Podcasts about Lysol

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??

A pandemic survivor accidentally forms a harem.Based on a post by CorruptingPower, in 25 parts. Listen to the Podcast at Explicit Novels.Chapter 1Around day eighteen of the quarantine, Andy was starting to lose his damn mind. The governor of California had gotten on the television and announced that everyone who wasn't essential was under house arrest, essentially. Sure, the grocery stores were open, but restaurants were only doing delivery, and every bar in town was closed. The most time he'd spent outdoors in the last week had been walking out to the mailbox cluster for the complex down at the end of the street.Despite the fact that both of them had decent paying jobs “ Eric as a software engineer and Andy as a marketing writer “ neither could afford an entire place to themselves, so Andy paid rent to Eric, who owned the condo (or at least was paying it down).Andy also had a side hustle as a novelist, and was getting frustrated as hell that the quarantine was keeping him in place meant that his newest book was being pushed back. There was a warehouse full of fifty thousand copies of his next novel, and they were all just sitting there."They'll come out eventually," his agent had told him, but the whole thing felt very much like a death sentence to his literary ambitions. Andy even had a box of copies sitting on their kitchen table, along with a movie poster styled promotional in a frame."Did you get the mail today?" Andy asked his roommate."Nah," Eric said. "Didn't see the point.""Fair enough."Wham wham wham."You order food?""Nope. You?"A voice came from outside their front door. "CDC. Open the door, please."Eric moved to the door and peered through the peephole. On the other side, he saw a man in a biohazard suit, covered completely from head to toe. He raised one covered hand and waved. "I'm perfectly safe, as you can see. We're going door to door and testing people for the virus."Eric looked back at his roommate and shrugged. Andy grabbed his two cats, scooping one up in each arm as Eric opened the door. It was like something out of The Andromeda Strain, seeing the man in the yellow hazmat outside, a small box in one hand. "CDC?""Yeah. I'm Dave. Invite me in?"Andy shrugged and Eric laughed. "Sure, c'mon in. We just need to close the door behind you so the cats don't get out.""Sure sure, I get that. I'm here to test if you guys are clear. Is there some place I can set up?""Go ahead and use the kitchen. You want us together or one at a time?""The test only takes fifteen minutes and I can run up to four of them at a time, so come on. I can run you both." He lugged the kit with a world weariness, as if he'd been doing this thirty times a day since the lockdown had started. "Paperwork says you've got two guys living here “ Eric Yang and Andrew Rook. That you two?""That's us.""Nobody else in the condo?""Nope. Nobody else.""Cool," Dave said as he set the kit down on the kitchen table. He glanced up at the movie poster promotional on the wall above the kitchen table. "Oh hey, you guys are fan of the Druid Gunslinger books too? I fucking love those things."Eric laughed a little bit, sitting down in one of the kitchen chairs, rolling up his sleeve. "I mean, you could say that, I guess. He writes'em.""What? No, they're written by some guy named Blake Conrad." He glanced at Eric and grinned. "I don't need blood, man. Here, just rub this swab on the inside of your cheek for a bit."Andy smiled a bit sheepishly, putting the cats down. "Yeah, that's me. It's a pen name.""Why the hell would you want a pen name when you've got an awesome last name like Rook?""I'm friends with Arthur McStevenson. You know, the guy who writes all those thrillers you see on sale in the airports? Anyway, he told me that he wished he'd have taken a pen name before he got started, so people just couldn't look him up and track him down at home."Dave took the cotton swap that Eric handed him and put it into one of the four slots on the little machine he carried with him. "Oh hey, I'm sorry man. I don't want to bother you about it.""Nah, you didn't come tap on my window in the middle of the night or anything. What do I care?" Andy waved his hand before taking a cotton swab from him, rubbing it along the inside of his cheek, and then handed it back to the man in the bio suit."While this is running, I just gotta ask you guys a few other questions. Do you guys each have a twin bed?"Eric rolled his eyes. "Are you kidding me? Ask him about his bed. Just ask him."Andy crossed his arms over his chest, as if this was a discussion they'd had a number of times. "Eric's got a queen sized bed and I've got a California king sized bed. Even though I've got the smaller bedroom. But what can I say? When I got out of college, I bought a big ass bed, so I'd always be comfortable, and never wanted to give it up.""Why do you ask?""They're starting to force people to house additional people in their places, so we can keep the uncontaminated together, at least for a while.""What?" Eric said, his face scowling. "There's no way that's legal.""It's temporary, and we're doing everything we can to make sure people are at least okay with it. At this point, we're just doing what we can to get people through it. But the death toll is starting to stack up. I mean, have you seen the footage coming out of New York City?"Andy nodded. "Trailer trucks stacked full with body bags. It's terrifying.""Besides, it's not all that bad. The virus seems to be targeting men a lot more than women, so guys are scoring with women way out of their league. And the women seem to be a little friskier once they've developed an immunity to the virus. I'm sure you'll see eventually."Andy arched an eyebrow in the man's direction. "That sounds ominous."The man in the biohazard suit waved a hand dismissively in their direction. "Not at all. Just relax and enjoy the ride. That's all I should say about it. So when's the next Druid Gunslinger book coming out? It's really soon, isn't it?"Andy stepped over to the fridge, opening it to take out a can of soda, using the fridge to hide his sigh, although he wasn't entirely successful. "It was supposed to be out in three weeks, but because of the virus, the publisher's pushing it back to the fall. I mean, I understand. I get a lot of additional sales off of in store appearances and whatnot. I get it. And I'm already working on writing the next one. But it's always rough having a book release pushed back.""Man, that sucks. I was really looking forward to reading it during my downtime when they're driving us between locations.""Y'know what, you're a fan, so let me do you a favor. I better not see this show up on eBay or the internet though, otherwise I'm gonna know who it was." Andy moved over to the box on the kitchen and opened the top of it, taking one of the books out. "They call these advance reader copies. They send me a few boxes of them so I can sell them at appearances or give them away to friends and such. I haven't even sent my family copies yet. I think the only other person than my agent and my editor who's read the book is Eric here."Eric nodded. "It's not as good as 'Have Totem, Will Travel' but it's one of the better books in the series, I thought. Way better than 'The Trouble With Werebears,' but then again, that's not hard.""Everyone's a critic," Andy said, grabbing a pen from near the box. "Fair, though. I had to bang that one out in five weeks because the publisher just wanted to cram another one onto store shelves while it was hot. I wasn't satisfied with it either, but it still sold okay. You said your name was Dave, right?""Yeah," Dave answered.Andy opened the front cover of the hardback ARC and wrote in the front of it, "For Dave, Jake thinks you're one of the real heroes. Yours, Blake Conrad." He blew over the ink for a second, making sure it was dry, before closing it up and offering it to Dave. "There you go. Autographed, personalized copy months in advance of when you can get it in stores.""That's awesome, man!" Dave said, genuine enthusiasm in his voice. The machine on the table beeped, a cheerful tri tone medley. "You guys are both 100% virus clear. And let me pay you back for this," he said, patting the book on the table next to him. He flipped a little toggle switch on the machine and then pushed the large green button on the side. A small little printout scrolled out of the machine. He tore it off and then pushed the green button again. "Okay, this one is for you," he said, holding out the receipt to Eric. "And this one is for you, Mr. Conrad," he said with a laugh, holding out the second slip to Andy. "You need to go onto the website today and fill out the questionnaire. I know it's going to seem weird, but just answer the questions honestly and openly, and go through the whole thing. You'll be very glad you did later, okay?""What's it for?""It'll help you be happy with your pair ups when we bring them by in a few days. You know that giant condo complex a mile or two over?""What, the 30 story skyscraper?""Yeah. That's being converted into a triage hospital, so all the tenants are being evicted. Lots of people who are going to be relocated. There's a range of five possible questionnaires that uninfected men can get, and it's at the test giver's discretion. Most people, we just give them level one or two questionnaires.""What did you give us?""Welcome to level 5, fellas. It's mostly reserved for medical professionals and high rollers, but it's my discretion, and this little baby's going to keep me from losing my mind for the next few weeks, so I gotta make sure we're square," he said while patting the book. "This should more than even us out.""It makes that much of a difference?"Dave smiled like a Cheshire cat beneath his biohazard helmet and nodded. "You'll see. Just trust me on this. Go fill it out right away, though! They'll probably have someone here tomorrow or the day after, and you want to be ready." The scientist picked up the book in one hand and his testing kit in the other. "And with that, I'm off! I won't be able to get started on this tonight, but I'll see if I can swing by on one of the drop offs and let you know what I think of it.""Hey, it's always nice to meet a fan," Andy said. He moved to scoop up the two cats into his arms again before he and Eric walked him to the door.Dave shuffled toward the door, as Eric opened it for him. "Remember guys, the questionnaire is completely confidential and no one's going to judge you on any of it, so be completely honest. Got it? Completely. Honest.""With all the hyping you've been doing, I can't wait to see this questionnaire," Andy laughed. "Go on, go! You've got more people to be saving, I'm sure.""Take care, fellas!" Dave said.Eric closed the door on him, then flipped the lock, and then the deadbolt before putting the chain on. He liked to make sure it was secure. "So I suppose we both better go take this thing, huh?" he said to Andy, who was putting down the cats again."Guess so."Eric's desk was in the living room, while Andy's was part of the adjacent dining room. They'd been known to politely yell at one another from their desks. Andy typed in the website on the slip and hit return. A rather bland looking government website popped up. There Andy entered his name, his address, his social security number and address."He wasn't kidding when he said this quiz was unorthodox," Eric called over to him, clearly ahead of him in the process. "These are not the kind of questions I expect a government website to be asking me.""Oh yeah? I can't wait to find out." Andy typed in the personalization code at the bottom of the slip. It was a long series of characters, a mix of numbers and letters, both capital and lower case, with a variety of special characters mixed in “ 25 characters in all. Andy had to enter the series twice because the first time he hadn't realized it was case sensitive and the site had rejected it.The first question immediately surprised him. "Are you attracted to: Women, Men, Both?" It wasn't at all what he expected, but he checked "women" and the site moved onward. There was a small button marked back, in case he made errors, obviously.The next page asked him what ages of women he was attracted to. There were two little slider bars, with the low end going as far down at 18 and the high end going up to 70+. Andy was nearly 40, but the words of Dave rang through his head. "Be honest." Andy shrugged, leaving the low end set to 18 and brought the high end to 35.He was a more than a little caught off guard by the next question. "Would you consider yourself: Monogamous, polyamorous, no preference?" He had to think about it for a long moment, but eventually clicked "no preference." If he was truly honest with himself, if he found himself with a girlfriend who had another girlfriend, he wouldn't have been bothered by it.For the next twenty minutes, Andy continued to work through the website, filling in all the options about what he was and wasn't attracted to. Height, weight, race, hair color, hair length, eye color, nationality, education, physique, the questions went on and on and on. After he went through any given category, he was then given a follow up page to rank all of the things from most attracted to at the top down to least attracted to at the bottom.Towards the back half, he started to understand what Eric had found so surprising. The quiz had a page with a seemingly limitless collections of fetishes and kinks. At the top was the message "Click all that apply." Following that, all of the things Andy had clicked on were in another list he was expected to order.When he had to order all of his turn ons, he became more than a little aware how at odds with each other some of them were. In fact, he had aggressive women and submissive women next to one another in the ordered list. He wondered what the algorithm would make of that.The last page was the same fetish and kinks list presented again with a different message at the top. "Click all those that are hard turn offs for you. Be thorough." It was this page that Andy found himself clicking a lot of buttons.He also had to look up a handful of the terms that did not include clarification. He was sure there were people out there who liked pissing on each other, but he certainly wasn't one of those. He also had to make sure to reject women who were allergic to cats. He wondered if all this information was just going to ensure no one showed up.All in all, the whole thing felt a little like a thing he'd taken in college called the Purity Test, a thousand question party game where people who had been drinking would compare sexual histories.The final page was all the information he'd entered presented in an ordered list, with a message in large friendly red letters at the top. "Review all the information below for accuracy! Once you hit submit, you cannot revise this information!"After a final pass to make sure he hadn't marked anything incorrectly, he hit submit. The screen went blank for a second before a confirmation message popped up. "A copy of this has been mailed to the email address you provided. Thank you for helping us keep California safe!"Andy closed the web browser and rose up from his seat, heading over to talk to his roommate. "Okay, yeah, that was definitely weird.""What did you say to the polyamory question?" Eric asked him."I put no preference.""Really? Man, I couldn't click the monogamous button fast enough. Last thing I want is a girlfriend who's shacking up with another guy."Andy smirked. "What if she was shacking up with another girl?""Ah shit, I didn't even think of that."He shrugged at Eric with a wry smile. "Like it's going to make any fucking difference anyway. I'm sure the whole thing is just an optimistic pipe dream. When was the last time our government brought any real change with a website?""Heh. Guess we'll see.""Yep, suppose so."And that was the last they talked about it for the rest of the day. But it certainly wouldn't be the last time they talked about it.Chapter 2It was a little past noon the next day when there came a knock at the door. "Open up! CDC!" the voice on the other side shouted at them. "Delivery and I don't have time to fuck about so let's go."Andy was in the living room working on his laptop, and glanced over at Eric, who was hip deep in a conference call. "Don't worry, I got it. They probably just forgot some questions yesterday or something." Eric waved his hand as Andy set his laptop aside, carrying on with his conversation with his coworkers.Andy rose from the couch and made his way over to the front door, opening it without thinking to look through the peephole. The cats were both upstairs asleep, so he didn't worry about them. When he opened the door, there were three people outside of it, not the one he'd expected. The person in the middle looked a lot like Dave had, except for the face. The man inside this biohazard suit was a black man in his late forties. He looked a lot less jovial than Dave had.To the left and right of the man in the biohazard suit was a woman covered from head to toe. From the clothing, it was almost impossible to make out any details other than the woman to the left of him was short and the woman to the right was tall. Both of them wore hoodies with the hoods pulled up. They wore ski visors over their eyes and scarves over their noses and mouths. Both wore long sweatpants and had those fuzzy lined boots he'd never thought were fashionable. He couldn't see an inch of skin from either. Each of them had a small roller suitcase with them, the kind of travel bag someone takes for a holiday no longer than a week. They also each had a large bag under their arm, an oversized purse maybe, or a laptop bag. The whole appearance was almost like Berkas by Gucci."You Eric or Andy?" the man in the gear asked him."Andy.""Copy," the man said, tapping at his little pad with a stylus that dangled from it. He let the stylus drop and then opened a pouch on the outside of his suit, upholstering a bottle of Lysol. He sprayed the surface of the tablet for a few seconds then held it out to Andy. "Just use your finger to sign on the line. Any day now. I've got another seven deliveries to make today, and people are on the bus waiting so let's go."Andy lifted a finger up and signed an approximation of his name on the tablet's surface. "So how long is this for? That these people are staying with us?""Which room is Eric's and which room is Andy's?" the shorter of the two women asked."Upstairs and turn right for Eric's room and left for my, uh, Andy's room," he said, as the two women immediately brushed past him and ran upstairs. "How long?""The fuck should I know, pal? I just deliver them." He took the tablet back from Andy and glanced down at it. "Anyway, that's it for this batch. I'll see you again in a few days, maybe a week or so, with the next one.""The next one?" Andy asked, but the man had already turned and started walking back to a school bus that was idling in the street. "What do you mean the next one?" But the man had already moved on, and either didn't hear Andy or didn't care. Andy suspected it was the latter. Behind him, up the stairs, he heard both his and Eric's bedroom doors shut.He closed the door and locked it, then turned the padlock and put the chain back on. Andy looked over his shoulder, then glanced and Eric, who shrugged. He moved upstairs and knocked on his own bedroom door. "Uh, hello?""Five minutes please!" a voice on the other side of the door said to him.Andy sighed, turned around and walked downstairs. His roommate looked over at him, having just wrapped up his conference call. "She wants five minutes."Eric laughed. "We've been kicked out of our own rooms. Great."Andy moved back over to the couch and picked up his laptop, sitting back down and starting to write again. He was curious, though. Insanely curious about what was happening in his own room. Neither of the cats were complaining so he imagined it couldn't be too bad. His roommate had wrapped up his conference call, but had clearly turned on his music, because Andy could hear the tiny noise flare ups, even though Eric was just wearing earbuds. He did love his death metal loud.He spent a while trying to work but trying to focus felt damn near impossible. He popped into his company's Slack channel, to let them know what was going on.“your partner showed up?” his boss typed. “take the rest of the week off. you're going to be busy“They said they're going to be back later with another delivery. What the hell does that mean?” Andy typed into the channel.“oh shit” his boss typed back. “how big is your bed? queen sized?”“King sized.” Andy replied. “California king, actually. Don't know what difference that makes though. The news said one partner per person.”“u have a king bed tho” his boss replied. “did the site ask u the polyamory question?”“Yeah” Andy typed. “I put no preference”“shit” came the reply. “okay take off the rest of the week and let me know when you get another partner and we can do the same again as many times as you get partners”“Wait. What? How many partners can they give me?”“depends on what level the tester gave you”“He said level 5. He was a fan of my novels so I gave him a signed copy of the new one”“Oh, shit” his boss answered. “then u can be assigned up to 4 partners with Cali king bed”“Now you're just fucking with me” Andy sent back with a laugh.“noshit my dude” his boss answered. “ok we play it by ear then but dont check out any new tasks until monday, k?”“Am I still getting paid for the time?”“new partner adaptation time dude its all covered”“Okay then, I guess.”“level 5, L O L, u fucking suck” his boss typed. “u dont deserve that level of woman”“Wait. What do you mean?”“LOL u didn't read how the levels system work fuck u go enjoy winning the lottery”And with that, his boss set Andy's status to Out Of Office.From upstairs he heard both pairs of doors open, although he didn't think either of them opened fully. "I'm going to take a shower if that's okay with Eric," a voice called down."He's in the zone working, so that should be fine," Andy called up."Thank you!" And then Eric's bedroom door closed again."Okay Andy, come on up," a different voice said. "But close the bedroom door behind you, okay?" And then his own bedroom door shut.His work day was done. He found himself a little nervous at the idea of going into his own room, but he realized waiting wasn't going to make it any easier. Time to face the music. He pushed his laptop back into his laptop bag, zipped it up and set it on the coffee table.Andy walked up the stairs and came to his bedroom door. It was odd, staring at this side of his bedroom door. He knocked on the door, and a soft giggle came from the other side. "You don't need to knock, silly. It's your room. Come on in."He wasn't entirely sure what he expected to find behind the door. But he did as he was told to do, opening the door, stepping in and closing the door behind him.Sitting on his bed was a lovely redheaded woman in her mid to late twenties. He suspected the coppery color of her hair was natural as he could see a generous dusting of freckles on her cheeks and arms. She had it done up in a sporty ponytail that hung down to the small of her back. Instead of all the layers he'd seen her in just a few minutes ago, she was dressed now in simply a sports bra, a pair of booty shorts and a pair of thigh high leather boots. She had her hands behind her on the bed to thrust her perky tits up in his direction. She was fit, pale, strikingly beautiful, and had a playful smile on her face."Hallo Andy," she said, an Irish tinge to her voice. "My name's Aisling. It's pronounced Ashling, but spelled A i s l i n g. I'm from Dublin, but after I finished uni, I got a job out here working as a graphic designer. I'm your new partner. I hope I'm to your liking.""Oh!" Andy said, as if the whole situation was just dawning on him. "Oh, I'm "Aisling couldn't contain herself any longer and sat up and rushed him, throwing her arms around, clinging to him firmly. "We can touch," she moaned into his ear. "Touch! It's been so fucking long since I touched anybody. And I'm going to touch the fuck out of you nonstop, you beautiful bastard."He was slightly taken aback at how tightly she was holding him. "I mean, you don't have to ""I don't have to do any fucking thing I don't want to," she whispered into his ear. "But it is taking every bit of willpower I have not to drop to my fucking knees and rip those pants right off you. Because that's what I desperately want to do right now."Andy could feel her nipples pressed firmly against his chest through the sports bra, and her breath was hot against his skin. "Wah, why?""We've been in isolation for months," Aisling said as her hand grabbed onto his ass through his jeans. "They gave us injections to help us build our immune system against the virus, but they said it was going to stoke our libidos a bit. God, wasn't that a fucking understatement." She nibbled on his earlobe for a moment. "They showed me twenty pictures of men with a bit of description beneath each of them on what they wanted and didn't want, and I picked you."His hand moved along the small of her back, trying to keep it from going anywhere inappropriate, but she reached behind herself to grab his arm by the wrist and push his hand down onto her ass, which invoked another moan from her. "Why did you pick me?""You like gingers, which I am obviously. I'll be sure to show you it's natural in just a smidge," she said with a smile. "But you like both submissive and aggressive women, and I can be both. You're open to polyamory. I like both men and women, and I know that polyamorous men with large beds get multiple partners, so that's something to look forward to. I consider myself a switch, so I'm looking forward to having another girl to play with, one I can order around a bit." Andy started to try and pull his hand upward a bit, and she rubbed her hips forward a bit more insistently. "If you're lifting that hand up, it'd better be to slip it under my shorts onto my bare ass.""Is, is that what you want?""For an appetizer," she purred. "But you know what made me want you most of all?"Andy lifted his hand just to the top of her booty shorts, hesitating for just a second before he slid his fingertips beneath the hem of them. He realized he must've been hesitating a bit too long, because she reached back and pushed his hand down firmly until he had a full handful of toned butt in his grasp. "What's that?""Out of that long, long list of sexual turn ons and offs, the thing you put that turned you on the most, was dirty talk," she practically moaned at him. "I fucking love dirty talk. I am an absolutely filthy little slut. No," she giggled, licking her tongue along the shell of his ear, "I'm your filthy little slut now. I am going to beg you to fuck me stupid over and over again. I can't wait to suck on that cock of yours, to make you fuck my face until there are tears rolling down my eyes and I can't breathe. God, that makes my little cunt clench. It's tight, too. I've only fucked two guys before, and each of them only a couple of times. But you are going to fucking plow that gash of mine so much I may have to etch your name into it. You are going to fuck your little whore so much that you fall asleep inside of my cunt more often than not, and wake up to me sucking your cock clean to get you ready for another round." She turned around in his arms, which made his hand slide up to her stomach, her head leaning against his shoulder. "Here," she said, taking his hand on her belly, pushing it down the front of her shorts. "Feel just how sopping wet a bitch you own now, sir. Should be it sir? Master?" She giggled a little, wiggling her eyebrows. "Daddy?"Andy stuttered for a second, as his fingertips pushed through a small strip of hair before reaching the most drenched snatch he'd ever felt. "Fuck, you are soaked,”"Umm," she said with a nod. "So I'll just use all three then.""Not,” Andy sputtered, "not in front of my roommate.""The other guy? Oh, he's going to be more than a little distracted. I talked with Lily a little bit on the way over here “ Lily's the girl waiting for him in his room “ and she's more worked up than I am. And your roommate likes them to be a little dominant with him, so I don't think he'll have time to say anything, but if it makes you feel better, sir, I'll just call you Andy when we're out in the common areas. Or honey or baby. Something innocuous. As long as you're going to hold up your end of our deal.""My end?" Andy said, as he pushed a fingertip inside of Aisling's drenched cunt, feeling her clench down on it as she shivered slightly."You owe me one load of spunk every fucking day," she said, grabbing his other hand to push it up and under her sports bra to cup her tit, feeling how hard her nipple was against his palm. "I don't give a shite where you put it “ on my face, down my throat, across my tits, up my cunt, you can even stuff it up my virgin asshole, something I can't wait to feel the first time “ but you don't fall asleep at night without making sure I got my daily dose of your jizz. Think you can live up to that?""God, I hope so," he said, lifting her bra up to her collarbone, as her hands moved to pull it up and over her head, tossing it aside. "You really want that?"Aisling giggled again, a sound that sent shivers up Andy's spine every time. "I honestly can't wait to get started, Master. I want you to fuck me so bad, I can feel it trickling down my thighs. You've got yourself a needy little slut on your hands. How do you want our first time to be?"Andy's hand slid up from her shorts and brought his fingertips to his lips, licking them clean, seeing her nuzzling her face against his neck, so he offered his pointer finger to her, which she wrapped her lips around and suckled hard on before letting it pop from her mouth. "You were going to prove to me you were ginger, weren't you?""Hmm, I'm sure you can see the freckles all over my tits," she said, crossing her arms at the wrists in front of her to push them together and up towards his eyes. "But you want to be sure you've got an honest slut on your hands, hmm? Boots off or on, you think?""The boots are dead sexy, but let's have them off.""You like them though, yeah?" she asked as she put one foot up on his bed, and started unzipping one of the boots."Oh yes, they're fantastic. A lot of forethought in thinking to bring them.""We were allowed to made a list of things to get packed up for us, so I've got all sorts of little surprises in my wheelie bag, but I'll tell you one, I've got a plaid skirt in there, back from my days at Mercy College. Every man around the world loves a schoolgirl." She pulled her other boot off and set it on the floor next to its companion. Then she unbuttoned the front button of her jean shorts, unzipping them before bending forward over the corner of Andy's bed. She pushed the shorts slowly over the curve of her ass and down her thighs before stepping out of them, leaving her in a tiny silky red thong. "Like the view?""God you're fit. I feel like a bit of fat man in your presence, I'm afraid.""Don't you worry, lad," she purred. "You and I are going to be doing a lot of exercise." She slid on her belly further onto the bed and then rolled onto her back. "I'll fuck you back thin, daddy." Aisling pulled her thighs back to her chest, reached down and drew her thong up along her legs. As soon as she lifted the fabric upward, Andy got his first view of her cunt, and she was glistening. With her ankles to the side of her head, she drew the thong off and tossed it to the side before spreading her legs wide. True to her word, there was a neat shaved triangle of copper curls just above her snatch. "See? Ginge minge. Now what're you gonna do about it?""Aren't you sweet as candy?" Andy slowly crawled onto the bed next to her. He didn't have shoes to kick off “ he'd barely put them on since the lockdown began. "You're down for anything?"Aisling rolled onto her side. "You want the first time to be something particular? How sweet. What did you have in mind?""Something simple. So you can show me what you like. You on top. That okay?" Andy said as he pulled his shirt up and over his head.She giggled a little bit, reaching a fingertip over to brush it along his chest. "Tattoos? You're full of surprises. I wouldn't have pegged you as a man with ink." Andy had a tattoo of a griffon starting on his right pectoral going down to his stomach, done in an elaborate and detailed style. It had been the better part of two days worth of work ten years ago. "I like the look of it, though. And if you want our first time to be me riding you, I say giddyup partner. Any other surprises down here I should be looking forward to?" Her fingertip moved to smooth down over the swell of his cock through his jeans."You can have a looksee for yourself after you do one more thing," Andy said, with a little laugh."Tell me what it is, so I can see the thing that's going to change my life." She was rubbing the palm of her hand firmly against that buldge now, her eyes looking down at her hand before bringing those green eyes up to meet his gaze, a girlish smile on her lips. "Stop teasing and tell me.""I've never shown my cock to girl I haven't kissed before," he said with a wry smile. "I don't intend to stay"Andy didn't even finish getting the sentence before Aisling had crawled all over him, pressing her lips to his. The kiss was intense, more intense than he'd ever remembered before. It came on strong and kept getting stronger, her lips parting after several seconds to let her tongue slip into his mouth and spiral around in a hungry dance. After a few minutes of making out like a couple of teenagers, she pulled back just an inch or so. "God, I hadn't realized how much I missed kissing someone. You're a great kisser." She pressed her lips against his once more and this time didn't wait to push her tongue in. After a few more minutes, she pulled back again. "That what you wanted?"He laughed softly. "You really want to see it, don't you?""See it, touch it, taste it, fuck it. I want to do everything you can think of with that cock, and once we're done with all of that, we can do it all over again." Her fingertips plucked at the button of his jeans, popping them undone. "Can I see it now, daddy?""I'm no porn star, Aisling, so I wouldn't get your hopes up," he said. "But yes, you can see it." He felt her drawing down his zipper and lifted his hips up so she could tug his jeans down and off, but she made a point of grabbing his boxers with them. "See? Not any longer than the average man.""Jaysus," she said quietly, "maybe not any longer, but certainly thicker. A lot thicker. That is a great big fat ol' cock you got there, Master." Her voice was one continuous purr as her slender fingers wrapped around the base of his cock and started to slowly stroke it. "Thicker than any cock I've ever had inside of me. Can I?""Hop aboard." The whole thing felt vaguely dreamlike. He wasn't sure she was real, wasn't sure any of this was real. He half expected to wake up and for everything to disappear at any moment. But that didn't happen."Gladly," she said, as she straddled one leg over his hips. She snaked a hand between them to grab the base of his cock, angling it properly, setting the tip against wet snatch before sinking down onto it with one continuous motion. As soon as her hips touched down against his, his cock bottoming out inside of her cunt, he felt her entire body slump forward atop him in a colossal shiver, her cunt spasming and clenching on his shaft. A tiny moan burbled from her lips, one that bubbled over into a breathy laugh against his neck, desperate and delirious. "Fer fuck sake. I've never cum that hard in my entire fucking life, and you just put the fucking thing inside of me. Nothing more. Just from putting him in.""Do you want to stop?""Are you out of your fucking mind?" she giggled, placing both of her hands on Andy's chest. "I haven't gotten my daily nut yet, daddy. And your girl wants what's coming to her. And by hook or by crook, she will fucking having it." Her arms pressed together to push her tits out even more, as she started to snake her hips backwards only to thrust them forward again. "It's been two years since I got properly fucked last. How long's it been for you?""You'll only laugh at me," Andy said with a slight frown."I promise I won't," she purred. "Has it been longer?""A lot longer.""How long?""Over a decade."She leaned down and kissed him again, this time a bit more softly and tenderly. "Well, you're never going to go a day in your life without fucking ever again, so it'll be alright." She had a magical way of swaying atop of him, shimmying back and forth on his cock. Her body ground down onto him over and over, sweat glistening off her freckled pale skin.His hands latched onto her hips, trying mostly to hold on. His fingertips clenched onto her smooth skin, pressing her down a little more than she'd been trying to push onto his cock, as if he felt like he wanted to contribute something to her effort."C'mon. Make me your girl, claim your whore, daddy," she whimpered, her face looming over his. "I wanna feel it. Gimme that cum. Own me. Own me. Cum in her tight little cunt. Paint it. Take it. Fucking own me, Master. Own. Me."Just outside of his room, he heard Eric's door open and then slam shut again, but it was only a momentary distraction, as Aisling continued to bear down on him, her ass slamming against the top of his thighs.It wasn't long before he could feel that release building up on him, and much sooner than he'd have liked, his body was shuddering in the throes of an orgasm as he started to spew hot cum inside of her tight young twat. As soon as he started to orgasm, however, it was almost like Aisling had been struck by lightning, her whole body violently shaking as a guttural sound was wrenched from her throat, primal and whorish, before her body collapsed on top of him, her body trembling for a long moment before she lay still atop of him.After a few minutes, he slowly moved her to one side of him so he could slip out from under her. She was completely unconscious, and he was almost certain he could her hear whispering nigh imperceptibly the word 'imprinting' over and over again.He didn't want to wake her, so he went and showered, then headed downstairs to grab himself a bit of dinner. The two cats sat at the foot of his bed, peering at the unconscious redhead in his bed, wondering what the hell was going on.The madness had barely even gotten started.Chapter 3When Andy woke up the next morning, he was almost certain he'd been dreaming yesterday. But he felt an odd sensation and lifted his head to look down. There he saw Aisling's coppery ponytail bouncing over his crotch. And he could feel her lips sealed around his cock, as she continued to face fuck herself on his shaft.Andy had never woken up to being blown before, and it certainly was a delightful experience. He tried to pull her head up, to give her a break, but she reached up and pressed his hand away with her own, a delightful little giggle rolling from her lips onto his cock.He thrust his hips towards her face because it seemed like the thing she wanted him to do, and sure enough, she kept pushing her head down again and again. She wasn't letting up until she got what she needed.In the end, resistance was futile.His body tensed up and his back arched as he felt her lips around the base of his cock, the head lodged in her throat as he started to spew cum. When he did, he could feel her body shake and quiver against his thigh.A few minutes later, both of them had regained their composure, and she'd snuggled up alongside him, her face nestled in the crook of his neck as she laughed almost deliriously. "It's actually true. The taste of your cum gives me an orgasm. Each and every time, harder than I'd ever known before I met you," she purred. "You really do fuckin' own me, daddy.""You say that," Andy said, "but eventually you'll get bored of me, and you'll come to resent me, resent being attached to me like this."She rolled over a little bit, pressing one of her arms against his chest as she shook her head, a crooked smile on her lips. "I woke up in the middle of the night and looked around the room while you were asleep. There are bookcases everywhere. My first boyfriend was a footie player who dreamed of going pro when he could barely get up in the morning. My second boyfriend? He was a shitty musician who claimed he was being artful when he couldn't carry a tune. You're surrounded by books. Have you read all of them?"Andy shrugged a little. "Maybe half of them. But I like having books around, knowing that when I'm ready for another, it's right there.""See?" she giggled. "I've never been with anyone so smart before. And I've never been with someone who'll let me be myself and not force me to hide it.""Hide what?""What an absolute slut I am," she said, kissing his neck. "Your absolute slut, if I'm honest." She wasn't trying to wind him up, just more of delighting in learning all the nooks and crannies of his body. "And I don't have to pretend I'm a good Catholic girl who'd never let a boy put his hand up her skirt when I'd rather be bent over getting my tight young gash plowed. You'll have to do that next, have me on my hands and knees, your good little proper bitch."Andy laughed. "You sound rather eager for that."" Umm," she mumbled, nibbling on his ear, "you want me to beg again?""Let me do it later," he said. "We should get up, shower, and we should meet our new roommates.""I talked to Lily a bit on the ride over. I'll tell you about it in the shower."Each of the bedrooms in the condo had an attached bathroom so they didn't even have to get dressed to get up and move to the bathroom. She scooted ahead of him quickly, and he could see the inside of her thighs were damp as she climbed out of the bed and moved into the bathroom.It was the first time he'd had a woman in his bathroom in a decade, and so he was a little embarrassed about the state of it. "Of course you don't have a hair dryer," Aisling giggled, as she ran her fingertips over Andy's shaved head. He'd started developing a bald spot in his mid twenties, so he'd been shaving his head every since then. "Don't worry, I've got one in my suitcase. Speaking of which, you're going to need to give me one drawer in that dresser to myself. That okay?""You're really in this for the long haul, aren't you?" He turned on the water in the shower as he closed the top of the toilet.She leaned in and folded her hands behind his neck, pressing her body up against his. "What did I tell you? You. Own. Me." She kissed him briefly in between each of the last three words. "But that means you belong to me as well. Whenever you go, I go. And I need to take care of you. And you need to take care of me.""I can clear out a drawer for you, no problem, Aisling.""See? It's not that hard to pronounce, is it?""But hey, this is your bathroom now too, so feel free to make it home.""Oo!" she said suddenly and darted back out into the bedroom. Andy could hear her unzipping her little suitcase before she sprinted back in, a giant tricolor beach towel which she set on top of the toilet. It didn't even take him half a second to recognize it was the colors of Ireland's flag. "Little bit of the home country. Now let's get wet. I've never taken a shower with another person before." She lifted her fingers and pressed them against his hair chest, almost shoving him back into the shower.It was rather a long shower, where they got dirty before they got clean again.About forty minutes later, they'd both gotten dried off and dressed and headed downstairs, Aisling bringing her laptop bag with her. Sitting on the couch was a Japanese woman dressed in sweatpants and a baggy t shirt typing away on her laptop while Eric was sitting at his desk on the other side of the room."Andy, meet Lily," Eric said to Andy as he walked down the stairs. "She's my new partner.""S'up," Lily said, not even looking up from her typing."She's kinda in the zone right now. She's a coder with DoorDash.""We talked a bit on the ride over here," Aisling said. "Hi, I'm Aisling. I'm Andy's first partner.""First?" Lily said, stopping typing and looking up and over her shoulder at them as they reached the bottom of the stairs.Andy scowled. "She didn't mean it like that. I wasn't a virgin."Lily snickered a bit. "I know. I'm fucking with you," she said, looking back down to her laptop. "So how was he Ash?""Fucking amazing," Aisling said. "How about yours?""I have a name you know," Eric said."Good but not great," Lily said. "But I'll train him to be the best ever. Best for me, anyway.""Hi Eric," Aisling said, shaking Eric's hand. "Nice to meet you.""I cleared off the dining room table behind Andy's desk to give you a bit of work space, Ash," Eric said. "Lily said you're an artist?""Graphic designer for Alphabet."Andy cocked his head as he and Aisling started to cross the living room, heading towards the dining room. "I didn't know you were a Googler.""I'm a contractor for them, so they don't really consider me a Googler," she sighed. "They might move me from contract to full time at some point, but it's just as likely they're going to just keep giving me new contracts over and over again.""Welcome to life in Silicon Valley," Andy laughed. "Everything's forever, for exactly five minutes."Aisling pulled her laptop out of her bag and set it on the table, noticing the box pushed off to one side. "Blake Conrad, huh?" she said, taking a book out from the box. "My older brother loves these books, but I've never read any of them. Are you a big fan?"From the other room, Eric couldn't help but laugh. "Go on!" he yelled at Andy. "Tell her."Andy rolled his eyes. "Look inside the back flap."Aisling took the hardcover and opened to the back of it, looking at the inside flap where Andy's picture peered back at her. "Wait, are you Blake Conrad?""It's a pen name.""Oh my god! I'm shagging Dermot's favorite pen!" she giggled. "I can't wait to phone him and tell him.""Mmm. I can even autograph a copy of the new one for him and you can mail it out to him, as long as he's not going to be mad that I'm sleeping with his sister."Aisling pulled out a Wacom tablet from her laptop as well as a power cord, plugging it into the wall. "Andy. You're a bloody hero to him. He'll be over the moon.""He's not going to be upset that you're shacking up with a guy you just met? Or that he's going to have, other women?"Aisling kissed him for a long moment, soft and tender. "You're sweet, Andy. But this is the way the world works now. And you're a good man, so Dermot'll be happy that I didn't end up with someone crazy or ugly.""Oh, you don't think I'm ugly?" Andy grinned impishly, as Aisling pushed him back down into his desk chair."Look fella," she teased. "If I thought you were ugly, I'd have said so. Now don't you have work to get to or something?"Andy turned on his computer and the two monitors on his desk sprung to life. "Well, yeah, but theoretically I'm on new partner leave, so I don't really have to be working."She stuck her tongue out at him. "Well, I don't get any such luxury as a contractor, so I need to get some work done today. How does a novelist get partner leave anyway?"He sighed a little. "That's just my side hustle. My day job is as a marketing writer for Netflix."Aisling's face scrunched up in cute confusion. "The books don't pay enough?""Not until they get optioned, which my agent seems to think will happen eventually, but hasn't yet.""I'll have to read them then." Andy tried to mask the look of surprise on his face, but apparently wasn't great at concealing it. "What? I said I hadn't read them, not that I didn't want to read them.""Fair enough!" Andy grabbed his headphones and pulled them onto his head, clicking on iTunes to bring up his music. He wasn't allowed to check out new tasks for his day job, so he figured he might as well get a bit of writing in on his next novel.After a few minutes, Aisling tapped him on the shoulder, so he pulled the headphones off. "What's up?""What're you listening to?""Right now? Post rock band called God Is An Astronaut, but I usually just put my music on shuffle and let it ride.""Can I listen too?"Andy nodded. "Sure, as long as you've got headphones with a long cable and a USB plug.""Certainly do!" she said, holding out the cable.He plugged her in, did a few clicks on his computer, and then they were both listening to his music, just a few feet apart.Andy found it a little hard to focus on his writing, so he decided to take a bit of time to read up on the level system. His boss seemed to know a lot more about it, so he figured it didn't hurt to see what was coming down the pipeline.The virus, it seemed, was hitting the coasts hardest, with N Y C being the biggest disaster area, but the Silicon Valley wasn't far behind. Isolation was the best path, but the bodies were still piling up, so the country was looking to build some stability into people's lives. That meant pairing the single people up. Men were dying at a significantly higher rate than women to the virus, so protecting them had become extremely important. The virus had a mortality rate that was fifty times higher in men than it was in women.Because of that fact alone, it had been determined that virus free men would be ranked on a scale of one to five in terms of their importance to society, and that the higher a man was ranked, the more that person's personal needs would be tended to. So level 1s, which it seemed like was most people, would simply be given the barest amount of effort to find someone to pair with their basic desires. 80% of the men were classified as level ones. Level twos were essential, low risk workers such as construction engineers, clerks, judges and the like. Level three was law enforcement. Level four was figures of high impact. Mark Zuckerberg would've supposedly been a level four if he wasn't already married, one article said. Level five was the front liners in the fight in the virus and those who had made extraordinary contributions to society. They made up a fractional amount of people in the pool, less than half of one percent.A kind of hushed up mythology had been built up around level fives from what Andy could find on the internet. There were stories of emergency doctors who were on the best of days a six in any woman's estimate getting partnered up with women who would never be any less than a ten.Andy scoffed a little bit until he started looking at some of the pictures, and noticed that there were endless pictures of ER doctors and genetics researchers with women way, way, way, way out of their leagues.It was on the fifth collection of photos he spotted a familiar face. There was Dave, the man who'd tested them just a few short days ago, with his arm around a Hispanic knockout who couldn't have been pressed closer to him. And in the group shot with Dave, there were nearly a dozen other similar pairings of schlep and stunner.Once paired, men were being kept in isolation for an indeterminate amount of time. They were allowed to go out for walks, but had to keep fifteen feet away from anyone else. They weren't even permitted to go into stores to go shopping. Andy and Eric had been living on food delivery for weeks now. They'd even had groceries delivered and left on their doorstep. The receipt said the person who delivered them was named Silva, but neither Andy nor Eric had seen them. Andy wondered which of the two women would volunteer to go and get groceries first.During the middle of the day, Eric wanders over to take their orders as he placed a food delivery, but none of them had any chance to talk until dinner, which they also had delivered. Lily got free deliveries working for DoorDash, apparently, so both lunch and dinner had been brought that way."So how did you guys meet?" Lily asked as she was bringing in the bag of food that had been left on their doorstep.Eric laughed. "You want to tell them or should I?"Andy waved his hand, turning his desk chair around so it was up against the dining room table. "You're looking forward to it, so you tell them."Eric grinned as Lily started to take the food “ cheesesteaks it seemed “ and put it out on the table. "He was trying to bang my sister.""I was trying to date your sister," Andy said as Aisling giggled. "There's a difference.""Date her so you could fuck her, let's be clear."Andy rolled his eyes. "That was over a decade ago, so it's probably time to let it go.""She's married and lives in Florida down with her husband and their four kids, so we never really see her much anymore," Eric said."But Eric needed a roommate and I needed a place to live, so I moved into his spare room, and we've been flatmates since then," Andy said. "Aisling's from Dublin, but are you local Lily?""Second generation Bay Area native," Lily said as Eric set a beer in front of her. "My parents live up in Petaluma these days. Are your parents still around here, Eric?""They retired and moved down to Santa Cruz, although they spend half their time out in Florida with their grandkids. I'll introduce you to them over Facetime when they call next.""They going to be happy you hooked up with a Japanese woman?""They'll be happy I'm happy," Eric said. "Beyond that, I don't think they care.""What about you, Andy? You got local family?"Andy shook his head. "I'm from Ohio originally, but I've been out here for longer than I was there. My dad died a few years back, but my mom's still out there, as is my older brother with his wife and their son.""How old's your nephew?" Aisling asked."Conner will be 11 in July. I generally go back every year for Christmas, but this year seems like that's probably out."The Irish girl cocked her head slightly. "How much older is your brother?""Nine years older than me.""No siblings in between?""Nope," Andy said. "You said you have an older brother named Dermot. That your only sibling?"Aisling almost snorted she laughed so suddenly. "Jaysis no. Dermot's the eldest, then me, then my sisters Aoife and Niamh, and the last one is my baby brother Colin, who's about as old as your nephew. What about you, Lily?""Only child, thank fuck," she grumbled. "So, Andy, I understand Aisling's not going to be your only partner. What makes you think you deserve more than one partner, hmm?"Andy raised a hand defensively. "Hey now, I never said I deserve anything.""She's fucking with you, love," Aisling said, poking him with a grin."Spoil sport," Lily said, sticking her tongue out. "I don't really care as long as you're not going to take a pass at me.""You're Eric's partner, Lily. I'm going to respect that.""Good, and I'll make sure he keeps his hands off your girls.""I would never " Eric started to say before Lily raised a finger in his direction and he felt silent."Good boy," Lily said with a smirk. "I'll get him trained yet."Andy had never seen Eric get cowed quite so severely before, but he could swear his flatmate was blushing a little."I'm actually looking forward to seeing who else we get to play with," Aisling said."How many names should I expect to have to learn?" Lily asked."It's a fookin' huge bed, Lil," Aisling giggled. "So I expect a few more.""What I was reading about on the internet says I'm supposed to share my bed with four partners," Andy said, "but that can't possibly be right can it?""Umm. I can't wait," Aisling purred.She didn't have long to wait.To be continued in part 2, by CorruptingPower for Literotica.

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

All aboard for another four years on the funwagon-deathride-bizarreathon. Should be a riot!

Join me on my latest episode, a special election day episode. • The election – this messy fiasco • Donald Trump – The worst possible candidate • I remember – Donald Trump • The Pandemic • Spray Bleach or Lysol in the air • The Calls to GA SOS • I remember – Kamala Harris • The Border • GA Election Interference Case • The call • VP Harris Plan • Gov't paid sex changes • Trump's Tariff • Items from China • White Women Support • Time of the woman to be heard • Abolish the electoral college • I remember my first Presidential Election• • Everything is Political • Vote!!! • My election prediction ************************************** A production of Chetro, LLC https://linktr.ee/Chetro Find me on IG: @whatchetrothnksabout_Podcast Facebook: Chetro Speaks Twitter: @chetro www.whatchetrothinksaboutit.com ebook link: chetrovoice.gumroad.com Artwork: @thebougieprofessor on IG Leave a Voice Message: https://anchor.fm/chetro/message I am available for speaking engagements, mentorship, coaching, & panel discussions via chetrospeaks@gmail.com You can support this podcast by going to buymeacoffe.com/chetro Join in for another episode of What Chetro Thinks About it --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/chetro/support

Get your butt out of Racoon City because this week we're discussing 2004's "Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse". Come along as we chat about the movie, plus hot water toilet bowls, Kingdom Hearts movies, unrealistic elements, Pirates of the Caribbean, straight-to-video Mortal Kombat, set-ups, standards on trash, "Good Witch", Ugly Betty, Lysol doctors, jump scares, syringes, bullets vs missiles, & more! Want to hear more from your favorite Marsh Land Media hosts? Hear exclusive shows, podcasts, and content by heading to Patreon.com/MLMpod! Buy some Shuffling the Deck / MLMpod MERCH, including our "Natty With Otters" shirt, over at redbubble.com/shop/msspod! Follow James @MarshLandMedia on Twitter, @MLMpod on Instagram, and listen to his music under "Marsh Land Monster" wherever music is found! Have fan mail, fan art, projects you want us to review, or whatever you want to send us? You can ship directly to us using "James McCollum, PO Box 180036, 2011 W Montrose Ave, Chicago, IL 60618"! Send us a voice mail to be played on the show at (224) 900-7644! Find out more about James' other podcasts "Mostly Speakin' Sentai", "Hit It & Crit It", "Formulaic: A Podcast In Script Writing", "The Height of Horror", "Sweet Child of Time", & more on our website, www.MLMPod.com!!! Plus, download all Marsh Land Monster albums there, too!

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.

Meet our guest for this episode, Danny Creed. Danny grew up on a Kansas farm in what can only be called a very rural area. Even so, he clearly grew up with lots of drive and imagination. After high school, he entered radio broadcasting where he remained for 20 years. Like many in the industry he bounced around from station to station doing broadcasts, selling and whatever else that was asked of him.   In the late 1980s he left radio after 20 years and became an entrepreneur working with 15 startups. As he tells us, they all were successful.   He then spent a bit of time working at the pentagon and the department of defense again putting his entrepreneurial skills to work. One of the military leaders with whom Danny worked urged him to think about helping others by entering the new career of business coaching. He did and met some of the great motivational and business coaching leaders like Zig Zigler and Brian Tracy.   Danny is the author of several books and has received many accolades and awards through his coaching career.   About the Guest:   Danny Creed is a certified Master business and executive coach. He is a noted sales and leadership trainer, best-selling author, international keynote, and workshop speaker who is an acclaimed business turnaround expert.   Danny's personal coach and mentor is the legendary Brian Tracy. He is a certified Master Business Coach, Executive Coach, and Sales Trainer with over 15,000 logged coaching hours. In addition, he's an entrepreneur with 15 successful start-up businesses to his credit and over 400 business turnarounds. Coach Dan is the unprecedented Seven-time recipient of the FocalPoint International Brian Tracy Award of Sales Excellence and CXO Outlooks “10 Most Inspiring Transformational Coaches, Globally – 2022”   Danny Creed is an internationally best-selling author of six business and motivational books, including the bestseller CHAMPIONS NEVER MAKE COLD CALLS and THRIVING in BUSINESS.   Dan is involved in community and volunteer work and, when time allows, a professional musician.     Ways to connect with Danny:   LinkedIn:   Linkedin.com/inbusinesscoachdan YouTube: Bit.ly/2F8exoh Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mrluckyinc1952   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 ** 01:20 Well, hello once again, I'm your host, Mike Hinkson, and we want to wish you a great welcome to unstoppable mindset, wherever you may be. Thanks for being here with us, and I want you to meet our guest, Danny Creed, who is a major certified business coach, among other things, with more accolades and awards than I can count. And if he wants to tell them all to you, that'll be up to him, because he probably knows them all without memorizing them. But we've been we were supposed to start this podcast a little while ago. We've been busy talking about mystery books that we both like and sharing stories of being around the Pentagon and Department of Defense and other things before and after September 11. So, ah, lots of stories. I'm sure we're going to have fun this next hour. But Danny, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset.   Danny Creed ** 02:10 Thank you, Mike. I'm really happy to be here. I really am.   Michael Hingson ** 02:14 Well, really appreciate you taking the time to do it. Why don't we start by you telling us kind of about the early Danny, growing up, that's always a fun place to start.   Danny Creed ** 02:24 Oh, yeah, and I've told you this. And okay, so I, I come from very humble beginnings. I was raised in a town of 120 people in southern Kansas. I was raised on a farm. My family's still on that farm 130 some years later, I had, I joke, I had, I had 16 kids in my senior class. I had seven girls, and five of them were cousins and but I knew, I knew that that wasn't what I was meant to do. So I left the farm, and only member of our clan for a long time to have left the farm and I went into broadcasting. Spent about 20 years in the great era of being in radio and TV. And from that, I learned a lot about I got bit by the entrepreneurial bug. Did my first entrepreneurial startup in the late 80s, and just, gosh, it was so exciting. Yeah, it went crazy. It was exciting. It was risky. It was CR everything.   Michael Hingson ** 03:30 Yeah, did you go to college?   Danny Creed ** 03:32 I well, I went to two years of college. There you go. And then my father died, and he died very young. And I always joked that we didn't know we were not poor, but we didn't know we didn't have much, you know, but we were on the farm, we always had a cow and a pig, and, you know, we were, we were happy, you know, but I had to go to work, and one thing I'd always done is sell and use my creativity, even when I was on the farm. And so I took off on a on a on a knowledge search of self education that you know, great, great minds, you know, of great creators in our in our world, in the our history, were people that Louis LaMoure, one of the greatest self of all time, had the equivalent of a Third grade education, but when he died, he had three honorary PhDs for his he credits that to reading 100 books that were very specific. And I found that list one day. So I just spent a lot of time reading, putting in a lot of hours. I went from I worked with a general who or an admiral who said, you know, based on your experience, based when I was at the Pentagon, you ought to go out and do something to help businessmen and women be successful, and not redo mistakes over and over again. Because I had been there, I'd been a business owner, I'd done startups. And so that's when I found my way. And I, by the way, I did 15 startups, which is. Why I don't have any hair today, but I really learned a lot about all kinds of businesses, and I became a business coach, partnering with some of my mentors, Brian Tracy and Zig Ziglar and some other people you might not be familiar with and and since then, I've been a business coach going on 17 years. I've got over 15,000 hours of log coaching time, business coaching time and and been very, very successful, because my clients have been successful. So I've been really blessed with that. And just a year ago, I was, I was honored by being listed in the top 10 in the world of the most transformational, inspiring coaches, wow, I'm a really a blessed guy, and it's all based on my drive to help people, as corny as that may sound as though, well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:54 and it's also an issue of being humble about it and not thinking that you're the greatest thing in The world and have an ego, and that clearly comes through that you're you're not that way, and I think that that really means a lot. When did you first go into radio,   Danny Creed ** 06:11 it was right out of off the farm. Literally, I walked off a farm. I was going to junior college, and one of the more inspirational people in my life. Was a journalism instructor there, and he goes, I know exactly you want to go on radio. I can get you a job as a copywriter. And that was 1971 and so I went in. During the day, I would write commercials, and at night, I did an airship from 8pm to 2am oh my gosh, turn around and do it again the next day. But I learned creativity in short bursts, which helped me my whole life, helps in writing blogs. And it was I would have never thought that I I went through I learned it was on the air. Learned communication. Then I got into sales and management and radio was really it was all selling, Michael, it was all about selling, learning to sell the intangible, sure, and that's one thing that a lot of people struggle with today. They have to have something in their hands. They have to have that app or something in their hands, where, if people would learn, and I try to teach this my clients how, how to sell an idea, a product, anything, sell the intangible side, which is, look here, touch it, feel it, smell it, versus how would you feel if you were sitting on a on a on An island next to the ocean, and the waves, warm waves, were coming in, and you wanted to relax and see, I'm selling an intangible feeling. I'm selling, how does it make you feel? And that was a big deal, and I still teach, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you want to be successful in business, you got to learn to communicate, and good communication, contrary to what a lot of people teach, good communication is all about really being able to sell a concept in the intangible side of it. How does it make you feel? What's your why versus here it is. Here's how it feels, here's how it smells. See, I can talk to you and make you smell something and   Michael Hingson ** 08:25 I and I appreciate that. I love to tell people that after September 11, when people started calling and asking me to come and speak and so on, I realized pretty quickly and made the choice to do this, but I chose to believe it's a whole heck of a lot more fun to sell life and philosophy than it is to sell computer hardware. Yeah, it's all about intangibles, and I also talk a lot about blindness and disabilities and so on, and probably need to do more writing and all of that. But it's true that that everything really, no matter, even with even with the the physical stuff, any good salesperson will realize that it's not selling the physical stuff. Ultimately, you have to want to emotionally buy into it. And I also need to, as a salesperson, understand where you are, where you're coming from, to know whether what I can sell you is what you need to have, or whether I need to help you find other places to go.   Danny Creed ** 09:30 Amen. I I've always said that the mistake that a lot of people in my industry do is that they come in and try to sell stuff. They tell people, here's what, here's why, you ought to buy my product. I firmly, honestly believe you can tell all your listeners right now that if you ever work with me or talk to me about working with you, I will never sell you stuff. What I'm going to sell is I'm going to listen to your needs from your point of view. Of and then I'm going to, if it there's a fit, because I'm not right for everyone, but if there is a fit, I'm going to, I sell hope. Yeah, think about that's what every good product should be sold on. I still hope that this will work, that I hate it when I go in to make a major purchase and they're asking me what I think? Well, look, when I had triple bypass heart surgery, which I did, and they told me I had 48 hours to live. You think, you know? And well, how would you feel if the doctor then said, So, how do you think we ought to do that surgery?   10:39 Yeah, well, I   Danny Creed ** 10:40 don't know that's you're the Pro, yeah. And that's the way people look at anyone, you know, that's why they look at anyone selling an idea or a concept or a product. They want to help me understand if my needs fit what you're selling. And then maybe we can work together. Maybe we should work together. I'm always   Michael Hingson ** 11:01 amazed with reporters and so on, when they interview somebody who's in the middle of a tragedy and so on, and they go, Well, how do you feel about that?   11:12 Yeah, hello, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 11:16 well,   Danny Creed ** 11:17 yeah, how do you think I feel about it? Yeah, really. I   Michael Hingson ** 11:19 mean, I'm I'm still waiting for the first person to say that.   Danny Creed ** 11:23 But yeah, you know, Michael, you mentioned books earlier. I collect books, autograph books, and and I was, I've rather than go, you know, fall all over some of my heroes in writing, I always try to have one question that I asked him, and I asked him the same question here at the time. And the one I asked, have asked some really famous guys, as you know, what makes a great, best selling book, and one of the more famous thriller crime writer guys told me one that I've always remembered. He goes, You gotta, you gotta hook them. If you can't hook them on the first paragraph of the first page of that book, they're gonna, they're gonna close it up and go to another book. Yeah, you know. And that's selling. Hope that, okay, this is good. I get it, I feel it, I understand it, I'm excited about it. I'm gonna turn the page. And it's the same in business. I mean, you've got to sell. You've got to understand what people need and then talk to them about fulfilling that need rather than telling them what they need. You know doesn't happen.   Michael Hingson ** 12:33 Ultimately, they probably know what they need and how to get it, at least subconsciously, and your job is to help them ferret that out.   Danny Creed ** 12:44 Yeah, yeah, it is, you know, and, and again, a lot of that comes with, I, that's why I was intrigued with your show. And, and, you know, it's a great show, is this, is that mindset thing i I'm telling you right now that I work with clients all over the world. And again, I've I'm blessed enough that I can, I can work with lot of different people. I can help a lot of different people and and I'm telling you the one thing that that that helps people win or helps assist them in losing their business, their their success, or anything like this is where their mind is at, where they keep your mind at, I'm telling you, it comes down to, and I know you're you're kind of the expert on it. You do this great show, but I have it broke down. I really believe there's two mindsets to break it down, as simple as you can get. One is a mindset of survival, and the other one's a mindset of possibilities. Now survival is one where you're worrying about, what if, during covid years, 2020 21 and 22 I'm proud to say that 100% of my clients that I work with had growth while the rest of the world was on their head. Woe is me. But the secret to what I did is no secret. But I would go into every coaching session every day and say, Where's your head at today, because I can find when somebody has a survival mindset, all I have to do is say, Hey, Mike, how you doing today? Oh, just getting by, just making it.   Michael Hingson ** 14:32 I never say that.   Danny Creed ** 14:35 I had a guy one time i i One of my books I wrote, I was interviewing people on if they have goals or not. And this one guy just said, Oh yeah, I've got goals. And I and I won't do it all, but he I've got goals, and I read them every day and I believe in them. I said, What's your goal? Then, if you do it every day and it's that deep in your heart, he goes, my goal is go to work every day and break even. And I said, why? Okay. He goes, Yeah, you know, it's tough out there. Well, the people who won and what I tried to do with my clients were the ones that said, Look, you can't control the what if, yes, covid, good, kill everybody. Yes, we might have a government overthrow. Yes, there could be war and all this stuff. And you can worry about that, but that's nothing you can control. Hello. You can control the what is, yeah, and the what is, is what you have in front of you and what you can control. And you can manage that then. And if you think about the possibilities then that are part of what is, instead of the what ifs that cause survival, thinking you're going to be in the top 3% in the world, and people will come to you because all your other competition is in hiding, simply because the differences of your mindset   Michael Hingson ** 16:00 absolutely true. I know that during the whole covid period, we locked down my wife and I did. She had rheumatoid arthritis, so she had a lowered immune system anyway, because she had to take meds to keep the RA kind of at bay, and that lowers the immune system. So I was sensitive to that, and that was a good motivator, but I also knew that traveling wasn't going to happen in it, and it didn't, and we just plain locked down. We We did choose not to ingest bleach or Lysol like some politicians suggested. Sorry,   16:41 yes,   Michael Hingson ** 16:41 I know, but we we we didn't even fret about it. We did it, and we knew it was the right thing to do, and didn't contract covid. But I also believe if I have one goal every day, it's to have fun. And whatever I do, I've got to find ways to have fun, to make it happen. And and I always worked at doing that even, you know, even if it's in my own mind, finding a way to have fun. But I agree with you all too often people are so worried about all the things over which we have no control. You know, after September 11, I kept hearing people say, We got to get back to normal. We got to get back to normal. And it took me a while before I realized, and finally started to articulate, first of all, normal will never be the same again, and if we really got back to that, then we're going to have the same problem. So we're not going to get back to the same normal that we had. And people kept talking about what they were worried about, and I and I finally realized that the most important thing that I could say to people, and still say to people, is don't worry about the things that you can't control. Focus on what you can control, and the rest will take care of itself. And when you read thunderdog, you'll you'll see where that came from, because that's actually an integral part of the story, and for for people listening out there, Danny told me when we first started, that he has thunderdog on his desk, and he hasn't started to read it yet. So chapter 10, I think, is where you'll find it, but don't skip ahead, but it's   Danny Creed ** 18:16 there. You made me reach for it, but I'm not   Michael Hingson ** 18:20 sure you can hold it up, but we've got to not worry about the things that we don't have control over. And it's so very frustrating with all the stuff going on, like today in politics and all that, and it is easy to get very frustrated at some of these clowns, and I get frustrated, and two seconds later I go, Oh, that's not going to do any good. So forget it, you know, and just believe and have faith that that things work out because we don't have we don't have ultimate Well, we do have ultimate control. We have the right and the ability to vote, and that's the best thing that we can do.   Danny Creed ** 18:57 Well, you know, Michael, you said to have fun. Well, I have a lot of fun in possibility thinking,   Michael Hingson ** 19:03 Mm hmm.   Danny Creed ** 19:04 Because if you're, if you have that possibility mindset, and you're an entrepreneur, an executive, a business owner, and you're thinking of possibility, it's a lot of fun to go, Holy cow, everybody else is in hiding, and there's an opportunity. Yeah, I can help my clients. I can, I can, holy cow, that's going to be fun. That's going to be exciting. Because I've never thought of that before. You know, the possibilities are out there. They're, you know, the analogy of the old boat analogy, you know that some guys don't, don't see the boats come by. They're on a desert island, they choose not to see the boats come by others, others see them, you know. And you've got to be able to see the opportunities, because if you're so negative and you're only thinking survival, you're not going to see the opportunities. And one of the books I wrote, I based. On me almost dying. And the one thing I learned out of that is a lot of people set back and they wait for their second chance. And they're set back and wait for somebody to come along, you know, and say, I'm going to give you a second chance. And the fact that that I realized was everybody can give themselves a second chance and a third chance and a fourth chance and a fifth chance. You've got to understand you can create that, that you can go out. We have the ability to do it every day, if we're thinking about possibilities others are happy with right now, and happy with moaning and groaning and whining and crying, and they're happy with where they're at, and they don't want it to get any better, because they're happy with the whining. And I just, honestly, I'm sorry to say that I just, I don't even want to breathe the same air as people, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 21:04 Well, I know for me, yeah, I know. I know for me the idea of the second chance, you know, I like to live in the moment, and I think that worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow. I mean, there, there is a place and a time for strategizing, but living for the moment and looking at what's going on in the moment, saying, How do I maximize what I can do and need to do, which is all part of the possibilities. Issue is, was what needs to happen, and I think that more people should do that. I know for me, I learned some time ago to spend time every night just thinking about what happened during the day. How did it go, what really worked well, and oh, by the way, could I have even done anything better about what went well and the things that maybe didn't work as well. Why and how do I deal with it? Going forward, I've learned that I have to teach myself. I shouldn't, you know, I used to say I'm my own worst critic, as I've told people on this podcast many times, and I've changed that I'm not my own worst critic, I'm my own best teacher, and I have to really learn and do work hard at teaching myself. And that's one of the lovely things I've learned from talking to so many people on this podcast, yes,   Danny Creed ** 22:24 yes, I have to share with you, because you bring to mind, and I can't use his name, but he was one of the most successful businessmen in history, one of the wealthiest men in the world. That I had a chance to sit and talk to this gentleman three or four times, and I asked him one time I said, Do you do anything every day in your mindset, or how you think, how you act you? What do you is there anything you do every day that keeps your company growing and you growing, no matter what, no matter how much money you have, and because he has billions, and he I didn't even get it out of my mouth until he had an answer. And he said, there's three things. Dan, number one, protect your money. He says, what I mean by that is, fail fast. If you're going to fail, fail fast, have metrics in place so that you don't drag things out. And I say this to every business person. I say, You better know when advertising is working or not, when a strategy is working or not, when an employee is working or not, and get rid of it quickly and replace it with something better. So that's one the second thing he said was, I try to go to work every day in my multi 100 billion dollar plus company, and I try to have the same mindset and have my staff have the same mindset as we had on our first day of business. That point is that, well, that's work hard, you know, work smart, fail fast. He said, that's really important to keep in our minds. And the third thing I do is want kind of long lines what you said? He said, and when I go to bed every night, I sit back and say his name, he said, I sit back and go me, I could be broke tomorrow. Something happens tonight, stock drops, whatever I could be broke tomorrow. So what did I do today to prevent that from happening. That's long lines, what you said you if you looked at and I've never forgot that that was 2023, years ago when I told me that. And I think about it every day, and I actually teach the concept in a bigger form to every client I have, because it's powerful stuff. And you're right on, Michael, you're right on contemplating looking at what happened. You know, 1928 the great book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon, identified that that the best time to plan your next day is the night before, because you're thinking about. What happened, what worked, what didn't, and then you're thinking about, what do I need to do tomorrow? And if you're thinking clear enough, it's going to send a message out to the universe. And it is everybody I know has had a great idea in the morning in the shower, yeah, well, that's because you were probably thinking about it with clarity the night before, and the powers out there sent you an answer, and that works just as well on personal success, professional success, and just living a good life and a happy life and having fun,   Michael Hingson ** 25:34 and that's really what it's all about. You know, the whole idea of regrets. You can feel bad about something not working out. Okay, I accept that, and now I'm going to work on figuring out what happened so it won't happen again. But my gosh, if we, as you say, spend all of our time whining and grousing about stuff, then we don't get anywhere. And I think it's so important to take the time at the end of the day to really think about what what happened and and anyone who says I don't have time, clearly doesn't know how to think, because, of course, you have time.   Danny Creed ** 26:15 That's right. Damian, that's exactly right. Yeah, and some regrets there i They just stay. There's no good that comes from regrets. Yeah, no good I tell, I tell my clients, and I do a lot of charity work. I work men in prison. I teach them personal and professional development. Fact, I was there last week at a major penitentiary working with minimum maximum security. But I tell them all the time, I said, look, it's only a mistake, because a lot of these guys sit and think about regrets. So why are they in there? This and that? But anybody? Business owners, you know your regrets? Just, they they just think it doesn't go anybody but, but you can't do anything about so I always said there's, it's only a mistake if you didn't learn something from it, which is your story. So   Michael Hingson ** 27:10 well, I and it wasn't a mistake until it happened. That's right. Anyway, go ahead.   Danny Creed ** 27:18 No, I you're, you're, right, you're you're filling in the blanks here. So I use a four step process, what happened, be real, honest, not to point fingers, but what happened? Hey, very honestly. Number two, why did it happen? So analyze it. What happened, not to point fingers or blame, but what happened that caused this to happen. Number three, how will it never happen again? So watch your solution that you're going to learn from, and then number four is, see you later. I'm not going to face this again, because I learned something. So that's the way I live, and I and I teach my clients that, because so many people live in the past, and it doesn't get them anywhere.   Michael Hingson ** 28:01 And if I don't know the answer to what happened or how to address it, I'm going to go out and take the time to interact with others and seek answers. And invariably, someone will have an answer that you may not have, and it's perfectly reasonable to do that.   Danny Creed ** 28:19 That's right, that's right. Well, you learn. You know the old line I read about 50 years ago, Ope, you can learn so much from other people's experiences. And again, that's why I got into coaching, because so many people still do. They make mistakes over and over and over again. That costs 10 bucks or ten million and they keep making them Oh and, and they're so surprised. Oh, holy cow. When back to what we were talking about earlier. If you learn something from it, it won't happen again. So I my practice is based on, let's let's work on foundational stuff. Let's work on the basics of everything. Let's understand what we keep making mistakes on and learn from it. And create a rule. Create something that goes in your rule book, you know, in your business plan. But let's not make those mistakes again. And sometimes we've been able to 1020, 3040, 40x that grow their business just by correcting those mistakes and learning something from it. So you're you're right on and on what you say. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 29:30 well, and you know, it all. It all comes from thinking about it. I was going to say it all comes from experience, and that's true, but ultimately, it comes from thinking about it and learning. And I think that's and that that gets back to I'm my own best teacher, and should be, but I have to be open to learning and letting me teach me to do what needs to be done.   29:55 Well,   Michael Hingson ** 29:56 you bring up a   Danny Creed ** 29:56 good point, because I had a guy in a seminar. I do a lot of seminar. Work and such and and I could tell he just didn't want to be there, and he was disruptive. And so finally I just stopped. I was in Atlanta, Georgia, where this happened, and I said, Sir, I mean, what's going on? Other people want to learn what's going on. I know this. He was in sales. I know this. I'm the best salesman, you know, I I've been, you know? And I said, Look, let me ask you one question, have you been in sales? I said, How long you been in sales? 30 years. I said, Have you been in sales 30 years or one year, 30 times? And it well, well, that goes back to your statement. He went to one seminar 30 years ago and says, I know it all. I I'm not willing to learn anymore. That's the operative part about it. I'm not willing to learn anymore. But I see people in all walks of life, you know, I see them, you know, they try out these hot apps and they try it out and say, okay, yeah, that one worked. Are you still using it? No, no. I went on and I went, I'm trying out a new one now. I don't get it. If it works for you, and it works really well. Why aren't you? Didn't you add it into your curriculum, your vocabulary, your daily routine, and it is just, it's, it's very frustrating. But I also teach people how easy it can be to be successful today, if you're disciplined enough to find what works, to learn from mistakes, to learn from your history, and grow every day, it's really not that hard to be successful, you know, you just gotta apply those basics   Michael Hingson ** 31:42 when, when you're coaching people, do you teach them, in one way or another, how to vision   Danny Creed ** 31:47 absolutely that I, I've, I've learned a very complex way to learn it of goal setting and achieving. And I've, I've simplified it, but it's, it's a real tough course that I put executives entrepreneurs, through. But one of the key elements of that goal setting and achieving, course, one of the key elements is visioning and and I'm telling you, that's one of the hardest things, Mike, that that I can do in that process. And here's why, that so many people don't have a vision, because so many people have forgot how to dream. Mm, hmm. I work with a lot of corporate executives and such, and they flat forgot how to dream, because the only dream they have is one that they they received from the corporation they were working for, and they only have one goal, and that's the goal that the corp gave them. They don't have family goals, they don't have personal goals, they don't have personal income goals, they don't have charitable goals. They don't have any of that because the only thing they do is that one goal that the corporate gate given and that nullifies dreams, and dreams are nullified for fear, and so I really force them. I'm going through that right now with a very valued client in Arizona, and once we learned, I got them to just dream a little bit, drop the ego, forget about what is people analyze too much. You know what is potentially Well, that's impossible. Well, yeah, tell that to Edison. Tell me, you know, the Wright brothers. Tell that to Elon Musk. Tell that to you know, a lot of these people, you know, but if I can get them to create a vision, because vision is the starting point for goals, and I don't care how goofy and crazy that vision might be, tell anybody. You don't have to tell anybody what your vision is, but you can be in the back of the room laughing, going, Yeah, someday, someday, this is going to happen. What happened yesterday? Someday, we're going to put a chip in somebody's brain, and that chip will help them talk and run computers by thinking, you know, two years ago, people went, You're nuts. You know, I always go back to Edison again. Can you imagine that guy going around selling the light bulb to people going, look what this is going to do is replace that candle. You got to believe me, every household in the world will have one. Can't Get out. You're crazy, you know, but that vision is the key. Vision is the start of goal setting. And goal setting is the start is based on, well, dreaming equals vision. Equals a start for your goal setting. A goal setting is everything,   Michael Hingson ** 34:45 and visioning can be accomplished in so many ways. A lot of people say, write things down, write it down, put it up on a chalkboard, or create a paper, or do whatever I don't because if. I write it down, still out of sight, can be out of mind. So I learned that that rather than writing it down, I need to think about it, although if I really need to make sure I don't forget something, I'll tell my lovely little Amazon Echo device to remind me about something, but I will make sure that I remember things. On the other hand, we do abuse Thomas Edison because he invented the electric light bulb. And as I love to tell people, and this is something I figured out last year, the biggest problem with most people is they don't recognize their own disability of being light dependents because Thomas Edison made electric light so on demand and available, especially over the last 146 years that now light is everywhere, but it doesn't mean that people still don't have that disability of being light dependent. So it's fun to have discussions about that, but, but, but still, the the bottom line is that visioning and dreaming are so important, and anyone who knocks it is really missing such an invaluable opportunity.   Danny Creed ** 36:04 You're right on the target again. Simply the way I teach visioning as part of the goal setting process is i This is the way I learned it from a very famous guy, and that is, you sit in a room, have as quiet as possible. Shut off your phone, shut off everything Have and Have a recorder of some sort. You can have a digital recorder. You can have, you know, AI now, or whatever, but shut off all surrounding noise. Kill the noise. Warren Buffett says the number one cause of failure today is people don't learn how to shut out the noise. Oh so true. And and so the noise. Shut off all that. Lock yourself in a room for 15 minutes, 30 minutes, however, you can stand and just and no one's around. No one's going to laugh at you. No one's going to point fingers, turn on the recorder, whatever that is, and just go nuts. That's hard for certain personality profiles, but just go nuts and talk, you know. And I'll give you a personal example, if I may, if we have i The one I teach, because I don't like to release my goals and everything to people, but I will tell one way this works. I always wanted my wife and I always wanted a house in the mountains. So I visualized this house, and I had the vision for 15 years. But the vision was I could close my eyes right now. I can do it as we talk, I can close my eyes and tell you the positioning northeast, southwest of this house has the backside of it as a giant plate glass window. It's all made of pine logs. You walk in through the front door and there's a kelly green carpet with a elk antler chandelier hanging down, and I can be that specific. And we finally, we were driving around in northern Arizona, Northeastern Arizona in the mountains where we lived at the time, and we were driving around one day up there just for a long weekend. And we came up and there was the house in my vision, exactly as I laid it out and we bought it, and the only thing we had to do is replace the carpet. But I had this vision in my head of what my perfect getaway home would be in the mountains and my son, both of my sons, actually do this. One of them says, He manifests stuff, you know? He says, I need a new couch that I can't afford the full price. So he goes, he sets and visualizes it and what it looks like, and everything else. And he did that the other day on a couch. And his his his roommate, they have a big old house. His roommate goes, you know, I got a couch in the basement that I'm gonna I'm gonna give away. It's almost new. So would you like it? And Brett, my son, says he went downstairs and that was the couch He visualized. Wow. Now the point is, it's fun, but let yourself go. There's no ego. Shouldn't be any ego involved, you know. Just believe that the line that I use, that that one of my mentors taught me, is, how big would you allow yourself to dream if you knew you couldn't fail, how big would you allow yourself to dream? And people will go, oh, that's, that's baloney. That's, I don't care. Play with me. If you knew you couldn't fail, how big would you allow yourself to dream? And that usually gets people think, and I'm telling you, that's the key to success. You cannot be a success in business or life unless you can dream of what what makes a perfect life a better life for you? You've gotten to do that. And   Michael Hingson ** 40:01 the on the operative part about it is when you're visioning and so on, it is also important not to put a timeline on, well, it didn't happen in the time I put, put out and specified. Well, okay, that's no surprise, because, as you pointed out you, you dreamed about that house for years,   Danny Creed ** 40:21 yep, yep. Now in goal setting, I think I know psychologically that you can put a timeline on some things, sure, but psychologically again, they've proven that just to be a starter, it just puts a deadline in there, and if you don't make it at the end of the year, change the date. But you've got to have something that that you're working towards all the time. So it's always good to have, you know, have something there that says that by the end of 2024 I'm going to I will have done this, and if you don't, we'll change the day. Yeah, you're right.   Michael Hingson ** 41:05 Yeah, if you you try to put timeline on a vision, unless you develop more skills than most of us have, you aren't going to accomplish, most likely, what you think. And if you do, then relish that and go on.   Danny Creed ** 41:22 Well, most visions, really, we find most visions are actually rewards for accomplishing other things, like like, like that cabin. We couldn't get it unless I was successful in business and earned a certain amount and saved a certain amount and did those things, and then when I found that house, I go, I can afford that. Now I can do that, you know. So it's that starting point, you know. But again, I will share with you, Michael that we find that a lot of people, and I love to find people like that have all this ability and possibilities in their mind and everything else, but they nobody's led them to be think it's okay to visualize, yeah, because there's so much fear people have. I know, personally, for a long time, I said, Well, you know, I come from the farm, I'm not supposed to be real successful. Oh, I didn't go to college. I'm not supposed to be real successful. Oh, I didn't do this or that, or this or that, and that's a fear in me. And if you eliminate that, say, you know, I can learn anything I need to learn. I have the ability to work my rear end off and work harder than anybody else, and learn from my mistakes, learn from my lessons and grow. I can do that. I can give myself that second, third, fourth, fifth chance. If you can get your mind in that mindset, I'm I believe you can achieve anything you can,   Michael Hingson ** 42:51 of course, absolutely, and I think that more of us should take that to heart, and we will, we will be all the better for it. Do you still have the house?   Danny Creed ** 43:07 Now? When we had to help family out and we moved, I we split our time between Arizona and Kansas. We built a house in Kansas, where our family's from, and we helped out, help out family while we're here, and it was just to use the house only three or four times a year. We had a chance to really sell it in the real estate boom out there. So we sold it in but I plan to have, I'm now visualizing a lake home. I want to have a home on a lake so I can go fishing every day.   Michael Hingson ** 43:42 There you go. And that will happen. Yo, yeah, I   Danny Creed ** 43:47 know it will. And I've got, I've got the whole thing. I know what color the house is and where it sets near the lake, and how far away for water it is, and what the dock looks like. I've already done all that.   Michael Hingson ** 43:57 There you go. Cool. So what did you do after radio? You were in radio for 20 years, and then what did you do?   Danny Creed ** 44:05 Well, I then I got into entrepreneurship. I had the chance in the late 80s to go into one of the entrepreneurial startup that really was quite successful. We were very successful to me again, it was exhilarating, because I was the one non technical guy usually in the business. I I was the sales guy and the idea guy. And I'd come to all the technical guys and go, What if we could do this? And they'd go, let's see if we can do it. And they'd go out and build the product. And then I take off in the world and go try to sell it and and it was just so exciting. And we did our first startup, and that was really successful. And that's what got me to Arizona. We went out to do a startup there, and we we took it public three, three years after. Start up, and then we sold it three years after that to McKesson pharmaceuticals for it was a really good sale. We didn't always make money, Mike, but we, I don't remember us ever losing any money for an investor or anything. You know, because we were, we'd been around the block. We learned from our mistakes, thank goodness. And again, we were very blessed in how we learn to run businesses, particularly startups. So that gave me and then I told you about the Pentagon, one of the admirals I work with pulled me over and said, Man, you really there's a new industry called business coaching, and you really ought to think about that, because with your background you have, there's a lot of people this whole entrepreneurship thing. There's a lot of people doing well, there's a lot of people losing money. Because, you know, the statistics still is 90 I think last year, 92% of all startups will be broke in five years or less, and that's because they underestimate the amount of time, effort and money involved. They always underestimate it, and you know, or they don't know anything about the business they're going into, how to run a business, and so they go broke. So a lot of people go broke, and some are quite successful, but the suggestion to me was, help these people not make, you know, help help teach them. Help them protect their investment, give them hope for, you know, the thing that they have, a dream on, a vision on. And so I went from radio, which was very creative, into entrepreneurship, which was really creative in the side, because I didn't specialize in anything. I mean, if it was sounded fun and exciting, I count me in. And fortunately, my family stuck with me. But we did startups in healthcare field. We did military health. We did startups in the telephone, independent telephone industry, telephone publishing industry. We did startups and training and and we did startups and just all kinds of stuff, and if it was exciting and fun, because again, there are foundational rules to business. I didn't have to be the expert in any of them, but I understood the foundational rules of business. So that's what we would bring to the table. We'd make sure the basics we had them right. Because no matter what business you're in in the world, they all share the same 13 or 14 foundational needs. And there are things like clarity, time management, priority management, goal setting, visioning, sales, leadership. There are all these things that it doesn't matter what business you're in. I personally believe I can coach any business anywhere in the world, in any economy, because I am a master of understanding the foundational things that make a business work, make someone successful. So that was a natural progression. It was almost like for me, coaching was inevitable, and everything I done in my life led to doing this. So that's that was, that's my was my route.   Michael Hingson ** 48:17 So how did you get started in coaching? What did you do that that gave you that foundation from a coaching standpoint, well,   Danny Creed ** 48:25 I already a part of us. What you were talking about earlier is is, and I think a lot of people fail in business because they don't honor their past. I was smart enough because of some of my mentors. I was smart enough to say, Okay, I had some royal mistakes in my life, but what did I learn from and so I could relate to almost any business person or any executive to the issues they were having, because most of them are foundational. It's people problem, it's a money problem, it's a time problem, it's an effort issue, you know. So I learned from all those, I'm telling you, I did 15 startups, and then before that, I, you know, all the radio stations I worked for as a salesperson and Sales Manager. In a single day, I'd make sales calls on a lumber yard, a funeral parlor, a ladies dress shop, a shoe store, a Cadillac dealership. So I learned a lot about business, and I think everybody has a lot of this knowledge. Again, they don't they don't honor their past. They don't honor their mistakes and their successes by remembering them.   Michael Hingson ** 49:43 And a lot of people don't go into so you went to a dress shop, you went to a Cadillac dealer, and so many places, and you observed, and you learn things while you were there. And so many people just go in and never observe and never learn and take that knowledge with them. Yeah. Yep. Well, I   Danny Creed ** 50:00 tried to, I realized I had all this foundational and the admiral directed me that way. I'll be forever indebted to him for making me be aware of what you know and in that. And then I had some mentors, and Brian Tracy was one of them. And and Brian Tracy was putting together a coaching organization, and I got in very early with that and helped them build that. And from the standpoint of just my knowledge and successes and and I had access to a lot of, like I said, I didn't have the college, but I had, you know, I had quadruple PhDs in business because of what I've learned, the mistakes I made, and the people around me so blessed with the angels that put their arm around me said, Come on, let's, let's learn from this. I learned from Brian Tracy Zig Ziglar, people that weren't as famous in the public, but one of the greatest sales trainers of all time. He was a good friend of mine, one of the great coaches he's quoted at Harvard was was one of my mentors, and I had the luck to surround myself not be egotistic enough to say, look, there's people out there that know what I need to know. So I need to learn. I need to set at their feet. So it was just again, that never ending search for knowledge and but I always was very confident, and that's that's the key. Today, a lot of people just have lost their confidence and or don't have any, and you've got to be confident, because people are searching for people, for experts. They're searching for trusted advisors that act confident. You know, I always example I use is I, you know, I was faced with situation where I I was I was told I had 48 hours to live because my heart was dying. Now I make joke of that by using example. I said, if you found yourself in that situation and you had the choice of doctors, which one would you choose? The first doctor guy comes in and says, I am the head of cardiothoracic surgery for all of America, for this hospital system, I have the best team in America. Or the other guy sitting over here with a laptop and YouTube up on how to how to do a triple bypass. So which guy would you choose? Well, you choose the cardiothoracic surgery, right? Why? Because he's an expert, because he's an expert, and he told you he's an expert, versus the guy who just has, well, I'll give it a shot. Yeah, so much of that is perception. I try to have confidence that a lot of people don't have, and I think anybody can do that, because people are looking for people to help them that have the confidence they don't have, but you've   Michael Hingson ** 52:55 got to have the confidence, and not just the ego, it's you've got to have the confidence and the knowledge. And that's the real issue, of course. Well,   Danny Creed ** 53:04 that's the follow up side. Yeah, you better be able to deliver. But again, I found, you know, Michael, I found the the lost art in American business, worldwide. Business actually, is art of listening. Nobody listens to anybody more. Nobody acts like they're listening. That I read someplace that the actual that the average attention span of the teenager up to middle age today is seven seconds. So nobody listens. So I try very, very hard to and I'm working on it, but I tell people I'm a world class listener, so let me try to understand your needs from your point of view. And I'm telling you that gives people confidence. And I don't have to be the expert in everything, Mike, I just have to ask the best questions   Michael Hingson ** 54:00 well. And you also, I am sure, say to people, let me make sure I understand what you're saying.   Danny Creed ** 54:05 Absolutely that that's part of question. That's part Sure. And feeding back and asking questions, let me help you understand. If I can help you, because I'm not right for everyone, and if I can, we ought to do business, right? Yeah, you know. And people go, Oh my gosh, I can't tell you. I'm not. People go, Oh my gosh, here's somebody's actually listening to me, trying to understand, really, on a simple form, is the difference between telling and asking. You know what? Michael, people don't need told anymore. They don't want to be told anymore. You know why? Because of this little device here called a cell phone, a communication device. I read someplace that today, the the modern day cell phone has replaced, like 140 other products, they've replaced. Replaced the telephone. They've replaced a recording device. They replaced the game thing. They've replaced everything you can think of it. They've replaced, you know, GPS. They it's just crazy. People have access to knowledge instantaneously. They don't need to be told anything. But yet, some of the great training organizations of the world today will come in and teach you to tell let me tell you all the reasons you ought to buy me. Well, look, I can teach people to come in and go. Let me ask you some questions and see if we ought to be working together, because I'm really good at some things. And so let's talk. I understand what that you're facing. And people go, Wow,   Michael Hingson ** 55:48 somebody. And the reality is, of course, you end up by doing it that way, telling them things, but you're not really telling them. You're you're relating, well,   Danny Creed ** 55:58 I'm relating and telling based upon what they've told me, right? I might say the way I understood standard is, this is an issue for you. Am I right? I might have a solution for you. Can I share that it's way different from let me tell you, Oh, absolutely you need to do. Let me tell you what you ought to be thinking. Let me tell you what, people just I don't need it. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:25 and, and we have gotten so far away from listening. We've gotten so far away from conversing. In general, people are afraid to have conversations today.   Danny Creed ** 56:35 Oh, it just makes me sick. Go to a restaurant and see a family of four sitting there, and everybody's looking in their laps. We forgot how to converse. We forgot how to talk. So I'm saying and that that's fine for them, but I'm saying that one of the things I teach is that's one of the keys to success today, if you can just learn to listen. Here's my rule, ask a question, shut up, listen, feedback what they're telling you, and then solve the problem.   Michael Hingson ** 57:12 One of my favorite lessons of all times came from someone who worked with me. We were both in sales, and he told the story of selling some products in Washington, DC, and I don't remember where or whatever, but was something relating to the government. And he was invited to come in and do a presentation, which he did. And he eventually got to the point of saying, as he described it to us, and now it's time for me to ask for the order. And he said, so I made my presentation, and then I asked for the order, and then I shut up and didn't say a word. And the guy I was talking with sat there on the other side of his desk not moving, and my friend John sat on his side of the desk not moving. And they sat that way for about 10 minutes, and then the guy he was talking with said, well, don't you have anything else today to say? And John said, No, I asked you for the order, and there wasn't anything else for me to say. And he got the order because of that. It was a trick that the guy used, but rightly so, and it's wise not to always have to talk. Well,   Danny Creed ** 58:28 it is you'll talk, you know, it's true in sales, it'll talk yourself out of an order. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 58:32 I've seen it happen so many times. You know?   Danny Creed ** 58:35 I actually did that one time and I set for 42 minutes. No one said anything. In fact, my my my client, actually picked up the newspaper and read the newspaper, because the old axiom is, whoever speaks first solutions, you know? So, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. But you know, it just comes back to people, general courtesy. People want to work with people, whether you're a coach or a counselor or a minister or a school teacher. People just don't need to be told anymore. They They want somebody to listen to them, and the world is crying out for people to listen to whether it's a child in school or big time executive. I tell you, I work with a lot of executives, because this isn't the right word, but, but they're lonely. They don't anybody talk to they can't talk to directors, they can't talk to their spouses, they can't talk to their employees, and they don't anybody talk to about business issues. And I gladly will work with them. I'll gladly listen to them and help them make better decisions. I don't have to have all those answers, ask questions and help them make a better decision.   Michael Hingson ** 59:53 That's what a coach does, yep. Which is, tell me about some of the book code. Go ahead. Go ahead. No. So tell me about some of the books you've written, if you would please. I read   Danny Creed ** 1:00:03 a book called A Life best lived, a story of life, death and second chances. That was about the lessons I learned in that process where I was almost died, and it's been very successful, particularly in like prisons, soldiers, veterans coming back and that just need to believe that they can get a second chance and a third chance and everything else, and it's done really well. I have another book called champions. Never make cold calls. It's a I love that title. It's a business, business book that can be applied to anybody who owns any kind of business, whether you're multi level, or you're selling medical supplies or printers or copiers or selling coaching. It's just about how ripe the market is for you to leverage who you know and who they know to get referrals. I created this concept about 40 years ago, the champions concept, and then I put it into a book eight years ago, and, and I've had a white paper on it, but I figured somebody's going to steal it. My idea, gotta put it in a book. And, but it's, it's all I've ever used in 16 years of coaching, 100% of my clients have came from referrals. My whole idea is to create an army of people that will refer me so I, you know, I talked to a guy a while back that a businessman, and I said, So of all the things you do, if you could spend 100% of your time doing it, which would be the number one thing? He said, Well, sales. I said, So how much of your current time do you spend doing that? He says, 20% I said, What do you do with the other 80 and he goes, Well, I got meetings, and I gotta run things, and I gotta pick up the mail. And I go, whoa. So what would it mean to you if we could make 80% of your time selling and 20% your time all that other stuff? He goes, it'll mean millions. Okay, so that's way a lot of people in sales or or most business owners don't know how to sell, but if you're in sales, you need to quit going to networking meetings and quit doing all going to planning meetings and marketing meetings, all that stuff. You need to be out swinging the bat for home runs. So I wanted to figure out, how could I do more of that in less meetings, and I created the champions concept. And the champions is leveraging who I know and then who they know. So that's been, actually, it's still selling after seven years, and it's a great book if you're in any form of selling, even if you're just selling your ideas or trying to ask the boss for a raise, it's just it's helped so many people. I've used it and taught it worldwide. So that's another one. And then I have one called Straight Talk on thriving in business. And then I've done two or three other books that are collaborative books, where I've asked to be with two or three other offers authors and do a book. And those have been fairly successful, but the ones under my name are the the Straight Talk series, and then champions, and then life best lived   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:31 well, and we have pictures of book covers in the show notes. So I hope people will go out and and get some of those books, because clearly there's a lot of neat information here. What do you think are some of the most challenging issues for entrepreneurs and business people, and then people in life today?   Danny Creed ** 1:03:51 Work ethic. Most people don't have a work ethic at all, and that's again, where I draw from the farm. I learned how to work there. I learned how to work on the farm, and a lot of people will work hard for a little while, and then they'll quit, and they'll stop, or they don't, they give up to quit. So I actually teach this to a lot of entrepreneurs things. So you got to have, you got to have a work ethic. Number two, you've gotta understand what success looks like for you, cuz so many people put themselves up against people other people that they're highly successful, but you don't share any of the same standards or anything like that, and everybody's definition is different of success. So you need to understand exactly what what you want and what that looks like, because everybody's debt like, you know, some of I've got friends on the farm that their definition of wealth is much different than some of my people. And Silicon Valley friends, you know their definition of well, but that's okay. I You can't say you're not successful. You're not a wealthy person. If you don't make a half a million a year, you may be very happy and just absolute, living the best life ever, making 50 grand a year, but you got to know what you want out of it. Be satisfied with that so and be happy with that, but know exactly what you're looking for. So have metrics in life. The the third, the third thing is that I always tell people is, learn to sell. I don't care what you're doing, you've got to sell, whether you like it or not. And I used to have people go, Yeah, well, I'm not a salesman. I you know, they had to. Everybody thinks the old thing that if you're in sales, you're like the the old, goofy used car sales, if you're if you're going to do anything, particularly if you're an entrepreneur, or you're trying look, you have to sell from the day you're born, you've got to scream if you want to eat, you've got to scream louder if you want your diapers change, you've got to sell your mom to go out and do things. You've got to sell people to, you know, sell a girl or a guy to go on a date. You have to go sell yourself to get a job. That's right, you have to sell, to earn a living, you've got to sell your ideas to a banker or an investor. Learn how to sell. Get rid of that old crap, out crappy idea of well, you know, I'm the salesman. Yes, you are everybody. You have to   Michael Hingson ** 1:06:33 learn everybody's a salesperson. Yeah, um, phase up. Find   Danny Creed ** 1:06:37 a good course. I mean, but you've got to learn to sell. Because a lot of the people who fail today in business with their entrepreneurial ideas fail because they can't sell their idea. They can't sell. Let's go back about 30 minutes. They can't sell their vision. Yeah, you've got to be able to sell. So again, I stay on pretty much those foundational things. The other thing that I talk about is you gotta have goals. You gotta written goals. And so here's the statistic, 70% of our society has absolutely zero goals. 28% of our society says they have goals, but they're not written. 2% and that's arguable, have written goals, Oxfam, the International Organization for tracking wealth in the world, will just put out a paper that says the 2% of our 2% of the wealth of the world, or 98% of the wealth of world, is held by 2% you know, and, and I choose to believe. And if you talk to some of the great people, like Brian Tracy and such a lot of them will say that's the people who have written goals, you know, again, you've got to have a division. You can't just go, Well, you know, I want to my brother in law's a minister, and he used to tell me one of the biggest issues that he had is getting people to pray clearly, because they will say, there, I pray to be rich. Okay. What does that mean? Yeah. You know, everybody's definition is different. How does God or whoever know what to deliver by saying, I want to I want to be rich, you know, so be very which I guess, could tie into another issue, but you got to be clear on what you're looking for, what you're asking for, and and that's where goals are. Very important to be very clear. Don't say I want to be rich. I want to go to Hawaii. I want to what, how you how? What does that mean to you? And I will, again, Michael, when I work with people, a lot of businesses just have no clarity. Yeah, they have no clarity on what they want. So they're upset, they're frustrated, they're, you know, I I talked to a lot of salespeople. I worked wit

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

Chief marketer behind Lysol, Mucinex and Airwick describes how company is using AI to mine insights, measure media effectiveness and more.

Send us a Text Message.Ever wondered how an artist meticulously sets up 100,000 dominos or why people race around with wooden hobby horses? Join us as we unravel these intriguing stories and more in this jam-packed episode! We kick things off by celebrating National Daiquiri Day and reveal our surprising preference for margaritas over their sugary counterparts. Then, we correct the historical misconceptions about Saint Germain and her tragic story, before sharing our love for London's superior Kit Kats. To top it off, we recount a laugh-out-loud moment involving Lysol and bugs, a testament to our quest for chemical-free cleaning.Next, we venture into the world of unusual hobbies and essential summer tips. You'll be fascinated by the precision needed for a 100,000-domino exhibit in Washington DC and amused by the quirky 11th Annual Hobby Horse Championship in Finland, where competitors show off their skills with wooden steeds. Plus, we offer indispensable advice on sunscreen application to keep your skin safe during those beach outings. If sunscreen has ever left you baffled, we've got you covered with practical tips that will make your summer care routine a breeze.Finally, we take you on a beauty adventure inspired by our recent visit to the Lip Lab. Discover how we created custom lip products and our thoughts on the trending natural, dewy look. We also explore the rising popularity of personal color analysis and the science behind finding your perfect palette. Wrapping up, we share heartfelt stories of community kindness—from a neighbor helping with a broken car window to an unexpected encounter with the original builder of one of our homes. This episode is a delightful mix of humor, practical advice, and touching moments that underscore the importance of connection and support.

On today's episode, Good Leadership CEO, Paul Batz discusses healthy accountability with another one of the Accountability Research Steering Team members. Amy Cook, Global Talent Director with Reckitt, shares her valuable insights on the subject. Most people do not recognize the organization Reckitt by its name but know the organization by way of their product lines such as Lysol and Enfamil. In recent years, the world was faced with two different crises that leaned heavily on some of their products – the Covid-19 pandemic, and the infant formula crisis. In the interview, Amy touches on accountability in crisis, as well as what it looks like when you work for leaders who are good at holding their employees accountable in a healthy way, and how she believes her involvement in the Accountability Research Project has influenced her personal leadership.  

Not sure how to read an ingredient label or where to find healthy alternatives when it comes to beauty products, baby products, snack foods, cleaning products, furniture, or even products like clothing, bedding, mouse pads, and water...? Well today's episode was curated with you in mind. Tune in and learn what small steps you can take to make a big impact on your health. Today's episode is brought to your by Aizome Textiles (where I bought my organic sheets). Use code DEELEY15 to save 15%. Buy Raising Healthy Kids: Protecting Your Children from Hidden Chemical Toxins by David Steinman 5:30: DDT & liver cancer 7:28: What's the catch? (What fish can we safely eat?) 9:01: Stop buying Blue Fish 9:25: Chunk Light is the safest tuna 11:00: PFAS in our drinking water (buy a water filter) 13:07: Food packaging contains PFAS (What are PFAS?) 14:52: More than 50 communities have ethylene oxide plants 15:25: Ethylene oxide causes breast cancer 15:48: Chloroprene used to make neoprene 17:25: Make your own cleaning procuts! (Or buy 'Ashley Approved' Cleaning Products here) 18:05: Facts about toxic carpet 18:40: What Is OEKO-TEX Certification? 19:15: Worried about off gasing furniture? Buy second hand and learn about alternatives from this blog post 20:21: Ecos Soap 20:50: Organic sheets / organic bedding 21:11: Polyvinyl Chloride (a threat to human health) 22:00: Recycled Polyurethane hose on Amazon 22:57: Company which makes hemp backpacks 26:24: Raising Healthy Kids (find out which foods are safe for consumption, including fish!) 26:59: The FDA issues an alert for 6 brands of cinnamon possibly containing lead 27:22: Stop buying Justin's Nut Butter! It contains acrylamide (lawsuit) 28:01: Acrylamide acts like the sex hormones 28:54: Ovarian cancer linked to talc 29:57: What are Phthalates? 31:38: Free Clean Beauty Guide 32:29: Quaternary compounds 32:53: Trimonium / Ammonium toxicity 33:06: Can Hair Relaxers Cause Cancer? 33:52: Lysol contains Ammonium Quaternary (a toxic pesticide and skin irritant) 34:39: Carbaryl toxicity (found in olive oil) 36:25: Microplastics found in brain tissue 37:39: 100% of baked goods (that are not organic) contain an organophosphate pesticide such as malathion 42:59: Chlorella 44:37: Milk thistle for detoxification and liver support 45:18: SaunaSpace / episode 48 45:50: Carlyle supplements 46:52: ⁠Raising Healthy Kids⁠ 48:03: Ethoxylates (ETH ingredients) 49:01: Mouse pads can be toxic when made with neoprene 50:14: 2, 4-D weed killer linked to cancer (don't use it on your lawn!) Where to find David: Raising Healthy Kids book Website Instagram

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

In their recently released earnings report, Reckitt Benckiser Group presented data which suggested a stable financial performance amidst challenging market conditions. CEO Kris Licht emphasized during the earnings call, that from his view, "we are not seeing any wider impact on the equity of our nutrition brands from this litigation." This statement provided clear insight into the company dynamics at the start of 2024, with the company reportedly maintaining its forward momentum despite external pressures.The Group's financial performance was marked by a 1.5% like-for-like net revenue growth, reinforcing its apparent financial steadiness. The company articulated its approach to sustaining competitiveness through innovation as a key driver, with offerings such as products within the Finish line, Lysol laundry sanitizer, Lysol Air Sanitizer, and innovations in intimate wellness including the Durex Invisible. These products were cited as significant contributors to the company's growth. Licht further highlighted the company's strategic adaptability in his remark, "Sometimes we find that we are not competitive enough, and then we will make adjustments. And that's sort of the nature of competition in that space."Analysing the overview provided by Reckitt Benckiser Group, it becomes noticeable that the company has been able to comprehend consumer preferences effectively. Their power brands like Dettol, Lysol, Durex, and Finish have reportedly seen volume growth, indicating consumers' trust in their quality. Furthermore, the company's strategy outlined on the earnings call indicated plans for continued investments to support growth, with a particular focus on OTC franchise, Intimate Wellness, and Finish. Also, the company acknowledged that there will be increased efforts directed towards enhancing the resilience and agility of its supply chain.In consideration of the information provided on the earnings call, Reckitt Benckiser's financial performance in Q1 2024 appears to be characterized by a consistent growth approach and strategic foresight. The company seems to be maintaining a focus on innovation, understanding consumer trends, and implementing strategic initiatives. However, it is essential to note that external factors and market dynamics exert influence on outcomes and so the current positive outlook should be tempered with a degree of caution as the business environment continues to evolve. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theprompt.email

This week we talked to Monty Vega and the Sittin' Shivas! We talk about bringing the gross back to punk, how they write songs, subliminal reading, and we play a new game. Music this week from Monty Vega and the Sittin' Shivas, Drunk Mums, Lysol, The Fauxs, and Heavy Sentence. 

Best of the underground, week of April 2, 2024:Pretty girl train crashes into a mountain. (All podcasts are on www.hlycrp.com, and you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.)  

This week we talked about hamburgers and the Terminator franchise. They also played tunes from Jade Dust, Coffin Pricks, and Lysol! Show Links: Terminator Franchise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminator_(franchise)  Music Links: Jade Dust - https://jadedust.bandcamp.com/  Coffin Pricks - https://coffinpricks.bandcamp.com/  Lysol - https://lysolpunx.bandcamp.com/  Follow us at: https://bio.link/rebelrockradio --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rebelrockradio/support

Jonah gets Tim back with some Lysol. You won't believe what shower curtain was given by Tim's wife Karen for the kids bathroom! And were you ever caught for throwing a party as a teen? Someone did once in their life! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jonah gets Tim back with some Lysol. You won't believe what shower curtain was given by Tim's wife Karen for the kids bathroom! And were you ever caught for throwing a party as a teen? Someone did once in their life! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reckitt Benckiser Group, known for its consistently stable market performance, released its earnings report during their latest earnings call on Thursday, February 29th, 2024. As the CEO, Kris Licht, informed investors, "2024 is a year of confident outlook and we expect our group like-for-like net revenue to grow between 2% to 4%, with mid-single-digit growth for our Health and Hygiene portfolios." It is important to scrutinize and understand the insights garnered from the Group's financial achievements and strategic initiatives, despite the absence of specific case studies related to this earnings call. According to the earnings call, the Group reported a revenue growth rate of 3.5%, surpassing expectations. This growth is attributed mainly to the success of their Health and Hygiene segments. Reckitt Benckiser Group reported that key brands under the Hygiene segment, such as Finish and Lysol, and portfolios under the Health segment including OTC and intimate wellness products, played a significant role in achieving this growth. Key to the Group's success was their recognition and understanding of changing consumer behavior and trends. An increased consumer demand for hygiene-focused products resulted in positive volume trends in the hygiene sector. Simultaneously, the health sector experienced growth in the intimate wellness products department, which mirrors market preferences and represents potential expansion opportunities in future. It was emphasized in the earnings call that the insights gathered about evolving consumer preferences help tailor the Group's product offerings. Going forward, based on the Group's strategic plans described during the earnings call, Reckitt Benckiser aims to focus on product superiority, innovation, and supply chain optimisation. They aim to leverage these strategies to seize new market opportunities and maintain a competitive advantage. The Group also shared plans to implement a fixed cost optimization program, which is expected to facilitate growth while improving the operating profit margin. The commitment to shareholders was also reiterated during the call. Projections of increased cash returns and continued share buyback programmes waved a flag of continued dedication, supported by the Group's financial strength. In conclusion, Reckitt Benckiser Group's earnings call underlines its ongoing financial performance. Anchored by remarkable revenue growth, strategic initiatives, and dedication to shareholder value, Reckitt Benckiser Group holds a strong position in the consumer goods market. The company's future growth and success, however, will heavily depend on its execution of outlined strategies and adaptation to evolving market trends. While optimistic, it's essential to keep in mind that the details provided in this article are based on the claims and statements made by the Reckitt Benckiser Group during this particular earnings call. RB. Company info: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/RB./profile For more PSFK research : www.psfk.com  This email has been published and shared for the purpose of business research and is not intended as investment advice.

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

Today we talk about what you can do now to get your garden beds ready for spring planting, even though you procrastinated til late winter on setting them up. We will also cover Tales From The Prepper Pantry, The Weekly Shopping Report, A Frugality Tip, Operation Independence. From the Weekly Mail. Livestream Schedule https://www.youtube.com/@lftn/streams

Dive into the hilarious dumpster fire of co-habitation comedy with Theresa and special guest Irene Morales on "Exaggerated"!

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!  

Rebecca Whitman Presents How To Go From Overwhelmed To Authority With Beate Chelette 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.com How to Be Balanced, Beautiful and Abundant? For more information go to… https://www.rebeccaelizabethwhitman.com/ Https://linktr.ee/rebeccaewhitman #Debttomultimillionsuccess #BeateChelette #TheGrowthArchitect #TheWomensCode #InspiringJourney #SuccessStory #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessSuccess #Motivation #WomenEmpowerment #Leadership #SmallBusinessOwner #FinancialIndependence #GoalSetter #Achievement #Passion #Hardworkpaysoff #SelfGrowth #PersonalDevelopment #SuccessMindset

Rebecca Whitman Presents How To Go From Overwhelmed To Authority With Beate Chelette 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.com How to Be Balanced, Beautiful and Abundant? For more information go to… https://www.rebeccaelizabethwhitman.com/ Https://linktr.ee/rebeccaewhitman #Debttomultimillionsuccess #BeateChelette #TheGrowthArchitect #TheWomensCode #InspiringJourney #SuccessStory #EntrepreneurLife #BusinessSuccess #Motivation #WomenEmpowerment #Leadership #SmallBusinessOwner #FinancialIndependence #GoalSetter #Achievement #Passion #Hardworkpaysoff #SelfGrowth #PersonalDevelopment #SuccessMindset

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

Bought some stuff from a guy in your parking lot and I do not like it and would like to return it to the man named Lysol. Street justice. Room rebate with parking lot purchase. Buying points out in the … Continue reading →

The forbidden C word. The ‘Vid if you will.. This week the Whine Mamas sit down to relive what it was like for them when the world shut down. Lysol, toilet paper shortages and staying indoors, the year of 2020 was a whirlwind to reflect back on. So grab a glass of the Wine of the Week and let's travel back in time. Wine of the Week: Simi Brightful Chardonnay. Honorable mentions: Gasparilla, Whataburger, LysolInstagram: @whinemamapodcastHosts: @anniegpyle & @j.freyy

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

2GG Podcast: Lysol in Fridge PART 2 by Two Girls and a Guy

2GG Podcast: Lysol in Fridge PART 1 by Two Girls and a Guy

Navigating the challenges of unifying messaging and adopting data-driven marketing processes is especially complex for large enterprises. Reckitt, the parent company behind renowned brands like Lysol, Clearasil, Woolite, and Enfamil, confronted these obstacles when recognizing the need to shift from traditional to digital marketing practices. In this episode of Content Disrupted, Sameer Amin, Reckitt's Global Director of Data-Driven Marketing and Media, offers a behind-the-scenes look at the brand's digital marketing strategy, emphasizing how it integrates products, purpose, people, and methods. In the process, he shares best practices for rallying teams and stakeholders around an enterprise-wide digital transformation initiative.

REFLECTION: Think about control. We control the smells in our homes with incense and plugins. We control bacteria with Lysol. We try to control viruses with vitamin C. We control our babies. We'll burp, we'll reprimand with pinches. When you're at church you get pinched or you get the side-eye from the choir stand. We are good at controlling because we know the past and we're responsibly fearful of the future. When we thought about self-control and knowing that control has been our superpower, from binding our bellies up to our hair to everything we know, controlling our femininity so that people don't attack us. We know how to control. When we are trying to control the world around us, it's like a mightiness. It is a tightness, and when you do it for long enough, it is exhausting.    Self-control is knowing now that you have everything in your power because you are divinely connected.    Because all you have is right now. It is not the fear of the past. It is not the anticipation or fear of the future, but it is the power of right now that you can choose every moment of your life to get more and more awake or to fall deeper and deeper asleep. We are here. God has not given us the spirit of fear. Self-control is fearlessness. It is knowing that I have a constant choice every morning. Self-control is the mechanism by which we employ all of the other Fruits of the Spirit.      PRAYER: Eternal, all-wise, all-knowing, loving, matchless, creator, God Lord almighty, you are wonderful. You are loving. You are the beginning, the end, the Alpha, the Omega. You are our everything, Lord God and we love you. We love you Lord, and we lift up our hands to worship you, oh Lord, for our heart longs to be closer and closer to you.    You ask us to bring our prayers and petitions to you so we can tell you right now to give us the power that we need, to give us the love that we need, and to give us the self-control and self-discipline that we need to move and do the work that you have called for us to do.    We ask, oh Lord, that you continue to hide this work within our hearts so that we can continue to be strengthened to move closer to you, so that in those moments where we lack control of our minds, of our bodies, of our thoughts, we can automatically be brought closer to you so that the control we seek you take over for us. Lord God, it's all about your power, your power that gives us courage to do all that you called us to do.    Amen.  "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies." 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

JB, my youngest son, fell over a Lysol can in the living room and is currently on crutches. I promise I didn't make this up. More details are coming on today's show, but If you're not following me on social media you need to do so for no other reason than to see the cuteness of him navigating crutches (unsuccessfully).    Today we're kicking off a series on trusting God and letting go of our metaphorical crutches in order to hand our deepest struggles over to the Lord. Psalm 20:7 is one of my favorite verses on trust and it says, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.”    It's doubtful you're included to put your trust in chariots and horses, but those blanks are likely filled in with things like financial stability, a spouse's approval, recognition, achievement, or a number of other things.   Let's take a few months to consider how we can very practically learn to trust God in the areas where we are inclined to use the crutches of worry, addiction, approval, etc.    Here's a little preview of where we're heading the next few months:    To kick-off this series, we have none other than the amazing Max Lucado joining us today. We're talking about trusting God with our failures because  God Never Gives Up On You, despite the shortcomings and fall flat on your face moments that inevitably happen.    Take a minute to listen to Pastor Max today, and then share this with a friend as we kick-off our new fall series!   God Never Gives Up On You by Max Lucado How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth by Gordon Fee    

[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.

With so many choices out there, which probiotic should be on all of our radars? Co-Founder and CEO of Just Thrive Health, Tina Anderson, explains the latest game-changer in gut health - the HU36 bacillus indicus strain, how better gut health can improve your emotional wellbeing, the difference between active and activated probiotics, and why she is so passionate about helping people improve their gut-brain connection for greater health. In this episode, you will learn all about the latest breakthrough research on the superior probiotic from the renowned researcher, Dr. Simon Cutting: the HU36 bacillus indicus strain.  "The really cool thing about HU36 bacillus indicus is that it actually produces carotenoids and antioxidants in the gut exactly where they need to be absorbed. We have had such great success with helping support leaky gut syndrome because these antioxidants that are produced by HU36 combat that oxidative stress on the gut lining. It really is a unique strain, so effective, and truly what's making it stand out from a lot of the other ones out there." - Tina Anderson The Ultimate Metabolism Kit Save 20% with code "WELLNESSFORCE" on everyone's favorite Superfoods brand, ORGANIFI, including their Ultimate Metabolism Kit, Sunrise to Sunset Bundle + their Women's Power Stack that includes HARMONY + GLOW for true hormonal balance and great health radiating through your beautiful skin. Click HERE to order your Organifi today. Are You Stressed Out Lately? Take a deep breath with the M21™ wellness guide: a simple yet powerful 21 minute morning system that melts stress and gives you more energy through 6 science-backed practices and breathwork. Click HERE to download for free. Optimize Your Brain's FunctionWith the only clinical-grade NAD+ brain supplement used by physicians to improve: NADOVIM NAD+ and Save 20% with code "JOSH20" Nadovim NAD+ is a nootropic (brain enhancing) clinical-grade formula designed by renowned physician Thomas K. Szulc to promote focus, concentration, and improved cognitive functioning. Optimize your most important organ (your brain) with a jitter-free and natural source of energy to keep you in the zone. *Review The Wellness + Wisdom Podcast & WIN $150 in wellness prizes! *Join The Facebook Group   20% Off Just Thrive Probiotics Get 20% off your Just Thrive Health order with the code "JOSH"  Why Just Thrive? There are hundreds of brands of probiotics on the market, but as you've probably already discovered, they are not all equal. Just Thrive® is the first 100% spore-forming probiotic and antioxidant supplement that arrives 100% alive to your intestines that's available in the retail market. Just Thrive® contains a patented strain called Bacillus Indicus HU36® – bacillus strains are abundant environmental organisms that are a normal part of the human microflora. This strain, Bacillus Indicus HU36®, produces antioxidants/ carotenoids (the nutrients that give red peppers and tomatoes their color) in your intestines where they can be best absorbed by the body, making it one of the most absorbable forms of antioxidants on the market. These spores have been successfully used to enhance digestive health for more than 50 years! Summer Flash Sale | August 21-23, 2023! 30% off UT123 + Immunity Plus with promo code: "PLUS30"   Listen To Episode 360 As Tina Anderson Uncovers: [1:30] A New Career Path In Health & Wellness Tina Anderson Just Thrive Health - 20% OFF with "JOSH" Her calling to change her life from being an attorney to family pharmaceuticals to launching Just Thrive. The experience she and her husband had working in the pharmaceutical industry and how they went from feeling great about it to realizing how abusive it actually was and still is today. Norman Vincent Peale Wayne Dyer 129 Gretchen Rubin How she and her husband came to founding the company and why the timing couldn't have been better for them. The encouragement she gives to others to follow their dreams and pursue what they want to do with their lives and make a career change if they want to change paths. Why there is a place for pharmaceuticals when it comes to saving lives and emergencies but it's not a place for chronic conditions that can be addressed by treating the root cause.   [15:30] What Are Better - Dormant or Active Probiotic Strains? Myths and truths about probiotics that inhibit people from actually knowing what probiotics are and what they can do for them. What people should do and look out for when considering taking a new supplement. Steps Just Thrive is doing to raise the bar and set themselves apart from other pharmaceutical companies. Dr. Simon M. Cutting  Why they didn't have to change their supplement formula with the strain too many times before they brought it to the market. What makes their specific bacillus strain so unique and beneficial for our gut health. Breaking down the bacillus strain and others you find in probiotic products. The difference between dormant and active bacteria strains plus the main issue with taking active probiotics. Natural bacteria strains we can come into contact with via the soil and environment compared to the ones from natural, vaginal childbirth and how long they actually last in our system. Weston A. Price Foundation 321 Sally Fallon Morell & Hilda Labrada Gore Wise Traditions Podcast Episode 240 | Breathwork For Stress Relief with Josh Trent The fact that the healthiest children in the world are the ones that grow up playing outside and in the dirt. [26:00] How Just Thrive Is Helping Heal Mental & Physical Health How Just Thrive's probiotic products have helped people including autistic children. Why severe gut dysbiosis is very common in children who are on the spectrum. AutismOne How probiotics can help boost our energy,  sleep better, and improve how the body functions and help us live our healthiest lives. Why companies are still selling refrigerated, live probiotics if dormant probiotics are better for us. The NIH Human Microbiome Project The profound yet very little amount of science we actually know about gut health in 2020 but how all of that is changing as we research more and more on the topic. The research on how dead bacteria can help give us some relief when we come into contact with it. Breaking down how their products work in synergy and they have changed since launching Just Thrive. Their mission to only bring to the market products that are missing and needed to aide the population's health. The common problem with many prebiotics not being able to distinguish between feeding the good and the bad bacteria plus how they've designed theirs to only target the good bacteria. Precision PREbiotic – Just Thrive Why she's so excited about their new product, Ultimate IgG, that has been designed for immune health and especially for HIV patients. Ultimate IgG – Just Thrive [35:30] Signs You Have A Leaky Gut 223 Dr. Michael Ruscio Healthy Gut, Healthy You by Dr. Michael Ruscio The importance of focusing on optimizing your gut health by boosting the immune system especially during COVID-19. Unpacking the incredible fact that 70-75% of American has leaky gut syndrome. Signs you have a leaky gut and why you should assume that you need to take care of your stomach better. Groundbreaking Study on Healing Leaky Gut With the Strains Used in Just Thrive Probiotic (VIDEO) WholeFoods Magazine: Groundbreaking Probiotic Study on Leaky Gut Breaking down what an LPS toxin is that can leak into the gut and why it's so important to prevent them from seeping into the gut and further into the bloodstream. The study that came out showing that the number one driver of Alzheimer's are LPS toxins in the bloodstream. What Just Thrive's supplements are supporting at the very root of disease and inflammation in the body. The fact that we have 10x more bacterial cells than human cells yet live in such an anti-microbial world with all of these antibiotics, glyphosate, stress, sugar, alcohol, and other toxins. Just Thrive's Probiotics Survivability Test Exploring the extensive research Just Thrive has done on their products to tests their probiotics ability to survive, the positive impact on the gut, and how it increases the gut bacteria's diversity. [46:00] Healing The Garden That Is Your Natural Body How we can tend to and nurture our body with tools such as diet, sleep, movement, and supplements to help it grow naturally instead of stomp on it with harmful ingredients and chemicals. 345 Dr. Zach Bush 353 Dr. Ben Lynch How overcleaning with Lysol, hand sanitizers, and other household products with chemicals are weakening our health and increasing symptoms of asthma, allergies, and other autoimmune dysfunctions in children. Why hand sanitizers and social distancing aren't helping us as they weaken our natural immune system and there will always be viruses in our world. The power of gratitude through greater awareness and her favorite practice for it. How her rich relationship with her aunt impacted her while she was alive and then again after she passed away. The most difficult obstacle she and her team have faced during their progress and how they gained momentum moving forward. Why she doesn't see other probiotic and supplement companies as their competitors but they do with Big Pharma. [52:00] Why The HU36 Bacillus Indicus Strain Is A Game Changer The authentic truth behind the phrase, "Your vibe attracts your tribe." Just Thrive's entire team's mission to provide customers with the very best product and guidance they can give to people on their wellness journeys. Further exploring the HU36 bacillus indicus strain and the specifics about it. What their team has found out about the HU36 bacillus indicus strain and all of its benefits for the human gut. The third-party lab studies that have going on to ensure that their product is always what it says it is on the label. Why it's so important that probiotics are alive in your gut; not in the refrigerator and why that's so important when looking for a quality product. What wellness means to her as a combination of physical and mental peace. BREATHE M21 Wellness Guide Wellness + Wisdom Community Leave Wellness + Wisdom a Review on Apple Podcasts Power Quotes From The Show Good Health Begins In The Gut "Good health begins in the gut and I cannot emphasize that enough; I mean we are 10x more bacteria than we are human and it's hard to find any disease that's not associated with a dysbiotic gut. Most people will think about gut health if you have diarrhea, constipation, or other gastrointestinal issues but they don't think about it when it comes to weight management, mental health, heart disease, or diabetes. Those things are all related to an imbalance in your gut." - Tina Anderson Refrigerated Or Shelved Probiotics? "We have to remember it's important that your organisms are alive in your gut, not in the refrigerator. The key is that these strains are actually creating diversity in the microbiome which really equals health. Our strains 100% survive the pathway from the mouth to the intestines and a gut model study showed that after 2.5 weeks, there was a 30% favorable shift in the gut. What the spores do in our products is rebalance and recondition the gut by attaching to the intestinal cell wall and then pull out the pathogenic bacteria and bring the gut back to life." - Tina Anderson What Destroys Our Gut Bacteria Every Day? "Our whole body is made up of bacterial microorganisms; that is who we are as biological individuals yet we live in such an antimicrobial world. We're living in this world of antibiotics, with glyphosate in our food supply, and with all of this stress, sugar, and alcohol that wreak such havoc on our gut. We have to start removing those things but how are we going to do that? Even when we eat the cleanest of things, organic food, we're still getting glyphosate in there. We're destroying our gut bacteria every single day and people occasionally need to take a probiotic. The gut is like a garden and a probiotic like HU36 bacillus indicus removes the weeds, reconditions the environment, creates diversity, and brings the good bacteria back to life." - Tina Anderson   Links From Today's Show  Ultimate IgG – Just Thrive - 20% OFF with "JOSH" The importance of Probiotic Strain "HU36": Antioxidant Protection for Your Eyes, Heart, Skin & More Precision PREbiotic – Just Thrive Just Thrive's Story Norman Vincent Peale Wayne Dyer 129 Gretchen Rubin Dr. Simon M. Cutting  Weston A. Price Foundation 321 Sally Fallon Morell & Hilda Labrada Gore Wise Traditions Podcast Episode 240 | Breathwork For Stress Relief with Josh Trent AutismOne The NIH Human Microbiome Project 223 Dr. Michael Ruscio Healthy Gut, Healthy You by Dr. Michael Ruscio Groundbreaking Study on Healing Leaky Gut With the Strains Used in Just Thrive Probiotic (VIDEO) WholeFoods Magazine: Groundbreaking Probiotic Study on Leaky Gut Just Thrive's Probiotics Survivability Test 345 Dr. Zach Bush 353 Dr. Ben Lynch E-23 Trust (And Take Care Of) Your Gut with Tina Anderson “5 things I wish someone told me before I became a CEO” with Tina Anderson CEO of Just Thrive Bugging Out: Myth-busting Probiotics & Healing Your Gut Biome Wellness Mama Podcast: 244: Debunking Probiotic Myths With Just Thrive Founder Tina Anderson Bulletproof Radio | Armor-Plated Immortal Probiotics from Space – Just Thrive Health – #629 Josh's Trusted Products | Up To 40% Off Shop All Products BREATHE - 20% off with the code “PODCAST20” Organifi –20% off with the code ‘WELLNESSFORCE' BON CHARGE - 15% off with the code "JOSH15" MANNA Vitality - 20% off with the code "JOSH20" Mendi.io - 20% off with the code "JOSH20" SpectraSculpt - 15% off with the code "JOSH15" SaunaSpace - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" Cured Nutrition CBD - 20% off with the code "WELLNESS FORCE" PLUNGE - $150 off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE" LiftMode - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" HVMN Ketone-IQ - 20% off with the code "JOSH" MitoZen – 10% off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE” Paleovalley – 15% off with the link only NOOTOPIA - 10% off with the code "JOSH10" Activation Products - 20% off with the code “WELLNESSFORCE” SENSATE - $25 off with the code "JOSH25" ION - 15% off with the code ‘JOSH1KS' Feel Free from Botanic Tonics - $40 off with the code "WELLNESS40" Essential Oil Wizardry - 10% off with the code "WELLNESSFORCE" ALIVE WATERS - 33% off your first order with the code "JOSH33" DRY FARM WINES - Get an extra bottle of Pure Natural Wine with your order for just 1¢ Drink LMNT – Zero Sugar Hydration: Get your free LMNT Sample Pack, with any purchase Free Resources M21 Wellness Guide - Free 3-Week Breathwork Program with Josh Trent Join Wellness + Wisdom Community About Tina Anderson Tina Anderson worked in the pharmaceutical field for 15 years. Together with their family, they had built thriving careers. But, while successful, their careers were not feeding their passion of natural health and well-being. Just Thrive Co-founder and CEO is available to talk about following your passion (she left a career as an attorney in the pharmaceutical industry to launch Just Thrive), living with gratitude, and the critical importance of gut health and immune support. Tina Anderson Just Thrive Health Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube