Podcasts about Lysol

"How do you bring people into your story?" In this special episode, our WomenHeard guest host is Linda Descano! A former NYWICI president and current Chief Global Integration & Marketing Officer at Havas Red Agency, she explores the evolving landscape of Chief Communications/Marketing officers with two women at the forefront of the strategic shift.Jennifer O'Neill leads communications for the Americas region at Reckitt, a global hygiene and health consumer products company known for Lysol and more. She recently completed the Reckitt Catalyst Innovator Bootcamp, which scales start-ups founded by women and under-represented entrepreneurs (in collaboration with Serena Williams, the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence!) Sangeeta Prasad is the first CMO at Slalom, a global technology consulting company, who spoke at 2026 Cannes Lions about how digital transformation and the AI revolution have enhanced her team's impact as a growth engine. Listen to this episode for how they build trust, maintain authenticity, and share their perspectives on what's shaping marketing and communications success today. Plus, they discuss how men and women are approaching AI with different lenses - and what that could mean for their career development. 

What's scarier than Tyree and Lysol eyeballing your beautiful alabaster queen? Prob seeing Grayson waller with a live mic because he gonna spit the sh*t that makes your soul burn slow. Join B.A & E-Ray as they go on a two man power trip to AEW Ave. discuss Redemption graps, drive over to WWE blvd for Some Unreal Sights, before landing on NXT Drive and catching all the Ether. All that and so much more…Follow us on social media:IG: Instagram.com/letmebookpodX: x.com/letmebookpodYT: youtube.com/letmebookpod

Send us Fan MailBrian S. Brijbag is an award-winning playwright, author, and actor whose work has been produced across New York City, Florida, and beyond. His plays — among them Love, Lysol, and Other Delusions, On the Likelihood of Elephants, Fireflies & Fault Lines, and Funeral of god — are written in his signature Elegant Anarchy style and have been staged at festivals from the Players Theatre and Broadway Bound in NYC to Stage West and the Tampa Bay Theatre Festival.To watch the video format of this episode visit - https://youtu.be/FVic-udNa2QFor tickets for Funeral of god, July 30th through August 2nd with The Broadway Bound Theatre Fest at the AMT Theater in New York City visit - https://broadwayboundtheatrefestival.ludus.com/index.phpFor tickets to One Seat Over with the 2026 New Works Festival at Stage West Playhouse in Spring Hill, Florida, visit -  https://events.ticketleap.com/events/stage-west-playhouseTo purchase copies of books by Brian Brijbag, visit - https://www.amazon.com/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3ABrian%2BS.%2BBrijbag&s=relevancerank&text=Brian+S.+Brijbag&ref=dp_byline_sr_book_1Websites and socials for Brian Brijbag - https://brianbrijbagauthor.comhttps://chaosandcraft.com/about/IG - @brianbrijbagTwitter/X - @brianbrigbagTikTok - @brianbrijbagBluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/brianbrijbag.bsky.socialNew Play Exchange - https://newplayexchange.org/users/99428/brian-brijbagWebsites and socials for James Elden, Punk Monkey Productions and Playwright's SpotlightPunk Monkey Productions - www.punkmonkeyproductions.comPLAY Noir -www.playnoir.comPLAY Noir Anthology –www.punkmonkeyproductions.com/contact.htmlJames Elden -Twitter - @jameseldensauerIG - @alakardrakeFB - fb.com/jameseldensauerPunk Monkey Productions and PLAY Noir - Twitter - @punkmonkeyprods                  - @playnoirla IG - @punkmonkeyprods       - @playnoir_la FB - fb.com/playnoir        - fb.com/punkmonkeyproductionsPlaywright's Spotlight -Twitter - @wrightlightpod IG - @playwrights_spotlightPlaywriting services through Los Angeles Collegiate Playwrights Festivalwww.losangelescollegiateplaywrightsfestival.com/services.htmlSupport the show

We break down a jam-packed show starting with Dr. Josh McConkey, a board-certified emergency medicine physician and military flight surgeon, who joins us to untangle the real medical science behind new military testosterone screenings. While critics and the mainstream media try to spin this as a push for "toxic masculinity," Dr. McConkey explains how extreme operational stress routinely tanks hormone levels in service members over 30 and why routine screenings prolong critical careers. We also dive into the terrifying reality of the nationwide cyclospora outbreak. Dr. McConkey warns that this explosive diarrhea parasite can linger for up to six weeks, cannot be killed by household Lysol or hand sanitizer, and requires a strict cooking temperature of 158°C to neutralize on leafy green vegetables. Dawn gets fiery over the tragic death of Pennsylvania State Trooper Michael Fiera, who was struck and killed by an illegal Haitian migrant operating a massive tractor-trailer on a commercial driver's license. We play the powerful audio of President Trump honoring Trooper Fiera at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit and react to the shocking revelation that the suspect had a documented history of severe medical seizures yet was still allowed on the road. Dawn highlights Trump's massive new economic commitment—a $10 billion defense investment in Pennsylvania to build national security multi-mission vessels at the Philadelphia Shipyard, bringing over 4,000 proud jobs back to the local workforce. We react to Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner's bizarre public video attacking House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan. Krasner lashed out at Jordan's formal investigation into Philly's sanctuary city policies, accusing him of writing "nastygrams" and "doing dirt in the dark." Dawn exposes the true numbers, pointing out that over 78,000 non-citizens reside in Philadelphia County, and calls for full transparency on how much local taxpayers are actively shelling out for daily city services. Finally, economist Dr. Michael Bussler of Stockton University joins the show to dissect the dipping inflation numbers and explain how artificial intelligence spending might temporarily boost demand while ultimately driving prices down by supercharging worker productivity.

We are going full Canadian in this episode. The Canadian Movie Crew and I talk about an episode of The Dave Thomas Comedy Show with guest Dan Aykroyd. Well. Let's say we talk about the episode, but we do tend to get sidetracked with Ivory Soap, KFC, Lysol and A T&T. You'll know what I'm talking about after you listen to the episode. You can support this podcast with my Patreon page with the link below. This podcast can be found on Cross The Streams Media podcast. www.patreon.com/scottwhite www.scottyblanco.com www.instagram.com/scottspodcasts www.youtube.com/scottwhitecomedian www.crossthestreamsmedia.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Everyday Antibacterial Products Could Affect Your Child's Immune SystemThis week on the Natural Super Kids Podcast, we're talking about the everyday antibacterial products many families use to try to keep germs away, and how they may be making it harder for your child's immune system to do its job.From antibacterial hand washes and surface sprays to laundry sanitisers, dishwashing products and teenage skincare, these products are often marketed as protective. But when used too often, they can reduce the microbial exposure children need for healthy immune development.In this episode, we explore:Why too many antibacterial products can interfere with healthy immune developmentThe two chemicals to look out for: triclosan and benzalkonium chlorideWhere these chemicals may be hiding, including soaps, sanitisers, laundry products, dishwashing liquids and skincareSimple swaps that support a healthier home without over-sanitising your child's environment

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Lisa and Sue revisit the moments that made them laugh so hard they couldn't recover—possibly not even with a bathroom break in time. This “best of” episode pulls from some of their earliest podcasts, including classroom life gems like the great fish tank debacle (apparently, electricity is optional, but fish are not).They relive an end-of-year cleaning disaster involving a rag bag and an unexpected pair of granny panties, a typing lesson that took a turn when a student casually mentioned he was missing two fingers, and the unforgettable crisis of a plastic Lysol container stuck on a child's finger.There are the snack rebellions—black olives worn proudly on fingers until they were banned, then rolled down desks in quiet protest, and string cheese painstakingly shredded into a pile because using hands was apparently too mainstream.And, of course, the legends: the substitute who played a “nose flute,” biked through anything short of a natural disaster, and once simply… didn't come back from lunch; the entirely fabricated ghost of Rachel Underwood; and a prank involving a maxi pad that probably shouldn't have been as funny as it was.Because sometimes the only way to survive teaching… is to laugh at the parts no one would ever believe anyway.Do you have a story to share? Do you just want to talk? Send us a text! Please contact us with comments or ideas for our new podcast.  Here's our email: podcastwedidntknow@gmail.com.  You can also find us here: Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/SueandLisaInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/wedidntknowpodcast/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lifelaughedpodcast Thanks for listening!  -Sue and Lisa#AgingWithHumor#RetiredNotTired#LifeLaughed#WomenOver50#MidlifeUnfiltered#PodcastLife#StorytellingPodcast#RealTalk#BoomerHumor#EmptyNestAdventures#RetirementLife#WomenSupportingWomen#LaughAtLife#LifeLessons#GrowingOlder#FunnyWomen#PodcastRecommendations#AgingGracefully#Over60AndFabulous#LifeAfterTeaching #Menopause

One man falls asleep in the early 1920s… and wakes up to a world on the brink of the moon landing. In this episode of The Box of Oddities, Kat and Jethro explore the chilling true story behind encephalitis lethargica—the mysterious neurological epidemic that left thousands frozen in time. Through the haunting experience of Leonard, a patient who remained aware for decades inside his own unmoving body, we dive into questions of consciousness, time, and what it means to truly be alive. Then, in a wildly unexpected turn, the conversation shifts to the strange, shocking, and sometimes downright dangerous history of birth control—from ancient Egyptian remedies and medieval amulets to Lysol douches and goat bladder condoms. It's bizarre history, unsettling medical mysteries, and laugh-out-loud moments you won't believe are real. Perfect for fans of weird facts, strange history, and the wonderfully unsettling—this episode delivers curiosity, humor, and a reminder that humans have always been… creative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome fellow movie nerds! For our latest podcast episode Mike, Ma, and Matt discuss a movie you probably should not see, Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! starring Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale. Not monster topics include gargling Lysol, Matt goes really dark too fast, and is a drink a day a bad thing? Next review we don't go to the theaters, there is just not a lot coming out with the Academy Awards this Sunday. Instead we check out a new Prime Original streaming film The Wrecking Crew starring Dave Bautista, Jason Momoa, and Temuera Morrison. You can find us on all things social such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter or X. We also have an awesome community you can join, click here to check out our Facebook Fan Group so you can yell at Mike and Matt from the comfort of your keyboard while talking about films. Lastly we have an amazing website where you can watch trailers, read the host's bios, listen to the podcast, and get a ton more info on the movies we review.  Check out the link here https://www.ReelFilmNerds.com Thanks for stopping by and listening to our podcast, we appreciate each and everyone of you and we will be back next week with another incredible episode of the Reel Film Nerds podcast.

Join Myka and Stevie Stacks as they dive into the unglamorous but essential "in-the-trenches" side of property management. From bracing for "Dalaska" ice storms to battling "pungent" room turnovers and exploring major shifts in the Texas real estate market, this episode covers the full spectrum of modern real estate investing.In this episode, we discuss:Preparing for "Dalaska": How we are winterizing our DFW and Arkansas portfolios, installing faucet covers, and instructing tenants to drip pipes to survive the upcoming ice storm.The PadSplit "Smell" Saga: Stevie shares a wild story about a tenant move-out that left a room "odorific" and pungent. We break down the exact cleaning kit used to save the space—including Lysol, ozone machines, and Febreze plug-ins.Automating the Gritty Work: Can you truly automate evictions? We discuss the reality of getting non-paying tenants out and why PadSplit residents often move out without a legal fight compared to traditional rentals.The Austin Real Estate "Crash": Why rental values are plummeting in Austin and our thoughts on Brandon Turner's big move to the Texas capital to manage his struggling multifamily funds.10-House Goal for 2024: Stevie breaks down his "lofty" goal of acquiring 10 houses this year and how he's using quarterly tracking and a whiteboard to stay on pace.The OPM Debate: Why Stevie is sticking to single-family investing with his own capital rather than using "Other People's Money" (OPM) during this market cycle.Demographic Clashes: How high-income medical professionals from Furnished Finder are meshing with traditional PadSplit residents in the same house.National Watch: Our take on the Trump administration's proposals for 50-year mortgages and 10% interest caps on credit cards.Connect with us:Work With Us Interested in professional management or consulting? Connect with Myka and Steve through their respective management firms: Myka (Sharebnb): www.sharebnb.comSteven (Argest Rentals): www.ArgestRentals.comCheck out Myka's Podcast: Entrepremarriage – Building wealth without losing the marriageClick our Link Tree for Podcast News!https://linktr.ee/liveletthrive

I don't get sick very often, but that one year I did pick up the special flu bug of the year. Which, of course, meant my wife soon followed suit. We believed in sharing everything. Then our friend, Janice, got a similar flu - sick for four or five days. Then her husband got it - sick for four or five days. Then their lucky daughter took her turn - sick for four or five days. Their teenage son was the only one who didn't get it. His mom said he was the one walking around the house with a can of Lysol all the time! You can almost count on it - when one person is infected with a germ, it's probably going to end up infecting the people closest to them. I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cure for Family Germs." Every family has them - those germs that get passed around the family. And they're not all the kind you go to a doctor for. The most virulent, most damaging family infections of all come from moral germs, spiritual germs, some of which have infected generations or are in the process right now of being passed on to yet another generation. One writer tells about his friend, George, and the angry explosions he had with his wife - angry words which unfortunately his little son could sometimes hear down the hall in his room. There was one particularly bitter argument where George yelled to his wife, "I don't need you. I don't want you, and I can't stand you!" A few weeks later, George was awakened by sounds down the hall from his bedroom. They were coming from his little boy's room. George tiptoed down there and he stood and listened in horror as his son was angrily telling a stuffed animal of his, "I don't need you. I don't want you. I can't stand you!" That's how the family diseases are transmitted from one generation to the next. There are those weaknesses that scarred our parents' lives, probably their parents' lives, and who knows how many other generations! Tragically, we tend to carry that baggage into our lives and then infect another generation with them. We seem to be unable to stop the things in us that hurt most the people we love most: that anger, that selfishness, the criticism, the abuse, the addictions, the negativity. But there's wonderful news about our family infections in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18-19. Listen. God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Translation: there is a connection between my hurtful weakness and what Jesus Christ did when He died on the cross. If I open myself up to the love and the power of Jesus Christ, the disease can stop in this generation! I can be in the Bible's word "redeemed" from it. The central disease we all have that poisons our closest relationships is the disease of me - a disease the Bible calls sin. That's just a life you run instead of God running it, and it can only be conquered by the One who died to pay the death penalty for all our sinning, and that's Jesus. When you put your total trust in Him to be your "Savior" from all your sin, He enters your life. He unleashes His power which raised Him from the dead to start changing you from the inside out. The Bible says, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. A new life has begun." If you're ready to finally be forgiven, if you're ready to finally be free, then you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ. What you do is you say to Him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hope on you because you died for me. I am yours beginning today." That's a new beginning for you and for your family. I'd love to share with you more how you can be sure you belong to Him and what this relationship can do for you at our website. And it's got a name that's appropriate - ANewStory.com. That's what it's about - a new story for you. The spiritual infections in your family - haven't they done enough damage? And the Man who died for you is willing to begin His miracle healing of your past, your present, and your future. Think what it could mean to you and to those you love, "It stops here - in this generation! Because Jesus is running things now!"

I don't get sick very often, but that one year I did pick up the special flu bug of the year. Which, of course, meant my wife soon followed suit. We believed in sharing everything. Then our friend, Janice, got a similar flu - sick for four or five days. Then her husband got it - sick for four or five days. Then their lucky daughter took her turn - sick for four or five days. Their teenage son was the only one who didn't get it. His mom said he was the one walking around the house with a can of Lysol all the time! You can almost count on it - when one person is infected with a germ, it's probably going to end up infecting the people closest to them. I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Cure for Family Germs." Every family has them - those germs that get passed around the family. And they're not all the kind you go to a doctor for. The most virulent, most damaging family infections of all come from moral germs, spiritual germs, some of which have infected generations or are in the process right now of being passed on to yet another generation. One writer tells about his friend, George, and the angry explosions he had with his wife - angry words which unfortunately his little son could sometimes hear down the hall in his room. There was one particularly bitter argument where George yelled to his wife, "I don't need you. I don't want you, and I can't stand you!" A few weeks later, George was awakened by sounds down the hall from his bedroom. They were coming from his little boy's room. George tiptoed down there and he stood and listened in horror as his son was angrily telling a stuffed animal of his, "I don't need you. I don't want you. I can't stand you!" That's how the family diseases are transmitted from one generation to the next. There are those weaknesses that scarred our parents' lives, probably their parents' lives, and who knows how many other generations! Tragically, we tend to carry that baggage into our lives and then infect another generation with them. We seem to be unable to stop the things in us that hurt most the people we love most: that anger, that selfishness, the criticism, the abuse, the addictions, the negativity. But there's wonderful news about our family infections in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 1:18-19. Listen. God says, "You were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Translation: there is a connection between my hurtful weakness and what Jesus Christ did when He died on the cross. If I open myself up to the love and the power of Jesus Christ, the disease can stop in this generation! I can be in the Bible's word "redeemed" from it. The central disease we all have that poisons our closest relationships is the disease of me - a disease the Bible calls sin. That's just a life you run instead of God running it, and it can only be conquered by the One who died to pay the death penalty for all our sinning, and that's Jesus. When you put your total trust in Him to be your "Savior" from all your sin, He enters your life. He unleashes His power which raised Him from the dead to start changing you from the inside out. The Bible says, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. The old has gone. A new life has begun." If you're ready to finally be forgiven, if you're ready to finally be free, then you're ready to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ. What you do is you say to Him, "Jesus, I'm pinning all my hope on you because you died for me. I am yours beginning today." That's a new beginning for you and for your family. I'd love to share with you more how you can be sure you belong to Him and what this relationship can do for you at our website. And it's got a name that's appropriate - ANewStory.com. That's what it's about - a new story for you. The spiritual infections in your family - haven't they done enough damage? And the Man who died for you is willing to begin His miracle healing of your past, your present, and your future. Think what it could mean to you and to those you love, "It stops here - in this generation! Because Jesus is running things now!"

Quaranteam - Dave In Dallas: Part 1 Surviving a horrible plague has unusual conditions. Based on a post by RonanJWilkerson, in 12 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels. Forward: This story occurs within the Quaranteam universe created by CorruptingPower. If you have not red the original, or any of the other spinoffs, they are highly recommended. That is not required to understand this story, they're just good, and a lot of fun. This fictional drama coincides with the timing of the 2nd wave outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. The modified cold virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory and directly killed more than 7 million people, but is suspected of indirectly causing the early deaths of over 20 million, in about 24 months. The DuoHalo virus that this series of novels pertains to, is far more deadly, and can only be combatted with a gene therapy injection, but it wears off in just days, unless followed up by human hormones, and only through a continual booster through both male and female genital fluids. Only the female body is capable of enduring the inoculation gene therapy dose, but she still needs the catalyst of male genital fluids, which then activates both physical and psychological mutations. Her libido goes into hyper drive. The corresponding male partner also absorbs the hormone-based anti-viral, by absorbing the woman's rich antiviral genital fluids. The world order undergoes a fundamental rest, and the fight for survival of the species becomes dependent on heterosexual mating ‘bareback', with women devoting themselves to monogamy, while men retain a capacity to be the catalyst for however many females their stamina allows. The most notable psychological mystery is the absence of female jealousy and possessiveness. Cohabitation is an essential accommodation to make the treatment work. Chapter 1. September 18, 2020. Dave Belsus sat on the floor of his hallway texturing the wall over the patch he'd installed a few days earlier. It had taken a sizable piece of sheetrock (from a layman's perspective) to repair the big gaping hole in his wall. There wasn't really a right or wrong pattern to the texturing and Dave was simultaneously restless and reluctant to move on to a different task. He finally stood, gathered his tools and materials, and hauled them down to the garage. There are still things to do. There are people depending on him. He went out to his greenhouse and stopped, closed his eyes and smelled the green. Let it soak into him. He needed to feel life around him. He just stood there for; he wasn't sure how long. Not long enough. He still felt dead inside. But he had work to do. David started harvesting some veggies to exchange with his neighbor, Lupie. Inspecting the cucumber plants, he could see two large ones were ready. He'd keep one for his own salads and send the other next door. Becca, Lupie's houseguest (once babysitter) had developed a taste for them after Dave offered one a few months ago. Several beefy tomatoes were ready, so he plucked them, keeping a few for himself. Maybe a tomato sandwich tonight or tomorrow. That'd be nice. Three heads of redleaf lettuce (he'd staggered his lettuce so a few heads were harvestable every week) were next, again, one for Dave, two for next door. Finally, a handful of strawberries were perfectly ripe. He'd let Lupie and the girls have all of those. Esme, Lupie's daughter loved strawberries. Well, who didn't? Cute little girl. Always gave Dave fierce, friendly hugs. Dave missed the farmer's markets on the weekends where he could trade or buy/sell for other varieties and veggies he didn't have space or time for. Well, now he had all sorts of time, but he still didn't have the space. Dave brought the harvested veggies into the house and sorted the veggies. Stuff for him went on the counter basket. Items for Lupie, Becca and Esme went back in the basket he'd carried into the greenhouse. Dave grabbed the basket and walked over to what had been a parlor just off his entryway. Now it was a decon area. Dave added a plasticized suit over the clothes he'd been wearing. Mid-September was still toasty in Texas, but fortunately not as bad as late August. That had been brutal. Hot enough Dave had thought about adding a water bottle with a straw to the inside of the suit. He hadn't come up with a way to attach it without breaching the suit's integrity, so he nixed the idea. He doubled down on pre-hydrating when it was absolutely necessary to go out in the damn thing. Dave gathered up the basket in the clumsy gloves. He'd gotten fairly good at manipulating medium size items while wearing the gloves. The gloves were disposable dish gloves, tucked into the suit and duct taped to it for a seal. He opened his door and crossed the lawns over to Lupie's porch. He carefully transferred the veggies over to Lupie's porch pickup box, then gathered the dozen eggs she'd left him. Lupie had several hens in a large coop in her back yard. Dave had helped her install some anti-predator devices to the top of her fence and around the coop in the before times. Being that close to Lupie was a fond memory. Nothing romantic between them, just very comfortable. And it had paid off well too. He got a dozen eggs twice a week, and sometimes a whole chicken, plucked and dressed. Sometimes even separated into parts. If he was really lucky, after bringing her some good meat, he'd get homemade tamales. Lupie was a great cook. Her cooking wasn't the only thing Dave appreciated about Lupie. Absolutely lovely inside and out. She wasn't beauty pageant pretty, she was normal girl pretty. What a lovely face to wake up to. A face that'd make a man want to come home. Nice figure too. She never wore anything too showy, but she wasn't one for baggy stuff either. Sure, she's in her early thirties and has a real job and a kid to keep track of, so she most certainly wouldn't have a washboard tummy under her shirts. Or dresses. God, Lupie looks fantastic in a dress. The way they billow around her calves always caught Dave's eye. And that hair. Long, lovely, raven black hair. Hopping back onto his own porch, Dave put the basket down and flipped on the UV lights he'd installed in the porch awning. Step one in his decontamination process. Arms straight out from his shoulders, he turned slowly. One full circle palms down, another palms up. He flipped off the light, opened the door and grabbed the basket. Inside, he stripped off the outer suit, hanging it on hooks in the entryway, set the basket in the kitchen, then went straight to the upstairs shower, the one near the unused bedrooms. Excessive? Possibly. But Dave wasn't going to be another statistic. Viruses don't negotiate. Dave didn't either. That's what Lysol was for. Not that the average person could get much of that anymore. Still, if you weed out the essential oils nuts, there were some good recipes for home sanitizers online. You just had to pay attention to the recommended duration. Some were stronger than others and didn't need to be left on a surface as long. After toweling off and tossing the towel in the hamper, Dave went to the master bedroom to put on fresh clothes. Then he went back down to wash the lettuce and cucumber and started making a small salad. Dave didn't like eating right before exertion, but he hadn't eaten in a day and a half. He need to workout the anger surging through him too. So he compromised - a small salad, then beat the crap out of imaginary opponents. Lettuce base, quartered tomato, quartered boiled egg, diced cucumber, and balsamic vinaigrette. Tasty enough that he'd finish it. Small enough he wouldn't blow chunks while he's exercising. Kitchen cleanup gave the food a little time to settle. Dave walked across the house to get his staff from the gym, then went back to the sliding glass door separating the living room from the backyard. He walked to the large flat platform in the middle of the yard, stretching his arms as he went. He stretched his legs when he got there. Then he took a several minutes with warm up motions. He ran through each of the basic strikes and defenses in a pattern he practiced at least three times a week. He repeated the sequence five times. Then he launched into a series of combination motions. Half-staff upper hand strike on the right, followed by the left. A horizontal block leading into a full staff strike starting from the lower left into the upper right. On and on. Each pattern repeated. Each repetition faster. Turning. Striking. Blocking. Faster. Dave's face, initially a blank mask, grew pained, then angry. Anger flowed into rage. In his rage, Dave lost track of his position on the platform. He unknowingly stepped off the platform. It was only two or three inches high, but that was enough. He caught his fall with his staff and avoided an unceremonious face plant. Still, the interruption pulled him out of the mental space he'd been in. His breathing was ragged. Sweat soaked his clothes, dripped from every part of his body. The air was no longer flinty, but it was still too hot for heavy, continuous exertion. He felt a small wave of nausea roll through his belly. Time to pack it in. He cleaned off the end of the staff he'd use to stop his fall, then walked inside, stowed the staff back in the gym, and went up to the master suite shower stall. The shower refreshed Dave's body. Time to give his mind something to do. Eastfield College had only partially re-opened, just a few online classes. He had one section of astronomy to teach for the folks that wanted something more exciting than physical science for their science core requirement. No one was taking chemistry or physics this semester. The chemistry instructor was still alive. She'd laid down the law in her house and they had taken lockdown seriously. They just didn't have a good substitute for teaching the lab part of the class yet. The full-time physics guy had inexplicably taken the same attitude as too many in the county. He died before the spring semester ended. The guy had a doctorate in physics, twelve published papers to his name and spent twenty years living in scientific circles. You'd think he'd know better than to fall in with the idiot brigade. Hell, maybe the college would take Dave on full time to cover the physics courses once they opened up for real. Dave logged into to the course website, checking grades in the online homework column and looking for any labs submitted by the faster, more diligent (or just bored) students. No new work since yesterday. Maybe the rest would wait until last minute on Sunday night. On no, a procrastinating college student. What a surprise! A text message notification pulled him out of his reverie. It was from Lupie. "Please say yes." He was about to reply, asking her what he was supposed to say yes to, when he heard the doorbell. Crap. Dave rushed downstairs to the door, hearing a second ring on the way down. He grabbed a mask and slipped it on quickly just before opening the door a crack with his shoulder braced against it if he needed to slam it shut again. A man in a hazmat suit stood on Dave's porch, carrying a small case and wearing what appeared to be a watch on his right wrist. "Good morning sir, my name is Arthur Samuelson, I'm with the CDC. May I come in?" "You ain't a vampire are you?" The grin on Dave's face indicated he was joking. Arthur chuckled. "No sir, just administering tests checking for DuoHalo and making arrangements for vaccination." Dave got the impression a few details were being skipped here, as if the man in front of him was easing him in with the broadest strokes first. "A vaccine? Holy shit. Yeah, come on in dude." Dave backed up and opened the door fully. After making sure the door was fully closed, Dave led Arthur to the dining room table. Arthur immediately pulled out sterile cotton swabs, the kind with wooden stems and cotton only on one end, a small box. Arthur tapped the face of the watch and then typed in a numeric sequence when a digital number pad popped up. "It's a monitor. Some folks have taken a militant approach since the lockdowns started. Every time the watch buzzes at me, I have to enter a code within 30 seconds or they send a squad of troops to my coordinates." Dave reacted briefly, but nonverbally. Well, some people try to drown the lifeguard that's there to save their ass. Whoever said we've evolved past our caveman days isn't paying attention. Arthur handed one of the hospital style cotton swabs to Dave. "Just swab the inside of your cheek very well, no brain tickling this time." Dave swabbed as instructed, then handed the stick back to Arthur. Arthur set about processing the sample and placing it in the testing device. "This will take a few minutes. While we are waiting, is there anyone else to be tested here?" "No, I live alone." "Big place." "Yeah, I . . . had other plans, but they didn't pan out. Been here by myself for a few years now. Nice neighbors, especially next door, Lupie." Dave mentioned Lupie intentionally. Given the short time span between the text and the doorbell, it was possible, but not certain, the two were connected. "Yes, I just came from there. Nice ladies." "So, are you going door-to-door doing this, like somebody selling steak knives?" Arthur guffawed. "Not quite. We used electric usage rates to determine which houses still have people living in them. Then we set routes for each test administrator for a day. Also, you're going to like what I'm offering a lot more than steak knives, but they won't all come at once." Dave chuckled, but held back a bit. "So multiple booster shots?" "Something like that." Arthur's grin was slightly cryptic, like he was hiding a joke he wasn't ready to reveal just yet. "I hate needles man. I put up with them, but I usually have to look away when I get stuck for shots or blood donations." "We'll see what we can do to make it easier on you." The cryptic grin hadn't receded. Then the box trilled a three note sequence. Arthur checked it. "Congratulations, you are virus free. Let's make arrangements to keep you safe from this thing." Arthur pressed a button on the box, which then printed out a strip of paper. He handed the strip over to Dave. "So here's the deal: you know by now DuoHalo is deadly, especially to men. Like an 80% fatality rate for us guys." Dave's eyes hooded over. "I'm aware." "Yes, well it seems directly administering the vaccine is 100% fatal to men." "How the fuck is that supposed to help? Leave a planet of Valkyries that only survives if they solve cloning or learn to create artificial semen in one generation?" Dave shouted, but managed not to rise out of his seat. Arthur leaned back somewhat, as if subconsciously giving Dave a little extra space. "No sir, we have a solution, just please hear me out." Dave calmed himself and prepared to listen to what comes after three of the worst words to hear. Whatever followed those three words was either incredibly good, or monumentally bad. Dave wasn't holding his breath for the former. "No, no, nothing like that. It turns out that women can act as intermediaries for the vaccine, sort of a buffer solution. I'm sorry, that may not - " "I know what a buffer solution is and how it functions." "Oh, excellent. You see, we have found that if a vaccinated woman has intercourse with a man, her body buffers the vaccine serum and her immunity transfers - in part - to the man." "Intercourse? As in sex?" Arthur smirked "Someone at the office started referring to this as the STV - Sexually Transmitted Vaccine." Dave rolled his eyes briefly, then closed them and shook his head. "Okay, there is a website with text and videos to explain more details, but a few more things I should say before I leave. First, it takes more than one woman to keep a man safe. That means you will have multiple women 'sharing' you." Dave's eyebrows shot up, but he kept his mouth shut and listened for now. "The vaccine also creates some kind of bond between men and women, so once they sleep with you, they can't be with another man. Ever. It's extremely dangerous for the woman." Seeing Dave start to object, Arthur rushed along "The website I gave you is a highly detailed and personal survey. Women take the same survey. The results get processed through a system called Oracle that has been rigorously tested to match people. We don't want someone stuck with a person they can't stand." Hearing this, Dave was somewhat mollified. Arthur's haste from a moment ago clearly intended to forestall Dave's objection. Of course, Arthur probably thought the concern was for Dave being stuck with an objectionable woman. Dave was equally concerned with a woman getting stuck with him. "Alright so last few questions, how much space is there in this house?" "Oh, well, I have a king size canopy bed in the master bedroom. There are four more bedrooms upstairs, two of which have twin beds in them. The other two have no furniture." "You're going to want to change that. Your first partner will likely arrive tomorrow, with more coming every week, maybe four days apart, at least until we get you up to four partners. Eventually, you will be assigned at least twelve women. Oh, and one more thing." Arthur handed Dave a plain white letter envelope bearing Dave's name in a flowing script. "Your neighbor Lupie asked me to give this to you. I'll step out to the living room to give you some privacy, but I'll need an answer before I leave." Dave was puzzled and concerned but nodded Arthur towards the couch visible through the archway separating the dining and living rooms. Dave pulled out his pocketknife and slit the envelope open. His eyes widened at the first line. First line, hell - the salutation! Dearest David, Words cannot express just how wonderful it is just to address you in that way. I don't know when I began falling for you. I can tell you that last year, when I said I wanted a man who could make a living for us so that I could stay home, raise our kids, and love him with my whole heart, I was thinking of you. Yes, I know it's a bit silly to some, since I earn quite a nice income without any help, but that does not make me feel whole. I want to love you, and Esme, and the children we have together. Yes David, I want to bear your children and raise them with you. I wanted that before all of this lockdown and death started. And now, with all that's been lost, I want to feel life in my body. I want you to put it there. I never want to be away from Esme again. I want to manage your household and love you and our children and whomever else comes into our lives with the way the world is changing. I understand from the gentleman that came to our door that the vaccine has some unusual effects, including emotional and psychological impacts. This is why I am writing to you now, before I take the vaccine. I want to make sure you know this is really what I want. Before anything affects me. I love you. I want to be with you for a lifetime. You should also know that Becca wants to be with you as well. I suspect you will have objections based on her age. Yet, you know she is incredibly mature and responsible. You know what she went through to protect Esmeralda. You know what she has suffered through. Her world is completely unmoored. You, Esme, and I are all that she has left. Your heart and your mind know these things to be true. One thing you may not be aware of - Becca considers you her hero. For so many things big and small that you have done for us during this lockdown. Besides, she's a sci-fi and gaming nerd too, you two will get along quite well if you give her a chance. I love you desperately David. Please say yes. For both of us. Forever yours, Lupie. Dave reached into his back pocket for a handkerchief to dry his eyes. Lupie wanted him all along? Images flashed through his mind. Lupie laughing in a flowy dress on a pleasant spring day. Lupie's hands touching his as they exchanged eggs or produce. Lupie bringing him a glass of ice water while he repaired her fence because he couldn't bear the thought of her blowing money on a contractor. Lupie's proud grin as he thanked her and expounded on the deliciousness of the fresh tamales she brought over late last fall. Their hands had touched then too, hadn't they? No, she touched his hand. Not an accident. Dear God what an idiot! Hell yes he wanted Lupie in his life! And she had been showing him she wanted him in hers. Then his mind turned to Rebecca. Just barely eighteen, and him already forty-six. If she were five years older, she'd still be half his age! Everything Lupie said in her letter was true though. The four of them had gotten through this lockdown together - Lupie, her nine-year-old daughter Esme, and Becca, the young babysitter that had taken on so much when this first started. Loyalty to someone that had weathered the storm with him. Sympathy for someone who'd lost her entire family, even her extended relations. Admiration of the strength, character and resilience she'd shown. Mix in a little lust, 'cuz she's kinda cute. Nerdy cute. But then, Dave is a nerd, he likes nerd girls. Among others. So the only thing holding him back was a number? He'd seen that girl show more loyalty and honor than women twice her age! David took a cleansing breath and blew it slowly out. Arthur picked up on the change, stood and strode back to the dining room. "Have you made a decision?" "Yes. I will accept them both. I'd be a fool not to. How do we do that though? You said something about a matching program?" "Right, however a man may ask for a particular woman. The computer jockeys have to do some manual work for this to happen, so it's not a common occurrence. The two profiles are run through Oracle and the woman is informed of the request, the man's brief bio, and the match percentage of their profiles. Then she can choose to assent or decline." "Sounds like something waiting to be abused." "Hmm. I don't know of any such abuse occurring. I can see the potential you're talking about, but that would require one or more well placed conspirators in one of the vaccination centers." "And that never happens?" "Not to my knowledge. Not yet anyway. I need to get going. I'll inform your neighbors you've agreed. They'll pack a small suitcase and be ready to get picked up tonight or possibly tomorrow morning. You should expect your first partner to arrive sometime tomorrow. As long as you get that profile filled out. And be ruthlessly honest. It's quite thorough. Some questions might make you a bit uncomfortable. Fudging the answers could lead to poor results. And get it in quick. As soon as - Lupie and Becca? -" Dave nodded "are entered in the system, they will be compared to you. If your profile isn't there when the programmers run the comparison, they will be given a random match." Dave nodded his understanding, then rose to walk his guest out. Guest. After all these months, isn't that a hell of a thing? "Remember man, completely, brutally honest." With that, Arthur left. Dave closed the door behind him. He pulled out his phone and started typing. Yes To both of you. The little dots started dancing while he was still typing the second line. Thank you, David! Thank you so much! I'm sorry I held back so long! I have a lot to say to you too. But I want to say it in person. To look you in the eyes. Lupie, you have made me very happy. Happier than I feel I am worthy of. I can't wait to see you again. Face to face. Dave's phone buzzed with an incoming message, but there was nothing new from Lupie. He popped back to the inbox screen, finding an entry from Becca with an image. He opened it and just stared for a moment. He blinked when he realized his mouth was hanging open. Framed in the image was Becca, clearly taking a selfie, from just above her head to the bottom of her ribcage. She was biting her bottom lip and blushing furiously. Probably because the hand not holding the phone was holding her shirt and bra pulled up above her tits. Dave was embarrassed for a moment, then decided why not savor it? Hell, he'd be sharing a bed with her. He would see more than just her pert young boobies then. He sent a thumbs up, followed by: When you're all in, you're really all in huh? ; Laugh emoji ; Yeah, is that ok? ; Do you like them? Are they too small? They're beautiful. They're a part of you, and that makes them wonderful. Always remember that your body, as lovely as it is, is merely a bonus. You won me over with the strength of your character, your courage, your resilience. ; crying emoji, heart emoji ; You make me want to come over right now. ; peach, eggplant, water spurt ; See you in a few days. ; Lover. Dave had made it back to his office and woke his computer with a quick mouse shake. As he logged in, his phone buzzed again. This time it was Lupie. ; Is everything ok? Becca is acting really skittish, and she's blushing like she's embarrassed. Didn't you say yes to her? I did and do. If she doesn't want to tell you, I won't either. Yet. ; monocled raised eyebrow emoji I promise. I'll see you both - all three of you soon. Tell Esme she's getting a big hug. ; I will. I'll have a really nice hug for you too. Looking forward to it. Oh wow. GuadaLupie Jimena Angelina Gutierrez Ramos is itching to live in his house, share a bed with him, and spend her life with him? Fairy tales .. can come true.. it can happen to you; Dave forced himself to focus. He typed in the u r l Arthur had given him. Things started out bland enough. Girls, boys, both? Ladies only. Age range? Dave's first instinct was to set the bottom age to around 25 or 30. He's forty-six for God's sake. Yeah, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out repopulation was going to be an issue, and younger women had both more years of fertility and were more fertile, so at some point, someone would force the issue and each man would be paired with some women under twenty five. But Becca. If Dave set the minimum above eighteen, she might not even get a chance to match with him. That would likely separate her from Lupie and Esme as well. But that left the door open for other teens. Well, Arthur did say women got to pick who they paired with. Fuck it. I'm not screwing over Becca. That's not even a choice. We'll deal with whatever else results as we go. By the time Dave finished the Oracle survey, his stomach was growling. He wasn't quite done yet though. He only had a bare minimum of sheets and towels, so he went online and ordered three changes of sheets for both of the twin beds (there was already one set on each now), two full-sized beds for the two unfurnished rooms, four changes of sheets for those, and four dressers. He went down to the kitchen and pulled out the half tomato left from his lunch salad and started slicing it. After making his tomato sandwich, he added some chips and pickles to the plate. He sat quietly, alone, at the table, realizing that this may be the last dinner he has by himself. Arthur said multiple women. This whole house would be full of people. Full of life. What a difference a day makes. Dave was cleaning up from breakfast the next morning when he heard a knock at the door. He had just turned the water off at the sink, so it was possible this wasn't the first knock. He rushed to the door, grabbing a mask enroute. When he opened the door, a soldier stood there with a clipboard, a young lady beside and behind him. "You David Belsus?" "I am." "Meet your new partner sir, sign here please." Dave signed by the red x. "Y'all have a good day." He tipped his ball cap bill "Ma'am" and walked off. "Hi, I'm Janice Hoppler." She stuck out her hand and Dave shook it while processing what he was seeing. She was cute, late twenties or early thirties, distinctly Korean features, and jet black hair reaching the middle of her back. Dave had marked long hair as one of his desired traits in a woman, giving it a seven out of ten priority. Short hair can be nice, but nothing is so distinctly feminine as long hair. He'd pass up big boobs if a woman had long hair. Not that he'd mind getting both. Not even a little. "Can I come inside?" Dave realized he'd been shaking her hand for a bit too long and not saying anything. "Oh, sure. Sorry, this is kinda surreal." She grinned. "Ya, I know. First a pandemic kills off a huge part of the population, and now the solution is to fuck like bunnies and every man gets like a dozen women? Sounds like some high school boy's fantasy dream." Her dark eyes danced as she laughed. Dave brought her in to sit in the living room, mindful to sit somewhat close so he didn't appear distant, but not all up in her personal space. "Yeah, well, the hard part will be keeping up with the libidos of ten or twelve women. Especially since the videos mentioned you're each going to have an accelerated sex drive." "They also said you would get some invigoration as well. But don't worry, I'll make sure your part is plenty hard so it can do its work." Janice giggled when Dave blushed and closed his eyes. "Sorry, that's not the kind of thing I'd normally say out loud, but they did say all of us ladies will wind up much more forward than we had been before." "That could be helpful, I'm not great at picking up on subtle signals. When it happens, I just think a woman is being nice, but not interested. Or I think she's interested and she's just being nice." "Well, I'm interested enough to choose to be bonded with you for the rest of my life so consider this carte blanche to get frisky anytime you feel like it." She stood, strode to his chair and planted a smoky kiss on his lips, but no tongue. Dave took a breath to recover and register that this was really happening. "So, would you like to see the place first?" "Sure." Janice took his hand as he stood. "You've seen the entryway and parlor," Dave said guiding Janice past the couch into the dining room and beyond into the kitchen. "So here's the kitchen. The small door in the corner is the pantry. Upper two cabinets next to the fridge are dry foods. The other two are dishes and glasses. Lower cabinets are pots, pans, etc." Janice sniffed the air. "You cook much? Smells like you just had breakfast." "Yeah, I had just finished dishes. Did y'all have to knock more than once?" "Twice. But that's worth it for a man that can cook." "You cook much?" "I have to follow box directions carefully to get mac n' cheese to come out decent. I can only do cakes with help from Betty or Duncan and even that is an iffy proposition. Is that a problem, that I don't cook?" "Oh no, not at all." Dave led her out of the kitchen, winding back through the dining room and living room. "Up the stairs are the bedrooms, a full bath, my office, and the master suite." Her eyes glimmered. "Shortly." He paused. "Wow, that's new, me being the one to hold off." "I can see you want it. It's kinda sexy you wanting me, but not just jumping me." "Hmm. I 'll keep that in mind." He hoped his eyes were conveying his interest. Guess they were. "So, we were talking about cooking. I love to cook and so does Lupie. Becca enjoys it I think, but she's still learning. Not bad. She made me birthday cupcakes over the summer. Of course, we had to do the careful packaging and cleaning bit. She wanted to so bad after I made her a birthday dinner and cupcakes." "Who are Lupie and Becca?" "Oh, right, my neighbors." "Oh, the Latina woman and her daughter?" "The daughter is Esme. She's nine. Becca is the eighteen year old blonde. When did you see them?" "They were loading -" Dave and Janice had just arrived at the first door off the hallway past the living room. A former guest bedroom, Dave had done some renovations, adding the closet space of the room onto the half bath and converting that into a full bath. The rest of the room he had filled with bookshelves and comfortable chairs. A few small tables sat near the chairs to rest a drink or a book on. One table bore a good-sized and fairly recent globe. A map of the U S A and a world map adorned one wall in the sitting area. And of course, all the shelves were loaded with books. Janice took a few steps into the room past Dave, who had stopped the moment she cut herself off, wondering what was wrong. When she spun to face him, he saw the look of a kid walking into a candy store with a hand full of monthly allowance. Janice swiftly crossed the small distance between them, launched her short frame into his arms and kissed him fiercely. "Fuck me. Fuck me right here, right now." Dave's brain was not keeping up with the changes. Janice wasn't waiting anyway. She quickly unbuckled his belt, unbuttoned and unzipped his pants and shoved them to his ankles, along with his boxers. She dropped to her knees and started kissing and licking his cock. As it began to fill out, she took it in her mouth and bobbed her head along its length. Dave had always been self-conscious about his cock. It wasn't anything impressive as far as he knew. It didn't help that it shrank in both length and girth in the flaccid state. A cheating ex-wife didn't help things either. And yet, here was this beautiful woman, on her knees, hungry for his cock. Janice's eyes rolled back in her head and a deep, guttural moan issued from her chest. She stilled for a moment, falling back with her ass on her heels. She looked like she might fall over, so Dave took hold of her shoulders. After a minute or so, She looked up at him, happy and hungry. "That. was. Awesome!" Then her eyes zeroed in on his cock again, taking the same look as a hawk spying a squirrel. He was fully erect now. Janice rose up enough to shove his hips. "On the ground baby. Time to finish this. Make me your horny little bitch for life." Dave lay down, Janice not even waiting until he was all the way down to crawl up his body and straddle him. The sensations he picked up from the tip of his cock as she settled herself told him she wore no panties under her loose skirt. She quickly lined him up with her entrance and sat back forcefully. "Fuck yeah. This thing feels so damn good baby. God, how the hell are you still single? I'd fucking sell my soul to you if you promised to fuck me." She started rising a bit, then shoving herself back down, then grinding her clit against him. "Fucking perfect fucking thickness and length. I feel so stuffed, and not painful." She placed her palms over his nipples and began focusing her efforts on riding up and down, her breathing getting ragged. Janice emitted several moans and grunts as she worked herself and Dave up to a pinnacle. For his part, Dave was just hoping to last long enough for her to enjoy this. It had been a while since he'd been with a woman and Rosy Palm just isn't the same. He felt his pleasure rising rapidly and focused on holding it back. Just then she threw her head back and howled in pleasure as her inner muscles ran riot gripping him. He crested too, shooting up into her. Her howl nearly became a scream, her whole body shaking, seizing. Dave grasped her torso at the bottom of her ribcage to give her some stability. She collapsed like a ragdoll, her arms, limbs and neck going limp, dangling from her still vertical body in Dave's hands. Dave lowered her body to his and gently rolled them over, one hand behind her head to keep it from flopping around. He pulled up his boxers and pants so his legs could move enough to stand. Doing so, he tucked himself back in and fastened his pants. Dave crouched beside his sleeping beauty, gave her a soft kiss on her forehead, then scooped her into his arms and carried her up to the master bedroom. He laid her out gently on top of the covers and draped a light blanket over her. Then he went back to his computer to watch some of the videos he had skipped. Clearly, he had missed a few important facts. Janice has Dave all to herself for one day. Chapter 2 - Janice's Day. September 19, 2020. Dave fought the urge to go straight to his computer and watch more videos on this vaccine. He'd anticipated the chanting of 'imprinting' but he'd skipped over the parts of the videos on sexual effects, thinking it would wait, or not even matter. That reaction was not natural. Okay, he's somewhat decent in bed, but that shit was next level, pornstar stuff. No way a woman got that excited over his crank. Before he could go video surfing, he needed to get over and feed Lupie's chickens. No telling when they'd be back, probably tomorrow, and the chickens had to get fed. At least he wouldn't need to truss up. He wasn't running into anyone else. Dave slipped through the fence gate separating Lupie's front yard from her backyard. She left it unlocked all the time. Dave only mentioned it once, and then remained low-level worried for her when she never locked it. Dave was pulled out of his musing by a low growl. In the backyard, glaring at him, was a large dog, a mutt with a lineage that ran thick and muscular. The eyes looked somewhat red, but the muzzle showed clear evidence of dried blood. Most likely a neighbor had died, thus cutting of the dog's food supply. It broke out of its own backyard and had been killing other dogs, cats or squirrels thus far. Now it was thinking squab for breakfast and Dave had just interrupted. Well, first good news, no foaming at the mouth so it's probably not rabid. Still a good idea to not get bit though. Holding stock still, Dave scanned the area, moving his eyes only, searching for anything that could be helpful. Ironically, Dave had a number of weapons at home that would have solved this little problem for the neighborhood. Not that they were doing him any good right now. A shop broom. Lupie kept a shop broom on the back porch, and it was just a few feet away. Well that's something. Dave took a small step sideways and the growling turned to a couple of loud barks. The dog leaned to one side, as if anticipating the need to intercept Dave running sideways. Dave's hand reached out slowly, causing the dog to bark harshly and take two steps closer. Dave's hand connected with the broom. When he began pulling the broom to him, the dog charged, open mouth, teeth bared. Feeling a little ridiculous, Dave snapped into ready position, the brush part of the broom held low. He thrust the broom under the dog's muzzle, the bristles splaying out absurdly. The dog reared back, possibly about to leap over the broom, so Dave adjusted his motion upward, catching the dog's chin and flipping it up and back. The dog kept his back feet planted and swiveled its head to take the broom head in its mouth. It swung its head back and forth, attempting to pull the broom from Dave's hands. Dave took a firm grip and unscrewed the handle from the broom, with a few added jabs to keep the dog off balance as he did so. The dog noticed the moment the head come loose from the handle. It threw down the head and came charging again. Dave of course was ready for this, swinging the metal threads on the head end of the handle in an arc that delivered an upper cut to the dog's jaw. With an angry yip, the dog pulled back, barked, and circled. Dave turned with the dog, waiting for the next charge. When it came, Dave snapped the end of the handle on the dog's head in a downward strike that connected, but did not stop the dog. Dave slipped sideways as he brought the other end of the handle around, catching the dog in the shoulder. At this point, Dave realized scaring the dog off might not work at all, and if it did, the dog would be back in an hour or so. He was going to have to kill the dog to keep the chickens safe. Dave had already maneuvered to the concrete porch in Lupie's backyard. He slammed the end of the broom handle in a downward strike on the porch, snapping the end off and leaving a splintered point on the end. He now had a spear. The dog charged again. This time, Dave waited until the dog reared up to leap before plunging the sharpened end of the handle into the dog's torso. A sickening yelp issued from the dog as the makeshift spear drove into its chest cavity. The dog fell, pulling Dave's weapon from his hands, and lay growling, panting and whimpering on the porch. Mortally wounded, the dog was still dangerous. It was also in pain. Dave needed to dispatch it quickly. Every moment it wasted away would wear on his soul. He spotted Lupie's garden trowel. Moving swiftly, he grabbed it, slipped behind the dog, and drove the trowel into the base of the skull, ending the animal's pain. Once he was sure the animal was neither a danger nor in pain, Dave sat back on his haunches and wept bitter tears. Hell, he'd kill deer and turkey before, but that was hunting. What meat he didn't eat or give to Lupie was donated to a local charity to feed the poor or homeless. The butcher he used sold the deerskin and turkey feathers to local crafters for their works. This animal was dead because it was hungry and targeted the wrong prey. Feeling like an utter wimp, Dave wiped his eyes and face dry. He went back to his own garage, pulled out a tarp, and headed back to Lupie's yard. Dave wrapped the dog in the tarp, then carried it through the back gate, and tossed the carcass in the rolling garbage bin. More waste. More death. By the time Dave got back, the chickens had largely settled down. He scattered some seed into their enclosure and filled the water tank from the backyard hose. Dave left the backyard, pulling Lupie's gate closed tightly behind him and returned to his own home. He went upstairs to the master suite bathroom and scrubbed his arms thoroughly. Partly to remove any fluids that might have gotten on him. Mostly as a psychological exercise, trying to wash away what happened. Emerging from the bathroom, Dave was captured by Janice's sleeping face. He climbed into bed and lay beside her, watching her gently breathe. Drinking in the feeling of another life nearby. But he had work to do. And some research on what happened this morning. Maybe watching the videos first would help get his head settled again so he could focus on his project. Rewatching the video he'd skipped parts of, he hit the part explaining the bonding effect of the serum on women with a male partner. Did that work in reverse? Is that why he found Janice's muttering of 'imprinting' slightly sexy, but not the lady in the video? His thoughts were interrupted by his text warning bing. Lupie sent; Can you look a few things up for me? There's a lot of terms here I don't know and I can't ask Lupie face to face. And I can't look it up without leaving the survey. Sure, what do you need defined? If I don't know, I'll search it up for you. Lupie sent; Okay, the first one is fictophilia. That one I'll need to look up. Oh, okay, that's having an attraction to a fictional character. Not sure if that's the same as cosplay or not. Lupie sent; So if I had that, would you dress up as Malcom Reynolds for me? Sure. But I might want reciprocation. Lupie sent; Zoey, Kaylee, or Inara Sera? Yes. Lupie sent; huge crying laughing emoji ok, how about lactophilia? I mean, it's tasty, but I'm not fixated on it. She posted a question mark. Oh, sorry, it means you like for your partner to suckle mother's milk from you during foreplay or sex. Or, you know, you want to suckle *from* them. Another lady I mean Lupie sent; Oh Shit, I didn't know that was a thing! Okay, I kinda like the idea of you sucking on me during, you know. Not sure I'm into other girls though. Eventually we are going to get better at finishing those sentences kitten. We'll be 'you knowing a lot. Lupie sent; laugh emoji And you don't have to do anything with another woman Never, if you aren't interested. It took a few minutes, and Dave was about to hit play again on the video when another text from Becca came in. Lupie sent; somnophilia? It means you get aroused seeing a sleeping person. Or you want to be taken in your sleep. Lupie sent; Oh god, I just had this thrill run through me at the idea of waking up with you already in me, on top of me. So we're doing that? Lupie sent; Oh yeah. oh, and I hit yes on watersports too. I'd love to do it in the shower, or a pool. God, wish we had a pool, that would be awesome. No no no no! That is not; what watersports means! Watersports means pee! You want to be pee'd on or you want to pee on your partner! Lupie sent; Oh Gross. barf emoji People do that? Surely you've seen porn pics of girls squatting and peeing in a field or on a road? Lupie sent; Yeah. Well, that's what it's for. Lupie sent; No offense Dave, but that's a hard no. We are in absolute agreement kitten. Lupie sent; Okay, finally finished. I hit submit, now the great microchip brain gets to spin our data and tell us how close we are. Lupie sent; I'm a little scared David. What if it doesn't match us? Becca, worrying isn't going to help you at all. Just get a snack, talk with Esme or Lupie. Or talk with another lady if there's someone nearby. Lupie sent; I miss you already. The text went quiet. Dave waited a few more minutes and then turned his attention to his computer. Time to focus on his side project. The secret one. For his public side job, Dave did data analysis, but no one was sending him new numbers to crunch or putting out bids at the moment. Government types probably had more data than they knew how to process, but Dave had never done government jobs and never had any clearance level. His 'quiet' side job was less boring but could be problematic if some prudish Karen found out. Well, some folks knew, because they paid him money. But no one had connected his online persona with him. Dave had written two adult visual novels, with good reviews. Now he worked on a game with adult themes. And pictures, of course. Fitting his personal fiction interests, the background was an apocalyptic scenario, and the main character built a harem of capable and beautiful ladies to; survive. Even with software support, Dave wasn't much of an artist, so he had an arrangement with someone else to render the images and short video scenes. Version 0.3 had been out for three months, so he was working intently to complete 0.4 before Thanksgiving. The artist was reliable and good. Dave just needed to give him (her? They used anonymous internet handles) clear and detailed descriptions of what he wanted. That meant figuring out what was happening in this next update. Lockdown had somewhat helped. Dave had more free time available. He'd gotten 0.3 out early, but that just meant his paying supporters wanted more. And they are paying, even in months he didn't produce anything. Half an hour of banging his head against code (and thinking strongly of banging his head against the wall) Dave finally got 'in the flow' and cranked out the last bit of story structure over the next two hours. That ended when his grumbling stomach informed him of his neglect. First though, he'd look in on Janice. It was both strange and comforting, seeing this lovely woman in his bed, sleeping peacefully. His heart warmed at the sight, but a nagging fear rose in him as well. He knew this was only due to this strange vaccine. How long until the bio geeks find a solution so women were not stuck with a guy forever? That would be a very telling day. One which Dave would welcome, but also feared. Feeling the need for some comfort food, Dave made himself a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches, then piled two handfuls of chips on the plate. He didn't keep soda in the house unless company was coming, so he grabbed a lime flavored seltzer. He liked soda, but that's why he didn't keep it around. After cleaning up from lunch, Dave headed back to his office space to check in on his Astronomy class. They had a project due this past weekend, so it was time to grade the results. Thirty minutes later, he felt like his eyes were bleeding reading the same errors repeatedly. Most of them were doing the math correctly, but they were measuring completely wrong. Which didn't make sense, given that Dave had made a video explicitly showing how to take the measurements. It was a simple parallax trick astronomers used for gauging distance to stars. It told also be used by surveyors to measure distance across a river or gorge. If you do it right. What he wanted to do was bang his head against a wall for ten minutes, then arrange a live zoom session with his students to find out what they didn't understand, and then have them do the project again. But there may not be enough time to complete all the semester topics. Fuck it, put out another tutorial video on the topic so they can get the parallax questions right on the midterm, and just be a little lenient grading this set of work. Work email popped a new message. From the dean. What the fuck? Seriously? Online physics? For majors? The whole point of slipping physics into the degree plans of doctors and other professionals has more to do with analytical techniques and detailed, careful experimental training than the topics covered. Yeah, several of the topics apply closely to those future careers also, but mostly it's used to make sure these kids understand the precision needed in scientific professions, how to analyze data, read graphs and use equations. And since it's tough, it weeds out those without the dedication or talent to go the distance. Dave shot back a reply email, asking for clarification. Will there be a budget to buy kits so kids can do experiments at home? How long to I have to assemble my own kits, or source some third party? What's the budget limit? Dave groaned. Just two years ago they'd gotten a grant to buy some great new lab equipment. But he only had one classroom set, and it was expensive. No way could he send out this gear to the students. Not enough for each one to have a set. And even if no one tried anything fishy, basic forgetfulness would result in a third of the equipment missing by the end of the semester. This shit was way too expensive for that. A second email from the dean, not a reply to his reply, a new topic. At least she was dependably methodical on that. Different topic required a different email chain. She might be a squishy (the dean was a microbiologist, Dave referred to all life science degreed folks as 'squishies') with little imagination on administrative matters, but she was very consistent and precise. Okay, so she's giving him a heads up on; a vaccine? Cute. Dave sent back a reply, thank her for the information, but his first partner arrived this morning and is currently passed out. She shot back a reply, relieved that he was safe, followed by an observation that departmental parties with spouses were going to be much larger from now on. Then she replied to the other email, pointing out that several big universities do online, without hands on labs. They sent the students pre-collected data and had them only do the analysis. Dave could go that route if he wanted. Of course, if Dave chose to put a few labs requiring data collection by the students, along with other labs that only used canned data, that would make their online physics more rigorous than those other schools. Just saying'. Lovely. Dave went back to grading and finished the column out. At least for those that had already submitted. A half hour surfing science kit supply companies left him unimpressed, so he pulled out a sheet of paper and outlined a video on parallax. His head wasn't right to shoot it today, but he could plan it. The day was wearing on and Dave had already gotten a lot done. Time for a brain break. Dave locked out the computer and headed downstairs to the library. Standing in the fiction area, He browsed for a bit before pulling out an old favorite, Executive Orders by Tom Clancy. He settled into a lounge chair in the library and let his mind and body relax. As usual, Dave lost all track of time while immersed in a book. He was midway through a particularly engrossing passage when Janice came through the library door with a huge grin. She'd changed out of her clothes from this morning, now dressed in his 'not procrastinating, just doing side quests' shirt and a pair of her panties. Well, maybe panties. The shirt hem was low enough to reach an inch or so below her groin. She was not wearing a bra however. The pinpoints sticking out of the shirt proclaimed that fact loudly. Dave smiled, setting the book aside and began to rise. Janice placed a soft hand on his chest and then settled herself in the lounger alongside him. She kissed him firmly on the cheek and temple, then rubbed the side of her face against his. They ended the nuzzling nose to nose, looking into each other's eyes. "Have a nice nap?" "Best sleep ever." Janice took another look around the room, taking in a deep breath. "God I love the smell of books." She snuggled in tighter. "Your profile mentioned reading as one of your pastimes, but nothing about having a full-on library in your house. I saw the smaller bookshelves in the entryway, but this really blew me away. And you have another bookshelf in the bedroom!" She stopped to deliver another steamy kiss. "It's hard sometimes finding other bookworms, except at work. I love it, but sometimes I just want to enjoy books, ya know?" "What is it you do? It feels like I should already know that, before we, um; " "Before I jumped you?" Dave nodded, then chuckled. "I just texted Becca this morning about being free talking with each other about sex, and here I am all tongue tied." Janice laughed with him. "Well, lover, I'm a librarian over at Cedar Valley." "Wow. Obviously a love of books could drive you into that career, but does it ever get to you? Make you want to get away from books?" Janice just stares at him. "I withdraw the question and humbly beg the court's forgiveness." She chuckled and kissed him on the nose. "How about you feed me something, I'm starving." "Starving, or starving?" Dave said, pushing lightly towards her with his pelvis along with the second iteration. After a hearty laugh, Janice said "Both, in that order. Give me the meat buster." Dave chortled while lifting her off him and setting her, standing on the floor. He stood beside her, giving her side eye as they walked side by side, holding hands, to the kitchen. "You give this appearance of coquettish innocence and then talk saucy enough to get me half hard before you remove so much as a single button. Is that due to the vaccine?" Janice rubbed first her shoulder, then her tit against his arm while looking up into his eyes. "Mostly just me, a few friends have said I give a reserved air until I'm with people I trust. The vaccine's effects might lower that veil a bit faster." A brief wash of pain passed over Janice's face. Dave didn't inquire, knowing it must be concern or mourning for friends no longer living. Dave took a quick look through the fridge. "We can do steak, mashed potatoes, and broccoli in about an hour, mostly because of the potatoes. Or we can do broccoli beef, probably about 45 minutes. Or we can do sloppy joes and chips in about twenty or twenty-five minutes." "Sloppy joes it is." Dave grabbed the thawed pound of ground beef, an onion, and a green bell pepper from the fridge. "Can you go into the pantry and grab a can of tomato sauce?" Dave said, while pointing to the pantry door. He remembered pointing it out this morning, but reinforcement usually helps assimilate new information. When Janice came back out, Dave had two skillets on the stove, and spices on the counter alongside a cutting board, knife and the two veggies. "Can I help?" "Sure, how's your knife skills?" "Well, I can cut a bitch if I have to; " Dave burst out laughing, lowering the knife to the counter just to be safe. He turned to Janice, giving her a fierce kiss. "Oh, I think I needed that." He wiped a few tears from his eyes and got back to dicing the pepper and onion. "Aright, how about you sauté these while I get the meat started?" With a light grimace, she asked "How?" "Toss 'em in the skillet on medium-low heat, about a tablespoon of butter" Dave looked at the veggies again, "maybe two, a couple shakes of salt. Keep the veggies in the butter, stirring a bit once in a while, until the onions start to look clear." Janice set to work sautéing, while Dave got the ground beef browning. He stepped aside from the stove to the adjacent counter to leave her more space. Dave poured 'eyeball' measured amounts of powdered garlic, paprika, cumin (very little), salt, and chili powder in to a small bowl and swirled the bowl to mix everything. When he leaned towards the stove to tend the beef, Janice leaned her head against his shoulder. "Comfy?" Janice nodded her head. Dave kissed her on the crown and she hummed. "Think you could watch both of these? Just make sure to turn the beef and keep chopping it into small bits so we get crumbles instead of big chunks. I'm going to toast some bread. Sorry, we don't have any buns." "That's okay, I know what buns I want to bite." Janice punctuated her statement with an impish wink. Dave just shook his head, grabbed the loaf out of the cabinet and got to work with the toaster. A few minutes later, Janice called out, "The beef is sizzling and sticking. I'm getting some brown in the bottom of the pan." "Perfect, pour in the veggies, then the tomato sauce." Seeing her do that he added, "Great, now sprinkle the spices over the top, as evenly as you can. Good, Now just stir that up a bit. Let it cook down some, boil off some of the liquid. Stir it every few minutes." Dave had finished the toast well before Janice had called out, but she seemed to be doing well so far and he wanted to let her get more comfortable in the kitchen. Sounded like something she wanted, based on what she'd said this morning. He did walk up behind her and give her a gentle, loose hug as she worked the skillet. Janice rested her head back on his chest. "This is so thoroughly domestic. Thank you." "You don't have to cook you know. There'll be three cooks in the family by tomorrow evening." "Yeah, and one is an eighteen year old girl who's fifteen years younger than me." "That teen girl has been through the wringer. She's shown some serious maturity. That's why I accepted her. She's the only reason I set my age range that low." "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to sound dismissive." Dave was quiet for a moment. "I'm sorry for coming off snappy. We lived in separate houses, but the four of us rode this mess out together." Janice nodded. "How about you tell me more over dinner. Starting tomorrow they're going to be family." With the meat reaching its final stage, Dave put a hot pad on the table for the skillet, and grabbed two open bags of chips from the cabinet. He'd already placed the toast on the table as soon a

Marc Malusis describes his home life over the last seven days as a complete biohazard war zone. It started with his wife, Donna, catching a brutal stomach bug from her kindergarten students, leading to a 4 AM vigil. Despite Marc's desperate attempts to fumigate the house with Lysol, the "Vomit Vortex" claimed his kids one by one—featuring projectile vomit in the bedroom, ruined rugs, and a messy Christmas cookie session turned disastrous. With his youngest son now battling Flu A and the rest of the family on the mend, Marc treats his mid-day fill-in shift at the station as a "Shangri-La" reprieve from the clogged toilets and latex gloves of Connecticut. He wraps up with a fiery reminder to all parents: when your wife gives the marching orders to clean the floor, you just do it.

Marc "Moose" Malusis steps behind the mic for a fiery mid-day session, taking aim at the state of New York sports. He starts by dissecting the Rangers' identity crisis, arguing they have too many "fourth-liners" and questioning if it's time to trade Artemi Panarin while his value is high. Malusis then turns his heat toward the Yankees, labeling them "self-satisfied" and lacking the "Evil Empire" motivation needed to keep pace with the powerhouse Dodgers. On the Mets' side, the Moose doesn't hold back on David Stearns, questioning the negotiation tactics with Edwin Diaz and the refusal to pay Pete Alonso. Between sports takes, Marc shares a hilarious yet harrowing story of his entire family falling ill, emphasizing the "Happy Wife, Happy Life" philosophy as he spent a week cleaning vomit and Lysol-ing his home just to get a "reprieve" at the studio. Finally, he looks at the Giants' coaching search, demanding a proven resume like Mike McCarthy or Mike Tomlin to fix a culture of "nonsense."

Nancy kept apologizing to old women at her church because she kept unintentionally ignoring them. She was decorating for an event but had her AirPods in doing a Zoom call. They kept trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t hear them. Weird Christmas traditions! Megan Moroney’s family eats lobster on Christmas Day. In Nancy’s family, Mrs. Claus brings new pajamas and a movie to their house on Christmas Eve. In Joey’s family, instead of having Santa Claus, they have Santa Cow... the cow from Chickfila. Hot Tea: Pamela Anderson claims that her relationship with Liam Neeson was NOT a publicity stunt. Gulf Shores, AL says that neither the Hangout Fest, nor Morgan Wallen’s Sand in My Boots festival will not be happening there in 2026. A drone was caught trying to break into a jail while carrying weed, cigarettes, and a raw steak. Redneck Wednesday! What’s a funny (non-deadly) item you’ve seen used in a fight? We got answers such as Lysol disinfectant spray, a cookie, and a plastic fork. Lucky 7 Australia has official banned social media for kids under the age of 16. How will that be enforced? Is it a good or bad thing? (We think it’s good) Billy Ray Cyrus is being sued by a woman who is claiming she is Miley’s biological mom. She says that she had Miley when she was 12 and that Dolly Parton helped set up the adoption with the Cyrus family. She says a head injury caused her to forget that all of this happened until earlier this year. Billy Ray is saying that none of this is true. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nancy kept apologizing to old women at her church because she kept unintentionally ignoring them. She was decorating for an event but had her AirPods in doing a Zoom call. They kept trying to talk to her, but she couldn’t hear them. Weird Christmas traditions! Megan Moroney’s family eats lobster on Christmas Day. In Nancy’s family, Mrs. Claus brings new pajamas and a movie to their house on Christmas Eve. In Joey’s family, instead of having Santa Claus, they have Santa Cow... the cow from Chickfila. Hot Tea: Pamela Anderson claims that her relationship with Liam Neeson was NOT a publicity stunt. Gulf Shores, AL says that neither the Hangout Fest, nor Morgan Wallen’s Sand in My Boots festival will not be happening there in 2026. A drone was caught trying to break into a jail while carrying weed, cigarettes, and a raw steak. Redneck Wednesday! What’s a funny (non-deadly) item you’ve seen used in a fight? We got answers such as Lysol disinfectant spray, a cookie, and a plastic fork. Lucky 7 Australia has official banned social media for kids under the age of 16. How will that be enforced? Is it a good or bad thing? (We think it’s good) Billy Ray Cyrus is being sued by a woman who is claiming she is Miley’s biological mom. She says that she had Miley when she was 12 and that Dolly Parton helped set up the adoption with the Cyrus family. She says a head injury caused her to forget that all of this happened until earlier this year. Billy Ray is saying that none of this is true. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joey’s 8-year-old, Marvin, has been wanting a world atlas. A listener brought one to us for him! Marvin absolutely loved it. Karly apologized for the mixture of smells of the studio. Her leggings smelled musty, and she sprayed them with peppermint oil and Lysol. Is Walmart tracking us? A man made a purchase at Walmart in cash and then got an email asking for him to rate and review the product. There are rumors that Walmart is using facial recognition. Hot Tea: It’s reported that Taylor Swift paid a couple to move their wedding date so she could have her wedding on that date at the venue she wanted. Kenny Chesney revealed that Mac McAnally had some of Jimmy Buffet ashes in his pocket when they performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Columbia is offering to give someone all the rights to “The Company” if they can prove the Earth is flat. A guy tried to save an injured raccoon on the side of the road. He picked it up and put it in his car. While driving to a rescue center, the raccoon bit him in the face. Unfortunately, the raccoon had rabies, so the man will have undergo treatment. A few days ago, we did a ragebait prank about Morgan Wallen. Karly posted the video on social media; with the fact it was ragebait in the caption and at the end of the video. Most people didn’t pay attention and started correcting us again... including Morgan’s mom and grandma! We called Morgan’s Mamaw Kay and talked to her about it. Lucky 7 A special edition of What Makes You Special with Sterl the Pearl! Nancy's husband hosted cooking school at their house last night. He is determined to make sure that Emma and her boyfriend are self-sufficient and know how to cook for themselves. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Joey’s 8-year-old, Marvin, has been wanting a world atlas. A listener brought one to us for him! Marvin absolutely loved it. Karly apologized for the mixture of smells of the studio. Her leggings smelled musty, and she sprayed them with peppermint oil and Lysol. Is Walmart tracking us? A man made a purchase at Walmart in cash and then got an email asking for him to rate and review the product. There are rumors that Walmart is using facial recognition. Hot Tea: It’s reported that Taylor Swift paid a couple to move their wedding date so she could have her wedding on that date at the venue she wanted. Kenny Chesney revealed that Mac McAnally had some of Jimmy Buffet ashes in his pocket when they performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Columbia is offering to give someone all the rights to “The Company” if they can prove the Earth is flat. A guy tried to save an injured raccoon on the side of the road. He picked it up and put it in his car. While driving to a rescue center, the raccoon bit him in the face. Unfortunately, the raccoon had rabies, so the man will have undergo treatment. A few days ago, we did a ragebait prank about Morgan Wallen. Karly posted the video on social media; with the fact it was ragebait in the caption and at the end of the video. Most people didn’t pay attention and started correcting us again... including Morgan’s mom and grandma! We called Morgan’s Mamaw Kay and talked to her about it. Lucky 7 A special edition of What Makes You Special with Sterl the Pearl! Nancy's husband hosted cooking school at their house last night. He is determined to make sure that Emma and her boyfriend are self-sufficient and know how to cook for themselves. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How do we renew our minds when negative thoughts threaten to take over?In today's episode, host Stephanie Muiña brings a fresh perspective on daily transformation through gratitude and spiritual renewal, inspired by Romans 12:2. Together, we'll explore what it looks like to tap into the true power of friendship with Jesus. Plus, how the Holy Spirit and scripture can clean and heal our hearts and minds in ways the world never could. Through practical insights, relatable stories, and encouragement to speak God's truth over our worries, we'll learn how to access the gifts God has placed in our lives.Join us today as we pray and devote ourselves to inviting God's truth into every thought and season, embracing His gift of transformation in our daily walk.Tap HERE to send us a text! BECOME A FOUNDING "MY MORNING DEVOTIONAL" MEMBERIf you enjoy your 5 minute daily dose of heaven, we would appreciate your support, and we have a fun way for you to partner with the MMD community! We've launched our "Buy Me a Coffee" membership where you can buy us a latte, OR become a founding member and get monthly bonus video episodes! To donate, go to mymorningdevo.co/join! Support the showNEW TO MY MORNING DEVOTIONAL? We're so glad you're here! We're the Alessis, a ministry family working together in a church in Miami, FL, and we're so blessed to partner with the My Morning Devotional community and continue the great work done by the show's creator and our friend, Alison Delamota.Join our Community Subscribe to the show on this app Share this with a friend Join our newsletter and get additional resources Follow Us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠Facebook⁠ ⁠Leave a review Support Our Friends and Family Connect with the original host of MMD Alison Delamota Follow our family podcast The Family Business with The Alessis Check out our Worship Music Hear the new music project "Praise the Lord EP" from Metro Life Worship and Mary AlessiListen on SpotifyWatch on YouTube

This week, Ivy Slater, host of Her Success Story, chats with her guests, Grace Kwak and Alexis Toney. The three talk about the challenges of standing out in an intensely crowded marketing space, the crucial role of relationships and referrals in their growth, and the lessons they've learned from early hiring decisions and business setbacks. In this episode, we discuss: How Background Noise got started What has kept the team motivated and growing in a crowded marketing environment space When to hire and scale a team in a small agency Why partnering with other agencies is part of their growth strategy Who benefits from keeping in touch How setbacks and surprises shape leadership   Grace Kwak is a growth marketing expert who has spent her career shaping customer journeys from every angle – working within agencies and startups alike – Grace Kwak's newest chapter is leading growth, marketing strategy and analytics at Background Noise. As a first-generation Korean-American, Grace is actively aware of how experiences vary from person to person, and how brands must keep diversity of customer experiences top-of-mind at all times. Across her career, she's contributed to growth for brands including Cecred, Taco Bell, Follain, Papa John's, Hint Water, Dunkin Donuts, NBC Sports, COTY, Lysol, Mucinex, and American Family Insurance. She's been internally honored for her contributions, earning an MVP award at Mindshare and a Person of New York award at Performics. She's contributed to internal presentations around International Women's Day Webinar at Big Spaceship, growth marketing for We Are Rosie and is published with MediaPost. Alexis Toney is a strategy and innovation leader who has built her career at the intersection of data, creativity, and cultural storytelling – Alexis Toney is the Chief Strategy & Innovation Officer at Background Noise. She drives brand innovation through research, analytics, and strategy, overseeing proprietary market research and social listening tools that help clients stay ahead of the curve. With more than eight years of experience in performance analytics, media strategy, and marketing intelligence, Alexis has shaped growth strategies for brands across industries while championing people-first insights. Her career path spans roles at Big Spaceship, Ovadia & Sons, and Laundry Service, where she led research, eCommerce, and media strategy initiatives. At Background Noise, Alexis contributed to the launch of Cécred and has collaborated with brands such as Google, Sony, NBC Sports, UPS, Weight Watchers, and Papa Johns throughout her career. Her work has been recognized with honors including Adweek Media Rising Star and the ADCOLOR Future Award. Based in Brooklyn, Alexis balances her data-driven leadership by day with her creative side as a DJ, music producer, and drummer by night. Website: https://www.backgroundnoise.co/ Social Media Links:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracejkwak/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexistoney/  

 Why do we trust people who sound smart—even when they're not? Discover the psychology behind smooth talk and confident nonsense.This episode of An Ounce unpacks The Eloquence Illusion—how polished words and perfect delivery can disguise empty thinking. From corporate spin to “quantum detox,” we explore why we fall for what sounds right instead of what is right.Learn how to recognize verbal sleight-of-hand and keep your brain one step ahead of the charm.Like, subscribe, and share if this story surprised you.Related Episodes / Playlists:The Distasteful History of Toothpaste – how bad breath built a billion-dollar industry   https://youtu.be/wq_H-8_pKKIWhy People Stopped Smiling in Photos – culture, cameras, and changing faces   https://youtu.be/l3xddLnkqME

You know what, folks? Beautification of America is officially underway. Trump didn't just win an election last November—he won an exorcism. Because when he came back to the White House, he didn't just bring in new drapes and better lighting. He brought Lysol, a hazmat suit, and a spiritual pressure washer set to “Biden Family Reunion.”Let's be honest, that place needed more than a cleaning—it needed a cleansing. The East Wing renovation is nice and all, but the real renovation started the moment Trump took the oath again. His first executive order? Ridding America of the stench of Barack Obama. Because that's not just a smell… that's a residueSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Barnaby's Blood Quantum is a relentless, gory zombie film with an interesting twist. This film pulls no punches and through the anti-hero Lysol, we get to see that generational trauma, anger and resolve acted out in vengeance and graphic horror. Ghouls revisit one of their all time favorite horror films that turns the classic monster, zombie, into a harsh history lesson.

In this episode of r/TalesFromYourServer we take a brief trip back to when people were taking coronavirus seriously. Maybe a bit too seriously. My, how things have changed... When Karen isn't busy stomping out kindergarten children to get her hands on another mask or bottle of hand sanitizer she's spraying pregnant women with caustic chemicals! Classy! This is a wild trip but it's very interesting to visit the tales from your server subreddit during these crazy days and times! #reddit #talesfromyourserver #lysol Join me on Discord dude: https://discord.gg/fmfCdmP Support this channel on Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Stalk me on the Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Check out my other channel: https://www.youtube.com/dayton... Have you ever met an entitled person? They are frustrating to deal with, but luckily you aren't alone! These r/talesfromyourserver stories from Reddit are among the top posts of all time and include some of the funniest Reddit stories ever posted on the tales from your server subreddit! rSlash talesfromyourserver stories have all kinds of funny entitled parents in them, but especially the Karen. Listening to ReddX's tales from your server playlist is a great experience! These talesfromyourserver Top Posts of All Time from Reddit are made for you to enjoy any time you feel like it, so be sure to save my rSlash talesfromyourserver playlist to your favorites! While there are many rslash channels that read r/entitled parents stories and r/prorevenge from reddit, each channel has their own way of performing them. Some of the top rSlash entitled parents channels I recommend checking out are the original rSlash, Redditor, fresh, r/Bumfries, VoiceyHere, Mr Reddit, Storytime and Darkfluff. These Reddit story channels inspired me to start my own Reddit story channel, with a focus on Entitled Parents stories and at times going into the r/pettyrevenge and r/choosingbeggars subreddit as well. Because most of my audience prefers Entitled Parents stories of Reddit, I tend to just stick with reading the r/EntitleParents Top Posts of All Time. Subscribe to ReddX for the freshest daily Reddit content. I post relatable readings of Reddit posts and Reddit stories every single day! Journey with me as I relate these amazing Reddit stories to my personal life journey. I'm greatly inspired by the top reddit posts of all time videos and reddit stories on YouTube which is why I started doing them myself. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channe... Discord: https://discord.gg/Sju7YckUWu Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/daytondo... PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/daytondo... Patreon: http://patreon.com/daytondoes Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/daytond... Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ReddX... Merch: https://reddx-shop.fourthwall....

Episode 214: In this episode, Mark is once again joined by Hip hop artist and radio host Rhinoceros Funk. We talk about his new project with Silent Someone and DJ JS-1 "Silent Funk 3 Silence B4 Da Funk". We also discuss movies like "Raiders of The Lost Ark", Tommy Lee Jones always looking older than he was, wrestling, the passing of Hulk Hogan, his tribute track to DOOM, adding a DJ element to the group, not buying beats and Lysol. Listen to Rhinoceros Funk on all platforms or here- https://therealsilentsomeone.bandcamp.com/album/silence-b4-da-funkMark also talks about the passing of Hitman Howie Tee (including a flashback segment where past guest DJ Silver Spinner reflects on Howie Tee), Baseball legend Ryne Sandberg and Hulk Hogan. Check out “Things and Stuff” where Mark reviews collectibles on The Infinite Banter Youtube channel. Direct link for current video- https://youtu.be/G1el4GYzHF8?si=GadJ1aAHKCJ0bgKaCheck out our sponsor Super 7, for the latest in action figures and merch featuring pop culture icons. Click the link for the latest figures and more- https://super7.com/INFINITEBANTERPODCAST

Tiff and Dana discuss how dental practices are being innovative in 2025, including A.I., apps, and other technologies that will streamline the busy work and help teams focus on being human. Episode resources: Subscribe to The Dental A-Team podcast Schedule a Practice Assessment Leave us a review Transcript: The Dental A Team (00:02) Hello, Dental A Team listeners. Dana and I are back here today. We are really excited. We just did actually a really fun podcast. think that was probably, I think Dana, I don't know. I think that was one of my favorite podcasts we probably ever recorded. I love that stuff. So Dana, thanks for being here. How are you today?   Dana (00:22) doing good excited to get you know I always I know I say this a lot but I truly am just excited to have some time.   The Dental A Team (00:29) Thank you. Thank you. I know I   actually I still have it on my mind. I need to put it in my click up click up organizer. You guys shout out to that. I need to get the soft skills training on there. So I was thinking about that a lot. So you make you make my day Dana. Thank you. I appreciate that. ⁓ You guys virtual teams are weird and they were like   It's just weird. But I think the weirdest part to me or the oddest part is how sincerely close I feel to everyone. Like Dana, I feel like we're best friends and we never get time together. Like the last time we had time together, truly the last time we had time together, I guess, was when we did the December, we did the shopping for the kids in December, the give back. Prior to that was like,   Disneyland last, that was two years ago, right? Two years ago, I think he's time flies, time freaking flies. So, but I feel like we were just together last weekend. Like it's weird. It's a weird thing that has come really far. So on that note, anyone who's considering a virtual team member, it can work really well. I mean, we've got Josh who's in the Philippines and I feel like I know that man. Like we've hung out together.   Dana (01:45) Thank   The Dental A Team (01:47) That's so weird. He's in the Philippines you guys it's nighttime when he's working for us And I'm like groggy just starting my day And he's already lived an entire day and his family sleeping like wild and I feel like I know   Dana (02:01) We know things about his baby girl. We know things about his wife, his band. And it's like he's not even in the country on the same time zone. It's just virtually over the computer. It's crazy. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (02:12) Yeah,   it is really crazy. It's insane to me how far things have come. I think it's really cool. think 2020, we're going to call it 2020, not the other word we could call it, did a lot for us in a lot of ways. There is a lot of bad, I will never just credit that, but I think it forced innovation. 2020 forced human innovation.   I think it was things that were already like in the works in the background or whatever, but it just pushed it to the forefront. And the innovation that has come in the last five years has been insane to me and the amount and what we've been able to handle and what we've been able to consume as humans is wild to me and working remotely and working on a virtual team is definitely something that came out of that. I remember, I remember Karen and I when everything first started happening.   We were like, shoot, okay, it is time to innovate or die, quite literally, innovate or die as a company, because things are drastically changing. Dana, we were in offices constantly, constantly. And then all of a sudden we were like, guess what? You're not allowed to leave the state. Actually, you can't even leave your house. Like don't breathe on anyone. Don't look at anyone. Like it was wild. And that was when,   Dana (03:22) Yes.   The Dental A Team (03:30) Kiera and I got on a call and we were like, what the heck? How do we continue to help offices? And that was when we switched and started doing so much virtual. And it really spun, like it worked really well. We had so many offices that during shutdown, we're doing a ton of training with us. We were building operations manuals and really prepping for reopening. But it also brought a space of like, holy cow, Tiff and Kiera cannot do this alone. Like it brought on so much.   And I think it just like speaks to the spiral of innovation that we've had in the last five years in our company and just in the country as a whole in the world realistically. But Dana, I'm so excited. You came not too far after our 2020 whirlwind of guess what? We're going to do everything by video now. And I was like, ⁓ crikey, here we go. This is going to be fun.   And you came on board with us. So thank you for being here. You have changed the game for us. And I know changed the game for so many of your clients. ⁓ And Dana continues to help us innovate constantly. It is something that she is really, really good at. is brilliant and just constantly thinking of another way, like, and then the, the, and then theory, like, yes, you can do that, but then also you could do this. I'm like, dang it. Thank you. So Dana, thank you for being here. ⁓   I don't know if you guys know this or not, a lot of our topics, we choose our topics, a lot of them, or we decide like, what are we gonna talk about today or what practice do we wanna highlight or chat about? then there are topics that are given to us that I can't really say that I don't have a lot of control on that because they're given to me at the beginning of the year, well, the end of the year for the beginning of the year.   And I go through them and I'm like, yes, these are fantastic topics. These are going to be great newsletters. Doctors are going to find a ton of value in this. And then as discussed about 15 minutes ago with Dana, I need to layer on top of that. This is the and then and say, how are we going to make a podcast about this? Because we have, we have run into that today. ⁓ but I'm really actually excited. We did our research, we did our due diligence and we've chatted about this a few times and   Speaking of innovations, there's been so many innovations everywhere that have helped dentistry just really take a new foothold in the scene of medical. And I think that you guys can all agree with that. Dentistry is one of the top survivors of 2020. And we're really thriving in this world. It's just never, never going away. So tons of innovations. We've talked about the tech. We talk about the tech a lot. actually did one, um, Dana, I did a podcast.   not too long ago with Christy about really getting dental assistants involved in the tech and the innovations there. And that was fun. And this one kind of, guess, is dental assistants too, but we really wanted to highlight some infection control innovations and not just like look at, oh, this is so cool. And, know, I don't know, when I started in 2003, we were doing this and now we're doing this. Like, I don't want to just dive into those, but I really want to talk about some things that are up and coming on the scene.   But with that said Dana thinking of my past and aging aging us both here. You're welcome Do you remember? Do you remember go walking into the room? No masks sometimes I had gloves like it was like whatever and dirty tray in one spot and just like spraying everything Everywhere to where you could barely breathe in that room. I remember I remember gosh   This must have been like 2006, 2007. I don't remember what happened, but something changed, right? With infection control. Do you remember stocking up on the Lysol cans? And like your whole office was like a cloud of Lysol. You couldn't even breathe. And now I'm, you know, curious to see what my lungs are gonna look like in the future and what Lysol really does to your lungs. But like, it's just so fun to look at.   Dana (07:30) Yep.   The Dental A Team (07:42) These are the things we used to do. I used to walk into an operatory with what was it called? What is it? It starts with a B. It's a Birex. I can see the bottle, the clear bottle with the green writing, yellow, you know, squirt, and just like squirting every surface I could possibly see. And then aerosoling with Lysol, walking away, coming back.   Dana (07:43) Hmm.   Pyrex, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   This is... Yep. Everything. Yeah.   The Dental A Team (08:11) wiping it down with calvicide wipes, spraying it again, and then walking away and then walking in with a patient and being like, oh, let me dry that. And I'm drying the chair because there's still byracks on the chair or Lysol in the air and the patient's coughing. Dana, do you remember those days? I hope some of us do.   Dana (08:15) Yeah.   I do and   honestly too because I grew up like I was a child in a dental office a lot and I actually even remember when like gloves were optional.   The Dental A Team (08:35) That's right.   Yeah, I was like, I know what you're   gonna say. I know what you're gonna say. Yeah.   Dana (08:45) Yep, yeah, we're even gloves.   We're just kind of like an option for something.   The Dental A Team (08:50) Yeah. Do you remember   when they would say, well, this is more to protect me than it is to protect you. So that's why I don't wear them. I remember that too. I'm like,   Dana (08:56) Yeah. ⁓   I wash my hands. we're gonna like, I just think about it now all the time. I'm like, ⁓ my like, the places we have come.   The Dental A Team (09:05) ⁓ what we did.   places we   have come, the things we have done not knowing. hope there are so many of you out there laughing. I know that there are a lot of you out there that are like, what are they even talking about? Because you may not have even been born yet. So welcome to Jenna String. We're glad you're here. Just be happier. Be happier coming out of the scene now. ⁓ Anyways, some of the things that I have   Well, we looked up some things today, Dana, and some of the things that one thing I was really excited about something that you mentioned when we were chatting earlier. I want you to kind of talk about what you think, how you think ⁓ practices could really utilize this was one there's like up and coming on the scene. I don't think that there's anything really out there yet that's solid, but up and coming on the scene like automated ⁓ knowing automatically if a sterilizer needs to be ran or what.   write the sterilization pieces. So that's, that's looking really cool, the AI side of automating those types of things to keep a good schedule. But Dana, one thing that was on there that we were looking at was really like tracking those things and making it so that it is digitized. And I think that's massive, because these checklists that we create with practices, right, I have so many dentists that are like, well, cool, we've got like an end to day sheet, but like, what about their monthly? What about their weekly? What about the stereo?   strips. And as a dental assistant, I never remember to do those dang things. And when I did, I never looked at them, right? And I'm like, just having shine, take it, take it away. Tell me if it's good or not. Like, but these automated tools, I think will be super helpful. So Dana, what do you think? How do you think that innovation is really going to benefit practices? And how can they implement something like that right away, that they could truly automate some of these things?   Dana (10:53) Yeah, and I think it's really just doing some research and finding things that are definitely our companies out there who that have started and even in the AI platform where they're just automatically tracking your sterilization. They're automatically making sure that all of your sterilization batches that come out are.   are good and it's logging it for you with dates and paths and fail and, and all those pieces, which I think is just really, really super cool. I know that oftentimes when I get new offices, you know, they're like, well, how do I get my OSHA pieces in place? And how do I and having things like this that are just automated that like, what, what a cool tool and what cool things that I think we're seeing coming for dentistry in that area.   The Dental A Team (11:34) Yeah. Where do you feel like practices could ⁓ ramp up what they're doing now to automate it? Like, I feel like I'm thinking we use ClickUp for everything, which I mean, we have spent, I'm not going to lie. We spent a couple of years getting really good at ClickUp and we have a whole team working on it behind us, but something like that even, right? Where it's like sending these automated email reminders or there's apps out there.   Dana (11:45) Mm-hmm.   No.   The Dental A Team (12:01) with the Remind apps. I know the schools use a Remind app even, but there's like those ⁓ family calendar apps that text you when things are coming up. Like how can we be innovative without waiting for AI to get better or waiting for, you know, Elon Musk or someone to think of something incredibly crazy that no one's ever thought of, but how can we be innovative with the tools that we already have?   that maybe we're seeing people are just aren't really doing these things and they easily could.   Dana (12:31) Yeah,   and think some of it comes down to like that saying, know, know thyself and be free, right? Well, if you're somebody that needs automated reminders, find a way to do it. There's boomerang on your email that you can, you can simply just email yourself and say, sterilization test strip, right? And then you boomerang it to yourself every 10 days or every number of days that it's required for you in your area. And so I think just like finding ways things that are hard don't   typically have to be hard. You just have to find a way to make it easier. And there are so many.   things out there, software, resources, and oftentimes too, like they're even cost effective or there's no cost, right, for some of these too. And so I think it is finding the pieces that are hard for you to keep track of, and then find something, whether it is a management tool or whether it is just a reminder system or whether it is one of these AI ⁓ pieces that are coming or are here. I think it really just is looking and figuring out how you can pivot.   and how you can use the technology that is around you because man, just, the things that are at our fingertips to make things easy and to help with the things that we kind of like just hit our heads on the wall against every single day, they're here and even more is coming and it's really cool.   The Dental A Team (13:54) I couldn't agree more. I have so many systems set up. I tell my practices constantly. Like I my memory, I my memory has never been super fantastic. I remember the things I want to remember, I suppose. Right. But I have so many like I have it down to like, in my calendar, it'll say like, don't forget to leave for your hair appointment. Last Friday, like you've got to drive, right? You got so many pop ups and reminders, then I'll set. I'll just set simple alarms with a label on my phone sometimes that   we'll make sure that I remember to do that off the wall thing. I think you're right, Dana, that we, I think we tend to overcomplicate things. And we try, we try to tell ourselves that we don't, we're not smart enough, or we don't know the thing, or that's not my space, right? I'm not a tech person. I'm not a techie person, but I can tell you, there are plenty of techie people out there that have created systems that I can use.   as a template to create it to be and work however I need it to work for me so that no, they saw me true. You're 100 % spot on with that. I know that I need these reminders. And so I look for the tools that will help me do that. I think making sure doctors, practice owners, leaders, making sure you guys remember you don't have to be the ones that think of this for everyone else. had...   a call yesterday, Dana, with a group of managers that are near and dear to my heart. I've been working with these ladies for years, gosh, like, I think since 2018. And I love them. They're so fantastic. But one of the questions yesterday was like, what do I do when they just keep forgetting to do the thing I asked them to do? And I'm like, well, one, right, Dana, make sure that you've got a date set. And like you said, like a reporting back system, you said that earlier on a different podcast. But also, Dana, don't   You believe I know you teach this to like, I don't need to be the one that creates the system for you to make sure you get it done. If I take that autonomy and that creativity from you, you're likely going to forget, right? Yeah.   Dana (15:55) Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree with   you. And I think team members know themselves.   Hands down better than you do as leaders or or we do as your coach and so sometimes I'm like just sit down and ask them like what can we put into place? What do you think will help you? What do you think we can do to support or what system do you think that we can build in? That's because not everybody is a checklist person Sometimes people need reminders on their phones. Sometimes people need reminders on the schedule. Sometimes people need Something that comes to them via email whatever it is, but oftentimes team members because they know themselves better than   anyone can come up with something that will actually truly work versus the 30 things we throw at them trying to solve it.   The Dental A Team (16:37) I totally agree with you. Totally agree with you. And that's, that's been helpful in my life for me to be able to have that autonomy and, be empowered to create what's going to work for me. And one of the biggest spaces there is, and then this comes to like the infection control things too, like what's the result we're after. If we know the result we're after, we are, we are very smart beings. We are insanely intellectual. If we know the result we're after,   likely we can come up with a plan to get us there. We just, we have to be given that space and the availability to be able to do that. So I think it's huge. think, gosh, Dana, like this little, I mean, we both have these notes up here that we're like, gosh, there are some really cool things coming down the pipeline. Like they sound awesome. Automated waterline disinfection system. Like, holy cow, that's so cool. If you have this, please write it and tell us more about it. Like,   I know there's so many things that have come out of the last five years and just watching these startup companies or companies that are just starting to do this new thing, watching them do this and jump onto the scene has just been really, really cool. I think do some research, you guys. There's some cool things in here that we don't know enough about to.   go on tangents with, but it is really amazing. And staying on top of that, staying in the forums, I know we've got our doctor forum that's constantly asking questions around things like this and constantly innovating and thinking of new things, but realistically, bottom line, make sure that it's getting done. Make sure that you know what the standards are that you're supposed to keep when it comes to infection control. Those standards, those are your goals. Give them to your team. Your team's really smart. And guess what? Most of us.   Right? Have teams that are way younger than us today. Shelby, shout out to Shelby. Shelby taught these old dogs a trick. That's not a new trick. It's a trick that we forgot about because we didn't have a reminder system for it. But Shelby, Shelby innovates like crazy. She is a solution master. She is a problem solver. And I think it's just that generation's way of   being they were raised with the internet, they were raised with these tools at their disposal and they know how to use them. We were not raised with these tools at our disposal. They came onto the scene while we were growing up and we learned to use them as they they were learning us, you know, and trust these team members to figure some of this stuff out and automate things for you. Simplify, create the systems that are going to work like let them work with these these things. I've seen   not only Shelby, but I've seen so many practices thrive because these young minds are thinking of some incredible, incredible things. And Dana, I'm sure you're saying the same things in your practices.   Dana (19:37) yeah, yeah, and you know, team members sometimes come with great ideas, they come with great resources, sometimes team members, you know, go do research and find something that will solve an issue that's happening and it is really...   need to see from an outside perspective, just how many changes are here, how many changes are coming and the pieces that technology bring. And you're right, younger team members tend to embrace them, ⁓ and find them.   The Dental A Team (20:07) Yeah, I agree. I agree. I call them, you know, the smarter, they're smarter. Those kids running around just thinking of everything and like, dang it, you know, I need that. But we all have our own things that we do really well and I make reminders really well. So that's what I'm gonna be super proud of today. So you guys, I told you, we have some really fun ones. Today was actually really fun. Innovations in infection control, like,   you guys innovate or die yourselves. Where is it? Maybe an infection control, maybe in anywhere else that's honestly driving you a little bit bad. Maybe we're forgetting the stereo strips. Maybe we're forgetting to the lines. Maybe we're forgetting to change the traps and our compressors are getting overworked. Like all of those spaces. What is it? Maybe we're forgetting to wipe things down or whatever it is. Where can we build in some automation? Because today's innovation is reminding you   that there's an automation for everything. So what is it that's driving your nets? What is it that's not getting done so your result isn't getting met? And then what can we create? What system can we create and put in a place that's going to get us there? Dana, thank you so much for taking this wild journey with me today. We've had some really fun podcasts. has been really enjoyable. I would not want to have done this with anyone else. So thank you, Dana, for spending your afternoon with me.   Dana (21:31) Yep, always fun.   The Dental A Team (21:33) Always an adventure with Tiff. All right, guys. Thank you listeners for being here. Whether you are a current Dental A Team client, a future client, or someone who is just here to listen, we love all of you guys. You are near and dear to our heart. We hope that you enjoy every podcast, but we hope you took some nuggets away from today. Please, as always, leave us a five-star review. Let us know what you thought.   And if you have some innovations, write into us. Hello@TheDentalATeam.com. If there are things that other people need to know about, put it in your review as well. People really do read them. And also look for our doctor forums on Facebook or on Instagram. And then if you are a client, make sure that you're in our client only space as well so that you can help everyone innovate in their practices too. And that's a wrap. Thanks guys. We'll catch you next time.

Dumb Crook News, Friday Freak out, Fun Facts, Rochelle got a lip flip, Real or Fake Father's Day edition, Joe crop dusts all furniture, Robby ingested Lysol, what would be a super bad gift for dad??

Over the past four episodes in this series, the Night Owl team has been immersed in a chilling investigation of the Sunset Strip Comedy Club, located on Austin's legendary 6th Street. From eerie disembodied voices and shadow figures to a haunting presence in the back stairwell, the team has uncovered a disturbing pattern of paranormal activity tied to the building's long and mysterious past. Early on, they uncovered the tragic story of John Waller Stephens Jr., whose alleged suicide by self-administered Lysol ingestion was thought to haunt the club, but the investigation has since revealed far more than they could have expected.In Parts 2 and 3, psychic mediums Jeffery and Kate the Brave helped validate staff experiences, while introducing new and unexpected spirits. Jeffery even identified a spirit named "Hank" who had no connection to the original story of John's death. And Kate brought to light that the negative energy in the building might not be tied to John at all—but to something darker lurking in the shadows. Then, in Part 4, a game-changing revelation completely shook their understanding of John's death.Nicole Riccardo, a trusted member of the paranormal community, revealed that she had investigated the speakeasy below the Sunset Strip, Eden, years earlier. Through extensive research, she uncovered startling contradictions in the narrative surrounding John Waller Stephens Jr.'s death. Newspaper articles described his death as the result of a car accident—no mention of Lysol or suicide. Even more puzzling was the strange police report showing that, after the accident, John was driven across town, past his house and two hospitals, directly to his workplace at Wilson Furniture Company—now the very building they had been investigating. This discovery raised more questions than ever about the true circumstances of his death.Now, armed with new evidence and insights, including the help of Nicole and the team of psychics, the Night Owl team returns to the Sunset Strip Comedy Club determined to uncover the truth. Will the investigation reveal what truly happened to John Waller Stephens Jr., and what dark forces are still at play in this historic building? Join them as they continue their journey to solve this mystery and confront whatever spirits may be haunting the Sunset Strip Comedy Club in Austin, Texas. Photo by Meg BlohmEPISODE SPONSORS:LUMENHead to http://lumen.me/nightowl for 20% off your purchase.BETTERHELPThe Night Owl is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/nightowlAG1New subscribers, go to drinkAG1.com/nightowl to get a FREE $76 Welcome Kit, bottle of D3K2 AND 5 free travel packs in your first box when you sign up.

Anne Ganguzza (00:00.93) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza and I am here with Tom Dheere for the Real Boss series. Hey Tom, how are ya? Tom Dheere (00:10.978) Hello Anne, how are you doing? Anne Ganguzza (00:14.208) You know, Tom, I am a little under the weather today. So, yeah, and you know, I'm so like attuned to, you know, how I sound in the booth and I'm a little bit nasal. And if I'm not 100%, I can't record, Tom. So, perfect time to talk to the bosses about what do you do when you can't record auditions or you can't record for your clients? I mean, there's lots of stuff you can do, I think, to... Tom Dheere (00:17.472) Yeah. Yeah, I could hear that. Anne Ganguzza (00:43.246) move your business ahead, so let's discuss. Tom Dheere (00:47.971) Okay, well, there's a number of things that you wanna keep in mind first, which is how you sound in your head doesn't necessarily sound like what you sound like when you listen to the playback on your audio. Oh, no, I did notice, it's a stitch off, but also, yeah. Anne Ganguzza (00:56.173) You Anne Ganguzza (01:00.717) But you noticed, but you noticed, Tom. So you noticed I sounded not like myself, yeah. Right? And even a stitch off, can't do, because you can hear a little bit of that, Mm-hmm, yep. Yeah? Tom Dheere (01:13.568) Yeah, well, you've also known each other for years. We talk all the time. So like, you know, you would, you'd be able to pick up if I wasn't feeling well either. So, so being in tune with your, with your, with your body and all that stuff, and then reconciling that with the reality of what do you sound like from on the outside? Because in your, in your skull, there's all these resonating chambers, you know, in your skull, in your turbinates. and what you hear when you talk doesn't Anne Ganguzza (01:34.988) Yes. Tom Dheere (01:43.166) sound like what other people hear who are outside of those resonating chambers. So you gotta give yourself a little bit of latitude and grace on that part. Anne Ganguzza (01:52.6) Yeah. You have to have a benchmark, I think. And you know, Tom, that's so interesting that you bring that up because it's kind of when we talk about when people record and then they listen back and they say, ew, I don't like that. And then they re-record 100 times over. It's because what they hear is not what other people hear. And so you have to be familiar enough and know yourself enough so that you can create a benchmark for when your voice is sounding pristine. And also when you're acting and you're not sounding like you're Tom Dheere (02:13.719) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (02:17.206) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (02:21.483) reading something or sounding kind of fake. And so yeah, that ear takes a lot of time to develop. But I will definitely tell you that, yeah, I can tell that my voice is not at its best right now. And so that is one of those things that there are so many things that we can do, probably all the things that you guys don't necessarily want to do, but they're all the things that really help us to move forward and market our businesses. Tom Dheere (02:24.897) Right. Tom Dheere (02:48.705) Right. So I always recommend the first thing you do is find out what projects you have do, what are the deadlines and what's the dynamic of the relationship with each of those clients. I mean, we all try to get our projects done as quickly as possible. So we meet our deadline, you know, the old under promise over deliver thing. And that also just gives you that much more time to do other things and that much more quality of head space to be like, good, I did that. Now I can look at the the next project or audition or whatever. like, also you want to look at the genre of voiceover that you're doing. Like for example, a 15 second commercial takes 15, you know, takes 15 seconds to record. You're doing multiple takes. So in short form stuff like that where you can just record the whole thing over and if there's a retake of a change of a sentence or a word, you can just do the whole thing over again because it takes so little time. Anne Ganguzza (03:18.273) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (03:35.169) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (03:45.185) Right, exactly. Tom Dheere (03:46.271) If it's something long form like an e-learning module or an audio book, it's not good if you sound different within a chapter or within a module. Slounding a stitch different from module to module or from chapter to chapter in an audio book isn't the worst thing in the world. It's obviously not ideal, but you can get away with that. But what you want to do is check your lines of communication. Anne Ganguzza (03:53.441) Yeah, it's hard to match. Yeah. Tom Dheere (04:15.52) with your clients. Now, the second you get a sniffle, you don't send a newsletter to everybody. Don't do that. Anne Ganguzza (04:22.861) No, but I got a job. I got a job this week and I had to send an email right away and say, look, I am fighting this cold and I'm very nasal right now. Can the client wait, you know, a couple of days? you know, guys, bosses out there, people are very understanding. We're all human. There is this, you know, wretched thing that's going around this cold. And so I think most people are understanding if they can be, and especially if you've got clients who depend on you and know you and have worked with you before. I don't think it's gonna kill your career if you tell them that you have a sniffle. Tom Dheere (04:58.715) There's only a handful of genres where the deadlines are so tight and so important like promo, for example. Commercials have a little more latitude because once you record the audio, they still have to either drop it into the existing video or animation, or they still need to create the video or animation that your voiceover will get applied to. So sometimes there's like weeks, you know, because at worst they can take your takes and drop them in there. Anne Ganguzza (05:06.784) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (05:28.66) or they can use a scratch or you can say, okay, this is a scratch track. This is me with a cold. And next week when I feel better, right. Well, there's also, there's also that too, but you gotta be careful about that because if you, if you sound like that in the audition and you book it and then you feel better and then you have to record it, you may not sound the same either, you know, so be, so be aware of, deadlines and genres and stuff like that. But there may come points where you actually just need to Anne Ganguzza (05:30.253) Yeah, You can say, if you're looking for that raspy, sexy voice, I've got it right now. I'm happy to record that for you. Yeah, if you have a retake. Exactly. Exactly. Tom Dheere (05:58.473) suck it up because you just have to do it. Anne Ganguzza (06:01.015) Well, that's the thing, Tom. I mean, we are human. mean, sometimes we get sick. And the first thing I do when I get sick, I immediately, like if I can, I immediately take off. I immediately just book out and I talk to my clients if I have any outstanding jobs and I let them know what's happening. And then ultimately, I'm like in bed. I'm trying to make sure. that I can get over this as soon as possible. I don't try to tough it out. mean, back in the day, I don't know, I used to try to tough it out and, no, I can handle this. But in reality, because our vocal instrument is such an intrinsic part of who we are in our product, I am bent on getting healthy as soon as possible. So I'm taking all the meds, I'm going to bed, I'm getting my rest, and I am not pushing myself so that I can get healthy quicker so that I can start working again. Tom Dheere (06:24.865) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (06:52.107) Right. And let's let's talk about things you can do. Rest is number one. Vocal rest as well as bed rest, hydration, hydration, hydration. You know, whether you're no matter how you're feeling as a voice actor, should you must always be hydrating. I have I have coconut water every single morning before I sit down. Also, because like, there you go. I got a glass. Mm Anne Ganguzza (06:56.354) Yes. Mm-hmm. isn't that the truth? Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (07:13.227) I have my big old water bottle. Three of them a day. Three of them a day. Tom Dheere (07:18.402) I have a glass of water at my side every day and then I have coconut water in the morning because also in the middle of overnight, you're not hydrating because you're sleeping. I do that as well because like I'm at my desk in the booth, 730, pretty much every morning hitting the ground running with auditions. And, you know, I want to make sure I am as loosened up and warmed up as possible. Anne Ganguzza (07:25.185) Yeah, exactly. Anne Ganguzza (07:39.054) Well, also I want to say that during this time of the year when it's colder out and you have heat on, the heat will also dry you out incredibly. And so if you have a humidifier or you have like a mask or a face mask that you know, that can put steam up into your face or sometimes I just put my face into the dishwasher after it's finished running and then the steam comes up. So take a hot shower, that steam will really help to moisten. Tom Dheere (07:49.343) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (08:08.779) moisten things and try to be careful when you're coughing or you know using your voice because it can it can do damage to your vocal cords and you don't want that for sure. Tom Dheere (08:16.546) I mean, it's also sounds cliche, but getting as much vitamin C in you as possible. lots of juices, lots of citrus and things like that. That always helps to keep your protein. Anne Ganguzza (08:22.87) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And going outside, even though it's freezing cold, sometimes going outside because of the moisture in the air can, for just a little bit, I mean dressed up warmly of course, but for just a little bit can help you because a lot of times the internal air, as I mentioned, circulating air in your house can be very drying. Tom Dheere (08:33.526) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (08:44.867) Absolutely. mean, I'm sure our bosses have other secrets and remedies and other ways of doing it. So we would obviously love to hear your suggestions and comments as well. Anne Ganguzza (08:55.714) Well, I will openly blame my husband. I love you, Jerry. Who had the flu and I ran around with a can of Lysol and saying, I'm not gonna get sick, I won't get sick. And I didn't get the flu, but I did get this cold. So unfortunately his turned into bronchitis, which again, it turned a little more serious. But you know, and I'm just kind of thankful that I'm getting over this cold. However, I did have to put some clients on notice. Tom Dheere (09:11.65) Hmm. Anne Ganguzza (09:23.789) And then I started thinking about all the other things that needed to be done, right, for my business so that I could continue as I was feeling better, right, and I couldn't rest 24 hours a day. But I had some time that I could go attend to some marketing skills, attend to some organization skills on my desktop, attend to some courses that I'm in the middle of taking, and workshops and practicing. And so there's a lot of things, guys, that you can do. when you are not feeling well to still continue to move your business forward. Tom Dheere (09:56.865) And that reminds me of something. This is something I tell all of my students, whether you're ill or whether you're healthy, you want to learn to listen to your body and listen to your brain and listen to your heart and see what they tell you. And the practical application of that is figure out the times of day that you are vocally at your best. Anne Ganguzza (10:08.151) Mmm. Anne Ganguzza (10:21.921) Yeah. Tom Dheere (10:23.54) and when you're not, there are some people who I'm very fortunate within 15 minutes of me waking up, I can be in the booth and busting out auditions and bookings. I'm very lucky. Some people don't have that. Sometimes they need hours to hydrate and feed themselves and get their protein and their energy up before they're ready to get in the booth and do their thing. so check out when you're vocally at your best and when you're not and try to wrap your day around that when it comes to auditioning and booking stuff. But the other thing is you also want to gauge when you are creatively at your best throughout the day. Now, that could also go hand in hand with vocally at your best because you want to be creative to make strong acting choices when you're doing your auditionings and your bookings. But what I'm talking specifically about is stuff like social media, blogging, Anne Ganguzza (11:14.327) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (11:19.725) Mm. Tom Dheere (11:21.282) crafting newsletters, crafting cold emails or follow-up emails. You're gonna be at different creative levels throughout the day, just like you're gonna be at different, you know, vocal healthy and just overall physically healthy and energy level throughout your day. So keep an eye out for when you're coming up with really good ideas and keep an eye out on when you're really struggling to just write, you know, just write a couple of sentences that you're gonna post on. Anne Ganguzza (11:31.703) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (11:49.038) Sure. Well, and let me interject. Yeah, let me interject that not only it's good to know like when your creative times are, but it's also you don't have to worry so much about like, I'm going to write an email and then send it out because there are schedulers and there are times when it's good for people to receive your, you know, your content that you're creating or those emails. And so the nice thing is that we can always schedule out the things that we're doing when we're the most creative. And so I Tom Dheere (11:50.966) some social media platform. Tom Dheere (12:09.698) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (12:16.961) That's it. Anne Ganguzza (12:17.833) I'm very creative in the morning when I get up. And so I can go ahead and craft like 20 emails and then I can schedule them out for later. So that's a good time for me to write in the morning and also write blogs. I have certain days that I create content on video. So that's typically in the afternoon and I have to schedule in, well, when am I gonna do the hair and makeup? because I need to be camera ready. So that's a time as well. And if I'm not feeling well, maybe, actually this week I did a whole series on what do I do when I'm sick? You know, for my video shorts. And so I still, the nice thing was is that I was able to, I was feeling well enough that I could at least get a little dressed up. and feel a little more human than I was feeling earlier in the week. So it was a good time. I was able to keep on that video schedule, but sometimes you just have to cancel that and then work on other things. And I also had some courses that I was taking where I'm trying to improve my skills in other genres. And so I went ahead and watched videos. I went ahead and practiced, you know, I practiced scripts and it was something that I didn't have to actually audition for. So it was fine that I could practice. And it really worked out well for me to get all those things done that I had on my other list of things to do, which I kept putting off because I kept thinking, well, other things are more important. So it was great for me to catch up on all the things on my list of things to do for improving my own self. And so it's funny because a lot of times I'm like, let's take care of my clients first, which is where I think most of your business needs to be. but then also self-improvement, right? Self-improvement. Watching those videos, watching those workouts, learning from other people, joining other groups and mastermind groups and that sort of thing, which are the things that I usually myself, because I'm so busy doing all my other things, I tend to put aside. So I was able to really address all those things on my list, which was really wonderful. Tom Dheere (14:24.762) Actually, I'm so glad you said that because that complements perfectly what with what I said So find out when you're vocally at your best find out when you are creatively at your best and then find out when you are neither vocally nor creatively at your best and those are the times when you balance your checkbook pay your bills Anne Ganguzza (14:43.853) Yes, yes, exactly. Tom Dheere (14:46.377) generate and reconcile your invoices, do the required and, you know, not so much fun, but extremely important administrative clerical things to do. And also that's also the times exactly what you were just talking about is the self-improvement times to watch videos or learn practice copy, you know, but without having to worry about what you sound like. Anne Ganguzza (14:49.259) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (14:55.937) Yeah? Yeah. Tom Dheere (15:09.856) you know, in a finished output, it's more about what's my intent, what are my choices, you know, maybe play back to it and listen to the intent and the choices and the emotional arc of whatever without actually necessarily keep taking stock in the vocal quality because you're not vocally at your best at that given time. Anne Ganguzza (15:26.541) And also too, what's cool is that creative refresh. You I always talk about like, I like to watch good movies. I like to watch good movies because it gives me inspiration and motivation. And a lot of times that helps me with my career. It helps me with my voiceover. So if I'm not feeling, I'm really feeling kind of bad, I can like sit on the couch with a blanket and watch Netflix and watch a good movie and be creatively inspired. Tom Dheere (15:50.785) Now that's a good, that's a really good point. you know, bosses remember we are actors, we are performers. We need to see what other actors and performers are doing and how they're doing it because we all know casting trends change all the time, but so do performance trends change over time. And watching what the, you know, one of the top Netflix Anne Ganguzza (16:05.527) Yeah. Tom Dheere (16:17.29) ranked shows are, like last night we watched American Primeval, which is some pretty crazy old west stuff, but there's some just top notch acting from actors I've never even heard of before. But to be able to take that in and listen to their nuance and their subtlety, or when they're being huge and melodramatic and is it part of the character, right? Anne Ganguzza (16:17.495) Sure. Anne Ganguzza (16:21.311) Mmm. Anne Ganguzza (16:37.538) Yeah, watched, yeah, I watched Emelia Perez. And so, which was a really great movie, by the way. And it like, it shocked me and surprised me. It was great. It really was, it really was a good movie. And then I watched, my gosh, now I'm trying to remember the name of it, but it was the series with, my goodness, Sophia, my God, what is the name of it? Now I'm gonna have to like, Tom, I'm gonna have to Google it. Tom Dheere (16:42.004) okay. Tom Dheere (17:03.351) Ha ha. Anne Ganguzza (17:03.553) But anyways, I started that series because I'd heard a lot of things about how great it was. And it was really nice because it got me inspired in terms of seeing the world in a different way and listening to actors do their thing and really become inspired by that. Tom Dheere (17:18.846) Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you should, bosses, take notes. Have a notepad or have your phone or tablet or laptop with you if you're, you know, if you're in that, okay, I'm not feeling too well. I can't really do any auditions right now. I'm caught up on my invoicing. Let's do a little character study. Let's do a little, you know, acting genre study. And, you know, if you're in anime, if you want to get into anime, it's a great excuse to watch the latest anime show, which you... Anne Ganguzza (17:32.225) Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (17:46.022) yeah, absolutely. Tom Dheere (17:47.297) You may be watching anyway, but the pair of eyes and ears that you have change when you are, know, Griselda, okay. Yeah. So you have this one set of eyes and ears on when you're watching or listening to something to enjoy it. And then you have a different set of eyes and ears when you are listening or watching something to learn from it. You know, so, you know, watch that, you know, watch that Anne Ganguzza (17:53.442) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was Griselda, by the way. I just looked at, yeah, Griselda, yeah, really good series, yeah. She's wonderful. Anne Ganguzza (18:08.705) Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Tom Dheere (18:15.37) Classic Akira movie or ninja scroll or something like that classic anime But but don't don't do it just to be entertained by it like listen to the acting choices and how do the acting choices affect the animation and how do the animation affect the acting choices and and vice versa you can learn a lot if you are because you you a lot of people come into voice over because they're a fan of Anne Ganguzza (18:17.653) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (18:27.083) Sure, absolutely. Tom Dheere (18:40.193) the genres that they want to be in, cartoons or video games or whatnot. But it's also critical that you are a student of the industry and the genres as well. And that requires a different, it's a different discipline when you're taking in that kind of stuff. So if you are feeling under the weather, put your school cap on and pull up at your school desk and learn and take notes as if you were gonna be taking a quiz. Anne Ganguzza (18:41.931) Yeah? Mm-hmm. Anne Ganguzza (18:46.221) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (18:54.615) Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (19:00.959) Yeah. And here's old school, watch commercials. If that's the genre you wanna work in, watch commercials, don't fast forward. And I've said that multiple times, especially current commercials, because then you're gonna really be aware of the current trends, what's happening, what's out there. And especially now in the new year, right, we have a change, obviously. in our administration. And so there's going to be maybe trends and changes that will happen in advertising and in commercials and in the genres that we're going to be working. So really keep your eyes and your ears peeled out for that. Do some research. Do some Google on companies and look at how they're advertising to people. That can be a really great education when you're not feeling well. Tom Dheere (19:42.496) Mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (19:50.029) Yeah, there's a difference between a commercial that you see on TV and what you hear on the radio and what you see in streaming and what you hear in between podcast episodes and Pandora and Spotify. These are, even though they're all technically the same thing, they're commercial voice actors, you know, different lengths. Anne Ganguzza (19:56.578) Yeah. Digital, Anne Ganguzza (20:10.401) Different lengths, different styles. Mm-hmm, yep. Exactly. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Tom Dheere (20:13.494) different audiences, different formats based on the milieu or the medium of whether it's a TV commercial or a radio spot or a streaming. listen to those and again, take notes, notice the difference. Like radio spots, for example, we talk a lot faster. You know, so, know, just things like that. Anne Ganguzza (20:31.246) Yeah, Absolutely, absolutely. And you carry more of the story because there's no visual there, right? And so, exactly. And I'm always telling my students, because a lot of students, they're like, so what is the difference between this genre and this genre? Especially when we're talking about nuanced genres like corporate. Corporate explainers and corporate narration. What's the difference between corporate narration and a commercial? Well, you've got longer time to tell it. And typically, corporate narration is still a sell because you're talking about a company. Tom Dheere (20:37.525) Right. You're more. Yeah. Anne Ganguzza (21:01.003) and companies are there to sell. So you can really kind of study if you look at the nuances of how things are marketed, how commercials are run versus how digital media is run versus how we listen to Pandora or SiriusXM, how those commercials are run. You can really hear the difference in how, within the mediums, how these advertisements are presented. really... There's so much that you can do. It's incredible, Tom, that we even get in our studios at all to do voiceover work, because there's so much stuff that you can do in the meantime to educate yourself, to prep yourself, to be ready for whatever you might be asked to do in your voiceover career. Tom Dheere (21:48.759) Yeah, that's one thing is a lot of people think that it's all about auditioning and booking and auditioning and booking and that's what their whole career is and it's not because you're running a business and there's so many things that need to be done in so many different ways and you know everything is important. mean obviously the auditions are critical but you know so is generating and sending an invoice because if you don't send the invoice you don't get paid and what a better time to do that, right? Anne Ganguzza (22:10.487) Yeah. And your website is important. Absolutely. SEO. Social media is important. However you're reaching out to your potential clients is important. so you can have the best little voice in the world, but if nobody knows about it, they can't hire you, and you can't make a living. And so really understanding what are the other aspects of this business. Tom Dheere (22:16.431) website maintenance, marketing research, lead generation. Anne Ganguzza (22:41.71) that you need to have in place so that you can make a living and you can pay the mortgage. mean, gosh, it's the end of the month. And every month I'm like, oh, I gotta contribute to the mortgage here. And so ultimately, right, my business needs to keep moving forward. I need to keep finding clients. I need to keep improving my product. I need to keep thinking of innovative ways that I can get out in front of people so that they can hire me. They can hire my services. Tom Dheere (23:09.696) Well, now that we've talked about that, I hope you feel better. Anne Ganguzza (23:12.333) Well, thank you, Tom, and yes, bosses, keep healthy. And of course, you know, I do sell a wonderful product, actually, which does help, right? This is my vocal spray. I have a couple of products, and here's a shameless plug for my vocal spray. My vocal spray does help, and as a matter of fact, I should probably spritz some now, but it does help keep your voice healthy, although unfortunately, nothing is 100%. I wish that were the case. I wish I had like, here's the ultimate cure. that you'll never get a cold again. However, if you do have a cold, you may not suffer as much. So that also can be found at anneganguzza.com of course, just being sensible and taking good care of yourself and knowing that, especially because our products are a part of us and a part of our body, I that just makes it so much more prudent that you take care of yourself and that you are doing everything in your power to be healthy. All right, bosses, I'm gonna give a great big shout out to our sponsor, IPDTL. You too can connect and network like bosses like Tom and myself, real bosses. And you can find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys have an amazing week and we will see you next week. Bye.  

UNiTE Food is a Yorba Linda, California-based company that produces globally inspired protein bars. The brand offers unique flavors such as Churro, Mexican Hot Chocolate, and PB & Jelly, aiming to bring diversity to the wellness industry. Each bar provides around 10 grams of protein and is gluten-free, catering to health-conscious consumers seeking both nutrition and nostalgic tastes. Clara often relied on protein bars during her busy career but found the available flavors uninspiring. Drawing from her diverse culinary background, she recognized a gap in the market for culturally diverse flavors. Clara's father is an entrepreneur. Her family immigrated from Sudan when she was five years old. When they arrived in the United States, her father started a plumbing supply distribution business, which is the business Clara worked in earlier in her career. The idea for UNiTE was something Clara started thinking about in 2018 or 2019 while she was still working in her family's plumbing business. She began experimenting with different recipes and products in her kitchen in the early days of the pandemic in 2020.Clara often visits ethnic markets to learn about new flavors for new products. She also studied flavors and what people were eating when she traveled abroad.  QUOTES “If I'm anything, I'm a very curious person. I'm curious about how the world works and I'm curious about why segments of the population aren't being served.” (Clara) “If you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow. If you create value, why would somebody leave you?” (Clara)“For me, it was about making sure we were taking care of our customers. That was the winning strategy. It sounds really simple, but it's way harder to execute.” (Clara)“Business is a framework. Once you understand product liability, you understand how to insure against it. You learn about the certifying bodies in your industry. It's hard and it's not (hard).” (Clara)“It's really about building relationships. Mutually beneficial relationships.” (Clara) “When you're over 40 and you created a new business, you're usually not doing it for money, you're doing it to try to make the world a better place.” (Clara)“I wanted to find common ground. Let's find flavors that will resonate with lots of people.” (Clara)“The essence of the UNiTE brand is to seek to understand and seek to find common ground instead of focusing on how we're different.” (Clara)“At the end of the day, consumers want authenticity and they want brands that create products that are meaningful to them. (Clara)“I don't really worry about copycat brands. I worry more when they stop copying me.” (Clara) TRANSCRIPT 00:01.49vigorbrandingAll right. Hello, everyone. Welcome to Fork Tales. I’m Michael Pavone. Our guest today is Clara Paye. And I’ve known Clara for a long time. ah She is from Unite Foods. ah Unite’s line of nutritious bars are built around the concept of global flavors, but also comfort foods. Clara has started a brand that’s redefining what protein and nutrition bars can be, and I’m happy to have her as a guest. Clara, welcome. 00:25.55Clara Paye _ UNiTEThanks, Michael. Good to be here. 00:27.85vigorbrandingSo again, I know you, I think pretty well, and I’m excited to excited for this. This will be fun. So um I want to go back. I mean, you have a fascinating story. So before we get into Unite, I want to talk about you. How did you, you know, where where do you come from? Where do you, where did you work? You know, talk a little bit about what got you, got you here. 00:46.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, it’s definitely not been a linear path. It’s been really a path led by my own curiosity in the world. And so I think if I’m anything, I’m a very curious person. I’m curious how the world works. I’m curious why, you know, segments of the population aren’t being served. So my journey really started, you know, undergrad, I went to USC and I really went undeclared and thought I but wanted to be a lawyer and. 01:10.72Clara Paye _ UNiTEgot into one political science class and I was like, no, I definitely don’t want to do this. And so kind of was looking around like what else is out there, found the business school at USC, and more importantly, found the entrepreneurship program, which was number one in the nation at the time. And, you know, and I knew I didn’t want to study accounting or finance, and that’s what business was to me in my mind back then. And finding this entrepreneurship route really like kind of opened up the world to me and was like a light bulb. 01:34.45Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know My dad is an entrepreneur. and We immigrated from Africa and the Sudan when I was five years old. And in Africa, he had an automotive parts distribution business. And when he immigrated to the U.S., he started a plumbing manufacturing and hardware distribution business. And so, you know, having a dad that had kind of modeled entrepreneurship, it was demystified for me. And so I was like, oh, that’s really interesting. You know, I’ve been an entrepreneur kind of since I was a little girl, whether, you know, the classic lemonade stand or side popsicles or, you know, drawing pictures and trying to sell them to my aunts. Like, you know, I always had that entrepreneurial 02:07.53Clara Paye _ UNiTEstart and you know funny and but like at USC I remember them taking a poll of all the entrepreneurship kids and how many of them had like a lemonade stand or something similar as a kid and it was like 95% of the class raised their hand right like it’s something almost innate where you know that entrepreneurship bug grabs you was even a little kid and 02:15.32vigorbrandingMm 02:24.37Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so, you know, going into the entrepreneurship program, it was kind of like and equated to like Ted Talks, where you just got to like hear and listen to these really successful entrepreneurs that had launched and they were normal people with good ideas that they just implemented. 02:36.22vigorbrandinghmm. 02:38.93Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I thought I would you know be an entrepreneur straight out of undergrad. I wrote a business plan um and for the apparel industry back then. this is I’ll date myself, but I graduated in 1999 and in 1998, 99. I wrote a business plan for plus size clothing for teenage girls. So I saw that there was this huge segment of the population where kids were kind of, you know, Americans were growing in size. and there weren’t really anything fashionable for young girls to wear if they were plus size. They had to shop, you know, especially in jeans, they had to start in the, you know, shop in the women’s Husky department, women’s department or the boy’s Husky department. And it really wasn’t anything fashionable. And I wrote this great business plan. All my professors told me to do it. And like the only person I knew that had any money was my dad. 03:21.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, being 21 years old and or, you know, barely 21 and asking him to fund, you know, I needed like $30,000 back then to launch this business. And my I was going to do it with my best friend whose father had just invested in the jeans manufacturing plant. 03:34.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEShe had done the entrepreneurship program the year before. It was like this home run idea. The internet was just coming online and we were going to do it all online. We didn’t need storefronts. You know, we’re kind of kind of revolutionize all of these things. 03:44.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd my dad’s like, what? Huh? Like watch yourself humming products. Yeah. 03:48.78vigorbrandingYeah. 03:50.42Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, this is a business that already exists. And he just didn’t see it, didn’t understand. But it’s it’s ironic that like that business would grow on to be like that segment specifically, um where I did all my research at this mall, like, went on to become a billion dollar business, like Torrid went into the same free mall with the same concept. And so that was kind of like always in the back of my mind, my entire career. So from age 20 to now, like, gosh, like, why I should have done that, like, I should have done something like that, you know, why didn’t I try and um I’m telling a really long part of the story so we can edit this, but it’s really like, you know, for me, it was really about that early experience in entrepreneurship that I held on to, but then I would go on. 04:22.93vigorbrandingOh, it’s great. 04:29.89Clara Paye _ UNiTEand work in cosmetics, worked for advertising agencies, you know, um and then eventually my dad lured me into the family business, which was like, you know, about five years after college, I wanted to get my MBA and he said, hey, I’ll make you a deal. You and your best friend want to come work for me, get your and MBAs and I’ll pay for them. And you just have to stay the time that you’re studying. And, you know, we did this executive MBA program where we worked our nine to five and then we went to school from like six to 10. 04:53.31Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd those are long days, but they were really fun because I got to take what I was learning in the MBA program and immediately apply it to my family business, which was, again, the plumbing and hardware distribution business. And so not that I was in love with plumbing and hardware, like, trust me, if I never see another supply line in my life, it’ll be too soon. But um it was really about this unique experience that I got to learn and apply, learn and apply. And it was just Really? um Really what set me up for like, you know in that curiosity to like really make an impact in my family business Where you know, sometimes when you join a family business you get told well, this is how we’ve always done it So this is why you have to do it this way and for me I got to kind of redefine everything Because of this MBA program that I was doing and my dad trusted, you know, he always had a high regard for education And so was like, okay. Well, yeah, let’s try it and really got you know got in and 05:45.11vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. i mean You bring up a really interesting point, though. Being a so a sibling of an entrepreneur, you you kind of do realize, or you maybe you don’t realize that it’s it’s not easy, but you you know it’s it’s doable, right? If you watch your father do it, like my father had a couple small sporting goods stores. So I thought, well, if you want to start a business, you just go out and start it. You just do it. and You know, my story is I’ve never been smart enough to know what I can’t do. So I’m like, Oh yeah, I can do that. And just, you know, and sometimes you pass, sometimes you fail, but you know, it’s like, Oh, I can try that. Oh yeah, I’ll do that. So, but, but I think our parents really do make it easier for us if they’ve done that, you know, and you sort of, I don’t want to say you take it for granted, but it’s sort of like, it seems doable. It seems attainable, you know, and next thing you know, you you’ve got something special. And I’ll say this, it had to be interesting, difficult, and maybe very educational for you. 06:34.52vigorbrandingah being a young woman in and the and the plumbing supply distribution business. I mean, what was that like? 06:40.78Clara Paye _ UNiTEah You know, it was it’s a very old industry. It’s you know very much like there’s very little product innovation. And so for me, being a curious person, I was always trying to learn. I always wanted to go to like plumbing school. So like I could like learn about the products a little bit more because they’re actually really complex. And if you ever go down a hardware store aisle and you go down the plumbing fittings or the plumbing section, I mean, there’s literally thousands and thousands of SKUs and so many different parts to like toilets and you know faucets and it’s it’s a very confusing um you know you have to have like a lot of deep knowledge in the industry to really make an impact so for me you know i knew i was never going to have that right what i could bring to the table was really an outside the box way of thinking about this industry like you know we created the company’s first website and started selling you know online and really trying to 07:28.80Clara Paye _ UNiTEUm, quantify customer experience, right? Like it wasn’t just about like place, you know, filling orders. It was like, what was the experience of that order for your customer? And so I’ve always been a customer centric leader. So I think it’s because I came up through marketing and entrepreneurship. You know, I really care about the customer and I really care about like the person that’s opening the box, whatever that box is, you know, and so. 07:51.58Clara Paye _ UNiTEFor me, it was all about aligning the business to be customer-focused, because my thesis was, if you focus on your customers, they will reward you with loyalty. And if they reward you with loyalty, your revenue will grow. 08:01.84Clara Paye _ UNiTEright It’s a win-win. 08:02.46vigorbrandingmean 08:03.15Clara Paye _ UNiTEIf you create value, why would somebody leave you? So it’s when you’re not creating value and you’re creating problems for the customer that you know you have that attrition. 08:13.25Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so for me, it was really about um making sure that we were taking care of our customers. And and that was the winning strategy. I mean, it sounds really simple, but it’s way harder to execute when you get to scale. 08:26.05vigorbrandingThat’s great. I mean, it makes total sense. So basically, you do all your own plumbing now, is that what you’re saying? 08:31.81Clara Paye _ UNiTEnot at all 08:32.01vigorbrandingYeah, I knew about it. Okay, so now let’s jump into something that I know you’re very proud of and should be. the that You founded Unite, okay? and And so let’s talk about that. You founded in March of 2020, right? 08:44.85vigorbrandingIn the middle of that thing called the pandemic with COVID. um but Obviously, that was a part of the story. That’s what sort of infused the story. Can you talk a little bit about that? 08:53.69Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah. So, you know you know, I’d been ideating on it for like probably a year and a half before that and really trying, you know, it was working in the plumbing business at my, you know, and the family business that I was kind of like stuck behind my desk. And especially when I became a mom, like I was always just like looking for quick fuel to get me through my day. And that was like kind of when I had the epiphany for Unite and really our main point of differentiation is that we use global flavors. 09:15.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so I had this unique experience, again, just just like the plus sized clothing where I was like, wait a minute, like there’s this whole population of people out there, like half the population are immigrants, people like me, or people that are just like really interested in other cultures and really interested in other foods. 09:31.28Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, I live in LA, like there’s, you can eat Thai, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, whatever you want, any time of day you want, you know, it’s all, you know, and that’s what makes America unique is that we are this melting pot of cultures. 09:38.69vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. 09:42.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it very similarly, I saw this demographic shift where, you know, America was just going to continue to grow in, in multiculturalism. And so I was like, okay, if you’re in wellness and you are diagnosed with something like for me, it was a gluten intolerance. Like, and you go and try to find diet compliant food and you go to the shelf and like nothing resonates with you. Like that’s a huge miss. And so I think it was because 10:08.08vigorbrandingbut 10:08.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, i I’m not, everybody that has created protein bars up to that point wasn’t diverse, didn’t have the life experience I had. So I just kind of used my own life experience it to develop it. 10:18.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I developed them in my kitchen, like really, like, you know, as I got my cuisine on out and was like, what would I put in my protein bars? And for me, it was like almond butter and dates and, you know, let’s sweeten it with all natural things. 10:25.68vigorbrandingMm hmm. 10:28.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I i can’t use sugar, alcohols or Stevia. Like I i just, they’re not palatable to me. So I just use natural things. and literally googled what do nutritionists say should be in a protein bar and like made those my macros like it’s not that hard you know you don’t have to like spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to figure it out and um created my first recipes and found a co-packer to make them and I knew you know because I didn’t want any food liability I wanted a really strong co-packer to be the producer for them found one that ah you know where they saw the vision they understood what we were about and supported us and got our product launched and 11:05.31Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, Expo West was this trade show, you know, it was a trade show in the food industry. It’s the largest natural products convention in the entire world. And if anybody hasn’t been to it, just imagine seven convention centers all smashed together in Anaheim, hundreds of thousands of people, like 3000 plus exhibitors. It’s literally and figuratively like Disneyland. Like it’s just, it’s a zoo. It’s, there’s so many people. And we got our little 10 by 10 booth and at the, you know, they have this like new products part of natural expo that opens a day before or used to. 11:35.43Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd we got our booth set up and we were ready to rock. 11:37.30vigorbrandingMm hmm. 11:37.51Clara Paye _ UNiTEWe were going to go show our bars. We had this whole warehouse full of new bars to show buyers. 11:39.71vigorbrandingand 11:41.83Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd that’s how it’s going to get people excited. And then the pandemic. And that was the first thing to get canceled. And literally we got this call like shows not going to happen. So break down your booth. 11:51.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd you know, and it was like such a wild time. 11:52.43vigorbrandingYep. 11:55.64Clara Paye _ UNiTEum And people were really, you know, unsure of what was going to happen. And, you know, ah brands were not able to get into stores to pitch or any buyers, everything kind of went on hold because every grocery store was worried about safety for their employees and how to keep cleaning products on shelf and Lysol wipes. 12:13.52Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like nobody was really thinking about like protein bars, right? 12:16.49vigorbrandingRight, right. 12:16.43Clara Paye _ UNiTELike we’re all trying to, you know, that’s what like, I think we all were baking banana bread every day in this power now and like, you know, consoling ourselves with chips and margaritas at, you know, noon. so 12:26.31vigorbrandingYeah. Well, I remember like for us, I mean, you know, one of my companies is Quench, which is a CPG food and beverage. I said, you know, COVID was truly the greatest sampling program in the face of the earth, food and beverage. If you made a product at that time, if you had an established product, you people bought it, people ate it, they put in their pantry, they stacked in their shells. I mean, it was phenomenal time for food. I mean, unfortunately, it was you were too new, right? You couldn’t even take advantage of it. You didn’t even get a chance to get out of the starting gate. so That’s how to be extremely disappointing. But I think it’s amazing too. Like, okay, so you you come from one industry and and you learn a lot just in business and dealing with people from one industry. But then you you applied to this startup that you didn’t, you’ve never really, you were never in the food business. So you don’t learn how to be a manufacturer, you had to learn about safety, you had to learn about ingredients, legal and and everything and anything. I mean, it’s just, ah it’s an amazing undertaking. How did you how did you learn so much? 13:21.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, like business is a framework. So once you understand product liability, you understand how to ensure against it, right? And you learn that, you know, you have to look, what are the certifying bodies in your industry, right? 13:35.40Clara Paye _ UNiTELike in, you know, for electrical companies, it’s like UL listing, you know, in food, it’s SQF. 13:35.85vigorbrandingMm hmm. Mm hmm. 13:40.84Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it’s not like the information isn’t that hard to find. So I think it’s like, you know, once you have a framework of, it’s, you know, the product is a widget almost, right? Like how you deal with Lowe’s is how you deal with Target. 13:49.40vigorbrandingMm 13:52.55Clara Paye _ UNiTELike it’s a big box. 13:52.83vigorbrandinghmm. 13:53.59Clara Paye _ UNiTEThey care about many of the same things, right? You have to understand what’s going to happen on the back end of your business. You have to understand how to get that product there on time and in full. And that’s what matters to them. 14:04.49Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so I, you know, it’s hard and it’s not. And so for me, I’ve always really relied on my network, Michael, like, like if I don’t know the answer, I know somebody that I know must know the answer. 14:16.44vigorbrandingMm hmm. 14:17.09Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I spent a lot of time. I don’t want to say networking, but I think it’s really about building relationships, like mutual like mutually beneficial relationships with people, trust. 14:26.75vigorbrandingSure, trust. 14:29.50Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd when I got into the food space, I was like, I just need to great advisors around me. I need people. 14:33.78vigorbrandingMm hmm. 14:33.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd I didn’t want like consultants. I wanted people who were also running their businesses, who were going in the trenches, doing it with in in real time. 14:38.08vigorbrandingSure. Skin the game. Yep. 14:41.79Clara Paye _ UNiTEand so you know, having a ah YPO forum of YPO, you know, food CPG people was like one of the ways that I accomplished that and like really creating a forum of people around me that were doing the same things as I was. 14:50.42vigorbrandingMm 14:56.01Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd, you know, there’s a lot of symbiotic um experience there. And we all got to go through COVID together. So it was something I did early on, you know, it was like grabbing people who wanted to go on this journey with me. 15:02.72vigorbrandinghmm. Mm hmm. 15:06.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so, You know you’re I think networking is like kind of like a bad word sometimes like people think it’s like you’re using people when you say networking but you’re doing networking right you’re actually at creating value for other people first right and that out it works. 15:13.24vigorbrandingwho yeah 15:20.16vigorbrandingThat’s right. Yeah. Absolutely. All right. So now let’s talk. You created the, the you had a product, you you got shut down and covered. So let’s talk about the Unite name. You created a brand and I’m a big brand guy, you know that. I love brands and and I love what you did here. I love the name and I’m not just saying that because you’re here, but this is something I did not know. I read an article and I read about the I in Unite. I should have looked and realized that the lowercase I, but to talk about the brand and how you came up with the name. 15:45.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, I mean, so for me is all about that what I was trying to do. So this is like the mission part of like this journey when like you’re over 40 and you’re creating new business. Usually you’re not doing it just for money. You’re really doing it because you feel like something’s missing in the world and you want to make the world a better place. At least that’s my journey. 16:01.60Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd for me, it was like, how can I use food as this instrument of inclusion to improve the lives of people, see people who haven’t been seen, welcome them into wellness, right? And kind of create cultural bridges, right? Where like somebody who I think food is has this unique way of binding people, right? Like it’s the cultural equivalent of bringing your, you know, 16:23.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEyour dish to a potluck and like you know kind of like do you like it you know kind of like yeah having that like you know there’s a moment where you’re like are you sure it’s kind of a little strange or like you know when when people used to come to my home and like be like you know my mom made this thing you don’t have to eat it it’s you know you might not like it and then people loving it and you’re like oh Okay, it’s good. Like it’s safe. Like everyone’s accepted now. And so I think for me, it was like how, you know, food can, can also divide people. But if people make fun of somebody’s food or make fun of flavors, you know, and I think it also can unite. And so I wanted to use it as like, you know, let’s, let’s find common ground. Let’s find flavors that like will resonate with lots of people. And so like the flavors we choose typically are not just like country specific. They’re like region specific. 17:04.98Clara Paye _ UNiTESo like, you know, churros are eaten in Spain, in Mexico, and like all over Latin America, right? Baklava is eaten in North Africa, in Greece, in Russia, in Croatia, right? 17:15.03Clara Paye _ UNiTEBubble tea, which sounds like just an Asian, Asian flavor. And yes, it was born in Taiwan, but you know, like but the British drink milk with tea. the in Indian people drink milk with tea, and the Middle East drink milk with tea. 17:25.54Clara Paye _ UNiTELike those flavors are, can resonate with lots of different people. 17:29.23vigorbrandingYeah. 17:29.53Clara Paye _ UNiTESo, and then there’s peanut butter and jelly, and that’s the one where people are like, 17:31.64vigorbrandingYeah. 17:32.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEhuh like you know that’s like that’s not global but it’s like my american heritage is just as important and so i want all people to feel represented and the reason the eye is small and as i think because if you’re trying to connect two sides you yourself have to get smaller to understand the other side and so that you you know to understand the other you know and we live in such a time of division and so like really having a name like unites like it’s really the essence of the brand 17:37.39vigorbrandingyeah 17:58.39Clara Paye _ UNiTEis to, you know, ah seek to understand and seek to find common ground and instead of like how we’re different. 18:05.96vigorbrandingI love it. i mean You obviously have a propensity for for marketing. it’s it’s It’s very smart and very sound, the thinking behind it. and and I’ve had the products that are fantastic. and again I’m not just saying that they’re your your products are absolutely delicious, so you should be very, very proud of that. 18:21.31vigorbrandingum you know and now So we talk about the flavors, so ah we do a food trends presentation every year and we always come up with all these funky flavors and and we we I shouldn’t say funky, we we we learn about things that are popping in different parts of the world and starting to you know bubble up and and and ah you know we we try to grab onto them, I mean all of us as manufacturers, as restaurants, as ah marketers And we try to understand these flavors and how to bring them forth and and introduce something fresh. how do How do you go about finding flavors? How do you go about deciding what the next flavor is going to be? 18:54.83Clara Paye _ UNiTEit’s really intuitive for me but like you know my my hero flavor is churro and like that one was really you know born out of you know I live near Disneyland I live like 15 minutes away and I have small kids and so we were always at Disneyland always the line at the churro cart was kind of like around the corner right and like churro was like definitely this very familiar flavor and like churros are you know they’re eaten they’re They’re not just different for different sake. Many people have had a churro, whether it’s at a fair or at Disneyland or at a carnival. Churro was like not that um outside the box for most people, and it was very approachable. and so like That Disneyland car, just like looking at the lines, I was like, yeah, that could be a really good flavor. How come nobody you know hasn’t really done that? and then 19:44.35Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, I would visit ethnic markets a lot to look at the flavors. 19:47.44vigorbrandingSure. 19:47.62Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I go to Hispanic markets, I go to Korean markets, I go to Japanese markets, you know, I live in an area again, where I’m blessed by diversity. And so I study, you know, when I travel, what are people eating? 19:59.01Clara Paye _ UNiTEWhat, you know, what are people, you know, what do people enjoy? And I really, I mean I the first flavors are really like things that I loved so I just wanted to create things you know flavors and then I tested them on my friends and I probably Michael I probably made like 15 or 20 different flavors before I started right like and kind of like chose the heroes from um the ones that I made and in my kitchen. 20:17.81vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Now, is there one that you you loved and thought, oh, everyone’s gonna love this and didn’t make it? Is there a flavor that you kind of, what is it? 20:26.76Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah it was a ah green tea matcha 20:30.55vigorbrandingUh-uh. 20:30.44Clara Paye _ UNiTEflavor and so but green tea powder sometimes can be fishy and it’s like sounds so weird but like it just didn’t work in in scale right and so and there are macho bars out there but I never think that they taste great and so you know I wanted it to have like good product integrity and so like that was like a 20:35.42vigorbrandingOkay. 20:39.37vigorbrandingNot it. 20:45.81vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 20:48.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know, one that like I thought would be, you know, cause if you, if you look at the Starbucks menu, like ah so many, you know, those, those are great flavor cues too. Like, you know, Starbucks spends a lot of time in flavor development. And so you can just, you can take cues from adjacent industries. 21:01.68vigorbrandingSure. We got to work with a lot over the years ah through Quench. We worked with the Hershey Company and we worked with the scientists. And I was always blown away because we’d go in the, and back, this would be like early 90s, we’d go in these rooms or they’d have to swipe a card for the door to open. It seemed very like, 21:17.81vigorbrandingUh, sign sci-fi, you know, and it would it be lab technicians and they’d put drops and they’d be like, here, taste that. What does it taste like? I’m like, well, I taste apple pie. They’re like, wait for it. I’m like, Oh, I taste whipped cream. Wait for it. Oh, I can not taste crust. Like they could do this. I mean, it was like better living through chemistry. They could do all this stuff. 21:36.54vigorbrandingand what it came down to obviously was and this is what is so hard with what you do is now you have to source the ingredients now you have to make sure it’s not a chemical thing and then you have to understand can you can you afford that flavoring at a price point that will be palatable to the consumer so there’s so much involved in all of what you do yeah 21:56.81Clara Paye _ UNiTEThere is so much like, look, all business is hard, but the food business is particularly hard, right? Because you’re, it’s a living, breathing thing, right? And for me, it came down to simplicity. Like I always wanted simple ingredients um because I wanted people to be able to understand what was going into the bar, right? Like I wanted it to be real food and natural. And um so when you have those kinds of like, 22:22.56Clara Paye _ UNiTEBarriers, you know, it’s it helps you and it hurts you right? Like I can’t put in a bunch of processing You know like many large companies can because that’s not the brand value that I’m trying to create or the kind of product I’m trying to create. 22:30.08vigorbrandingRight. Mhm. 22:34.50Clara Paye _ UNiTESo yeah, it’s very hard um You know, we do get a lot of those scientists taking pictures at our booth every year at all the Expos and so people and we have been copied, you know and that’s like just anytime you’re successful at something people are gonna copy you and so 22:45.84vigorbrandingSure. Mhm. 22:50.21Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut I think at the end of the day, consumers want authenticity. They want you know brands that are creating products that are meaningful to them and will reward those brands. So I don’t really worry about like copycats. I worry more about when they stop copying me. 23:07.91vigorbrandingbut you know and But to your point, and you know weve we’ve been doing a food trends report for over 15 years, and what you are doing and and how you’re doing it is very on trend. It’s not easy. It’s not inexpensive. i mean it’s ah it’s ah you know you there’s you could You could have cut corners along the way on your product, but you don’t do that. I just think that that’s going to pay dividends in the long run. i think that’s such a It’s hard to stick to your ethos, but I think you do a fantastic job of that. so I think it’s something to be proud of. and so and My next thing is, I did not know this, but the I in Unite stands for invite. and I did not realize on the back of every bar there’s an email address that you can people can send directly to you for suggestions on new flavors. Have you have you learned anything from these? Have you gotten anything interesting in the emails? 23:52.30Clara Paye _ UNiTEYes, I love those emails, like those emails come to me. And so I get to interact with the people that write those emails. And, you know, the most meaningful ones are when people will give me a flavor suggestion, but then they’ll also say, thank you for making a bar for us. 24:07.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, thank you. And it’s exactly what I wanted to do. 24:09.63vigorbrandingThat’s super cool. 24:10.64Clara Paye _ UNiTEwhen I, when I set out was like, make the invisible feel seen. 24:12.05vigorbrandingYeah. 24:14.77Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd you know, I know what it’s like to not feel seen. You know, I know what it’s like to like, kind of be in the shadows, like being a woman in the plumbing industry. Perfect example, right? Like you don’t really belong here or you don’t like, you know, somebody that looks like me typically doesn’t work in plumbing, right? 24:29.33Clara Paye _ UNiTElike It’s a very old, old, you know, antiquated kind of industry. And so like when I get those emails, I get really excited and people do have some great ideas and ideas of like things that we’ve actually developed, you know, and just haven’t launched. And, you know, so it’s fun to know that like, it is also on trend for people. 24:49.00vigorbrandingThat’s fantastic. So I mean, ah um I’m being italian Italian. My wife’s Greek. So yeah, yeah, her mother makes us baklava. So it’s phenomenal. So I love that. I’m really proud to see that you have a baklava in your in your flavors. So you have you have baklava, you have peanut butter and jelly, you have chiro, bubble tea, Mexican hot chocolate. What’s your what’s your favorite? 25:09.34Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, it’s like asking me which my favorite kid is. 25:12.05vigorbrandingah We all have one. 25:11.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEum i and I mean, is our hero. 25:12.61vigorbrandingCome on. We all have one. On any given day, we all have one. A favorite kid. 25:18.32Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd churro was like the first bar where I was like, okay, we really have something. 25:19.02vigorbrandingUh-huh. That’s the baby. 25:21.72Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah. But I really also very much like baklava. And it’s similar to churro in that, you know, it’s got kind of like some of the the same kind of spices with the cinnamon. 25:28.18vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 25:29.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut baklava has never been done outside of baklava. 25:31.48vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 25:32.33Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, think about it, Michael. Like, you’ve never seen a baklava ice cream. You’ve never seen a baklava cracker. 25:35.23vigorbrandingNope. 25:36.56Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, you’ve never seen a baklava popcorn. Right? Like it was very unique. 25:40.80vigorbrandingYeah. 25:41.16Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd, you know, when I, before I launched, you know, many of the, the manufacturing partners I met with in the beginning were like, these price flavors are too strange. Like nobody’s going to buy these and like to be, you know, have come full circle and and be like, no, they’re great. 25:54.00Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like Baklava just won a good housekeeping award this year when they’re, you know, best snack award. Churro won the same award last year. 25:59.19vigorbrandingAwesome. 26:00.98Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it’s like, it’s incredibly validating when, you know, people. like like the product and like, you know, um appreciate it. And it’s got organic honey in it. It’s just really tasty bar. 26:12.34vigorbrandingThat’s great. Well, like I said, you’re the products are amazing. And in a way, I like i look at these flavors and in a way they are they’re kind of all comfort foods, too, right? I mean, they’re, they’re, yeah, they’re all international flavors, but they’re almost like international comfort flavors, you know, it just it kind of feels that way. 26:28.40Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, they’re nostalgic flavors. 26:30.16vigorbrandingYeah. 26:30.11Clara Paye _ UNiTESo they’re foods that you ate in childhood. 26:32.21vigorbrandingRight. 26:32.26Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so that was also really important to me. That was also one of the barometers is like childhood flavors. 26:36.76vigorbrandingPerfect. 26:38.45Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd ironically, I mean, I didn’t develop these for kids, but like kids love our bars and like, duh, they’re childhood flavors, right? Like they’re really for adults, but you know, so we’ve had this like wide range of like consumer interest in our, in our products. And so for me, it’s like about taking you back to kind of like a simpler time. I think, you know, health food specifically is sometimes punitive. Like, Oh, I don’t really like this mushroom powder, but I’m going to drink it because like, i my you know, my, 27:03.59Clara Paye _ UNiTEpodcast said that I’m going to get muscles if I drink it. you know and I’m like more on the other side of wellness. We’re like, let’s make it fun and let’s make it like food you want to eat, not food you have to eat. 27:09.80vigorbrandingMm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great. All right. Well, let’s have some fun here. So, you know, being the research guys that we are and the marketing guys where we came up with our own flavors. So we decided to go around the world. I want your opinion on if these are going to be winners or not. So we’ll start in India, a gulab jambu. It’s very popular dessert. It’s often served during celebrations. It’s fried dough soaked in a rosewater syrup, often garnished with almonds and cashews. 27:40.04Clara Paye _ UNiTE10 out of 10. I think that would like a home run flavor. I’ve actually, you know, my Indian friends have also suggested ah exact flavor and it’s always kind of been in my mind. 27:45.01vigorbrandingYeah. 27:48.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEThe rosewater is the one that’s like, can be polarizing. So, you know, we try to have things that are like, you know, broad appeal, but yeah, I think 10 out of 10 would be a great flavor. 27:57.57vigorbrandingPlus, I’ll say this, I hate to be the total American here, but pronunciation can also be a barrier to people buying something if they can’t if they can’t figure out how to say it. 28:04.52Clara Paye _ UNiTEFor now, right? 28:06.08vigorbrandingAll right, now we’ll head to Spain, a creamy caramel flan. 28:09.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEI love flan and I think flan is another one of those foods that’s mistaken for like just Latin Americans because lots of people eat flan or you know it’s called sometimes creme caramel it’s called like different things in other regions of the world you know so yeah another great flavor you guys are good at this don um don’t start a bar company Michael. 28:15.09vigorbrandingMm hmm. 28:26.72vigorbrandingyeah Yeah, yeah. We would never if we, you know, they’re yours. These are all yours if you want to do them. So you have some friends, we have some employees in Brazil. So um Bolo de Rolo. It’s a light sponge cake. It’s rolled up with a layer of tangy guava jam. 28:43.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEThis one I’ve never heard of, I’ve never had. 28:45.94vigorbrandingright 28:46.23Clara Paye _ UNiTEI’ve not not been to Brazil, so it really piqued my interest. I love guavas. I think tropical fruits, you know, we see that in beverage now. 28:54.85vigorbrandingRight. 28:55.48Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, there’s all kinds of great beverages that have popped up with tropical fruit flavors. 28:56.09vigorbrandingMm hmm. 29:00.70Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd definitely in terms of what global flavor trends, guava I think is still underrated because I love guavas. 29:04.97vigorbrandingMm hmm. 29:07.99Clara Paye _ UNiTESo yeah, I think, you know, it’d be interesting to to get the um the sponge cake kind of consistency in a bar because bars tend to be a little bit drier and a little bit harder to to make soft because water stability issues. 29:20.76Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut I think that’s super intrigued. I want to go to Brazil, so that’s on my list. 29:24.27vigorbrandingYeah, there you go. There’s an excuse for R and&D. It’s a write-off. um you know Yeah, it’s ah that that’s that’s that’s fun. OK, so we go to Italy ah for some almond biscotti. 29:37.61Clara Paye _ UNiTEI mean, I love biscotti, but I think if you’re craving biscotti, eat a biscotti. 29:41.08vigorbrandingYeah, I agree. 29:41.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know 29:42.08vigorbrandingYeah, I don’t think that works in a bar, right? 29:43.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, you know like people tell me, like oh, you should make a hummus flavored bar. I’m like, what? Why don’t you just eat hummus? 29:49.24vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. 29:50.94Clara Paye _ UNiTEyou know For me, it’s about taking some things. Because biscotti is not unhealthy, like typically. like you know If you had one, it’s like it’s fine. 29:55.05vigorbrandingNo. 29:57.11Clara Paye _ UNiTEIt’s like a treat. So I typically try to take like higher calorie, higher density things to make them healthy and approachable. 30:02.75vigorbrandingoh 30:05.67vigorbrandingYeah, you’re you’re almost bringing a dessert together to a degree, right? 30:05.58Clara Paye _ UNiTEso i probably Exactly. 30:08.59vigorbrandingYeah. 30:08.51Clara Paye _ UNiTEa 30:09.42vigorbrandingYeah, that totally makes sense. And you know what’s funny? You you just said something that that really kind of stuck with me. though The beverage industry does do a lot of flavors. And it’s really kind of accelerated. I mean, as a company, we were early on with with flavored beverages in the tea category. 30:24.27vigorbrandingAnd we were we had a brand that we worked with for like 15 years. We helped build what’s called Turkey Hill Iced Tea. Excuse me. And it was the first refrigerated tea. a lot of There was teas out there that were shelf-stable, but we were in the refrigerator. Well, the proliferation now of beverages in the refrigerator. You go to a convenience store with just walls of beverages. So there’s a lot of unique flavorings that you see popping up. And I guess that’s that would be a good place to see, I don’t know, what’s acceptable, right? like what are what are What are consumers interested in? 30:53.61Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, I think um it’s a good, again, like I got to take a lot of flavor cues from like a Starbucks or like, you know, what are people drinking? 31:01.08vigorbrandingyeah 31:02.11Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like, what are the flavor cues in beverage that we can borrow from, right? Or we that can inform some of us. I think in beverage, it’s a little bit easier because the flavoring is just like props added to something versus like you’re trying to really create something authentic in food. 31:13.60vigorbrandingYeah, yep, yep. 31:19.97Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut gosh, I’m just happy I have a shelf stable product. Like I can’t imagine distributing a refrigerated or frozen product. 31:25.52vigorbrandingYeah, yeah, yeah. 31:26.11Clara Paye _ UNiTELike knowing what I know now, it’s like just a whole nother level of of anxiety. 31:30.73vigorbrandingYeah, well in flavoring to own on that side is it’s amazing how if you had some foot, it’s not obvious as a flavor to like what happened to potato chips, right? So we have a snack food category of snack foods. I mean, adding just a new flavor a new fun. It’s it’s amazing how much velocity you get and how much traction we actually did it across the tuna category. 31:49.35vigorbrandingAnd you would think, you know, tuna, we started adding sriracha or different types of hot or or or Thai chili or, I mean, just all these kind of unique flavors. 31:54.20Clara Paye _ UNiTEMm 31:57.94vigorbrandingAnd it’s amazing how it can really ah get you more more ah shelf presence. 31:59.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEhmm. 32:03.65vigorbrandingAnd it also then, ah it creates ah an atmosphere of trial. So it’s ah’s it’s an awful lot of fun for that too. So um so as an entrepreneur who who’s growing and developing a brand that’s still a relatively young brand, ah you just created it four years ago. 32:17.34vigorbrandingWhat are some of your biggest challenges? 32:20.85Clara Paye _ UNiTEIt’s sad to say, Michael, but like there’s a lot of predatory behavior for emerging brands in the food space, right? 32:26.57vigorbrandinghe 32:26.47Clara Paye _ UNiTEWhere I think this industry like depends on the turn to a certain degree of like brands to fail, to come in to shoot their shot. And like when they fail, it doesn’t matter because there’s like so many other brands behind them trying to get in that same shelf space. 32:39.58Clara Paye _ UNiTESo I think it’s just being the underdog. like If you look at the shelves that we’re on, we’re competing with behemoths, right? Like billion dollar brands, multi-billion dollar brands, like that control the entire food supply. 32:48.42vigorbrandingMm hmm. Mm hmm. 32:51.38Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd we’re like on the same shelf and like, how can we actually compete to build brand awareness? Like, you know, so you just do it with a radical authenticity. You do it by creating value for the consumer, creating something different, creating a better product. 33:05.17Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut it’s really like having come from a larger company where like, you know, you have some kind of street cred because you are a larger and you’re eight It’s easier to grow a larger company, but to grow from scratch has been like humbling. 33:17.69Clara Paye _ UNiTElike it’s There’s a lot of people who want to put their hand in your pocket, who want to you know take advantage of you, and you have to be astute. 33:18.13vigorbrandingYeah. 33:24.66Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd again, you have to surround yourself with people that are smart, that will help you avoid the landline, help you clear those paths. but You know, I, um, I also started, um, a nonprofit called included for, you know, people of color in food CPG just because I feel very passionately it’s called included included CPG, um, for people to kind of like not make the same mistakes that I made or kind of try to pull it forward somehow by clearing the path for, you know, I don’t want people to, you know, make the mistakes that we, we’ve made or could have potentially made. 33:49.99vigorbrandingMm hmm. 33:56.73vigorbrandingMm hmm. That’s you’ve you’ve always been one to give back. And I think that’s very admirable. I mean, we were walking around. It was it was it this we were just talking about with the included CPG. 34:09.40vigorbrandingWe were walking around. He was exposed. You had a special section and they they they don’t you had them donate space. What was that for? 34:16.71Clara Paye _ UNiTEum Yes for emerging brands and no for included and so we do do that at the fancy food show and at Expo West every year and so we kind of run kind of a mini incubator accelerator For these brands and help them get that space and be ready to pitch and you know, you have to be market ready So it’s not like for a brand that’s like pre-launch it’s like, you know if you have some kind of like established brand presence and really hoping to elevate them to the next level because those trade shows are so expensive and it’s so primitive and so anything that we can do to 34:18.69vigorbrandingOh, OK. 34:43.19vigorbrandingYeah. 34:46.50Clara Paye _ UNiTELevel the playing field to like help an emerging brand win is like I just it just lights me up I like it makes me so happy because These are the people improving the food systems. 34:57.16Clara Paye _ UNiTEThese are the people that are bringing healthy Products to market. 34:57.35vigorbrandingRight. 35:01.02Clara Paye _ UNiTEThese are the people who are you know, taking their family recipes and trying to share them with the world 35:06.90vigorbrandingWell, I mean, I admire you because you’re able to, I could see you walking into those shows and asking for them to give you all this space. And I know how you are. You do with a smile, but you’re pretty emphatic and I’m sure you always get your way. 35:19.64vigorbrandingCause I know I sit in meetings with you and when I’m, and when I miss a meeting, I have to answer to you, but you do with a smile, but you always hold people accountable and you get what you want. And I do respect that. So sure. 35:29.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEWell, I mean, it’s been a great partnership with New Hope and the Specialty Food Association. And it just, it aligns with their value. So they actually are great partners. And so it’s a, you know, and it’s a team. It’s not just me. There’s like five other founders on the leadership team have included. So, you know, we, we are really working hard to improve um the food systems. 35:51.19vigorbrandingwhat So what ah what do a lot of these folks, i mean thankfully they have you ah to sort of open up the door for them, literally to bring them into the into these shows. so like What do you see a mistake made by ah want to be entrepreneurs? what What do they do wrong? Or what do what do you think and in the brand creation process? What do you what do what do you think that they they do wrong a lot? 36:11.05Clara Paye _ UNiTEI mean, it’s probably something we did wrong too, but it’s like trying to pretend you’re a big brand when you’re not, right? Like, yes, you can get on that shelf, but are you ready? Can you support it the same way a big brand does? 36:20.43vigorbrandingMmhmm. 36:22.89Clara Paye _ UNiTEDo you know all the levers to pull, right? 36:24.66vigorbrandingMmhmm. 36:25.09Clara Paye _ UNiTElike And it’s hard to say, like, it’s hard when the opportunity knocks not to take it, right? 36:30.71vigorbrandingSure. 36:31.30Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it’s like that discipline of knowing, you know, What is the actual contribution margin of this account? And, you know, is it just like, or does it accomplish something else? So I think it’s like biting off a little bit more than you can chew. 36:44.02Clara Paye _ UNiTEum And then the one that I pay attention very closely to is quality. I think quality can sink your company so fast. You know, one quality issue, one copacker issue, one whatever issue. 36:53.05vigorbrandingyeah 36:54.04Clara Paye _ UNiTESo if you’re not paying attention to your product, you know, so closely, um that can really be a landmine because you can always create more brands. But you know, if your brand name is like tainted, it’s hard for you. 37:07.44vigorbrandingRight. I mean, some people might not even know like that. I think people assume because you have a brand, that you actually make it yourself. And you know, there are co-packers out there and a lot of brands use co-packers and you’re handing off your basically your baby and your promise, you know, a brand is a promise, your promise to the consumer to someone else to make. Obviously, there’s there’s checks and balances there. But it it is a, you know, there’s there’s places along the way that you have to count on a lot of partners. And it’s a, I’m sure it’s a difficult business, you know, 37:36.97Clara Paye _ UNiTEI think you have to think of your co-man relationships as kind of like your investors because they’re investing their line time, their energy you know to develop your brand as well. 37:40.66vigorbrandinghere Yep. 37:44.95Clara Paye _ UNiTESo it is a partnership. You’re not just like, you know. Um, taking and giving, right? is It’s truly a partnership but if done right. And like, yeah, I like to, I like to actually preface a lot of my buyer meetings by saying, Hey, by the way, I don’t make this in my garage. 37:56.50vigorbrandingMm 37:57.57Clara Paye _ UNiTEI, you know, because like the, the bias is if you’re like an emerging, I have a dream person and you’re like, make as far as in your garage and like packaging them up and sending them out. 38:01.10vigorbranding-hmm. 38:07.22Clara Paye _ UNiTEI thought there’s anything wrong with that. But like, when you’re trying to pitch a fortune, you know, 100 company, they got to make sure that, you know, you have your ducks in a row. 38:09.52vigorbrandingRight. eat Yeah. Yeah. 38:14.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so that’s a good qualifier. 38:17.32vigorbrandingYeah, Target doesn’t want you like ah to think you’re baking the night before. That’s funny. But I mean, yeah, it’s ah yeah’s it’s true. And it’s amazing all of the the hurdles, I’ll say, that you have to go through. So you have a great, yeah there’s a quote that you like to talk about. lot Winston Churchill, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. And you’re always enthusiastic. You want to talk a little bit about some of those things that you had to bump up against, some of your failures, some of the things that you had to pivot. 38:44.24Clara Paye _ UNiTEOh, there’s so many, Michael. I mean, every, if it’s, if it was easy, everyone would do it, you know, like I say that, but it’s like, it’s so true. 38:49.31vigorbrandingSure. 38:51.46Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd like, you know, and every entrepreneur I talk to in the food space or any space, it’s like, you gotta be able to take those hits and get back up. 38:57.56vigorbrandingOh, yeah. 38:59.18Clara Paye _ UNiTEBut the getting back up is really hard, right? 39:02.31vigorbrandingMm hmm. 39:02.73Clara Paye _ UNiTEEspecially when there’s like, you could do something else with your time. You could do something else with your energy. 39:06.20vigorbrandingGreat. 39:07.24Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd that’s where like a mission becomes really important. And it’s like, what’s actually driving you? 39:11.03vigorbrandingMm 39:11.36Clara Paye _ UNiTECause if it’s money, you’ll give up. There’s way easier ways to make money. 39:15.17vigorbrandinghmm. 39:15.47Clara Paye _ UNiTELike if I wanted to go make money, I’d just take my money and invest it in real estate or whatever. I’m like, yes, we do that too. but It’s really about mission for me. And so what drives you to like make the world a better place, have a lasting impact, create products that resonate with people. 39:31.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd so success is just a barometer. It’s just an outcome of you living that up. But like, you know, there are times, I mean, I think if you’re not ready to throw in the towel every month in your business, are you even an entrepreneur? 39:42.90Clara Paye _ UNiTELike, you know, like it’s just, it’s the getting back up. 39:43.50vigorbrandingRight. 39:46.20Clara Paye _ UNiTEAnd it’s like that loss of enthusiasm is what gets you. And like another way to send that is like burnout. If you’ve burned out, it’s too late. So I make sure that I don’t burn out. 39:52.89vigorbrandingYep. Yeah, that’s very smart. That’s actually very sage advice right there. Because look, these businesses, no matter how ah exciting they are, or how long you’ve been doing them, you do hit those those troughs, you do hit the burnout phase. I mean, personally, I started my first agency 33 years ago. And it’s, you know, ah yeah well and during this whole time with COVID, there’s so much change. And and and you know You think, well, you’ve been doing this for a long time. Everything think just should be on autopilot. No. I mean, I probably worked harder in the last couple of years. I did maybe in some of the middle years. I don’t know. It’s just just a different time. So yeah, the entrepreneur thing, I think everyone takes it for granted or everyone looks over and says, oh, you’ve done that. Or you have money because of this. And ah most people don’t realize those days and those sleepless nights and those weekends and the you know the the fears of everything from bankruptcy to lawsuits to everything else. We all go through it. right i mean every 40:45.92vigorbrandingi get to I’m very fortunate i get to talk to a lot of founders, I get to talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, and a lot of successful people, and they all have the same they all have those same stories. Every one of them has that nightmare, like, yeah, there was this time when, and you know you didn’t think there was a tomorrow. so it’s ah ah you know it’s ah It’s good to hear, it because your story, you’ve seen it all all the way around from your father to to starting up now and what you’re doing. and I love that you stick to your guns. because ah Again, you can cut corners. You could do things faster, cheaper, but not better. And I think that what you do is ah is really remarkable. And i again, I know it’s going to pay off in the long run. So so what’s what’s next for you tonight? I mean, are there any new flavors? If you can’t talk about it, I understand. But if theres is there anything new products or flavors or anything exciting on the horizon? 41:29.86Clara Paye _ UNiTEYeah, there is a new flavor. It’s called Hot Fudge Sunday. We’ll be launching soon. And so we’re really excited about that flavor, another nostalgic childhood treat. 41:35.70vigorbrandingAwesome. Yep. 41:38.67Clara Paye _ UNiTEAlso some different, you know, we’re looking at different formats, kind of some adjacent things. So definitely an innovation pipeline out there. 41:43.72vigorbrandingthat 41:44.39Clara Paye _ UNiTESo hoping to launch some other products. But really, I want to win at bars first and, um you know, really own our category and really, you know, make sure that our velocities stay up and and everything is is good with bars. 41:59.13vigorbrandingFantastic. All right, so one last question. And you can’t be one of your bars. But if you had one last final meal, what would you eat? Where? Why? 42:09.00Clara Paye _ UNiTESuch a good question. I mean, I’m a California girl, so it’d probably be an In-N-Out cheeseburger, ah you know, and and yeah some french fries and egg steak, animals for sure, animal style. 42:15.08vigorbrandingThere you go. All right. I respect that answer. That’s a great answer. Animal animal style, I hope. 42:25.41Clara Paye _ UNiTEum You know, it’s kind of like, that’s the meal when we travel abroad or something and you get back, you’re like, oh, I just want an In-N-Out burger. 42:26.67vigorbrandingah 42:30.92vigorbrandingYeah. 42:31.05Clara Paye _ UNiTEYou know, it just, it feels like home. And I think that goes back to nostalgia and childhood too. 42:35.15vigorbrandingAnybody that with work or or or whatever, friends or family that travel with me, they know when I land in California, that’s one of the first things I do and I will not leave until I do it. It might not be the very first thing I get to do if I have a meeting, but I will have in and out before I get on that plane to fly back east. 42:51.43vigorbrandingso That’s a great answer. 42:51.95Clara Paye _ UNiTEThat’s right. 42:52.84vigorbrandinggreat answer so Anyway, Claire, thank you. This was awesome. I you know i appreciate you. ah you know I’ve known you a long time and it’s just so cool to hear your story and see what you’re up to and congratulations. 43:03.82Clara Paye _ UNiTEThanks, Michaels. Fun to be on. 43:06.07vigorbrandingAwesome. Thanks.

In this episode, the team returns to the Sunset Strip Comedy Club, located in the heart of Austin's vibrant 6th Street, to continue their investigation into the strange and unsettling occurrences plaguing this historic building. After hearing chilling stories from both staff and patrons, and diving into the investigation back in September, they're back now to uncover what might be haunting this space—and what truths are still lurking in the shadows.In Part I, staff and patrons shared eerie experiences — voices calling their names, dimmer switches flickering on their own, and strange energy around the back office and stairwell. One employee even described shadowy figures rushing at him when he opened the café alone one morning. These unsettling accounts left the team with more questions than answers.In Part II, the team, including psychic medium Jeffery, investigated the building. He validated some of the staff's experiences, like the disembodied voices and names being called. But he also introduced a new spirit named "Hank," even though no one had reported this energy before. To their surprise, Jeffery didn't pick up on the heavy, oppressive energy around the back stairwell, nor did any of the mystery of J. Waller Stephens Jr.'s rumored suicide by Lysol ingestion come to light.With these lingering questions still haunting them, the team is diving back in, determined to get to the bottom of what's truly hiding within the walls of Sunset Strip Comedy Club. But this time, they're bringing an additional psychic medium — Kate the Brave.EPISODE SPONSORSBETTERHELPThe Night Owl is sponsored by BetterHelp. Get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/nightowlAG1Go to drinkAG1.com/nightowl to to start your new year on a healthier note.

Will my heat work with no compressor, can I spray Lysol in my air intake, do I need a return for every vent?

On today's MJ Morning Show: Which breed of dog bad for families? It's a 'frenzied lunatic'? Morons in the news The Villages Flight crew saw UFO? $50 at adult 'game room' in Queens, NYC Joann filing bankruptcy... again Road rangers and FHP wrangle donkey on I-75 You see a car w/trunk open full of tools... what do you do? Guy plants GPS tracker on woman's car in hopes of 'chance' meeting Guy arrested for DUI had 6.5 times the legal blood alcohol limit L.A. fire donations... is this wrong? Kristen Bell says 'no stained or torn clothes'... We took calls. Uber driver with crazy passenger... We took calls Southwest Airlines flight delayed 5 hours due to pilot's DUI Teacher exposed himself... a Lysol container was involved? List of items with Red Dye #3 MJ tries a gummy pickle The New Orleans terrorist visited Tampa, and the FBI says this... Attorneys for federal prosecutor who went nuts on Howard Frankland and stabbed a guy filed for evidence 2 coyote stories "Did you hide a check for $25,000?" L.A. fire pile... J.Lo, The Eagles

The stomach virus, COVID, cold, flu, RSV and whooping cough are going around. We're in the thick of germ season. Dr. Vickie Petz Kasper tells you the truth about how germs spread and how you can stay well and avoid catching them.  Tis the season to be coughing, catching all the germs and getting sick.  Whew, there really is a lot going around right now. So how can you keep from getting sick?  You've probably heard that the stomach bug is going around. The most common cause is the Norovirus. And January is typically flu and RSV season, and COVID levels are high. All three are increasing and this is not unexpected. Why is that? Well, because of all the travel and family gatherings, the number of people you are in close contact with on a daily basis usually consists of your immediate family, friends, and co workers. But over the river and through the woods, all those germs are coming to gather at Grandmother's house to spread like wildfire.   In this special edition episode, we're going to talk about how these six infections spread and what you can do to prevent it. But first, we need to go to mini medical school and learn about viruses and bacteria.  Pop quiz! Of the six diseases I mentioned, all but one is a virus. Do you know which one is caused by a bacteria? Norovirus, the common cold, flu, RSV, whooping cough, or COVID. Not sure? Well, listen close. I'll tell you as we review each one. But first, some basics. What is a virus? Well, it's a fragment of genetic information like DNA or RNA, and it's inside this protective shell that's called a capsid. And a lot of them look like a ball with these spiky things on it. They don't have any cells, and they're tiny. Their goal is to perpetuate, and they need a host to reproduce. And humans, well, we're so hospitable. We work great. First they attach to their host, and then they enter the host, and then they start replicating inside the host. Then they assemble more viral particles and whoosh, release them. And that, my friends, is a very, very brief overview and simplistic overview of how they make you sick.   One more thing. If you have a viral infection, an antibiotic will not do one frazzling bit of good. And that's what it says in all the medical textbooks, "Not one frazzling bit of good." And I know you want an antibiotic because you've got a lot of things to do and you want to get well fast. If you go to urgent care, you can probably snag a Z Pak pretty easily. But, if you have a viral infection, it won't do one frazzling bit of good. Now, why am I so passionate about that? I'll get to it in a sec, but let's first talk about bacteria. They're different. Bacteria are also tiny, but they have a single living cell. Some bacteria are actually good, and they keep you healthy.  And that's why taking an antibiotic when you don't need one is bad for you. Because if you kill off all the bacteria in your gut, that upsets the gut microbiome  for a long, long time. And what happens in the gut microbiome? Well, that's where neurotransmitters are made and where the immune system is regulated. I have some links in the show notes from previous episodes if you want to learn more about how the gut actually affects your brain and your mood.  Now, on the other hand, if you do have a bacterial infection, you need an antibiotic. Okay? Got it? Antibiotics are for bacteria, not viruses. Let's move on, starting with the stomach bug, which really isn't a bug at all. And I bet you already guessed that the stomach virus is caused by one of those spiky little pieces of genetic material that needs you to be its host.  The most common cause of the stomach virus is the Norovirus, and this one spreads easily, so it's super contagious. People with Norovirus infection can shed billions of invisible viral particles. That's billions, but it only takes a few to make you sick. And it doesn't really seem fair to stack the deck that way, especially since the end result is diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and stomach cramps, and possibly headache, body aches, and fever. You get it from sick people, contaminated food or water, and surfaces. Now that last one's really important, and that's the reason that I always, always use the little wipes. to wipe down the handlebar of the grocery cart and I wash my hands as soon as I can.  And once you're exposed to the Norovirus, it takes about 12 to 48 hours to get sick. So it usually makes the runs through the household pretty quickly. You can get infected with Norovirus by ingesting little bitty tiny pieces of feces or vomit from an infected person. Yeah, mom and dad. That's why you're at risk when little Johnny brings this home from school. All that barehanded cleaning and caring for your sick splattering little one puts you at risk for going down for the count, too. Your biggest defense is wash your hands. with soap and water. Wash them often, and wash them good. And keep your hands out of your mouth, eyes, and nose.  This virus grows really nicely in big Petri dishes, otherwise known as cruise ships. And that's why they installed 974 hand sanitizer stations right in front of the food troughs. Hand sanitizer doesn't really work that great for this particular virus. Turns out good old fashioned hand washing is much better. So, maybe that cart wiping isn't doing much good, but it certainly won't hurt. Anyway, be careful what you touch and keep it out of your mouth and nose, and wash your hands. Now let's move on to the common cold. Quick question, virus or bacteria? You got it. Virus. Specifically the rhino virus. And remember, rhino means nose  and it's also a type of Corona virus.  That's right. Corona virus first identified in the 1960s and effectively killed by Lysol. Says it right there on the label.  Next question. If the common cold is caused by a virus, will an antibiotic help you recover faster? Nope. Can it hurt?  I hope you said yes, and if not, go ahead and hit rewind. The symptoms of a cold usually last less than a week, but can last up to two weeks. And they include runny, stuffy nose, headache, body aches, sore throat, fever, coughing, and sneezing. There's a link in the show notes on how to differentiate a cold from allergies. Different viruses are spread in different ways. The common cold is spread through droplets from an infected person and they find you when that person coughs or sneezes. You can breathe them in or you can get infected by touching a contaminated surface then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth. That's why it's recommended that you cough or sneeze into your elbow. Because if you cover your mouth and nose with your hands and then shake hands or touch something or a surface, then the virus uses that as an opportunity to hitch a ride onto someone else's hands. Then, if they touch their eyes, nose, or mouth, they're infected. So wash your hands and keep them out of your mouth, eyes, and nose.   Another virus that spreads by droplets is influenza. These droplets are spread when people with flu cough, sneeze, or even talk. You can also get it from touching surfaces than touching your mouth, nose, or eyes, but that's actually less common. Most of the time you catch it directly from another person. These little viral particles are within droplets that land right in your mouth or nose. And, relatively speaking, these droplets are kind of big. They're greater than 5 microns in diameter, so they don't really travel far because gravity just pulls them to the ground within about 3 feet. Now, once you're exposed, the virus goes to work pretty quickly and you typically get sick a couple of days later. Now, flu season is definitely upon us and it's spreading. When I was young, my mom had the flu and she said, She thought she was going to die and kind of hoped she would. Now personally, I don't ever recall having the flu. But it's serious. It can be fatal. And there are lots of different types of flu, and some cause more severe illness than others. So far this year, there have been 9 pediatric deaths, and it's early in the season. 3. 1 million cases of flu have been reported, resulting in 37, 000 hospitalizations and 15, 000 deaths. According to the CDC, flu is on the rise.  How do they know? Let's take a look at how the data is collected because it might surprise you.  They look at emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and the number of tests done for certain diseases and the percent positivity. And there are benchmarks for those. But that wouldn't really give us a total picture, would it? Because some people don't go to the doctor or the hospital.  Want to know a secret?   They're looking at your poop. No, not yours individually, but collectively. They study wastewater and test feces for these viruses. I mean, it's kind of brilliant, albeit really gross.  They even have a poop dashboard. Of course, they have a more sanitized named for it. It's a Wastewater data. There's a link in the show notes if you're interested or if you don't believe me. And honestly, it's pretty fascinating if you're ready to geek out. I just wonder if they advertise on LinkedIn, looking for a CPA, a chief poop analyst. Qualifications must understand virology, statistics, and have a high tolerance for gross things. And maybe they got the idea from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Who knows? Okay, enough of that.  Now we call influenza flu for short and moving on, we call respiratory Syntcial virus, RSV for short. And the normal RSV season is late fall to winter, though that, again was thrown out with a lot of other things during the pandemic.  Wanna guess how it spreads? Just like the flu and the common cold, RSV spreads through droplets. You already knew it was a virus, I mean, it's right there in the title. But, it's the same old viral tactic. Somebody who's infected coughs or sneezes, the droplet travels the short distance between you, and  you breathe it in. This virus can survive on hard surfaces like door handles and tables for many hours. So, if you touch it and introduce it into your mouth, nose, or eyes, It can spread that way. It can also live on your hands or a used tissue, but not for very long. So what should you do?  That's right. Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Now, this is important. RSV can infect anyone at any age and more than once in their lifetime. In fact, nearly everyone gets it before their second birthday. But here's the deal. Babies can get really sick from it. And you can give it to them by kissing their face. So yeah, Grandma, this is one reason that new moms tell you, Don't kiss my baby. The other is the herpes virus, which causes fever blisters, but it can be fatal to newborns.  RSV can cause severe illness, hospitalization, pneumonia, and death in older adults too. So if you're sick, stay at home. Seriously, don't share your germs. When it comes to respiratory viruses, clean air also helps. That means HEPA filters for indoor air, or if you live in the South, you can probably open some windows except maybe those 13 or so days when we get bitter cold and ice. Anyway, just wash your hands and cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze, spray the Lysol, keep your distance, wipe down the surfaces. There's just not a lot of variety in these recommendations and following them just might protect a vulnerable little baby or a precious elderly grandma. And that logically helps me segue to COVID. You knew we were going to talk about COVID, didn't you? Transmission rates are really high right now. And here's a test I bet you'll ace. Is COVID a bacteria or a virus?  Bingo. Let's go a step further. COVID 19 is a coronavirus. And remember, there are lots of different kinds, but there is something very unique about COVID, and that is how it's spread. And hopefully you already know this, but let me remind you that COVID 19 is not spread the same way as the common cold, RSV, or the flu. And this is one of the things that made it so scary and dangerous. You see, COVID is airborne. Instead of hanging out in big heavy droplets that fall quickly to the floor, it floats along through the air. So you can literally get it from someone who isn't even in the same room with you. Think about a small bathroom where someone has coughed and then you go in, breathe in the little viral demons and get sick. It even traveled through ventilation systems in heavily populated apartment complexes. For the most part, the COVID virus spreads among people who are nearby. Basically, talking distance, coughing, sneezing, singing, and even breathing distance. And the louder you talk or sing, the further these little particles travel. We call it aerosolization.  I mean, think about hairspray in an aerosol can. You spray it, it gets on your jewelry, the mirror, your glasses, your husband comes in and starts fanning the air. Except these particles aren't big enough to declare their presence floating in the air.  Depending on the ventilation, airborne diseases can travel more than six feet and hang around for hours floating in the air.  Fortunately, there are not a lot of airborne diseases, but there are a few, like tuberculosis and measles. which is also on the rise and will likely continue to increase.   Remember when we didn't know how COVID was spread? I traveled to my daughter's during that time to see my grandbaby and drove eight hours without stopping to eat and only once to get gas and go to the bathroom. I wore gloves and an N95.  I never got into washing my groceries but I did wear an N95 a lot plus I worked in a hospital so there's that. Now you can touch a contaminated surface and get COVID through your eyes, mouth, and nose. So do the drill. Wash your hands. Don't touch your face. But it's that airborne aspect that made it different. Besides the fact that it was a novel coronavirus and we just didn't have any immunity.   The pandemic highlighted the need for America to get healthy too. Obesity was associated with poorer outcomes. And now we have GLP 1 agonists, which are helping people control obesity because it's so much more than willpower and determination. I put a link in the show notes about GLP 1 agonist and obesity, but listen, we still need to be physically active and eat whole food.  Now, we've talked about five viruses, Norovirus, rhinovirus that causes the common cold, influenza, RSV, and COVID, but what about whooping cough? Virus or bacteria?  You guessed it, whooping cough is caused by Pertussis Bordetella. And this bacteria is very contagious. It spreads easily through the air when someone coughs. And boy, do they cough. Sounds like a big wheeze before this violent coughing fit and a shower of germs. It lasts a long time and people are contagious for two weeks. And that cough can linger for months. You may be wondering, if it's a bacteria, should you take an antibiotic? And the answer is yes. But, for this one, you've got to take them early.  Not everyone gets that classic whoop. that gives it its name. Some people just get a little tickle and a cough and maybe they don't even know they're sick or their doctor tells them they have bronchitis or a sinus infection. And those are the ones you've got to watch out for because they can spread it. And like RSV in babies, it can be life threatening. Babies don't cough, they quit breathing. And one third of infants less than one year old who get whooping cough require hospitalization. Wow, that's serious. And that is why, when I was practicing obstetrics, I always recommended that my pregnant patients and everyone who was going to be around the newborn get a booster shot called Tdap. It stands for tetanus, diphtheria, acellular pertussis. Now let me stop right there. And I want you to hear me.  I really wanted to do this episode because promoting health is the whole goal of this podcast. I want to give you information, motivation, inspiration. to take measures to protect and improve your health. When it comes to seasonal illnesses, it's important to have a good baseline health and a strong immune system. That means a healthy gut microbiome, a healthy weight, and controlling risk factors like diabetes and hypertension.  I really care about you and I have no intention of wading into controversial waters.  So, if you have strong emotions when it comes to vaccines, Push stop on this podcast. But I really do care about you and I'm gonna keep this part really short. But if you want to have a further discussion about vaccines, I will literally schedule a call with you. Just email me, DrVickie@healthylooksgreatonyou.com and we can talk about it. Please don't send me hate mail, but if you do, I'll respond with love and grace  because I don't want this information which is rooted in solid science, evidence, research, medicine, and statistics to interfere with our relationship.  I'm not asking you to respect my opinion or anyone else's because this is not about opinion and it's not about respect.  But you see, that is something that changed with the pandemic. Distrust was sown  and maybe deserved. Maybe there was something nefarious, but there was also a lot we just didn't know. And as we learned and we learned quickly, things changed. Anyway, talk to your doctor is the best advice I can give you.  I remember when the chicken pox vaccine came out, my son was two years old and he had asthma. And I was a little leery because it was a new vaccine. I talked to my pediatrician and he advised giving it. Two years later, my son's preschool had to shut down because every single kid had chicken pox. Except my one little vaccinated boy. They even had to cancel preschool graduation because yeah, that's a thing. Instead of telling you what I do or what I know or how I feel, let me preface all of this by saying I've been a medical doctor for three decades. I was chief medical officer of a hospital for seven years, including the pandemic years, and I know what I saw firsthand. I do a lot of research from reputable sources for each podcast episode. So if you trust me, keep listening, but again, if you have strong feelings, now is the time to stop listening and you can tune back in next week. We'll pick up on the dementia series and talk about things we can agree on. I mean, we don't all have to agree on everything to be friends, do we?   Okay, I already told you that I recommended that all my pregnant patients get Get Tdap to protect their babies, and this is based on recommendations from the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, all reputable organizations. They also recommend the flu shot. Now, vaccine reactions are real. but they're rare. I don't personally know of a pediatrician who does not vaccinate their children. They see firsthand what these infectious diseases can do.  Now, I'll admit doctors have various opinions because they have various perspectives and we call that bias. Think about it. If a doctor only works in an outpatient clinic, they may have tons of experience treating some infection and what they do supports their beliefs.  But they don't know what goes on in the emergency room or the hospital. And the doctors that do have a different bias. And this was especially true during COVID.  There were a lot of sayings that went around during COVID, like, what about the obesity epidemic? Why are we not talking about that? And I think we should be talking about it. Or what happened to the flu? Did it suddenly disappear? Well, it turns out that social distancing, washing your hands, wearing a mask, avoiding crowded places prevents the flu too. It's recommended that everyone over the age of 6 months get a flu shot.  And if you're concerned about mercury or thimerosal, you'll be glad to know that single use vials of the flu shot don't contain any and haven't in many, many years. Now, remember I told you that I've never had the flu? You see, after my mom had it, she made sure we were vaccinated every year. And I continue to get the flu shot every year. I gave it to my kids every year. It is a killed virus. And you cannot get the flu from the flu shot. And yes, I know, you may have gotten the flu shot and then gotten the flu. And there's several reasons for that. Number one, the vaccine typically is only between 40 and 50 percent effective. Number two, it takes a couple of weeks before it works, and you might have gotten exposed to the flu right before you got the vaccine or right after before your immunity kicked in. You may also get the flu right after you drink a Coke.  That doesn't mean the aluminum can caused it, and I'm sorry if that was a little snarky, but correlation does not equal causation, and that's super important when you're looking at data rather than anecdotal experiences.   I remember how excited we were at the hospital when the COVID vaccine was delivered. I even took a video on my phone. It made a huge difference in the death rate we were seeing. And as soon as it was available, I got the COVID vaccine and all the boosters until the virus mutated enough to not really cause severe disease in most healthy people. I would still get it if it prevented COVID. But unlike what we thought at first, the COVID vaccine does not prevent COVID or the spread of COVID, just the severity of the disease, hospitalization, and death.  Not that that's not important.  The RSV vaccine is recommended for people age 60 and over. And there is a form of it that's available for newborns who are at risk.  Again, Tdap is recommended for pregnant women during every pregnancy and for anyone who's going to care for the baby.  Vaccines in pregnancy, like flu and Tdap, are given later so that those maternal antibodies can help protect the baby when they're too young to be vaccinated.   I know, attitudes have really shifted about vaccines. I remember when I was in the second grade, they lined us up at school and shot us in the arm with the same air gun to vaccinate us against smallpox. Remember smallpox? That disease has literally been eradicated from the face of the earth by vaccines. We all got it at school, and I'm not even sure our parents knew we were going to get it, but my mom is an ardent supporter of vaccines. Wanna know why? In a word, surely. You see, she had a cousin who was in an iron lung at the age of 17 from polio. It was a dreaded disease and the vaccine was a huge victory against this debilitating illness.   I guess people have a reason for believing what they believe. If you've seen devastation from an illness or from a vaccine, you're gonna have strong feelings and rightfully so. I've seen what I've seen and you've seen what you've seen. So, please send me an email if you want to continue the conversation. But I think we can all agree, keep your germs to yourself, wash your hands, get some fresh air, don't touch your face, and stay healthy. Because healthy looks great on you.        The information contained in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered to be a substitute for medical advice. You should continue to follow up with your physician or health care provider and take medication as prescribed. Though the information in this podcast is evidence based, new research may develop and recommendations may change. RESOURCES: Is it allergies? Weight loss injections What causes obesity? Gut Health, food and mood Wastewater dashboard Email me        

What if the secret to fixing your brain was as simple as a thousand tiny sound beams and a really close shave? In this special live episode from the CTO Conference in Toronto, the fellas sit down with Rima, a clinical trial participant who traded Lysol face wipes for focused ultrasound treatment in her battle against debilitating OCD. Dr. Nir Lipsman, a neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, joins to explain how his team is revolutionizing brain surgery by making precision "strikes" without ever opening the skull. From Chuck E. Cheese anxiety attacks to groundbreaking clinical trials, this episode explores the intersection of mental health innovation and patient care. Dr. Lipsman drops the mic with "It's better to have no brain than bad brain" - a statement that's both terrifying and oddly reassuring. Stick around to hear how a thousand tiny sound beams and one brave patient are changing the future of mental health treatment.Hear our previous fascinating chat about OCD here.Follow Sickboy on Instagram, TikTok and Discord!

What if the secret to fixing your brain was as simple as a thousand tiny sound beams and a really close shave? In this special live episode from the CTO Conference in Toronto, the fellas sit down with Rima, a clinical trial participant who traded Lysol face wipes for focused ultrasound treatment in her battle against debilitating OCD. Dr. Nir Lipsman, a neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, joins to explain how his team is revolutionizing brain surgery by making precision "strikes" without ever opening the skull. From Chuck E. Cheese anxiety attacks to groundbreaking clinical trials, this episode explores the intersection of mental health innovation and patient care. Dr. Lipsman drops the mic with "It's better to have no brain than bad brain" - a statement that's both terrifying and oddly reassuring. Stick around to hear how a thousand tiny sound beams and one brave patient are changing the future of mental health treatment.Hear our previous fascinating chat about OCD here.Follow Sickboy on Instagram, TikTok and Discord!

It's easy to focus on cleaning up the food we eat, the water we drink, and the products we use, but forget completely about the air we breathe! This is an often overlooked area of exposure to environmental toxins that can lead to poor health. On this episode of Vitality Radio, Jared interviews Mike Meade from Triad Aer and they discuss an innovative way of cleaning the air in your home. Most products on the market filter the air, but Triad Aer uses a totally different technology that causes particles in the air to fall to the ground to be vacuumed up during your regular cleaning. This technology targets particles smaller than any air filter can catch! You'll learn why our air has become so dirty and how this technology works to target the dangerous toxins that your air filter is missing.Products:For 20% off Triad Aer Products: Vitality Nutrition My Triad AerVisit the podcast website here: VitalityRadio.comYou can follow @vitalityradio and @vitalitynutritionbountiful on Instagram, or Vitality Radio and Vitality Nutrition on Facebook. Join us also in the Vitality Radio Podcast Listener Community on Facebook. Shop the products that Jared mentions at vitalitynutrition.com. Let us know your thoughts about this episode using the hashtag #vitalityradio and please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Thank you!Please also join us on the Dearly Discarded Podcast with Jared St. Clair.Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. The FDA has not evaluated the podcast. The information is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. The advice given is not intended to replace the advice of your medical professional.

Who has Lysol

What started as harmless spirit box recordings quickly escalated, as Tom found himself facing voices from beyond, floating apparitions, and even a Lysol can with a mind of its own. His story is a haunting reminder that sometimes, the ghosts aren't just in the video—they're in the room with you. Tune in to hear Tom's advice for aspiring ghost hunters: "Be careful what you wish for."  If you have a real ghost story or supernatural event to report, please write into our show or call 1-855-853-4802! If you like the show, please help keep us on the air and support the show by becoming a Premium Subscriber. Subscribe here: http://www.ghostpodcast.com/?page_id=118 or at or at http://www.patreon.com/realghoststories

On Unstoppable Mindset I have rarely met someone who is as outgoing and, yes, as confident as our guest this time, DW Starr. DW's childhood was by no means normal. Within his first six years of life, he suffered a broken leg as well as two traumatic brain injuries that came from automobile-related accidents. He even encountered a third traumatic brain injury at the age of forty, again from being hit by a car. Oh, make no mistake! None of these were the result of carelessness. No matter what, he persevered through all of these challenges.  For nearly thirty years as an adult, he worked in sales for companies and was a top performer. Mostly after his last brain injury he began using mnemonics techniques to help remember things that, for him, were easy to forget. He had developed some techniques as a child, but didn't resurrect them until his last accident. He also began learning more about confidence and how to use it in his own life. He also began working a bit as a performer giving shows to children and adults on how they could improve their own confidence and thus become better and stronger people. Now, his performances and talks are a full-time job. He tells us about his shows and gives us insights into what he does while performing. He even discusses some of the memory techniques he uses during his performances and how he teaches them to his audience.   DW has visited and performed in forty states in America as well as fifteen countries. He is quite an inspiration we all should value and from whom we can learn much. He discusses, for example, the difference between confidence and arrogance and he discusses the difference between assertiveness and aggression. I think you will gain much from DW's time with us. If you visit his website, www.dwstarr.net you can obtain a PDF copy of one of his books.   About the Guest:   DW STARR, confidence expert, performer, speaker and author empowers teens and adults to unleash their hidden confidence superpower to be the superhero in their own lives. DW draws from his multiple areas of expertise to help his teen and adult audiences reach peak performance success. He is uniquely qualified: started selling at 9 years old, endured and survived traumatic brain injury (TBI), over 25 years of corporate experience as a million-dollar sales executive excelling with the largest medical information analytics company on the planet, international award-winning U.S. Army movie/tv director, amateur magician, and author of 4 books with two more in the works. Using their favorite movie and his proprietary S.T.A.R.R. formula, DW empowers and connects with his audiences as he performs his audience-interactive one-man show DW LIVE! and through his transformational speaking presentations. They learn to re-direct the inner movie running in their minds. DW has performed and spoken in 15 countries and 40 U.S. States … His “Confidence Matters“ message speaks a universal language that resonates with people and organizations worldwide.   He lives in Southern Florida with his wife and his dog.   Ways to connect with DW:   INSTAGRAM….. DW_STARR FACEBOOK…….. DW STARR YOUTUBE………. @CONFIDENCECRUSADER TIKTOK…………… @CONFIDENCECRUSADER LINKEDIN……….. DW STARR WEBSITE………… WWW.DWSTARR.NET WEBSITE………… WWW.WOWUNOW.COM/DWSTARR   https://www.dropbox.com/s/q1x0v88barglevm/Teens%20Need%20Our%20Help.mp4?dl=0    MY MISSION TO HELP TEENS   https://www.dropbox.com/s/ffj4d55iyfjwlm4/DW%20Promo%20On%20Site%2034%20seconds.mp4?dl=0  34 second DW Promo     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi everyone, wherever you happen to be, we want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, once again, unstoppable mindset, where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet and unexpected gets to be a fun part of what we get to do today, by any standard. And I'm not going to tell you anymore, because I want it to be unexpected until it happens. We do have a wonderful guest today. I love people who are really animated and engage me in conversation and teach us a lot. And that's true of our guest today. DW Starr, and I'm not going to tell you anymore. I'm just going to say, dw, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset.   DW Starr ** 01:57 Hi, Michael, how are you?   Michael Hingson ** 01:58 I'm doing lovely. And you,   DW Starr ** 02:00 I'm doing great. I'm doing great. Did you know that late maybe you, or maybe even your audience? Don't know that Lady Gaga was fired after her first record album, after only three months that Michael Jordan didn't make his high school basketball team, the first time that Taylor Swift was told she was too young for the music industry. Get that and really that JK Rowling, the author the Harry Potter series, was turned down by 12 publishers. Was a single mother, and she was in poverty, and wrote her book in in a in a in a coffee shop. Now the reason I'm telling you that is because all those people figured out how to find the confidence to be the successes they became.   Michael Hingson ** 02:57 And it really is about confidence, isn't it? It is confidence matters, and it's not arrogance, it's confidence. And there's a big difference, correct?   DW Starr ** 03:06 Absolutely, the difference, to me, is authenticity. When someone is truly confident, they don't need to prove it to anybody, because it's internal, it's it's authentic, it's who they really are, and that comes with the good and the not so good sometimes, and the recognition of those things within ourselves. Good point. Well, how   Michael Hingson ** 03:32 did you I'd love to learn more about your story of how you did all that, and maybe you can tell us a little about the early dw and kind of how you evolved over time, as it were,   DW Starr ** 03:43 well, how far back to you? What we just Oh, go   Michael Hingson ** 03:46 to the beginning. What this early memories you got to tell us about you?   DW Starr ** 03:50 I'm two years old. I mean, there you go. I'm two years old. I'm in the backseat of my mother's car, and, damn, I fall out, smash my head on the ground and fracture my skull. Wow, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 04:06 Do you remember that?   DW Starr ** 04:07 No, okay, I just know that. People told me what happened, and then I was lucky. I didn't get run over by a car or a truck. So then I'm six years old, I'm riding my bike, playing, follow the leader, my friend goes across the street. I follow my friend on my bike, and bam, I get hit by a truck. I fly 15 feet in the air, smash, smash my leg on the curb and break my femur, and I hit my head on the ground and go unconscious. Brain Injury number two, when I when I wake up, yeah, when I wake up, I don't mean to interrupt you. I No go ahead times. So if I do that, tell me to stop interrupting.   Michael Hingson ** 04:56 I was just going to ask if you remember that one. Uh,   DW Starr ** 04:58 no. Okay anyway, so you broke your leg, and you hit your head right, and when I woke up my I found out that I had a broken leg, and they had put and then eventually they put me in a cast from my stomach down to both my feet, with a bar in between. So I had a cast on both legs, connected at the stomach area all the way down to my toes, and then a bar in between, so I couldn't even move without being carried around the house as a six year old.   Michael Hingson ** 05:33 Why was there a bar? Oh, so   DW Starr ** 05:36 that the legs would grow evenly, got it, um, and so that I would and so the two, the two, the two legs would be stabilized, okay, otherwise, what I would have two separate casts. So it was one giant cast right now when they took the cast off with, you know, with a buzzsaw, and they took off the cast. My leg had atrophied because it had been in the cast for so long, both of them, actually, and the strength of my leg, the broken leg was still in a healing process. So I had to, I slept on a cow a mattress in my living room, rolled off the mattress and crawled on my hands and knees into the kitchen and taught myself Pediatric Physical Therapy, because it didn't exist back then, and I taught myself how to walk again. Wow, at six, that wasn't really good for my self confidence. When I was crawling around on my hands and knees, I felt, I do remember feeling a little bit like a loser, you know, because I'm six years old, I'm supposed to be able to run and jump. And here I am crawling in my house, and then I go about living my life and different things. And at 40 years old, yep, it happened one more time. I'm in a car on the way to a Billy Joel concert listening to the music of Billy Joel, and I get hit at 55 miles an hour in a car. My wife breaks three ribs, and I hit my head in the inside of the car, so hard I dent the inside of the car with my head, and I don't know it, because what happened was, after that happened, my wife was complaining about these broken ribs. So what? She didn't know they were broken. She just knew she had pain. And so I crawled over the back seat of the car, went out the passenger side. I didn't realize what I was doing. I was on an adrenaline rush, obviously, and I just told her to sit still and everything be fine. The emergency people came. They took us to the hospital. They asked me if I was okay. I said, Sure, I just have a little cut in my in my leg, on my ankle. They said, well, we'll take care of that the hospital. I said, Sure. Went there. She got tested. She was okay, except for the broken ribs, and the way broken ribs heal is just time. So she was okay. We came home, I went to work the next day, and I was in corporate I was in corporate America, working with one of the largest medical informatics companies on the planet. It's one of the top 1000 companies in the world, and I was in sales management, and so anyway, what happened was, a couple days later, I started screaming at her, and that's not my personality at all. So I thought, something's not right. And so we ended up, I ended up going to a couple doctors, and the neuropsychiatrist said to me, I know what your problem is. I went, Oh, good, good, Doc. Tell me what my problem is. He said, Oh, you've had a traumatic brain injury. I said, That's not possible. He goes, Well, why is that? I said, because I've already had two. He said, Well, now you've had three.   Michael Hingson ** 09:14 You know, you just don't know how to keep your head out of the way   DW Starr ** 09:17 you think. And people say you should stay away from cars.   Michael Hingson ** 09:24 You got to mind your head better is what it is. It is so he told you he had a traumatic brain injury, yeah. And   DW Starr ** 09:30 he explained to me that it's a very unique kind of a thing. When you get a traumatic brain injury, you never really know what the long range effects are. He had me read an article about a female steeple jumper, someone who rides a horse and jumps over those, those railings, you know, the steeple jumper, right? And he said she fell off her horse, hit her head, and she had trouble the rest of her life addressing envelopes. Mm. And probably just like you. I said, What? What? What, what, how, what's it doesn't make sense addressing he said, Well, the way it works is that our brain is very, very, very unique, and different pieces do different things, so we never know what your long term effects are going to be. So I was out of work for three months because somebody would say, I want to buy one of these, one of these, and one of these, and I couldn't remember the first thing the person pointed to within, within a split second at the time they pointed to it. So I couldn't work because I couldn't remember. And I was really scared. I was scared that I wasn't going to be able to be a good provider for my family, be a good father to my sons, be a good husband to my wife, and just be okay. But after about three months, things really started to get better, and at that's the time when I remembered, when I was a kid, how I remembered things. Because even as a kid now, remember I had two head injuries by the time I was six. I don't know if the reason I had trouble remembering things when I was six was because of that or not, but I do remember my teacher telling me how to spell arithmetic. I'm doing all the talking here. That's okay, it's funny. It's your story. All right, all right.   Michael Hingson ** 11:30 People have heard mine.   DW Starr ** 11:32 Okay, cool. I gotcha. All right, so arithmetic, a rat in the house might eat the ice cream, A, R, I T, H, M, E, T, I C, a rat in the house might eat the ice cream. And I I love that as a kid, and I remembered that as an adult. And I said, Wait a minute, maybe I can start remembering things by using that kind of a technique, and that's what I did. I started creating memory hacks for myself in different arenas in my life, and that's how I remember remember things, to the point where even today, I use the some of those memory hacks for my own presentations, my own performances. I use my last name star as a memory hack to remember my own stuff. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 12:34 how long ago? So you had the last accident at 40? And how many years ago was that?   DW Starr ** 12:40 Well, that's going to give away my age. Oh, well, that's up to you. Let's just say I'm somewhere around 60. Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 12:51 so it's been a while, and so you've been using the memory hack, if you will, techniques for for quite a while, and you still use them   DW Starr ** 12:59 to people too. Sometimes, yeah, yeah. Do you ever forget? Let me ask you a question. Michael, do you? Do you ever forget something that you want to remember when you are going from one place to another? I do okay. Do you? Do you? Um? Do you have things that you always like to carry with you when you go from one place to another, like a phone or a notebook or or something like that. I do so do you ever forget them?   Michael Hingson ** 13:33 The things that I carry, typically not. I've gotten into the habit of carrying them and I don't   DW Starr ** 13:38 Okay. We find that that many people do forget things like their their glasses or their phone or their or their keys or whatever. So what I did for myself is I created an mnemonic device called, please bring a kazoo guide. Now, a kazoo is that thing that you play, that you humid like that? Yep. So please, I have one. Oh, you have one. I   Michael Hingson ** 14:07 do not right here, but I have one.   DW Starr ** 14:11 So do I? I got it as a kid? Yeah. So I used to use that in my performances sometimes. So I said, All right, I'll create a mnemonic device. Please bring a kazoo guide, phone, briefcase, attitude, keys and glasses. I never want to forget my good attitude, but I also don't want to forget my phone or my briefcase or my keys or my glasses. So that's the kind of mnemonic device, memory hack that I'm talking about, that I've used for myself to help me be confident and stay confident in my memory portion of my my life.   Michael Hingson ** 14:51 And I use mnemonics for some things from time to time or not so much mnemonics, but something I. Um, oftentimes, when I'm creating something that I want to remember, I will convert print characters to Braille dots, and I will create combinations that for whatever reason I remember to help me not forget the things that I don't want to forget when when I do that so I hear what you're saying, and I appreciate it a great deal. And I think that there's a lot of value in everyone finding ways to remember things. One of the things that I've always been good at remembering are phone numbers, and I work really hard, even today, when I have a smartphone that is very accessible that I can put contacts in and do I still want to remember the phone numbers, because I think that keeps me sharper by remembering things. So I remember a lot of phone numbers, and I've made it a conscious effort to do that so that, and it's worked for me specifically to be able to do that. I remember the phone number that we had when I grew up in Palmdale, California, and I even remember the phone number that I had in them in my dorm at UC Irvine and and some of the other phone numbers like that.   DW Starr ** 16:26 And any of them start with 213,   Michael Hingson ** 16:30 huh? No, mine started with 805, and then 714, because I went to UC Irvine. So it was 714, and I have a friend who, and I still remember it his phone number at UC Irvine, actually, he, yeah, he was a PhD candidate at UC Irvine, but he lived off campus, and his number was 714, Om, war, 1o, H, M, W, A, r1, and I always thought that was a clever way to remember it. Yeah, and I had one, I'm trying to remember. I know the last I've got to think about it. One of the phone numbers that I worked with at UC Irvine ended with jet one, and I don't remember right off. I'll think about it the first three digits, but it's good to have the little acronyms, or not acronyms, but mnemonics and memory devices, and they're very valuable to use, and more people should probably use them, they might remember things better. So   DW Starr ** 17:33 what I figured out, Michael is I figured out why we forget some of these things, and that has helped me help people understand more about building their own confidence, and the reason that we forget these things is because we're already where we're going instead of where we are. We're already thinking about getting in the car, walking into the other room, leaving the hotel, getting off an airplane, we're already thinking about those things as if they're already starting to happen, instead of paying attention to where we actually are at the moment. So this, this memory hack, actually creates something that we all call mindfulness, which is pretty wild, because I never knew that was going to be one of the outcomes. But because of that, I'm able to stay in the present a lot more often, and I like that feeling, yeah, and, and it, it's that's all part of about being confident, is being confident with who you are in the moment   Michael Hingson ** 18:42 you you asked earlier if I have a phone, and remember my phone and other things I know I've stayed in many hotels, and one of the things, again, it's a discipline that I've developed, is that I never leave A hotel key laying on a table, it stays in the pocket, and my phone will either be in my pocket, or if I'm in a hotel room, I will make sure that it is plugged in by the head of the bed, so that when I get up in the morning, it is one of the first things that I touch, and I'm very deliberate about that. But the hotel key, especially, I just have always developed this habit, this technique of never leave it laying around. And for me, there are several reasons. One, I am too much an out of sight, out of mind kind of guy, and so the bottom line is, not seeing the hotel key, if I put it down somewhere, that's going to be a problem. So the better thing is to keep it in a pocket.   DW Starr ** 19:45 Makes sense to me. It works, yep, but,   Michael Hingson ** 19:52 but people really do allow their minds to I think you pointed out very well. Uh, move to, um, away from where we are to where we're going to be, and we lose that control, and we never seem to learn from our mistakes. Or we think, Oh, well, I can just see the hotel key so I won't forget it. Yeah, that works really well.   DW Starr ** 20:19 Well, if you think of if the people in your audience were to think of people who they have in their life, who they feel are confident and would like to have some of that confidence, or somebody in a movie or TV or in a book they read that has has a really good, solid hold on confidence. They'll see that those characters or those people live in the present moment. And so that's a really important piece of the puzzle of confidence. It's not the only thing. Obviously, there's lots of other pieces of the puzzle, but that, like, I say that's, that's an important piece. So, yeah, it   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 is. Well, so you weren't doing any of this coaching, I presume, or hadn't really thought through as much about confidence and so on, before you had your accident at 40,   DW Starr ** 21:25 I was dabbling, dabbling. I I, I was inspired through many different people. In fact, I use a mnemonic memory hack, to even remember who inspired me. It's to rise t, w o r, I, instead of an S, it's a Z, Z e, t, w o r, I, z e, to rise to rise above, to rise ahead, and it stands for Tony Robbins, Wayne, Dyer, Oprah Winfrey, Ronald Reagan, Indira Gandhi, zig zigular, and Eleanor Roosevelt. So I use my name like I said. I use these memory hacks all the time, but those those people, along with Nelson Mandela and his life, were an inspiration to me that I decided that I needed to share my message with the world, and I so I studied these people and saw all the different roadblocks and the different the different things that stopped them, that held them back. And I said, if all these different people, I mean, Nelson Mandela was in jail for 20 years, yeah. And he was put there by the country that he eventually became president of, yeah. So if these people could rise above, to rise above their own circumstances. I certainly could teach myself how to do that too. And so that's what I did. And once I did that, then I said, I want to share this message with the world. And so I I did that for many, many years with adults. And then there's this thing that happened called covid. Yeah, all the speakers, right? It just shut down, yep. And during that time, some of the speakers and performers realized they could use this concept called Zoom. And I did a program in Ethiopia on Zoom, and I saw how successful it was. And this program was with college students and their professors. And up until that time, I had only been working with corporate America and adults, you know, big, big fortune, 500 companies that's all on my website, if somebody wants to look me up, and all the different companies I work for, worked with. But anyway, so during covid, and I did that, and I said, You know what, when I come out of this, I want, I want to make an, a really strong effort to make a big focus on teens and young adults, because I figured something out while I was, you know, while we were in this covid coma, almost at times, it felt like is that young adults and teens were going to their older mentors, whether it was their parents or whether it was their boss, and saying, I don't understand this covid thing. Can you please help me understand this? And their boss and their parents and their grandparents had no clue what to tell them, because they didn't know what to do either. Right, yeah. So what happens is all these young people who have these people on a pedestal, the pedestal starts to drop, and this hurts their the teens and young adults self confidence, to the point where you start seeing all kinds of major issues going on with it, with young people, and it's all over the news, and even even the Surgeon General talked about it, depression, higher rates of suicide, anxiety, heavy social anxiety, and on top of that, social media. So the teens and young adults sometimes can't even talk to each other because they only know how to do it on this machine.   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Yeah. Or, or with text,   DW Starr ** 25:49 yeah, yeah. Well, that's actually yeah, both computer and text. And like, I'm holding up a phone right now and it says, Bs, Oh, I better tell people what that stands for, or they're going to get freaked out. That reminds me, me, that's my memory hack that stands for belief system. Okay? It says BS, but it stands for belief system. It reminds me that the way I perceive my life is all based on what I believe. If I change my beliefs, I can change my perception, yep. And   Michael Hingson ** 26:28 the other part of that is, if you need to change your beliefs, that is, we should always look to grow. We have a belief system. We have what we believe in. And I'm not saying that people need to question what they believe in, but they should always be open to learning new things and letting that augment their belief system.   DW Starr ** 26:46 Absolutely. Yeah, so that's designed, that BS is designed every time I pick up my phone to remind me if what I believe is in my best interest, if it's healthy for me, and if it's not, then I need to do something about it, you   Michael Hingson ** 27:02 know, during covid. And I'm not trying to brag or sound arrogant or anything, but I know, and I think I can connect it up here. I didn't have a lot of social anxiety. My wife didn't even have a lot of social anxiety. We We went through it, but we also felt we lived in a in a house, the two of us, we live, where we where I live. Now, she passed away in 2022 but, but just she was in a wheelchair. Well, she was in a chair her whole life, and her body just started slowing down. So we lost her in November of 2022 and it's just kind of one of those things, as her physical medicine doctor once told her, you know, the body doesn't come with a lifetime warranty. So it happened,   DW Starr ** 27:46 no, no, just get out of here alive. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 not in that sense. And you know, but the thing is that we we felt okay. We got a lockdown, we'll lock down. And we did, but we were much more oriented toward, as you would say, living in the moment and not worrying about all the things that we couldn't control. And I can think about that very intellectually and say that's how we reacted to life. We didn't worry about what we couldn't control. We focused mainly on what we could Oh, occasionally we worried about one thing or another, but mostly we just didn't worry about what we couldn't control and focused on the things that we had control over. And we had control over things mail comes in, spray it with a little bit of Lysol, just to play safe. And neither of us ever got ever got covid, but we we always wore masks when we went out. And I still, when I fly, wear a mask, just because you never know. But I also had a lot of fun with masks, because I've told this story a couple times on on unstoppable mindset. We went to a bank one day, and I went into the bank wearing a mask. I was carrying my white K and I didn't use my guide dog. It was a quick trip, so he stayed home, and I walked. We walked. I walked in. Karen stayed in the car because she also had an autoimmune situation with rheumatoid arthritis, so she drove me to the bank, but she felt she shouldn't go in, and I agreed. Anyway, I went in wearing a mask. Go up to the teller, and they all know me there, but I go up and I say, when we when we greet each other? And I said, Hello. And they said, Hello. And then I said, Don't you think it's funny how today somebody wearing a mask can walk into a bank, and then I held my cane up and say, This is a stick up, right? And the manager came over and he said, you know, we haven't had such a good laugh all day, which is exactly why I did it. But you know, we all have choices to how we deal with things and and how we react to things. And I think so often I heard so many people being so anxious about. Using Zoom Zoom fatigue and everything else. And I realized the fact of the matter is that covid offered and still offers us a great opportunity to deal with a lot of things in a different way, and that, rather than having zoom fatigue, use it to your advantage, and unfortunately, we just don't worry about that, because we are so used to doing it one way, we don't get innovative anymore.   DW Starr ** 30:31 Yeah, so it's, if you look at the people, typically, that are most happy in life, it's because they're continually looking for a way to to grow. And it doesn't necessarily have to be financially, it can be spiritually, it can be emotionally, it can be psychologically, it can be financially, it can be educationally, but if that's even a word, educationally, but it works okay today anyway, yeah. But the key I guess, is that if you're continually growing, you're firing this. And trust me, I've studied the brain a lot. You can only imagine after three head injury,   Michael Hingson ** 31:15 have you discovered that you do you need to mind your head and keep it out of the way.   DW Starr ** 31:20 Absolutely, okay, absolutely away from   Michael Hingson ** 31:24 cars, cars. Yeah, please.   DW Starr ** 31:28 So, so what happens is, is that we're, we're, we're continually reassessing our ourselves, that those are, seem to be the people who are the most happiest.   Michael Hingson ** 31:46 I think there's a lot of truth to that they don't worry about the things that they don't have a lot of control over, because all that's going to do is drive you crazy, exactly, and it does. It just drives too many people way too crazy, which is too bad.   DW Starr ** 32:04 I think another thing for me, though that's really important that I want to share, is that that your life doesn't happen by chance. It happens by choice. Yes, and, and, and. So, you know, we, we've all heard this, but, but it's so true that by not making a decision, you're still making a decision. So if you're in a situation, you go, Oh, I don't really know what I want to do about this. Well, you're making the decision not to make a decision. And that, in itself, is a choice. And you always have a choice. Always say, you know, in Viktor frankl's book, A Man's Search for Meaning, which is quite an amazing book, if anyone in your audience hasn't read it and they want to really understand the deep psychological meaning for how people survive the concentration camps, is in his book, he talks, he talks about the the importance of of of recognizing that it's a choice, that it's a choice that they it's your choice to search for meaning. It's, you know, I made a post. I did a post just the other day. I said, it's not what happens to you, it's how you perceive what happens to you. It's not what happens to you, it's what you it's what you feel and think about what happens to you. It's not the actual occurrence itself, it's how you deal with it. And I think that's really important when it comes to confidence, because you can look at failure as failure, or you can look at failure as a stepping stone. I mean, we've all heard this stuff for years, but it's true. That's why we keep hearing it, because it's true,   Michael Hingson ** 33:57 September 11 happened, and I believe that we didn't have any control over it happening. I still don't think that, no matter what happened, we for could have foreseen it coming, but it happened, and that's not something we have any control over, but we all have control over how we choose to deal with it, which is exactly what you're saying.   DW Starr ** 34:21 Yeah, absolutely. And you know, for me, my parents were very dysfunctional. Okay, so I had a choice. I could, I could use that as an excuse not to be happy, not, you know, to be dysfunctional as a parent when I had kids, although, but, but I, I choose to look at those things as as lessons for me to grow from, to become who I want to be, you know. And that's I, you know, there's one thing I want to make sure I say in this podcast, and that's that, you know, somebody once said to me, well, dw, if I could just like, learn how to do. What you're talking about like in five minutes. Five just five minutes because everybody's in a hurry. Everybody wants to right? So five, I say, Well, here's the key. The key is figure out what you want. Figure out why you want it. Keep showing up. Don't let go of that desire. Don't let go of that dream, and then find somebody either in the real world or in the make believe world, meaning movies, TV, books, whatever, or in the real world, a mother, a father, an uncle, a boss, a librarian that you know a school teacher, whatever, find somebody who has the kind of confidence that you want to strive for, and then let them mentor you. And if you don't have a direct connection to them, use what I call a virtual mentor. And that's what I did. Ronald Reagan, Indira Gandhi, Zig Ziglar, Ellen Ro I didn't have any connection with those people, but what I did was I let them virtually mentor me, and that's what I would suggest the person do, and then for two minutes every morning and every night, imagine yourself being like that person, and then for two minutes during the day. Take a situation in your life, whatever it is, and for two minutes be like that person's confidence would be. Act as if you were that confident for just two minutes. You can do it for two for two minutes in the morning and two minutes in the evening, you just imagine you have that kind of confidence. What would that person do in the situation you're trying to be more confident about and then during the day, for two minutes, simply like, let's say you're nervous about making phone calls as a salesperson a cold call, or, let's say that you don't have the confidence you want to have for playing the guitar in front of five friends for two minutes. Just pretend like you're you have the confidence of that mentor, and just act as if you have it. And that's what I did, and over time, eventually I became DW star. That's not my legal name. That's my professional name.   Michael Hingson ** 37:31 I'm curious why Indira Gandhi? Well,   DW Starr ** 37:34 if you look at how big that country is and how populated it is and how, how she was one of the first females to be in charge of a I think she might have been the first female to be in charge of a country that big. And her, her, her personality, her her, her, her graciousness, her, her tenderness was an important piece of what I wanted for my life. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 38:07 yeah. I was just curious, because I figured some people might ask that question if they were here, so I thought it was probably relevant to ask, and I I agree with the answer. Well, so you, you went off and you, you had all these brain injuries. And so was, you were 40. Did you go back to work eventually, for the company that you?   DW Starr ** 38:31 Yeah, after three months, I went back to work. And slowly, well, I went back to work. I, if I were, I'm not sure I remember this, but I went back to work, I think, a few days a week, and then eventually I went back to work full time, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the top sales producers in that company for many, many years, And I worked for that company for, wow, about 30 years,   Michael Hingson ** 39:04 but then you decided to switch what caused. While I   DW Starr ** 39:08 was doing that, I started doing what I'm doing now in a smaller way, and then eventually it just grew and grew to where I was working. So I was selling to some of these corporations, and eventually I ended up doing programs for these corporations through my other act. And oh, by the way, people want to know why I'm dressed like this. You can't see it, but I'm wearing leather pants and leather boots. And that's because, if you go to my website, or you look at the front cover of my book, one of my books, I got, like five books. It's I'm wearing what looks like a movie director's outfit, because I play an old fashioned movie director. And what I do is I help people rewrite the script that's running inside. Their mind that isn't always so positive. So I'm an inner movie director, helping them rewrite the inner script that runs the inner movie in their mind. So I'm dressed as an inner movie director, and that's why I've got the megaphone in the box,   Michael Hingson ** 40:16 just gonna say. And hence the megaphone. And if anybody wants to know how I know about it, because DW told me, yeah,   DW Starr ** 40:22 yeah, and I, and I, and I use that in my presentation, because my presentation is oftentimes also a performance. Oh, I forgot to tell you this. I was in the US Army for three years. I wrote, produced, directed, acted in commercial. Commercials for the US Army stationed in Korea for one year. Cool. Now that's probably some other things I forgot to tell you, too. That's okay. Amber emulet, you know,   Michael Hingson ** 40:54 that's fine, but you so you you became a speaker, you became a performer. You're also a writer. And tell me. Tell me about your books, if you would. Okay,   DW Starr ** 41:07 well, I wrote two books on change, and as I what happens is, just like we're talking about recognizing how to be better, how to evolve. I wrote two books on change, and as I was working with corporations and doing some personal coaching and consulting, I realized that the reason people are having so much trouble with change is because they didn't have enough confidence. So I said, Why don't I help them with their confidence? And that way that'll automatically help them change. And so I shifted from change to confidence, and I'm really glad I did that. So the first two books are on change. The third book was written to be a very easy this is, this is the one I was talking about. And by the way, if they go to my website, they can get a free PDF for that book. What's   Michael Hingson ** 42:03 your website? By the way? Well, we'll do it again later. But what is, since you've mentioned it so many times, sure,   DW Starr ** 42:08 it's D, like dog, W, like wagon, S, T, A, R, r.net, D, W, star, with two R's, dot net. Okay, now what's really crazy, I have to tell you this. I tell this to people, and every time I say it, I think to myself, that's crazy. If you Google me, dw, star, right now, anyone in your audience Googles me, I am fortunate enough to have the entire page with no advertising. It's crazy to me that that that has happened, but it's because I've been able to be prolific in many ways. I mean, I have a song, I have a poem, I have my books, I present I you know, I do some personal coaching consulting. So I'm doing all these different things. So obviously, that's why Google finds all those different things. So anyway about my books? So first two books was change your size and when change means business. This book is be self confident anywhere, anytime and with anyone. It's a 30 page book so that every day, you can be a little more confident in a particular arena of interest in your life, and it lists 30 different ones, and I'll read to you really quickly off the back of the book. In this book, you will learn improve the inner movie and self talk running in your mind. Use actions and thoughts that will propel your success, gain a greater self confidence mindset day by day, and that's what it's designed to do. And like I said, they can get a free PDF copy if they want, if they want to buy the actual book, they can just shoot me an email and we'll take care of that later. It's 10 bucks, and anybody on on your program that they'll get a 20% discount, so we'll send it to him for eight bucks, plus shipping   Michael Hingson ** 44:03 if they if they just say that they heard about it here. Yeah. Okay, great.   DW Starr ** 44:07 And then another book I recently wrote with the partner is is on memory and AI working with AI, and I'm working on another book with that partner now about imagination and AI. And then I'm also working on a book called Confidence matters. I have about two thirds of that book written now, cool.   Michael Hingson ** 44:35 So lots going on. Yeah,   DW Starr ** 44:38 I like to stay busy.   Michael Hingson ** 44:40 Well, tell us about your show, your one man show, DW live, and maybe tell us a story about it, or something that happened in it, a memory you have of it recently and so on. Sure,   DW Starr ** 44:54 sure. Well, you know, I do it with adults, but the ones that really offer. Touch my heart or the younger, yeah, because there are future leaders, and also they're really struggling. I was in, I did, I did a my dwive Live show for the Police Athletic League, and the was Boys and Girls Club after school program at a recreation center here in Florida, in southern Florida, and when I was done, well, like I said, I played old fashioned movie director. I actually teach them very specific techniques that they can do in depth, like what I talked about real quick in the five minutes I go into depth in my program, where they can actually teach themselves how to be more confident, and within 30 days they are. It just happens. If they do it, you have to do the work, but if you're willing to do the work. So I was done with this one presentation, actually was the performance. And people were coming up and getting, you know, the school had the recreation center had bought copies of the books for all the kids. So I was doing some autographing, and one came up to me, and he goes, I really enjoyed that. Well, he didn't say, I really he's I really like that. And I said, Oh, great. And then I always ask people to be more specific so I can know what they like or don't like. And she and he said, I said, So what's, what did you really like about it? And he said, I liked everything. I went, Whoa, that's really cool. And then I said, you want to take a selfie? And he goes, Yeah, yeah. And I said, Okay, give me your phone. And he goes, Mr. DW, I don't have a phone. I don't have a phone. And I said, You, I think I actually was in disbelief. And so I said, Oh, you mean you left it in the class? He goes, No, no, no, I don't own a phone. And I said to myself, that's why I'm here. I'm here to help that son, that of a mother and father who can't financially afford to buy a phone for their son help him still feel like he has value and hope. And so I said, I'll tell you what. We're going to take a selfie with my phone, and then I'm going to make sure the selfie picture gets to your your I think he was called a coach, your coach, and he'll make sure you get to see it. And so they did that. But that was that was an awakening for me, because I knew why. I knew that some of these teenagers, were in situations that weren't ideal, in their family life and in their home life and in their economics and all but it for some reason, it it finally dawned on me that they can't their parents can't even afford to get them a phone when it's so prolific, everywhere, you can forget that. So that was a great that made me feel good, that I was giving back like that well, and that is, that's really cool story. I got plenty more, but, you know, I don't want to inundate people with stories.   Michael Hingson ** 48:37 No, that's fine. So, so tell me, what are the key qualities and skills that people need to learn or that you use to help people become engrossed in the STAR method, the STA RR method, and what does STARR stand for?   DW Starr ** 49:01 Okay, so S, T, A, R, R stands for something that I can remember by using that memory hack. I figured, yeah, and it does it three different times in my program, it stands for three different things, but I always use the same mnemonic so I can remember it. So let's try this. Michael, what, what's one of your favorite movies?   Michael Hingson ** 49:28 Et, perfect.   DW Starr ** 49:31 Who is the star in that movie? ET, okay, so the s, the s in Star stands for the star or the superhero of that movie. Okay, now the T stands for Task. What is the task of that character?   Michael Hingson ** 49:56 Well, in his case, of course, ultimately, it's to get home.   DW Starr ** 49:59 Exactly to get home. Okay? And who is ETS arch villain, the A in Star arch villain,   Michael Hingson ** 50:13 the law enforcement, the military. Okay?   DW Starr ** 50:17 Now the first R stands for reach coach. Now I could have said mentor, but mentor doesn't fit the formula of S, T, A, R, R, so I had to come up with a word, and I came up with Reach, reach coach. That's clever. Who, who in the movie helps the star attain the task by reaching deep and down, deep down inside themselves and finding the confidence they need to find.   Michael Hingson ** 50:44 And I don't remember the actor's name, but the young man, right? You don't need to   DW Starr ** 50:48 know the name. You just need to know the character. Perfect, the boy, the little boy, right? And the final r, what was the reason that et wanted to get home.   Michael Hingson ** 51:04 Well, he wanted to be back with his people, right,   DW Starr ** 51:07 right? He wanted to feel like he was with people he belonged with, right? Or extraterrestrials in this case, right? Well, so, so that's the start, so that's the STARR method, right, right? So what that is, now you take that and you have the audience. I take that and I have the audience take their favorite movie and apply the same formula, so each one of the people in that audience is connected to my concept through something that makes them happy and feel good. Okay? Then I say, Okay, now that you've done that, now what we're going to do is we're going to make your inner movie. We're going to help you rewrite the script to your inner movie. So guess what formula we're going to use, S, T, A, R, R, of course. Yeah, the S stands for star. Well, who's the star they are? What tasks do they want to achieve? So I asked them in the audience, what do they want to have more confidence in? And they and they think about that to themselves, while I have one person up front be the example. And so I bring a student or an adult up front, and I have them be the example and explain their favorite movie, just like I did with you, right? But I'm having the audience do it at the same time. Does that make sense? It does okay. So, so this is an interactive presentation and interactive performance all at the same time. So then the then, who is the arch villain? I have them figure out who the arch villain is in their life. It could be a friend, a so called friend. It could be a brother, it could be a it could be a school teacher. It could be an uncle. It could be, you know, be a number of different people in different roles, but somebody is their arch villain that is holding them back. And if it's themselves, it's the arch villain. And oftentimes I hear that people go, Oh, I'm my own worst enemy, or something like that. I say, okay, but isn't it possible that maybe you heard that from somebody else when you were growing up, that you're no good at you're, you're not a good singer, or you're never going to amount to anything. That's what my father actually said to me, you're never going to amount to anything. That's another story. I don't want to take the time to do that now, but that's part of what I had to overcome, along with the head injuries.   Michael Hingson ** 53:55 Did he say that because of the did he say that because of the head injuries? Or no in   DW Starr ** 53:59 in addition to the head injury, wow, I had to overcome my father's attitude that I would never amount to anything. And also, just as a sideline, my mom had a stroke when she was 15 years old, and was a very angry person as an adult, so I had to deal with a lot of that junk. But anyway, that's another story. So back to what I'm telling you. A stands for Arch villain, then the R stands for reach coach. Who can you create if you don't have a mentor in your life, who can you make a mentor? Or who can you make a virtual mentor? So if you don't have anybody that you really feel comfortable as a 15 year old making your mentor, you know, maybe it's Superman, or maybe it's Barbie, it somebody who has or something that has a kind of confidence you want to gain more of, and you use that virtually. You. To help. And then I walk them through these steps, step by step, which we don't have time for now, and then the final hours, reason. What's the real reason you want to do this? Why is it a burning desire? And I talk about that earlier in the presentation. The importance of it's not, it's not how to do something that's most important. What's most important is why? Because when you know the why, you'll figure out that how. So that's that. So now I've got all that, but that's just a formula. It's not a strategy. So then I walk them through the strategy, and the strategy is S, T, A, R, R, what a surprise. S stands for self assess. Well, that's what they've just done, they've assessed themselves. T stands for take a risk. What risks do they need to take in order to achieve the results they want? And I talk about some of the risks I had. One of the risks is this stuff, notes. Performers don't use notes typically when they're doing a performance, and I was told, don't use notes. It doesn't look good. I said, Well, I have to. I have no choice, but my memory won't be able to remember all my stuff, and I want to make sure I remember. So a couple of those phrases I said to you throughout this program were written down so I remember to say them. So and then the other risk was, of course, that I was told I wasn't going to amount to anything. So who do I think I am? Yeah, I'm nobody special, so I had to get over that hump. So those are my those are my risks and that so the T and star take a risk. I asked them what their risks are, and then the A stands for act as if. And that's where I have them do, where they're where they're at home. And the two minute thing that I talked about earlier, and I go into more depth about that in the presentation too. And then the first star is reassess. See how it's going after a month, see if there's been some major changes. If there have do the final R, repeat, repeat. But if it's not working, you got to go back to the original S, T, A, R, R, and see if you're really clear on what task you really want to you really want to achieve it, who really is your arch villain? And if you your reason is a burning desire, because it has to be in order for you to make the shift to have the confidence you want to have, right? Does that make sense? It does. It   Michael Hingson ** 57:28 makes absolute sense.   DW Starr ** 57:29 And the teens are like, Wow, no one's ever taught me this before. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:36 I'm sure that's true. Yeah.   DW Starr ** 57:38 And the and the college kids and the adults. There's plenty of adults that go, afterwards, they go, dw, no one's ever like, broken it down like that. So it's like concrete. I can actually follow this step by step. I give them a handout they take with them at the end that they can follow step by step. Wow.   Michael Hingson ** 57:59 All right, I have to ask, since we got the star part, what? What is dw?   DW Starr ** 58:03 Oh, man, I don't usually put this out on on the airwaves. Okay, well, I guess I will.   58:12 I'll leave it to you. No, no,   DW Starr ** 58:14 I'll do it. I'll do it. So when somebody meets me, and they go, Hi, and I go, Hi, I'm dw, and they go, Oh, what's that stand for? And I go, Oh, well, most of my friends call me dw, so you can call me DW too. And that usually works. That's fair, okay, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it here. Yeah, I'm gonna say, why not? Okay, so I say, once somebody gets to know me and understand me more, then it'll make more sense what DW stands for. If I tell them right up front, it's weird, okay, but now that people have heard me and they've listened a little bit about my story and how you know my personality and my my attitude about life, it'll make more sense. So Ringo Starr had a great last name. I loved it. So when it was time for me to become a writer at nine years old, because at nine years old, I started writing little short stories, I called myself my legal first name and star as my last name that became my pen name when I got to be an adult and decided I was going to be this character that helps people with their confidence. I said, Okay, I don't even want to use any part of my legal name. I want a completely different professional name. So I said, Okay, well, what is it that I do. I help people weave their dreams into their life on a daily basis. I'm a dream weaver, dw, and so every time I introduce myself to somebody and say, I'm dw, I'm. Myself that that's where my focus is. Yeah, people to do that, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:06 And I appreciate you telling us that story. And I, I thank you for doing that. Tell me what are some of the common misconceptions about confidence?   DW Starr ** 1:00:18 Well, let's look at politics for five seconds.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:21 No, there's confidence or lack of it or something. But anyway, sure,   DW Starr ** 1:00:24 I'm not, I'm not going to get specific about anything about politics. Oh, I understand. I'm going to be totally generalized. The reality is that if you are truly confident, you don't need to tell anybody or prove it. So if you see any of that in politics, you'll know that there's a possibility that there's some low self esteem floating underneath Yeah. And that's true not just in politics. That's true when you talk to somebody at a party who is using the most sophisticated words they can come up with to try to prove to you that they are smart, that they know their stuff, the most confident people can explain what they believe like you're Five years old, not talking down, but making it their complicated wisdom in a way that it's understandable to people who don't have that education in that particular arena or training. Einstein even talked about that make it as simple as you can, but not too simple. And that's a paraphrase of one of his   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:42 quotes, right? And then there's the common phrase of, keep it simple, stupid,   DW Starr ** 1:01:50 but you know Exactly, yeah. So overconfidence is usually a camouflage for low self esteem, yeah? So what true confidence is is, like I said earlier in the show, it's authenticity. It's being who you are with all your good parts and your not so good parts, whether it's your physical nature, whether it's your emotional nature, whether it's your psychological nature, whether it's your educational background, you're if you're truly confident, then you accept it all, and then you build from there. Yeah, that's my belief, that one ain't changing, nope. And I buy it. I   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:41 think you're absolutely right. I think that we all too often. I think there's a difference. We all too often just don't project the confidence that that we can we I think there's a lot of difference between a lack of confidence and humility. And there's nothing wrong with being confident. There is something wrong with being arrogant, but, but confidence doesn't mean arrogance. Confidence means that you have convictions, you have things that you know and you're certain about them, which is a fine thing.   DW Starr ** 1:03:18 Yeah, absolutely. In fact, some people get confused with aggressive and assertive. It's the same thing. It's that same concept. You want to be assertive. You just don't want to be aggressive, because if you're assertive, it shows your confidence. So if you're in an interview for a job, you want to show that you're assertive in that interview. You don't want to just have that interviewer feel like they're not, that they're not running the whole show, but that the the that you count in the interview, you're just not another number where they're just going checking off the list. You show you show your confidence by being assertive, and it's the same. You know people, you know they get a meal at a restaurant. You see this a lot, in a lack of self confidence. They get a meal at a restaurant, and it's either something they didn't order, period, or it's just not done correctly, and because they lack the confidence, they're not assertive to take a step to correct it, and and that's not aggressive, and that's not a complainer, that's someone who's valuing their their own self worth. So there's these fine lines sometimes that are important to recognize the   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:44 aggression comes in. How you if you decide you're going to deal with the incorrectness of the meal, how you deal with it exactly, and, and, and I know I'm I actually had a situation just last week. I went with someone to a restaurant. I. Yeah, and my food came, and it was cold, and it wasn't supposed to be was supposed to be a hot meal. So when the when the server came back, I just said, Hey, this is cold. Touch it and you can see. And she said, No, I won't touch it. I said, I guarantee you, it's cold. If they could heat it up, I'd sure appreciate it. I wouldn't ever be rude to a person and be obnoxious and say, You dummy, you brought me a lousy meal and all that. You know. Well, what happened was that it came back nice and hot, but it also came back being brought back by someone who I think was the manager. He heard that we had sent it back, and he actually had come over and said, What's the problem? And we explained. And then he was the one who actually brought the meal back, and it was, it was nice and hot, and it was so much better. So but I know I have,   DW Starr ** 1:05:54 I have something I call personal gratitude program, and I've taught that to in corporate America, and I've taught it to my my now adult sons, and that's that when somebody gives me over the top great service, I recognize it, yep, by going to their boss, either personally, in person or by phone or by email or by a form of some kind, and letting them know that I don't take for granted the exceptional service I got. I do that too. It's, it's, it's such an amazing feeling, because when you do that, I'm sure you know when you do that, it's a win win all across the board. Of course, it is the employee feels good, the person who hired the employee feels good, and the next person that employee sees is going to get some of that good, that good vibes to them. And you feel good Absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:00 Well, tell me so you do some coaching. You said, in addition to doing the one man show,   DW Starr ** 1:07:05 very it's, it's very limited, uh huh,   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:09 how do you how do you choose to or who you coach? Or how does that work?   DW Starr ** 1:07:14 It works with, working with, with a client that is clear about their why, and they are passionate about their why, and they just need some guardrails or guideposts to help them figure out how they can find the how got it. So it's very it's very limited, and it's, it's at a it's at a very high level, economically and corporately,   Michael Hingson ** 1:07:54 but mostly you travel and you do your show, and you've clearly been to a lot of states, and I know that because everyone DW told me about the map behind him. So he's been to a lot of states, and he's been to a number of countries,   DW Starr ** 1:08:09 40 states, and I think it's nine countries,   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:13 which is cool. No, it's   DW Starr ** 1:08:15 15 countries. Okay, sorry, 15, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:08:20 Well, you know, I want to thank you for being here. So tell us once again, if people want to reach out, learn more about you, maybe even contact you. How do they do that?   DW Starr ** 1:08:31 So there's a there's a few ways. One is then go to my website, which is D, w, s, t, a, r, r.net they can find me on Instagram, on at DW star, on LinkedIn, at DW star, they can find me on YouTube and Tiktok at confidence Crusader, confidence Crusader. And, yeah, I think, I think that's good. I mean, if you want to give my email address out, we'll just use the info at DW star.net, that's cool. Certainly shoot me so they can feel free to follow me, or, you know, get a free copy of my a PDF copy of my book, and they can Google me. Like I said, I'm all over there. That's just still crazy to me, that I, I have the I'm I'm lucky enough to have all of that without any advertising.   Michael Hingson ** 1:09:37 It's a great blessing. Well, I want to thank you for being here and being with us, and taking all this time, I've enjoyed it, and I've learned a lot, and I would think and hope that that everyone listening has as well, and that if you, if you like what you heard, let DW know, and I certainly would appreciate it if you'd let us know, you can reach me easily enough by emailing. At Michael M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, or you can go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w.michaelhingson.com/podcast, and Michael Hinkson is m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, N, yes. And we're on LinkedIn and Facebook and a number of the social media pages too, but love to get emails, and whenever you are thinking about this, would certainly appreciate it if you give us a five star rating wherever you're listening to us and listening to the podcast, and as DW does the one man show and travels and speaks and so on. So do I, if you ever need to Speaker, would love to hear from you. Speaker@michaelhingson.com we appreciate it. But most of all, once again, I want to thank you, dw, for being here with us today. I think this has been a lot of fun, and we ought to do it again sometime, absolutely,   DW Starr ** 1:10:56 you know. And just just a shout out to some of your other your other podcast videos. I had an opportunity to watch you do a fantastic job, Michael, and keep up the good work.   Michael Hingson ** 1:11:10 Thank you. I appreciate it. Well, let's let's do it again. Let's do it again, right? Sounds great.   DW Starr ** 1:11:16 Take care, buddy.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:11:21   You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an

The Lysol we know now is sold as disinfectant only. But at one time it was also marketed as a means of birth control. Listen in today to the twisted history of this common household product. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Probably the calmest anime Studio Trigger has ever done, it's Delicious in Dungeon on the podcast this week. We also talk about fast food, SLD knives, our most-adventurous eats and Lysol. | Follow us on Apple Podcasts | Support us on Patreon | Follow us on Twitter | Subscribe to us on YouTube | Join the fan Discord

Recently, rankings for the Most Culturally Inclusive Brands were announced. The rankings come from the Association for National Advertisers' (ANA) Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM), in partnership with the Cultural Inclusion Accelerator (CIA). For the second year in a row, the Lysol brand has been awarded “Best in Ad Effectiveness” by more than 80,000 consumers with a broad diversity of identities. I wanted to find more about Lysol's approach to inclusive marketing, and how they've gone about becoming so effective in their efforts. So I sat down with Gary Osifchin, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and General Manager at Reckitt U.S. Hygiene, the makers of Lysol. Gary had a TON to share, and there's a lot to learn from he and the team's approach. Get the Inclusion & Marketing Newsletter Lysol

Boner Records never went away, they were just hibernating. Today founder Tom Flynn discusses the label history, early records, Melvins KISS parody EPs, the Lysol lawsuit, having his song covered by Nirvana, the imposter "DUH", the new release of "Antler Family" and more. Tom is not a record nerd Does Boner Records have a website? Creating the “Tapeworm” record – Hermaphrodite Records Forming “Fang” – Yukon Fang 45 Creating the “Boner Records” record label Fang's “Landshark” record Expanding Boner Records to take on additional bands Working with Alternative Tentacles on Maximum Rock n Roll compilation The song “The Money Will Roll Right In” Impact of Nirvana covering “The Money Will Roll Right In” Kurt Cobain really liked Fang and Melvins How Melvins came to Boner Records Recording “Ozma” with Mark Deutrom Tom's role in album artwork for Boner releases Melvins KISS parody solo albums Original artwork for modern reissues The activity of Boner Records in recent decades The Melvins “Lysol” fiasco – lawsuit, fixing album art How they fixed the album covers, cassettes and CDs of Lysol to comply Melvins & Steel Pole Bath Tub Sub-Pop parody Alberti and Rainbo pressing plants going out of business The story of the band “DUH” The imposter “DUH” Did any major labels approach Boner Records to purchase? Why did he pause Boner Records for so many years? Boner Records was largely a 1-man show Recent revival, making “Antler Family” album 250 Antler Family vinyl copies Playing live again – future of Antler Family Another band “Suboptics” Interview wrap up Commercial-Free & High Resolution version of this podcast is available at: www.Patreon.com/VinylGuide Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/2Y6ORU0 Listen on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/36qhlc8

Happy Valentines Day to all you lovely lovers out there!  Today, the three principles try to make VD better, they try to fix crime in the big city, and they discuss feelings vs. statistics.  Also, the worst bathroom habits... please pass the Lysol. This Episode is Sponsored By: NAKED WINES.  Head to Nakedwines.com/TMOS and click ‘enter voucher' in the top right when you get to the website… then enter TMOS for both the code and password.  Every time you support our sponsors, you're supporting us. And for that, we're truly thankful!  

Jesse and Brittany discuss a recent study on toilet bowls spreading germs, listener emails related to transitioning away from faith and religion and a previous episode, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's struggles to defend the US's continued support of Israel, Republican Glenn Grothman's wildly disturbing comments about Gaza, Fox News' inability to report good news about the economy in a normal way, NBC News' focus group with "Trump-supporting feminists," Nikki Haley's response to Trump spending $50 million of PAC money on legal fees, Utah's efforts to allow clergy to report child abuse, and Takin' Care of Biz featuring Dr. Lloyd Williams. Link provided by listener in email: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/03/us/book-bans-librarians.html SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: http://www.TeamDollemore.comNEW MERCH AVAILABLE AT: http://www.dollemore.infoJoin the private Facebook listener group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1770575259637583Send a text or voicemail of fewer than three minutes to (657) 464-7609.Show Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/IDoubtPodcastShow Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/IDoubtItPodcastJesse on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/dollemoreBrittany on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/brittanyepageBuy a T-Shirt, Hoodie, Mug, or Tote: https://www.dollemore.infoPatreon: http://www.dollemore.com/patreonPayPal: http://www.dollemore.com/paypalAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Beate Chelette is the Growth Architect and Founder of The Women's Code and provides visionaries and leaders with strategies that grow your authority so that they can scale their impact.A first-generation immigrant who found herself $135,000 in debt as a single parent, Beate bootstrapped her passion for photography into a highly successful global business and eventually sold it to Bill Gates in a multimillion-dollar deal. She is amongst the “Top 100 Global Thought Leaders” by PeopleHum and “One of 50 Must-Follow Women Entrepreneurs” by HuffPost.Recent clients include Amazon, Reckitt (the maker of Lysol), Chevron, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, the Women's Legislative Caucus of California Cal State University Dominguez Hills, Shelter Inc., Mental Health First Aid and thousands of small businesses.Beate is the author of the #1 International Award-Winning Amazon Bestseller “Happy Woman Happy World – How to Go from Overwhelmed to Awesome”–a book that corporate trainer and best-selling author Brian Tracy calls “a handbook for every woman who wants health, success and a fulfilling career.”Links/freebies:Take advantage of our free quiz designed to unveil the hidden possibilities and empower you to capitalize on your unique talents!Take the free quiz here: WhatsYourTalentWorth.comHow to Be Balanced, Beautiful and Abundant?For more information go to…https://www.rebeccaelizabethwhitman.com/Https://linktr.ee/rebeccaewhitman

[You're listening to a preview of this month's Product Recall, available exclusively on our Patreon. To hear the full episode, join us at patreon.com/forever35.]Well, it's an episode all about the scam that is douching, and boy is it a doozy. Buckle up, friends, because we've got everything from Massengill's poisoning scandal of the 1930s, the history of Lysol marketing itself as “feminine hygiene,” and high-end skincare lines currently selling vaginal serums and washes. Do YOU ever feel not so fresh? You will after listening to this episode! (But not for the reasons Massengill suggests in their ads.) To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or visit shopmyshelf.us/forever35.Shop our merch at balancebound.co/shop/forever35.Donate to the Forever35 Giving Circle (https://www.grapevine.org/giving-circle/2nlhxOl/Forever35-Podcast) to help flip the Virginia State House!Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and sign up for the newsletter at forever35podcast.com/newsletter.Join our Patreon at patreon.com/forever35! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.