Podcasts about Northeast Georgia

In this episode of Atlanta Business Radio, Lee Kantor interviews Terry Knox, Senior Human Resources Manager at Uline. Terry discusses Uline’s 1.5-million-square-foot warehouse in Braselton, Georgia, highlighting the company’s 26-year presence in the community. He emphasizes Uline’s community involvement through educational partnerships and charitable initiatives. As a family-owned business, Uline offers competitive benefits including profit […]

Jon Herold sits down with Brian Tyson of Luv Litters for a surprisingly fascinating deep dive into one of the more unique Badlands sponsors. What do poultry litter, a retired Army colonel, and southern yellow pine have in common? The origin story of a cat litter company that's been running since 1994. Brian walks Jon through how his father's failed poultry integration business accidentally turned into a feed mill operation, which accidentally turned into wood pellet cat litter, which turns out to neutralize cat urine odor thanks to the natural chemistry of southern yellow pine. Brian also shares life on his Northeast Georgia farm with 300 head of cattle, four chicken houses, and a son finishing his freshman year at UGA who may one day take the whole thing over. Low key, genuine, and genuinely interesting. If you have a cat and a litter box you dread walking past, this one's for you.

What happens when you finally stop carrying the weight of your past? In this conversation, I sit down with Stephanie Maley, a pediatric nurse turned author, who shares her journey through childhood trauma, healing, and writing her memoir. You will hear how she moved through abuse, anger, and burnout, and how the writing process became a path to freedom. Stephanie opens up about motherhood, resilience, and finding purpose through storytelling and advocacy. I believe you will find this episode powerful if you are working through your own challenges or searching for a way forward. Highlights: 00:10 Learn how Stephanie's early life shaped her resilience and mindset03:44 Discover why she chose pediatric nursing and what drew her to children06:15 Hear how a traumatic first nursing experience nearly made her quit20:50 Learn what led her to finally write and share her story25:10 Understand how writing became a powerful tool for healing52:38 Discover how COVID gave her the space to step into creativity and purpose Bottom of Form About the Guest: A native of Chattanooga, Stephanie L. Maley grew up surrounded by mountains, rivers, and lakes. She developed a love of nature and water there. After obtaining her BSN from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, she was a pediatric nurse. She met her husband, Mike, who was a pediatric resident, at T.C. Thompson Children's Hospital. They met, dated, and married within five months. After he finished his residency, they moved to a rural town in Northeast Georgia and bought a small lake house. They raised their two sons there and Stephanie home educated them. During that time, she helped to start a YMCA in the area and volunteered for almost fifteen years. After attending photography school at North Georgia Technical College, she became a professional photographer and started her photography business in 2010 (www.lov2shoot.com). Stephanie was also an adjunct professor of photography. Since Stephanie was a young woman, she wanted to write a book. In 2018, the #metoo movement spoke to her. Stephanie had been sexually abused and groomed by two men in her elementary and teenage years. When Covid-19 hit, time allowed her to write her memoir, No Longer That Girl: Retracing the Scars of the Past and Present. It was published November 4, 2025, by She Writes Press. Simon and Schuster are the distributor. Her book can be found at Simon & Schuster, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere books are sold online. You can also order directly on her website (stephmaley.com). Stephanie and Mike live in their dream home on Lake Hartwell. In the summer, she can be found swimming, driving her boat, paddleboarding, and kayaking. She loves to take walks year-round and has seen foxes, a bobcat, and lots of deer.  Ways to connect with Stephanie: Website                       www.stephmaley.com Instagram                    @lov2write FB                               https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61565579387255 LinkedIn                     https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephswritings/ Threads                       https://www.threads.com/@stephlmaley 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  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe Welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. I'm your host. Michael hingson, speaker, author and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head on and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear, together, we focus on mindset resilience and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, Greetings, everyone. We're glad you're with us again. You are listening to, if you didn't notice on your screen or whatever unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're with us. Another podcast episode today, and today, we're getting the opportunity to converse with Stephanie Maley, who lives in Georgia. She's had kind of an interesting career in a variety of different ways, but among other things, and one of the things that attracted me to invite her to come on the podcast is She's a relatively new author. Book was published just a few months ago, and we will, we will talk about that, I am sure, along with all the other things that that she's doing, and she has introduced us to a couple of other people who we hope will be on the podcast fairly soon. One is her goddaughter, who is in the Paralympics, and is going to be in the Paralympics here in the California area in a couple of years, because I don't think that all the water in the California area will evaporate by then, so she's a swimmer, among other things. Yeah, I know. Isn't that fun anyway. Stephanie, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Stephanie Maley  02:11 Oh gosh, thank you for having me. I I've read your books, and you know since we first talked, and I'm just really excited to be here. You're well, Michael Hingson  02:25 we're excited to have you. Well, thank you. Well, let's start, as I love to do, tell us kind of about the early Stephanie, growing up, and all that around Chattanooga in your case, so you never had dreams of going back to Chattanooga, huh? You're fine in Georgia. Stephanie Maley  02:43 Yeah, we really are. We okay? So, so I'll start at the beginning. So, yeah, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and my birth father abandoned us right away. I was three months old, and my brother was two, and my daughter, my dad had just finished his residency, and so unfortunately, he had an affair, and he took her from radiology, and then they went on up to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And so my mom had two children. My brother was two years older, and was a two year old, and I was three months old, and then eventually my mom remarried, and I guess the significant time of childhood my my stepfather raised us until I was about 15, and then they got divorced, and I played sports. I had a lot of anger and and I had sexual abuse in second grade, and then I had two men who groomed me and my teenage years. So I had a lot of anger, and I applied that to sports. I played fast pitch softball, and I was a catcher for probably 13 years, and then I played volleyball and basketball at school, so yeah, and then I went into I wanted to be a doctor, not probably full heartedly, and I didn't get into The college that I wanted to in Suwannee, Tennessee, and so I went into nursing school at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and became a pediatric nurse in the hospital. Michael Hingson  04:32 Now, why Pediatric Nursing? Stephanie Maley  04:34 Specifically, I really love children. Always I just, I just love kids, and as a matter of fact, I almost didn't even continue because as a graduate nurse, I ended up being a camp nurse up in Suwannee, about an hour away from Chattanooga, and I had it. Everything go wrong. I mean, I thought it was going to get to study from my boards play with kids, it looked good on the resume. And unfortunately, like I said, everything went wrong, even to a death of a 12 year old. And I was responsible for, you know, everybody's health and but I had to hospital a child the first week I had everything from a torn cornea to dog bites to burns it, you know, two. I had to get two off of the campus for surgery. One had a grand mal seizure for the first time, and another one had an attendance that was about to rupture, and I got them off. So it was a very weird experience. And after the child who died was on a hike, and there was a waterfall, and he was at the back of the group, and ended up climbing up, barefooted, up this like embankment, and then he slipped and fell 60 feet. And I had three there were three counselors there, and one was a paramedic, and another one was a an EMT. And then I had sent them with kits, first aid kits, because this is back before cell phones or anything like that, and it was just horrible. And he had his brain was like an egg that had been broken. Part, just terrible. And I thought, good grief. I thought this was going to be easy. Would study, you know, and then go into nursing. And so I kind of started off a very rough way into my practice. Michael Hingson  06:50 Talk about baptism by fire, huh? Yeah, definitely. So what made you decide to stick with it? Because you obviously did, because you became a nurse, a pediatric nurse. I did. Stephanie Maley  07:04 I well. One of one of my instructors had really schooled me on, let's, let's get you published when you do this camp nursing. So research anything you can, and I want you to get published. So she was very aware of where I was, and after the accident, she recognized that was my camp, and so she called me at camp, and I was just a blubbering mess. I mean, we had Grief counselors were flown in, the bishops, I'm an Episcopalian. Bishops came to be there and this whole thing. And she calls and she says, Listen, I heard that was your camp, and that that child who died, and I want you to get on the horse, and I've got you a job. And this infant is really special. She's having her second liver transplant, and she's 12 months old, and she's in Pittsburgh, but she's going to be taken care of in Chattanooga. And so we want you, instead of keeping her intensive care unit, we're going to single nurse her in a room, you know, until she's able to go home, because she has an eight year old's liver in her 12 month old body, which means it's not covered. You know, her skin hasn't covered. It's gonna be a lot of wound care. She has a trach and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, I mean, I was just crying the whole conversation, like, No way, I can't do that. I can't do that, you know, so I did, and I think I had those people who really supported me to do that, and the parents were fantastic, and I ended up working for about five and a half years there, and then my husband and I met and married and then moved because he had an agreement with his medical school at Mercer to work in a rural area for four or five years, and to where we live reminds me of Chattanooga. It has mountains, rivers, lakes, you know, but it's very small. So I did stick with it, but then I did burn out. I ended up being with a lot of children who had cystic fibrosis, and they wanted me with them when they died and so. So it was a candle that burned out pretty quickly, within about six years, I I just knew I was done. Michael Hingson  09:44 So what did you do after that? Stephanie Maley  09:47 Well, it turns out I got pregnant. All right, that's a start. Yes, I was actually working as a pediatric nurse. It was my husband's a pediatrician and. And we have a hospital where we live. But I didn't want to be known as Mrs. Dr maylie. And so I wanted to, I started working about 45 miles away, and it was a great experience, I have to say that. But I when I got pregnant, getting up at 430 just getting down there by six or 630 I was exhausted, so So then I became a full time mom. So, yeah, go ahead. Michael Hingson  10:34 What did you learn from all your nursing and so on with all the trauma and other things that were going on in the world for you, what did you learn that helped you to be a parent? Stephanie Maley  10:47 I think an understanding of, well, definitely an understanding of children, of healthy and non healthy children. And I think patience, there was a lot of, you know, a lot of that our older son, my first child, I knew there was some things a little different with him, and I think it, my nursing kind of prepared me in a way that I might not have been. I might have kind of like, what? What does this mean he won't participate, or he won't cooperate, you know? And when he was about three, and I think my nursing experience just gave me the patience and the fortitude to end up actually home educating him, and then even our second son. Michael Hingson  11:40 So they they did all their their educating at home. Stephanie Maley  11:45 Yes, they did. I because again, I saw something different about my older son, and I thought if he goes into the school system, they're not going to enjoy him. Enjoy it. And I didn't have words for it, but it just made sense. And we had about 100 families here who were home educating at the time. So we did science, Olympiad, spelling bees, geography bees, chess clubs, pe you know, all of that. And then I kept some other boys for a friend of mine when she worked once a week. So I had five boys every Thursday. So socialization wasn't an issue. Michael Hingson  12:22 So your son was different, but how so? Or what was the real difference? Or was there one? Stephanie Maley  12:31 Well, he just he again, was very if he was interested in the subject, he was great. But if he wasn't, it's like pulling your teeth out, and he just wouldn't, like, we had a playgroup at our church for three year olds, and that's where I first saw a difference, because again, he was just three, just the age of when you start kind of playing with other kids, and he would not do what we were trying to have the kids do like there was he was not going to do it like we had them gather nature like little things outside and put on a table, man that put paper over it and do a rubbing, and he was in the window sill with a car, and there was no way he was going To get over there, so he didn't participate or cooperate very well. Those were the two main things, but he had some other, you know, just some quirkiness, and, and, and it just made me think this was the right decision. Michael Hingson  13:37 Was there any kind of a medical diagnosis for any of that with him, or just he was the way he was. Stephanie Maley  13:44 He definitely was the way he was, and he we, we treated him like he had, add inattentive, not hyper, but just inattentive, you know. And my husband has that as well. So that's really what we kind of thought was going on with him well. Michael Hingson  14:09 And you know, everyone's different anyway. And the fact is that you learned through nursing and so on, how to be patient with that, which is probably a good thing, because you may very well not have had that perception if you hadn't gone through, yeah, the nursing and the other things that you went through, yeah, yeah, which is, which is pretty important to to be able to do. How about your your other son, your younger son? Stephanie Maley  14:37 Well, he was the other, other way around. He was a sponge. And one day, when I was well, we were having breakfast, and I had been teaching my older son at five how to read. Well, the three year old started reading and decoding the cereal box, and I'm like, what? And so I had him. In my lap, and I had some very basic books, and he he read them all. He was double learning everything, like what his brother was like. He my younger son has always loved Japan, and interestingly enough, he is engaged to a Japanese woman who lives in Osaka, and he lives in Hawaii for the past now, almost six years. So the younger son was the one speaking Japanese around the headless what? Michael Hingson  15:32 What took him to Hawaii. Stephanie Maley  15:36 He, you know, he really doesn't like cold weather, okay? He during covid, he decided that he wanted to go to Hawaii, see if he could make it work there, and if not, he would have a neat vacation, and then maybe he would go to California. He just really the temperature and the weather, and he's always been like that, just kind of sensitive to those kinds of things, and he made it work. I mean, it's expensive, and he had worked hard to be able to stay there, and it's just been amazing. He serves, he hikes, he has so many good friends, and he will not come back to see us. So we have to go to him, you know, but it's worth it. Michael Hingson  16:26 So what kind of work does he do? Stephanie Maley  16:29 He is a salesman. Now, he was, he started out in security, but he he is a salesman for a Polynesian fiber optic company that is, you know, for people's Wi Fi and that type of thing. So he believes in it, and he is really good as salesman's and he's become a manager. And I know you were a salesman, as I was reading your books, I was like, Yeah, John, Shawn, you know, my older son has that as well. You know, just those that trait. And you know, what is that person interested in? What are they missing? And how can I help? Help? Yeah, yeah. With this product, Michael Hingson  17:14 it's interesting though, that your younger son has a fiance who doesn't live anywhere near him. She lives in Osaka. That's quite a distance. It is. This is Stephanie Maley  17:24 the older son. And yeah, he's Oh, the older son. Yeah, they're working on their k1 visa. The plan is she's going to move to Hawaii, and when her parents get older, they'll move to Japan. Okay, so I've been learning Japanese in our Of course, oldest son has been in Japanese Japan many times, but he's trying to learn the language. She speaks English just, you know, slow, yeah, Michael Hingson  17:55 well, it's okay, yeah. And you get to be bilingual if you work at it, Stephanie Maley  18:01 I'm trying. I've been trying to do port. I've been learning Portuguese for five or six years. So then try legal. Well, we'll see. Yeah, if you were to have a conversation with me, I'd be like, wait a minute, slow, you know? Michael Hingson  18:18 Yeah, I took Japanese for a year in graduate school, and enjoyed it. And one of the things that I did to practice being a ham radio operator. I had a really good communications receiver, and oftentimes tuned into radio Japan and worked to understand at least a little bit, and eventually, a fair amount of what they were saying because they were speaking in Japanese, which is what I wanted. I didn't want the English version of it, and right, it was fun. I don't remember a lot of Japanese today, and I've been to Japan twice, let's see, TWICE, TWICE. But I I've enjoyed it and and had a lot of fun doing it. So it worked out well, and thundered. Second time was thunder dog was published in Japanese, and I went over and spent two, almost three weeks with the Japanese publisher of thunder dog. So that was kind of fun. Stephanie Maley  19:21 I read that. I was like, Oh my gosh, that's amazing. We have not been to Japan. We will end up probably we need teleporting to be a thing, yeah? Well, let's just get that out catching Michael Hingson  19:35 rod and, well, he's not alive anymore. Get on, yeah, yeah. But get somebody to develop the transporter. That would be good. Stephanie Maley  19:41 That would be awesome, yeah. Michael Hingson  19:45 So, anyway, so, so where is your older son these days? Stephanie Maley  19:52 Well, well, he's, he's the one in Hawaii. He's in Hawaii, yeah, the younger son is in Atlanta, so he's not too far from us. Okay? See, we get to spend time with he and his friends, and, you know, that's really nice. So he works at Emory, yeah, at the computer science department, kind of like, he's like, in the role of an accountant for all the professors and post grad students. Michael Hingson  20:20 So your but your older son again, dating a woman from Osaka that's kind of long distance. It's good. We have computers that allow for better communications these days, I bet. Stephanie Maley  20:31 Oh, it does. And they talk, you know, we have WhatsApp, and they talk, I think, every day. And he goes there as often as he can afford it. And, you know, and she and her family were just there in December visiting him. So, yeah, it's pretty cool. Very proud of them. Michael Hingson  20:50 Good for them. That's, that's pretty cool. So how old is your older son? Stephanie Maley  20:57 He is 32 okay, yeah, and the younger one is 30, all right. Michael Hingson  21:03 Well, it's been a while, that's pretty cool. Well, I'm glad that that it's working out well for them. And so what do you do with your Well, I know some of what you do with yourself, so let me, let me go about it this way, you've written a book. What made you finally decide that it was time to write a book, write a memoir or whatever, right? Stephanie Maley  21:29 Well, that's a good question. It really things started opening up for me internally when the ME TOO movement came out carry other women who'd gone through similar things or works, it just made it that shame kind of that door kind of open, saying, Okay, you might not need to carry this anymore. And so what I ended up doing is writing more of a bio, autobiography, and just telling and just getting it down. My professional editor at the time, Laura Munson, said, Listen, if you do that, you're going to write two different books. If you write the autobiography, and then you you're going to write a memoir. You know you're going to be writing two books, why don't you just do the memoir? And I said, I just have to get this down. I really need to just I've never really gotten my husband knew, but I really never shared any of it with anybody. And so I wrote it down, and then covid came, and I had just written again, the autobiography, and then covid hit, and that really changed my life. I hated it, for all the people who got sick with it, and, you know, it was terrible, and I knew people who died, but for me, it, it put me in a place where that creativity could come out, and that's when I then I had the time, and so I started the memoir and the and the reason I even did that was because I really hadn't, like tried to talk or confront my predators. And I know there was probably other women who had to go through what I went through. And I thought, well, then I'll write this memoir. I'd rather just be in my little office here in Northeast Georgia and not have to do anything else but send it out. But if I really want to reach as many people as possible, I knew I had to do it right. Instead of memoir, it was about a seven to eight year process. Michael Hingson  23:46 Well, so what is the difference between a memoir and an autobiography? Stephanie Maley  23:53 Well, an autobiography, you are telling, you're you're just telling everything, and you're not like showing, creating, like the movie in your head. I love the way you know it, because that's what I want. I want it to be a movie you can smell, taste, feel, you know, the whole whole thing in when you're when you're showing, but if you're telling, it's like, it's, it's very boring, and there's, you're not going to be invested in that, you know what? I mean, you're not going to be like feeling you're like, you're there, like you're with that protagonist. You just kind of be sitting back and saying, Oh, I see what that person sees. But in the showing, you're going to be right in the thick of it, as if you were at a movie. Michael Hingson  24:45 So your book no longer that girl is more of a memoir. Stephanie Maley  24:50 It is. It is a memo, okay? Yeah, it is. I talk about the past in a couple of chapters, and then I have a great life. I have a beautiful life today, and so I bring in the present as well, and then just talk about what it took for me to get to where I am today, you know, and and what the process was for me doesn't mean it's going to work for anybody else, but this is what this is what worked for me, and this is how I got to be where I am, and this is what happened to me as well. Michael Hingson  25:26 So it sounds like you've definitely dealt with and and gotten rid of a lot of the anger and other things that you were facing, the demons that you were facing before. Stephanie Maley  25:37 Yes, definitely. Michael Hingson  25:41 So writing certainly had to be kind of cathartic and helping to make that happen, I would assume, yes, I mean, and Stephanie Maley  25:48 you've done that yourself, I didn't expect that, but you're exactly right. I and also had a line editor who lives in tokoa and came from a magazine background, and I knew him, you know, but we were more acquaintances. So whenever he would go through my manuscript and the chapters, each chapter, when it got to be those, those really hard parts, that's when I would not write as well, you know, because I wanted to get through it, and I would tell it and not show it. And those would be the sentences he would pick up on. I'm like, Oh my gosh, do we have to and he was, he was so good about that. But it also forced me to go through, you know, that little girl talked to that little girl, you know, who's inside of me and those things happen to and be able to say, I have you, and I really want to know how you really felt, because, you know, I felt like I was to make everybody happy, you know, not hurt anybody, that kind of stuff, and especially the men who were groomed that. One of them was an Episcopal seminarian, and everybody treated him like he's the best thing. And I'm like, well, then something must be wrong with me, because everybody thinks he's this person. But this is what I get, you know, when people aren't around. So, so anyway, I forget now what the question was. I'm like, Oh, I just went off track. Michael Hingson  27:30 No, you're, you're, you're doing fine. We were talking about getting rid of the anger and Stephanie Maley  27:35 Right, right, right. So, yes, having to talk about that and write about it and polish it over and over and over. It's like desensitizing, you know, I mean, and then when I went to record it, that was a whole nother level, which I didn't, I just didn't even think about either. That very first day, there's a 20 something year old in the other room, I'm reading my book out loud, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, you know he's gonna know my entire life. And I didn't even think about that. And so it turns out he was great. He created a safe space. Man, it went really well, but it was another layer of healing. Michael Hingson  28:22 What does Mike think of all this? Stephanie Maley  28:26 He is very supportive. Oh, I'm sure he is very, very supportive. I mean, he's always been my safe space, and he has just been a rock. And when I've had, you know, again, difficult times in the process of writing. He's always there and supporting me. It's hard. He he wanted to read my book, but he's not been able to to, even though he knows it. It's just he hasn't been able to read Michael Hingson  28:57 my book. Yeah, I know when, when Karen was alive, if we if she happened to go with me or whatever, to do a speech, she didn't want to listen to the speech. It just brought out memories and so on and things for her. So she went off and did other things, which was fine, because I, I wouldn't want her to to be in any way traumatized or hurt, and she and the other part about it is especially when I was writing, especially thunder dog with Susie Flory and so on. And just in general, she she heard a lot of it, so she knew the story, but it was just not something that she wanted to deal with directly, and that's fine, yeah. Stephanie Maley  29:44 I mean, that's that is painful. I mean, when you got that first call off to her, you know, until you were able to talk to her again, that was a lot of trauma for her. I mean, what for you, for sure, but it was a lot of trauma for her. Her well. Michael Hingson  30:00 And you know, she made the decision after we talked, and then she turned on the TV and found out what was really going on, because we didn't know, of course, and she made the decision she had to do some things to maybe get the house a little bit more in order, and she actually had to get up and eat and all that, because, as she decided, one or two things is going to happen, he's not going to come home, or he is, and either way, she had to be ready, because also if I weren't coming home, or even if I did, but other people showed up, she needed to be able to deal with that. But I am sure even with all that, there was a lot of trauma and a lot that she had to deal with, or chose to deal with, because it's just kind of the way it was, right. Stephanie Maley  30:53 I mean, she loves you and Roselle, and, of course, the people you worked with, but she was, you know, not sure if you were coming home and that, yeah, and then, or if you were getting injured or, you know, it's just, it's trauma and and, yeah. So I understand her not wanting to, you know, to go through, live through that moment, or moments, you know, by going to your speeches. And the same with Mike, I totally understand sure you don't need to read it. That's okay. I told my boys, you definitely don't need to read it. Michael Hingson  31:27 If you want to, you can, Stephanie Maley  31:29 but you can. You're Yeah, you're adults, but I don't have expectations that you read my book. Michael Hingson  31:34 Yeah. Well, and so the first real, major thing that happened media wise, after the World Trade Center was being interviewed on the 14th, that Friday night on Larry King Live. And then people started showing up the next day, and they kept saying, oh, there's Mike Kingston, star of stage and screen. That really upset Karen. And I understand why. I mean, you know, come on, that's, that's not what this is all about, right, right? And, you know, we got very visible. I've never really talked about it much, but there were a couple people who, on a couple of email lists called me a media whore and all that sort of stuff. And other people immediately jumped in and went, Wait a minute, people. But you know, my my belief is, if I can help get people to have a better understanding, if I can help people move on from September 11, if I can help people grow in any way, that's what I'm supposed to do. And it's worked for the last 24 years, and it's going to continue to continue to work, because it's kind of the way it is, exactly, Stephanie Maley  32:45 well, it's again that was, you know, wasn't just even your own personal experience. I mean, it is, but it was so it was nationwide. Michael Hingson  32:58 Well, it was, and we got lots of phone calls because people wanted to hear and in a way, be involved with the story. And so many people from the media called to come and do interviews because it was a story that they felt needed to be told. And we made the choice pretty early on. If it would help people move on from September 11, if it would help people learn more about blindness and guide dogs and the real truth about it and and so on, then it was worth doing, and that's what we did. It was a very conscious decision, but it wasn't about me or anything else, although, you know, a lot of people, I'm sure, didn't think of it that way, but it wasn't so, Stephanie Maley  33:45 but people could latch on to that, and it's such a great story. You know what I mean? I mean so many people you know didn't make it out seeing or not seeing, but, but you did, and you don't have your sight, you have your dog, Roselle, who doesn't panic and you're as a sometimes she does well with funders, but she was cool that day, yeah, Michael Hingson  34:09 well, and again. But the issue is that it's a team effort, and that's one of the strong messages that we try to convey everywhere we have the opportunity to do. So it's a team and it was a team effort, and it's always a team effort. And so we we work on it, and, you know, I will continue to do that, because I think it makes sense to do, and will, will live a better life because of it. I learned every time I do a speech, I feel I'm learning a fair amount, especially when it's rare now, but when people ask a question I've never thought of, yeah, that's always so much fun. Stephanie Maley  34:52 Yeah? I mean exactly, it changes it up and it makes you really go deeper. Michael Hingson  34:58 So have you done any speech? Working since the book was published. Stephanie Maley  35:02 Yeah, I we, I did a, I created a panel of Georgia authors who we all also had the same publisher. She writes press, and we did a bookstore in Chattanooga together, and we were all different genres. And so, which really, to me, makes it so much more interesting. And we were like, how did we Why did we take what we had and put it into a story or into a book? So it was like telling your story and then putting it in a book, and why? So we had historical fiction. We have drama from courtroom drama is another author, and it's a series, and I've told her I read her two books. I'm like, Please tell me you have the third book written. You're working on the fourth. And she is. She's a lawyer and a judge, and then the other one is nonfiction, but where she went and taught in Africa and at the girls school, trying to get the girls from the tribe to get educated and change that cycle. And then she went back and interviewed these women after they had become adults to see what they were doing, and they were like pediatricians they were doing in, you know, NGO stuff, just incredible things with their education. So they're all different and very interesting. So we've done that. We're trying to get into other bookstores around the Atlanta area, and we're going to be doing one in agworth, Georgia. But it is not easy. I mean, you have a huge platform, so I don't know if, but it's getting these rejections. And now that my book was published in November, it's kind of like, well, that's a little old now, Michael Hingson  37:01 which is ridiculous. It's not, but, yeah, it's Stephanie Maley  37:04 not, but it is in that field. And I guess there's so many people writing these days that so that's what I'm working on right now, is trying to get some more places we can be on a panel. Because again, I think it's much more interesting, you know, than just me talking about mine. And so we're working on, we're definitely working on that, but we have two and then we're, we've been turned down twice for in Decatur Georgia. And I'm like, oh, gosh, why is it so hard? But it is. Michael Hingson  37:39 Yeah, it's hard to understand sometimes, isn't it? Stephanie Maley  37:44 Yes, and I'm hoping to volunteer at a child advocacy place here in tocoa that is constantly busy and has It's all designed for children who've been abused or raped or whatever, and they have everything set up for recording and the kit and all that very done pediatric wise. And so I'm waiting to hear from the executive director on how I can help maybe give speeches and talk. You know, give talks, and my book would be, I think, a very good resource for the parents as well. So I'm hoping to do that in addition, that's I'm just waiting to hear back. Michael Hingson  38:29 Well, you wrote this book, but had you written, had you done any writing before? Or was this just a whole new thing? Or, what Stephanie Maley  38:40 a good question. I I wrote journals. I started that in high school. I went to a Catholic High School, and one of the priests taught a class like just an extra class you can take as a senior. And it was on called spiritual journal, and he talked to us about keeping a journal. So I started then, and I kept a journal, and I wrote, I don't know how many books, 40 something, so that's really what I had done with my writing, and I did well in English, but that this is really the first big thing. But when that child died at camp, we still had two more weeks to go, and it was so hard, and we were flown to his funeral in Memphis and all that, but I wrote a poem right then and there to express my feelings. So I think I had, I had that potential. I just really didn't work on it. And it was, you know, but it was, it's the comfort of getting stuff out, you know. I wish I had leaned on it, maybe even more, but I did, but I did in journals, but I did, like I said. It a poem. Is what came to me after that accident and where he died. Michael Hingson  40:04 Have you thought of maybe taking some of those journals, or taking things from those journals and maybe writing another book? Stephanie Maley  40:12 Well, I tell you what, Mike that I want to write another memoir. It's flesh tearing. Yeah, I and I have, I did get rid of a lot of those, which I wish I hadn't. I do have still some. I'm actually waiting for the muse. I would like to write another book and write it as a fiction, probably with a strong female protagonist. I don't know if you know, I've always wanted to be like, I think I would be a stunt I could be a snack car driver. And I thought, what if I wrote about a teenager who, again, it's more of a tomboy thing, but if she wanted to be a stunt car driver? And, you know, just, I don't know why a book. I really don't know, but I'm kind of waiting for that news. But there's, I have ideas. I just need to get a coerced, you know, coalesced. Michael Hingson  41:08 Well, if you write a book about a Stunt Car Driver, then maybe you should try it for a little while to get the experience. You know, that makes even a more interesting Stephanie Maley  41:18 story, doesn't it? It would instead of interviewing somebody, but yeah, well, I'm really, I'm really comfortable behind the wheel. The more that you know, as long as I can move going through Atlanta with the five lanes or so is nothing. And I enjoy it. It's relaxing. And I transfer lanes depending on speed, and I've had people I've had to dodge. I remember even as a teenager, I had to do a 180 to miss somebody, and I completely forgot about it in like, within minutes. It was no big deal. So anyway, I'm very comfortable behind the wheel, and I think I could do well, but I like your idea. Michael Hingson  42:02 I recall one time it was fairly soon after we moved to New Jersey, and we and I was working in New York, we drove into the city from our home, and we were just coming out of the tunnel, and I knew where we had to go, and I had told Karen, but I think she forgot, or maybe didn't understand. And you know, she said we're coming out of the tunnel, and I said, now you need to make a left turn here to get to where we need to go. And she had forgotten that, and suddenly the car went across three lanes of traffic to make the turn, and she was so proud of herself and the rest of her life. She talked about the fact that she went across those three lanes and not one single person honked at her. There you go, Karen. She said that just showed what kind of a good driver she was. It was so funny. Oh my Stephanie Maley  43:09 gosh, yeah, I like to go. I go about five miles above the speed limit in town and about nine on the highway and and I don't like back roads. I feel like I can't breathe, you know, I need to be in the open highway. Michael Hingson  43:24 Well, in this case, it was, it was like five in the afternoon, but coming out of the tunnel, the traffic was moving Okay, where we were. So she was very proud of herself. I was too i But yeah, she was a very observant person. We had some people with us in our car once, and they were they were saying, I'd never want to be in a taxi, because you could just see the taxis just driving real crazy. And Karen said something very interesting. She said to these people, look at those cabs. Do you see any dents or dings or marks on the cabs Exactly? And and they said no. And she said, There you go. They're they're very clever and careful drivers. They know what they're doing. Yes. And again, I, I think that's pretty clever, and that was pretty smart of her to have observed Stephanie Maley  44:20 that exactly, because they do know what they're doing. They're good drivers. They just do it in a faster pace than a lot of other drivers. And I literally can't ride with someone who's going to drive below the speed limit or, like, really, but I can't do it. I just, I rather, I'll just drive it myself. Just, you know, Michael Hingson  44:43 it could be a New York so you could be a New York, New York cab driver. That's almost like, that's almost like stunt driving. Stephanie Maley  44:49 It is, you know, that is a good point. They are like Stunt Car drivers. I actually drove through New York City with the family, and we had this hubcap. It kept coming off. I was taking a left, and there were police, like, across the street, and there goes that hubcap. And my husband like, I'm like, get it, honey. And he lowered the window and tried to reach down to get it, but it was he didn't, but the policeman did. And I'm like, gosh, wouldn't that have been cool if my husband could have swooped that? Michael Hingson  45:26 Gosh, yeah, it's, it's pretty funny. Well, you know, I think I tell people all the time out here, I don't see why I can't get a driver's license and drive around Victorville, because the way these people drive, I'm sure I would do just as well as they do, but exactly no one believes me. I I have driven a Tesla, Stephanie Maley  45:53 oh, what do you think of that? Michael Hingson  45:55 I thought was pretty interesting. You know, it was in co pilot mode, so I was able to do it, and the driver was, you know, the the owner of the car was there. But I, I'm waiting for the day that driving will be taken out of the hands of drivers, because there are too many people who just think they own the road and they don't, right. Stephanie Maley  46:13 I agree with that. I I don't know how I will do in that kind of a car that does it for me. Because for me again, I feel like I'm a pretty good driver. So that's insulting, because I know what I'm doing, but I do hear also what you're saying, and I think it would be so helpful for not just people who are blind, but people elderly, you know, who don't need to be behind the wheel, I think so Michael Hingson  46:42 many drivers, you know, in general, of all ages. Because the reality is, we don't pay attention to the details that we need to pay attention to anymore. And so once autonomous vehicles get to the point where they can truly do this safely, consistently all the time. I think it makes perfect sense to do we're not there yet, but the day will come when autonomous vehicles will be a lot more perfected, and it will happen. How soon remains to be seen, but it will happen, right? Stephanie Maley  47:17 Oh, I think it will too now I want a flying I agree, yeah, I because I love, like I'm a drone pilot, especially when they first came out. I mean, I've been doing it for a long time. I'm certified, but I just think I would just, I always just want to fly, yeah, it'd be a blast. Michael Hingson  47:40 Oh, I think it'll be cool. You know, there have been some flying cars, but it's not very common. And again, I think most people would not do it necessarily, extremely well, because they don't pay attention to the details that they need to pay attention to. But the autonomy will come and that will that will do it. It's like so many things, but it's like AI, right? Keep people complaining about AI, but it will get better. I don't believe that AI will ever replace humans. I don't think that it will be able to ever keep up with humans, but it's a tool, and it will do a lot of things, but it's not going to be the end of everything as we know it. Stephanie Maley  48:20 Yeah, and I remember reading, you know, in your books about that in your background. And for some reason, when I was probably 1920 I was terrified of computers and what they could me. And so, you know, I'd watched, I mean, I'd read George Orwell's 1984 1984 before 1984 and, you know, Mr. Roboto, the song that came out. And I was like, that is gonna be it. So it's so funny, it's in my book that it actually got me into counseling. I was on the governing body at our church at a very young age. I was 20. It's called a vestry in the Episcopal Church, and there was discussion about our church getting a computer. During the discussions, I would remove myself, because I just it was irrational. I had this irrational feeling. Well, they had voted that we would, and one Sunday after church, I told our priest I needed to talk to him, and so he met me in his office. Well, if you get a we get a computer and it's smashed. You'll know who did it. He's like, let's sit down for a minute. He said, I think that this has this. This really doesn't have to do with the computer. I think something else going on here. I think we need to talk about therapy and so. That started my therapy was that very thing I Michael Hingson  50:04 remember reading 1984 and actually a couple of years ago, I went to a hotel, and the room number I was assigned was 101 Do you know the significance of room 101, that was, that was where the brainwashing took place. That's where they, they took you to control you always, always loved it. And said, I'm in room 101, I can Stephanie Maley  50:34 scream when you embrace that more than you know, yeah, you know, in photography and in which I do as well, and then in writing, you know, AI is there. And as you know, I wasn't sure you were real when you were trying to contact me, because I and I'm sure you do too. You get all these, inundated by these, oh, your book is this. And I think you I could do this for you, and they're AMI generated, you know, it's, I mean, it's crazy how, you know, which is not, you know, obviously, there's always gonna be people using it for good stuff, and, you know, for Not so good stuff, that's Michael Hingson  51:21 always going to happen. It is and like AI, there are going to be some people who will misuse it, but I think in the long run, there are enough smart people that will will keep that pretty much under control. Some people are going to misuse it, but that's going to be their lot in life to deal with over time. Stephanie Maley  51:44 Yeah, that's true. And yeah, so I'm trying to, I mean, there are people in Chattanooga who are shocked that I have computers from that memory of that time. But yeah, I, I know people are saying, If I don't get into it, Claude or any of that stuff, that I'm going to get way behind, like some people who chose not to really do computers, you know, and now they're lost. Michael Hingson  52:17 Well, I think there's, there's merit in doing it. I think you will find that there are many good tools that that you can use it as a part of so it is something to do, but it's like everything. It's going to be what you make of it. I mean, people, people, long time ago, were pessimistic about penicillin, about microscopes, about even having your picture taken that would steal your soul. I mean, there are so many things, yeah, but the reality is, I think God doesn't really let us invent things that aren't, aren't good for us, but you know, if we, if we misuse them, we're going to have to be the ones that deal with that down the line at some point. That's true. That's true. Well, when you wrote the book, you wrote it during covid. Do you think you would have written it If covid hadn't come along? Were you just ready to write it? I'm gonna Stephanie Maley  53:15 hold it up too for a second. You know, that is a very good question. I I I would think that I would have, but it might have taken a bit longer, because I was on, you know, the running wheel like a rat. I was playing pickleball three times a week, active, doing things at church and just a bunch. I mean, I just kept on the wheel, and that covid just opened that door. But the fact that it, I had already written the autobiography, and it was on my mind and in my heart, I would have, but it might have been, it would have probably been later. Michael Hingson  53:58 But you also, with covid, you have the time Stephanie Maley  54:02 it gave me, the time it shut everything down. And I, I mean, I stayed at home for a year and a half. My husband was a, you know, again, a pediatrician. And actually, that's the first part of my book. Is I panicked. I once we heard from Italy and all the people who are dying, and they're like, it's coming to you, and we don't know about it. And my husband's a healthcare provider, and I was a nurse, I'm just like, what is going to happen? I'm I'm actually going to die, is what's going to happen. And I'm like, I need to write my funeral plans, and it just one day, all that, all that past vulnerability, vulnerability I hadn't dealt with, just came rushing at me, and so oddly, my therapist was the one who came up with what we needed to do to feel safe. I had called i. Um, the CDC, and was on hold for an hour trying to talk with a person and say, hey, my my husband's a health caregiver. What should we do to keep me because I have asthma, what you know, and I didn't get any help from them. But she said, yeah, have him change his clothes, put it in the dryer, take a shower, stay away from each other, where, you know, wear a mask, and once I felt safe is when I got down to writing. Michael Hingson  55:30 There you go. Yeah, you talked earlier about doing a lot of sports growing up. Do you think that was because of the anger and so on, or why did you do a lot of sports? Stephanie Maley  55:41 Well, I do. Well, that's, again, a very good question. My parents must have seen something in me, and they signed me up for softball when I was seven. So this was 1969 I know. So 1969 I'm playing the sport and and I loved it. I just fell in love with it and, and it did give me a socially acceptable way to express my anger. I'm a girl. I'm in the south girls, don't, you know, don't act like this, right? This is the way they're supposed to act. And softball initially was like, I said, I played at a very young age, made, made a way for me to get that stuff out. And, you know, I didn't understand it, and I would scare myself sometimes, but it was there, and I could just hit that ball harder or throw that runner out faster, and it just became and then I played squash for 10 years. And yeah, I'm just in pickleball. And so yeah, Michael Hingson  56:54 Pickleball is fairly new compared to a lot of these things, isn't it? Stephanie Maley  56:58 It is in a way, and again, in another way, it started in the 50s in Washington, though, yeah, what we didn't and Washington state is where it started with these, this family, and they came up with this thing to have fun. And I guess I started playing about eight years or so ago, and I used to compete in tournaments. But if I'd never heard of it, and it was in the county, one county over, and a friend said, Hey, I've heard of this game, I think you would really enjoy it. And I did, because I have, again, muscle memory, and I have really good coordination and but I've had to have three, not because of that, but I've had three foot surgeries, and so I've been out of it for two years right now, and I'm hoping to get back. I just had surgery a few months Michael Hingson  57:52 ago, again, who have you been kicking? That's what we wanted. No, that's it. Stephanie Maley  57:58 I have a session for you, if you don't mind. Nope. Okay, so you know you have had a lot of dogs, and have had to say goodbye to a lot of dogs that you just loved. Well, we just lost our I call her my outdoor dog because I was very allergic to her, and she stayed outside on Tuesday. How do you process that grief? Michael Hingson  58:26 Well, so what? What I tell people? Because I've been asked this before, and I've thought about it a lot. With every guide dog, you're creating a team, and you're both part of the same team. I am supposed to be the team leader. The dog wants me to be the team leader, and I have to accept that responsibility. But the the part about that, that you're dealing with is that there comes a time that maybe the dog isn't doing as well, the dog isn't seeing as well, or the dog is just not doing as well as it did. Doesn't mean it's ready to die, but there comes a time that you have to make a decision for the team. In the case of Guide Dogs, it means applying to get a new guide dog and starting to think about retiring the old guide dog. And I do things to prepare for retirement by maybe not using the dog as much and other things like that, but even with with pets, the fact of the matter is, it's, it's a mental thing as much as anything, and you do have to recognize that that time comes with pets, that that they are going to get older, and what what you need to do is to take steps to recognize that this time is coming. Usually you have a fair amount of time to prepare. A lot of people don't, and so suddenly the the animal has to be put down or whatever. And people don't take the time in advance to prepare mentally for it. And you know, that's one of the things that that they have to and should deal with. And so for me, it's a mental preparation. When my seventh guide dog, Africa started not seeing as well at night as she used to, and starting to walk a little slower, I knew that it was time to start the process. It was a year before Africa actually retired, but during that time, and knowing I had that time, we didn't take her to as many places and things like that and and other things, just to kind of recognize that what we had to do was to prepare for the fact that that something would happen. Now, the other part about it was that we already had Africa's mother, Fantasia, which you read about and live like a guide dog. And Fantasia was my wife service dog. Fantasia figured out how to do that, and we had Fantasia, and we were going to get a new guide dog. So we also decided that it would be a little bit difficult to have three dogs around the house, especially since two of them would be home with Karen in a wheelchair the whole time, and she had started to contract rheumatoid arthritis by then. So we we contacted Africa's parents. Her, her original the puppy raisers, yeah, because they had said, If we ever retired Africa and couldn't keep her, they wanted her, and they came one day, and they got her. Now, we visited with them after that several times, but still, the fact is that, you know we it was not hard, by comparison, to make that change and let Africa go to live with them. So you know it happens, but it's mental preparation, and the thing to do is, when you know something is going to happen, at some point, you start preparing for it. Stephanie Maley  1:02:06 Yeah, well, thank you for that. Yeah. Definitely had anticipatory grief, because she, she just got cancer, she's 15, you know, a couple of months ago. So we had on the prednisone and and and it was time, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know it was the thing to do for sure, yeah, it's just yeah. It's just hard. And every time I was reading about your dogs, I'm like, Oh my gosh, that's so hard. And of course, you do know that dogs that you're typically using against guide dogs are they're going to live about 10 years their labs and stuff. Is that about fair? Michael Hingson  1:02:47 Well, they're going to work about eight years. They'll live more than 10 my longest living guide dog was Holland, who lived until he was 15 and a half and but mostly they'll live longer, but they'll have to retire at some point. And yes, yes, you know that's that's part of the issue. But again, it doesn't matter if it's a guide dog or not. Got regular pets ought to be more treated more like members of the family, like teammates, establish a relationship with them. Yes, it's very important to do that. Stephanie Maley  1:03:24 Yeah, well, even though I couldn't pet her, her name was Annie, I couldn't pet her. If I did, I had to go right inside and watch. He knew that we walked 95% of the time every day, like 95% every day for 15 years. And you know, we but if I tried to kiss her, she's like, No, don't you know you're allergic to me. Turn her face. Martin girl, really great relationship. Michael Hingson  1:03:54 Yeah. So what's your favorite movie? Stephanie Maley  1:03:58 Oh, gosh. So it used to be ordinary people. Do you remember that one at all? Southern London? Yeah, and I think I've wrecked because it was it would help me to cry, because there were years I couldn't cry. And it's that part where one brother lives and the other one doesn't, and when he comes to realize that his guilt is because he survived, that would undo me every time. Now I'm leaning more into comedy, and even though there's a lot of bad language, have you ever seen or listened to the movie spy with Melissa McCarthy. I haven't, oh my gosh, Michael Hingson  1:04:47 I'll find it holy. So she's so funny. Stephanie Maley  1:04:51 She is so funny. And I mean, it's a, it's a, the name is so generic, but if you look for it with Melissa McCarthy, yeah. It is so funny that it undoes me laughing. And I'm leaning more into that. It's good for you, not an intellectual maybe, but it's so much fun. You know, movies Michael Hingson  1:05:13 don't have to be intellectual, Stephanie Maley  1:05:14 yeah, no, they don't. It's entered. I like it for entertainment. Michael Hingson  1:05:19 Well, if people want to reach out and talk to you or commiserate or share or whatever. How do they do that? Stephanie Maley  1:05:26 Well, they could go to my website, Steph, maily.com, Michael Hingson  1:05:31 So, S, T, E, Stephanie Maley  1:05:33 P, H, M, a, l, e, y, E, y.com, yeah, and they could. They could send me a message if they want to get on to my newsletter. They could do that. I'm on sub stack, excuse me as steps writings, and I'm actually on social media as steps writings, in on Instagram as well as Facebook, to hear from anybody. And again, what a delight to spend this time with you. I'm so glad that I finally really paid attention and said, Yes, I'm glad Michael Hingson  1:06:10 you did too. We're really happy that you were here. We're really grateful that all of you listened to this episode, and I hope that you picked up some really good nuggets of wisdom and life philosophy from it, and you'll reach out to Stephanie. You're welcome to reach out to me. I'm easy to find. It's speaker, S, P, E, A, k, e, r at Michael hingson, M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com, speaker at Michael hingson.com, and I would also say that if you know anyone who ought to be a guest on our podcast, we'd love it if you'd introduce us. We're always looking for for people to come on. As I mentioned at the beginning, Steph has actually got us in touch with a couple people, and we're gonna we'll have them on, and we'll probably talk about Stephanie. What can I say? Oh no, oh yeah, but I want to thank you again. Stephanie, this has been absolutely wonderful. We are so glad that you spent some time with us today. Stephanie Maley  1:07:10 Absolutely thank you so much. I appreciate it. Michael Hingson  1:07:17 Thank you for being here with me on unstoppable mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about if you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others. I have a free gift for you. Head over to Michael hingson.com and download my free ebook blinded by fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset. You yo

Today we have the pleasure of sharing an episode from one of our favorite podcasts, the Lit Ladies Podcast. Here is more about their show: We are three writers and moms exploring how to live out our faith in our literary lives. We span the country—from the coasts to the Midwest—and with different stages of life, careers, and favorite genres, we are sure to cover the literary landscape. In every episode, we'll discuss books we love, reading life, and writing craft, using the Bible as our guide for beauty, goodness, and truth. New episodes drop every other Friday! Historical Fiction, War Stories, and What We Sip While We Read This Lit Ladies Podcast crossover with the Historical Bookworm team covers why historical fiction matters, how war settings shape stories, and what everyone is reading right now. Key takeaways Historical fiction makes history personal, which helps you see how everyday people lived. Accuracy matters most when it grounds the characters and the social pressures of the era. War settings work best when the focus stays on human cost, resilience, and the ripple effects on families. Reading older books can mean meeting older blind spots, which calls for discernment instead of reflexive dismissal. Lesser-known conflicts can add fresh perspective, especially when anchored in solid research. Welcome to the crossover Karissa: Hello and welcome to the Lit Ladies Podcast. Today we’re doing a special crossover episode with our friends KyLee Woodley and Darcy Fornier and their historical fiction podcast. We’re so excited to have you here today. Darcy: So excited to be here. We have so much fun hanging out with you guys. KyLee: Thanks for the invite. Glad to be here. Karissa: KyLee Woodley is a podcaster and author of the Outlaw Hearts series, adventure romances set in the American Wild West. Darcy Fornier is a podcaster and author of The Crown and the Axe, and they are both the hosts of the Historical Bookworm podcast, which is in its fifth season. It’s for lovers of inspirational historical fiction, and the show features author interviews, bookish and historical segments, and a wide variety of guests, from Christy Award-winners to high-quality indie authors. Favorite reading beverages Karissa: Before we jump in today, I want to know what is everyone’s favorite reading beverage of choice? Christie: I usually drink water, or else I don’t really drink anything because I’m too busy speed reading. But today for the podcast, since we’re doing it in the morning, I get to drink coffee. Darcy: Usually coffee. If I said anything else, my sisters would say I was lying. But I also enjoy hot chocolate or tea. Anything hot. I’m not going to be drinking lemonade even in the summer. KyLee: The nice thing about being in the South is that the AC is always blasting. So it’s hot cocoa, coffee, soup, any time of the day. My current favorite beverage to go with my reading, which I seldom read, but audiobooks, big on audiobooks these days, is the Iced Pecan Crunch Oat Milk Latte. I don’t usually go to Starbucks. I find their coffee very bitter, but this is a blonde espresso. I get it without the foam. It’s too sweet and it takes up too much in my cup. Karissa: I like to drink herbal tea. That’s my main comfort drink. Why historical fiction Karissa: What draws you to historical fiction? KyLee: For me, I like the nostalgia. I grew up very sheltered. We didn’t have a TV until I was 12. My mom would just drop us off at the library, then go shopping, then pick us up whenever. We always had audiobooks or books on tape. When we did get a TV, it was black and white. We watched a lot of black and white shows. For me, I remember those good times with old classic films and literature. There’s also this idea of, “What was.” Historical and fantasy are best friends because there’s that sense of wonder. But historical is like, this really did happen. This was really true. I like to dig into history and see who someone was, and go back to where they were if that’s possible. I love to research the way people lived and thought, the things they invented, and how resourceful they were. Darcy: Mine is similar. It’s about the people that came before, and how their stories influenced our lives today. You can go to historical sites and almost touch the lives that they had there. We tend to study history as the big overview. This person was king, these wars happened, all this stuff. Historical fiction lets you dive into what it was like for the day-to-day person. Even if you’re writing about a king, you’re asking what motivated him and what it felt like. People are people as long as they’ve lived. Karissa: That’s my favorite part too. How did people actually live, what challenges did they face, and what did they wear? KyLee: I also like when an author challenges what we accept as historical norms. Bring out something different that we wouldn’t expect. Like a female rancher who ran a ranch with hundreds of cowboys. I heard on a podcast that there was an African-American college in Waco in the 1860s. I had never heard of that. I want to learn the things that go against what people believe as a whole. I want to see the people who were counterculture in their time. Christie: Whoever wins writes the history book. There’s so much that was lived and done that you don’t know about because it was shut down, or the history books made it seem nice and clean. Favorite eras and the appeal of time travel Karissa: Christie, do you have a favorite era to read or write about? Christie: I haven’t read much historical in a while. I used to read a lot of Jen Turano because her voice is funny, witty, and sharp. For an era, late 1800s to 1940s. If there’s too much work to live, it pulls me out. I’m modern. I don’t want to learn about churning butter. Darcy: A few modern conveniences is okay. Christie: I would do a castle, like medieval, every now and then. KyLee: That’s what’s fun about time travel or slip time. You get the comparison. Especially time travel, when someone modern comes into the past and you see how they react to everything. Karissa: I just discovered Gabrielle Meyer. It’s sort of time travel. KyLee: In those books, the women exist in two timelines until a certain age. Then they have to choose which timeline they’ll live in. What’s fun is that she explores different eras. You get contrast between two past timelines, like the Civil War and the 1920s. Christie: I’d choose the ’20s, not the war. Karissa: I love the Victorian era and the Regency era. I also love reading classics written in the period. You get the perspective of someone who lived in that era and took so much for granted. Darcy: If you read Jane Austen, she doesn’t explain everything because her readers would understand it. Then you read a Regency novel by a modern author, and they explain everything. It’s cool to do both. Karissa: Darcy and KyLee, do you have favorite time periods? Darcy: Medieval is my favorite to read in and write in. Then the Regency era, then the American West. I probably read mostly Westerns. Some people say cowboys are the truest heirs to medieval knights. There are similarities in how unlawful it could feel. There was law in both places, but it only extended so far. Christie: I watch black and white westerns with my mom. The body count is wild. They’re just shooting people in the street and it’s cool. I would never want to live back then. KyLee: I overanalyze it too. It’s set in the 1800s, but it was made in the ’40s or ’50s. So I’m thinking about their worldview and ideologies, and how that shaped what they presented. Christie: They’re pretty racist. Sometimes I’m like, how is this still on TV? Darcy: Everything we write is a product of our time. It’s just more glaring the further back you go. KyLee: I started Gone with the Wind. It’s too long for my taste. Some language made me pause. Karissa: We never see the sins of our own era. Our descendants will look back and see the sins of today. Darcy: Grace Livingstone Hill wrote in the late 1800s and early 1900s. You see elements of racism and classism, and ideas like bloodline influencing character. Looking through modern eyes, it’s horrible. She’s still one of my favorites because her stories are sweet and encouraging in faith, but you see how even a good person is a product of their time. KyLee: That’s why it’s important to be kind. I’m not going to stop reading her because I can see flaws. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Karissa: That comes up in English teaching too. How do you teach classics responsibly without canceling them completely? War settings in historical fiction Karissa: I wanted to talk about books set during wars. We see a lot set with the backdrop of World War II. Do you have a favorite war setting to read about, and any favorite books? KyLee: I’ve always been drawn to the Civil War. When I was growing up, there were quite a few Civil War movies and books in the Christian genre. The brother against brother aspect pulls me in. As an adult, I look at the events that led up to it and grimace, hoping history doesn’t repeat itself. More recently, the Franco-Prussian War, partly because some of my ancestors' sisters came over during that time. It only lasted about a year. France declared it, and France lost. Their people suffered. Germany demanded huge remunerations in gold. By today’s standards, I did the math before we started, it was about 84 to 95 billion dollars. (FACT CHECK – In today’s purchasing power, estimates for that 5 billion francs generally range between $80 billion and $100 billion USD.) France had promised not to tax people during the war, but afterward they charged back taxes. There was a civil uprising in Paris, and a week-long massacre called the Bloody Week. That history comes into book one of the Outlaw Heart series. It’s lesser known French history. My people were German, and my characters are French, but I was fascinated by it. You don’t hear about that war as much. Darcy: That’s obscure for Americans because it didn’t affect us directly, so it doesn’t make it into our history books. But it made a huge difference in Europe. KyLee: My dad’s side always wrote Prussia on census records, not Germany. That led me to dig into where Prussia was and how that history unfolded. Writing trauma and war without being gratuitous Karissa: What challenges did you find writing about something so difficult in a way that worked for your story? KyLee: The main character in book one, Lorraine, lived through the Bloody Week. She’s in America now. I looked at where she is as an immigrant and how she tries to settle when there is nothing left for her in France. People were rounded up, imprisoned, and shipped off to New Caledonia, a penal colony near Australia, I believe. No trial. Later, there were pardons, but many people were still imprisoned because they were never tried, and their names were never even taken down. Lorraine is haunted by the past and has post-traumatic stress disorder. She refuses to speak English even though she understands it. She holds tightly to French roots, clothing, and food, and stays close to other French people. Jesse challenges her to put down roots in a country where she feels like an alien. That Bible phrase kept coming up to me, be kind to the immigrant, the alien, the foreigner. Remember when you were in Egypt and you were a stranger in a strange land. For research, I relied on as many documents as I could find, plus academic papers written about the Bloody Week and why it happened. I want to respect history and the people who lived it. Karissa: I love how you included the war because we feel the weight she carries without putting everything on the page in an overly graphic way. Christie: The Bandit’s Redemption is the first in the series. It has such a pretty cover too. Darcy: It’s such a good one. Darcy's pick: World War II Karissa: Darcy, do you have a favorite war setting? Darcy: Probably World War II, because it’s so vast. You have the European theater and the Pacific theater, plus the home front in America and Britain. Every time I pick up a World War II book, it’s like, “I did not know that.” The Civil War is hard for me. I grew up in Georgia, and in some places it feels like it happened this century. It was my country. World War II lets me detach a bit more. I did read one Civil War book by Rosanna M. White that was fabulous, Dreams of Savannah. It handled the loyalty conflict very gracefully. Karissa: What makes a good war book? Christie: Accuracy doesn’t matter much to me because I’m not going to catch mistakes. I want characters and their journeys, battles and close calls, romance, and a happy ending. Darcy: I appreciate historical facts because I want to be grounded in the setting. But if I’m reading fiction, I’m there for story and characters. I want to see what the war is doing to them, to their society, to their family, and how it changes their lives. KyLee: I want it at the character level too. I also like seeing people on both sides. I want everyday heroes, and small choices that mattered. I also love surprising historical technology I didn’t know about. Karissa: Accuracy matters to me, but not at the expense of story. I just want what happens to feel believable for the era. In Regency romances, for example, two people being alone in a room can be a big deal. A kiss behind a barn could ruin lives. Darcy: Historical characters in books sometimes have a modern disregard for societal pressure, which is inaccurate. We all feel societal pressure today too. It’s just different pressures. When classics meet modern retellings Christie: Karissa, you like reading the Brontës because they wrote in that time. Do they have stolen kisses, or is it different because they were writing then? Karissa: If it’s Emily and Wuthering Heights, it’s more dramatic and Gothic. With Jane Eyre, I think it’s more bound by the era. Darcy: If someone did a modern retelling, I think they’d put stolen kisses in. KyLee: It depends on the character and how they were raised. There were orphanages and homes for widows who were pregnant, and women who had gotten pregnant outside marriage. There are records showing pregnancies starting before marriage dates in some places in the 1700s. On the whole, the societal expectation mattered. So you need to look at your character. If she’s proper and ladylike, she probably won’t have modern levels of physical intimacy. Karissa has proofread my stuff and told me, this would never happen. She was right. It pushes you to be creative. Make the little things special too. Karissa: What might seem small to us might be very steamy to someone in the Regency era. Like touching a hand without a glove. Darcy: He’ll be proposing within the week. War book recommendations and lesser-known conflicts Christie: I read The Ice Swan by J'nell Ciesielski. That was during the Russian Revolution in 1917. I remember really liking that one. Darcy: Rosemary Sutcliff does this well in her books about Britain after Rome officially withdrew. It spans generations. The first is The Eagle of the Ninth. It’s technically YA and she wrote in the 1950s or ’60s. Sword at Sunset is an adult book with some adult content. She personalizes the conflict and shows conflicting loyalties, and friendships across cultures. It’s history, not fantasy. Karissa: Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. Not to be confused with anything else. It’s YA historical set during World War II, but it focuses on Stalin’s reign and deportations to Siberia. It takes place in Lithuania and the Baltic states, where there were multiple occupations. It’s about a girl whose family is sent to a prison camp. I studied abroad in Lithuania, so that history sticks with me. Ruta Sepetys researches a lot and her books are well done. Kelly mentioned The Women by Kristin Hannah, set during the Vietnam War. Darcy: I had someone tell me she read The Women three times because it was so good. It's on my list. My sister highly recommends Kristin Hannah. She read The Nightingale and said it was worth the pain. Christie: I need happy ones. I can only do one super tearjerker a year. What everyone is currently reading KyLee: I borrowed The Dark of the Moon by Fiona Valpy. I’ve read The Dressmaker’s Gift and The Beekeeper’s Promise by her. They're World War II, like French resistance. Melanie Dobson does this well too, like The Curator’s Daughter, a time slip about a woman married to a Nazi soldier. I like books that feel sobering, like they changed my life. I also borrowed Angel from the East by Barbara A. Curtis. I borrowed The Winter Rose by Melanie Dobson, a World War II story about a lady who helps rescue Jewish children. Darcy: I just finished The Bounty Hunter’s Surrender by KyLee Woodley. I had never read it cover to cover. I helped brainstorm, and apparently the villain is my fault. I enjoyed it so much. I’m also reading a contemporary by Becky Wade, Turn to Me, in her Misty River romance series set in Northeast Georgia. I know exactly what she’s describing. Christie: I’m reading The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. Karissa: I'm listening to the audiobook of Long Bright River by Liz Moore. It’s about a police officer in Philadelphia. Her sister struggles with addiction, then goes missing. There are flashbacks and a modern timeline, plus mysterious murders. I can't stop listening. Where to find Historical Bookworm and Lit Ladies KyLee: You can connect with us at HistoricalBookworm.com. You can find me at KyLeeWoodley.com and Darcy at DarcyFornier.com Darcy: I’m most active on Instagram, DarcyFornierWriter Karissa: Thank you for joining us today on our literary journey. If you love the podcast, share it with a friend and rate and review. And don’t forget to follow us on social media at Lit Ladies Pod. Our quote today is from Barbara Tuchman: “Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled. Thought and speculation are at a standstill.”

Head to Bavarian Georgia with Randy, Caly, and travel photographer Carrie Hanrahan as they explore one of the South's most charming alpine destinations—Helen, Georgia. From colorful Bavarian-style architecture to scenic mountain views and outdoor adventure, discover why this unique town is a must-visit getaway in Northeast Georgia.Get 30% off any RV Destinations Magazine subscription! Visit RVD https://RVDestinationsMagazine.com and use code XMAS30 at checkout to start exploring smarter.

Evan Mills       Advantage Behavioral Health Systems is a public, community-based provider dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities through accessible, compassionate behavioral health care. Serving a multi-county region in Northeast Georgia, Advantage offers a comprehensive range of services for children, adolescents, adults, and seniors, including mental health […]

Evan Mills       Advantage Behavioral Health Systems is a public, community-based provider dedicated to improving the quality of life for individuals, families, and communities through accessible, compassionate behavioral health care. Serving a multi-county region in Northeast Georgia, Advantage offers a comprehensive range of services for children, adolescents, adults, and seniors, including mental health […]

Inside MicroLife's Micro Home Communities: Attainable, Connected Housing For Metro Atlanta (Good2Give Podcast, Episode 19) On this edition of the Good2Give Podcast, Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia president and CEO DePriest Waddy talks with Will Johnston, founder of the MicroLife Institute, about how micro homes and cottage courts are reshaping what home means in metro […]

Greg Bluestein and Patricia Murphy are joined by Tia Mitchell for a conversation with state Rep. Houston Gaines, the early Republican frontrunner for the open Northeast Georgia congressional seat. Gaines outlines why he's running for Congress, his record on immigration, public safety, and parental leave, and why affordability is the issue he hears most from voters. Then Patricia shares her reporting from the campaign trail with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jason Esteves. She follows him at his Flying Biscuit Café and then tours the city of Columbus with him as he talks about growing up in hardship, the cost-of-living pressures shaping his platform, and why he believes lived experience and economic opportunity are resonating with Democratic voters in 2026. Have a question or comment for the show? Call or text the 24-hour Politically Georgia Podcast Hotline at 770-810-5297. We'll play back your question and answer it during our next Monday Mailbag segment. You can also email your questions at PoliticallyGeorgia@ajc.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Tensley Almand, President and CEO of Atlanta Mission, the largest and longest-running provider of services for people experiencing homelessness in the Atlanta metro area. Founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen during the Great Depression, Atlanta Mission now operates four campuses, serving over 800 men, women, and children nightly through programs that provide housing, recovery support, and Christ-centered transformation. How do you lead through complexity while staying true to your calling? Tensley shares leadership lessons from his transition from church ministry to leading a $20 million nonprofit—insights that apply to every pastor or church leader navigating growth, complexity, or change. Moving beyond shelter to transformation. // While many think of Atlanta Mission as only an emergency shelter, over 60% of its beds are dedicated to long-term transformational programs that address root causes of homelessness. The yearlong program includes counseling, trauma recovery, life skills, and vocational training. Clients complete a four-week “Next Steps” program focused on relational, emotional, and workplace health. The results are remarkable: 70% of graduates maintain stable housing and employment a year later. Learning to lead by listening. // When Tensley stepped into his CEO role, he faced the challenge of succeeding a leader who had guided the organization from crisis to stability. Rather than arriving as the expert, Tensley began as what he calls the “Chief Question Officer.” He met with every employee to ask four key questions: What's right? What's wrong? What's missing? What's confusing? The responses revealed a clear need for strategic focus. Building clarity and focus. // Using that input, Tensley led a yearlong process to create a strategic roadmap—a seven-year plan that defines the organization's mission, values, and measurable outcomes. When there's clarity in an organization, saying ‘no' becomes easy and saying ‘yes' becomes difficult. The new strategy gave Atlanta Mission a unified framework for decision-making, with every initiative measured against the same mission. Measuring what matters. // Data fuels care. In order to better track client progress, the team at Atlanta Mission built dashboards, measuring not only how many people they serve but how lives are changing. When graduation rates dipped from 70% to 45%, they discovered the cause wasn't program failure but economic change. That same approach can transform church leadership. Churches measure nickels and noses, but what if we measured progression—how many first-time guests become group members, or how many volunteers grow into leaders? Partnership through presence. // Atlanta Mission thrives through partnerships with churches across the city. Tensley explains that relational poverty—people lacking healthy connections—is as debilitating as material poverty. Rather than only focusing on “do for” service projects, he encourages churches to create “be with” opportunities: hosting birthday parties, sharing meals, or building relationships with families at Atlanta Mission. Encouragement for leaders. // Reflecting on his own journey, Tensley reminds church leaders who feel stretched or uncertain that often you’ll overestimate what you can accomplish in 90 days, but underestimate what you can do in a year or two. Take time to listen, build unity, and stay faithful in the process. Over time, that faithfulness becomes transformation—both in the people you lead and in yourself. To learn more about Atlanta Mission, visit atlantamission.org or email to connect or schedule a visit. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. We’ve got a real honored to have an incredible guest on today’s episode. We’ve got Tensley Almand with us. He is the president and CEO of Atlanta Mission. Rich Birch — Now, if you don’t know Atlanta Mission, I’m not sure where you’ve been. You really should know. This organization was founded in 1938 as a soup kitchen to feed men who were displaced by the Great Depression. And they just keep chugging along. They do incredible work. They now serve Metro Atlanta’s largest homeless population and bring hope in the face of homelessness, poverty, and addiction. Rich Birch — Prior to serving at Atlanta Mission, he was in vocational ministry for 20 plus years, the last 12 of those, as we were just saying in the pre-call. He said, felt like he had the the best job in the world, was a lead pastor at Decatur City Church, one of the eight Atlanta City, Atlanta area campuses of North Point Ministries. Tensley, welcome. So glad you’re here. Tensley Almand — Man, so good to be here. Thanks so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. Rich Birch — No, this is going to be good. I’m excited. Why don’t you kind of fill in the picture? Tell us a little bit more of your background and tell us a bit more about Atlanta Mission, that kind of thing. Just help set the table. Tensley Almand — Yeah, so I’m a native Atlantan. I grew up here, born and raised just north of the city. Yeah. Only child. Parents still live north of the city in the same town that I grew up in. Rich Birch — Nice. Tensley Almand — My wife and I, we have four kids. We have been married now, just celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary… Rich Birch — Congratulations. That’s great. Tensley Almand — …which makes me feel old, but it’s it’s it’s all good. So four kids, three boys, little girl, they’re all just amazing, doing great things and in their worlds. We live over in city of Decatur. So ah for those that don’t know, just kind of just right outside of downtown Atlanta. So we feel like we’re living in the heart of the city. Rich Birch — Cool. Tensley Almand — Like you said, I spent 20 plus years on the church side of ministry, which you had told younger me that that was going to be my future, I probably would have laughed at you. Grew up in a family that church just frankly, wasn’t that important to us. My mom gets mad if I say I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, um, which, you know, looking back, I think is really true. I just grew up in a home that we didn’t feel like the church was for us. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so, um, after, you know, meeting Jesus in college, giving my life to him, which is a whole nother really cool story, started down the path towards ministry. And eventually several years into that kind of looked up and thought, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like I’m working at these churches that I don’t even want to attend. Tensley Almand — Like remember this very pivotal meeting in my life where our pastor asked us, he’s like, if I didn’t pay you to go to church here, is this the church you would attend? Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — And every one of us said no. Rich Birch — Oh, gosh. Oh, my goodness. Tensley Almand — And they were all okay with it. Rich Birch — Oh, no. Tensley Almand — And I just like something broke in me. Rich Birch — Oh, no. Oh, no. Yeah. Tensley Almand — And I remember going home and I told my wife, I was like, I can’t do this anymore. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so I started the process of just trying to find a job. But the problem is I’ve genuinely felt called by God to ministry. And so God used that to, to lead us down the path of starting Decatur City Church. And, um, our whole dream was just to create a church that people who didn’t like church would love to attend. Tensley Almand — And so, which is really cool. Again, it’s probably a whole other episode, but really cool because we got to do that in one of the most unchurched cities in Atlanta. 70% of the people who live in Decatur ah don’t go to a church. And Decatur, for those who don’t know, small little town right outside of a big city. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — But literally, there’s over 600 churches in that town. So we used to say all the time, nobody wakes up on Sunday wondering where a church is. They just wake up wondering if church is for them. Rich Birch — Right, right. Tensley Almand — And so that’s, that’s the thing we tried to solve. Right. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so did that for 12 years, thought I would do that with my whole life. Just an amazing season. And then God called me out of there to Atlanta Mission. And so for those who don’t know, and we can get into that story here if you want to, but, for those who don’t know, Atlanta mission, like you said, it’s the largest and longest running provider of services… Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — …for men, women, and children experiencing homelessness in our city. So for perspective, what that means is on any given night, we’ll have about 800 men, women, or children who are staying with us. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. That’s a significant operation. That’s, that’s incredible. Tensley Almand — It’s a significant operation. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — It represents that in our city, that represents about 35 to 40% of all the shelter beds in Atlanta. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Tensley Almand — So that’s, it’s a, it’s pretty remarkable opportunity that we do that across three campuses in downtown Atlanta. Rich Birch — Okay. Tensley Almand — One for men, two for women and children. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — And then we have this really cool drug and alcohol addiction facility out near Athens, which is about an hour outside of town, on 550 acre farm that is just beautiful ah for men who are in recovery from addiction. Rich Birch — Wow. Oh my goodness. Huh. Tensley Almand — So yeah. Rich Birch — Yeah. That’s, that’s incredible. i’m I’m glad you started with the kind of community size that you’re you’re serving. That’s, that’s amazing. Give me a sense of the operation from like a, you know, total number of staff, other kinds of metrics. Like I’m just trying to, I know, you know, you’re not a kind of person that’s going to brag about that kind of stuff, but just trying to help people kind of place, because this is a significant operation, friends. Atlanta Mission is it’s a world-class organization doing great work and honored to have you on this the show. But people might not be ah kind of aware of the the scale of it. Give us a bit more sense of that. Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a good question. I appreciate you asking. Cause yeah, I definitely don’t, I don’t want to, I don’t like going there, but… Rich Birch — Yes. And it’s even just, it’s a funny thing to, it’s a funny thing to even like, it’s like, well, we’re really good. It’s like, it’s like, well, yeah, it’s a tough thing you’re doing. So it’s like, man, it’s a weird thing to kind of try to but get ah your arms around. How, how do we talk about this? Yeah. Tensley Almand — Yeah. So let me kind of give you scope and then let me talk a little bit about what we’re doing. So scope is ah we’re we’re about a $20 million dollars a year organization. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Tensley Almand — And so just like every church out there, that means, you know, we start July as the start of our fiscal year and we start at zero… Rich Birch — Yep. Tensley Almand — …and then we go and raise $20 million dollars… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …to meet the need of our expenses. And we do that through mainly private and and corporate donations. And so… Rich Birch — Yep. Tensley Almand — …we’re almost a hundred percent privately funded this year. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Tensley Almand — We, we, we took our very first government grant. Rich Birch — Huh. Tensley Almand — But I mean, it’s a $250,000 grant, which is not insignificant, but on the scope of 20 million. So that kind of gives everybody an idea. So you’re talking about, uh, you know, thousands of donors who come alongside of us to partner with us, which is just amazing. Rich Birch — Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Tensley Almand — We serve about 800 men, women, and children, like I said, Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — And we have right at about 180 staff… Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — …who are who are either you know full-time equivalents basically here with us. And that’s across four different campuses. So we’re essentially like a multi-site operation. So I’m sitting here at my office today, which is basically our mission support center. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — So your accounting, HR, development team, all of your infrastructure, and we support the work that’s happening all over our city. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And then we also have three thrift stores across Northeast Georgia that’s included in that head count. Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — And so a little bit of that 20 million that I was telling you about that that revenue comes from sales as well. And so, so yeah, it’s pretty broad organization. And then what we do, a lot of people think about you know Atlanta Mission, especially here in our city, and they just think emergency shelter. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Certainly what we do. But of those 800 beds, roughly only 40% of those go towards emergency shelter. And so if you… Rich Birch — Oh, really? OK. Tensley Almand — Yeah. And so if you show up at our door and you just need safety, security, stability, um, you’re just trying to like get off the street… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …we have a program called Find Hope… Rich Birch — Yep. Tensley Almand — …and it’s a 30-day program. You can stay with us rent free 30 days. You know, bed meals, showers, really, really, really, really low expectation on those clients. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — It’s just like, hey, we’re here to meet your needs. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool. Tensley Almand — The other 60% of our beds go towards what we call our transformational model… Rich Birch — Okay. Tensley Almand — …where we provide complete wraparound services. It’s about a year long program. Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — You show up and we’re going to try to help you get healthy relationally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, vocationally. We’ve got counselors, we’ve got advocates, we’ve got social workers. You have a whole team… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …that works with you, walks with you for a year… Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — …depending on really your core traumas, what’s caused your homelessness. And our main goal, our mission is to transform through Christ the lives of those who are experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction. Tensley Almand — And so what we want to do, what that means to us is over the course of that year, Um, we want to give you the tools to identify your traumas, understand those traumas and ultimately break the cycles so that you don’t ever have to come back to our doors again. We we tell our clients, we love you, but we don’t ever want to see you again. Like this is just like, like, how do we… Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. This was a phase of your life, hopefully, right? Tensley Almand — Yeah. Rich Birch — That’s the goal. Tensley Almand — How do we end that for you? And so our program goes through all the counseling, all the services, and it wraps up in a vocational training program we call Next Steps that… Rich Birch — Wow. That’s amazing. Tensley Almand — …that gives our clients the soft skills they need to not just get a job. Because here’s here’s what’s really cool. You you would get this. Our clients are really good at getting jobs. But like so many people out there, we’re terrible at keeping a job. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Right. Yes. Tensley Almand — Like people don’t know the skills needed to like keep a job. Like how do you manage conflict? Rich Birch — Right, right. Tensley Almand — What do you do with that boss who’s just overbearing? How do you have normal workplace conversations? Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — And so we have a ah four week training program that gives our clients those skills. And what we’re finding is that for the clients who go all the way through our program, 70% of those who graduate our program, they still have a house or a living situation a year later. Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — And they are maintaining that job a year later. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s incredible. Tensley Almand — And so it’s just been a remarkable, remarkable journey. And so we’ve got some transitional housing in there… Rich Birch — Yep. Tensley Almand — …where you graduate our program, you stay with us, we help you save up and and we help you find an apartment. And then when you’re ready financially and you’re you’re stable, we help you move into that that apartment. Tensley Almand — And what’s really cool, probably one of my favorite things is for alumni is that year after you graduate, you get a retention coach with us and they walk with you. And they just help you navigate life because, man, when you’ve stayed somewhere for a year and then you kind of come back in and you’re like, oooh, the pressures of the world are on me. That first year is so tough. Rich Birch — So hard. Yeah. Tensley Almand — Yeah. Yeah. Rich Birch — Well, that’s cool. I appreciate you sharing that. and And yeah, even church leaders that are listening in, um man, ah there whether if you’re in the Atlanta area, you definitely should reach out to Atlanta Mission. Rich Birch — But even in your neighborhood, like there are, this is why you shouldn’t be trying to invent this yourself as a church. There are these are incredibly complex issues that you know when I heard all of the the different things you’re doing to surround people, try to help them, um that’s that’s inspiring. That’s amazing. Rich Birch — Well, I’d love to pivot and talk about kind of your experience as you’ve transitioned in, like some try to extract some leadership lessons. It’s been said that one of the first things that leaders do is define reality or gain clarity for their for their organization. Rich Birch — When you first started early on in your role, what were you listening for or look for that told you, maybe there’s some areas here that just aren’t very clear? What did you see as you were, you know, we got to bring some more clarity in the organization? Were there things you kind of saw that that made you think, oh, we maybe this is some areas we need to gain some better clarity as an organization? Tensley Almand — Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think, you know, every leadership transition is different. One of the advantages I had is that what my predecessor was leaving me was so much different than what he inherited. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And so he inherited an organization that was in crisis. He handed me an organization that was thriving. But, that organization really was, and he was, and it’s it’s all kind of wrapped up in our story, is that it was time for him to retire. It was time for him to move on. And so the whole organization was asking what’s next. And so that’s, that’s one advantage I had is that there was this collective, like, well, like what what is next for us? That was helpful. Tensley Almand — The other advantage I had, and I did not think this was an advantage. But, you know, I, I came out of church ministry. I didn’t know how to lead a nonprofit. I didn’t know anything about homelessness. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Tensley Almand — I didn’t know much about social services. And so, yeah I truly believe God called me into this, but I couldn’t come in like an expert. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so I literally was forced to, my I tell people my door said CEO, but I think I was really the chief question officer. I mean, my my first year… Rich Birch — Help me understand. Help me understand. Tensley Almand — …was, yeah, asking questions. I can I can vividly remember our clinical director coming into my office and saying, hey, we’ve got this massive clinical decision that we need to make and there’s this and this and this. And you know and then like trying to leave that way. What do you think we should do? And I’m like… you’re the clinical director. Like, what do what do you mean? Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — But that was again, and this is and he would say this if he was sitting here, my predecessor had an organization that was in crisis. And so every decision had to center on him. And I needed to come in and teach our team how to have a decentralized leadership. How like, hey, look you’re the clinical director I’m going to support you, I’m to remove obstacles for you. But if I have to make clinical decisions, we’re we’ve got a really big problem because I’m not qualified to make that decision. Tensley Almand — And so um really pushing leadership down… Rich Birch — yeah Tensley Almand — …asking a lot of questions, understanding what we do. And so that was that was a huge advantage that that i think a lot of people probably, they can like I did, they they think about the things that are stacked against them. To me, it’s like you don’t know anything about the space. That’s a big obstacle. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Well, maybe lean into those obstacles because it’s a really good way to to get underneath the hood. And so it forced me to ask questions, forced me to listen. And then what I did is I I truly went on a just a listening tour. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — I set up a meeting, I think, with every employee of our organization. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Tensley Almand — And I asked everybody what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s missing and what’s confusing. Rich Birch — Huh. Tensley Almand — And I still have that notebook. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — I mean, my assistant like cataloged answers for days. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And what was so cool to me was that without having the same language, almost everybody in the organization identified the same rights, wrongs, missings and confusions. And so I was able to then take that and really come back to our senior team and say, hey, what should we do about this? Like we all… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — We all agree this is a problem. like What should we do do? And I think a colleague of mine, I remember walking into his office and he had this drawing on his board. I’m like, what is what is that? He’s like, well, is how I feel about our organization. I remember it was ah it was a circle. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — And all the arrows were pointed in every direction around the circle. And he’s like, that’s us. Like, we’ve got the right idea… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …but everybody’s pulling in a hundred directions to try to figure out how to do that idea. Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — and I said, man, we need to take that circle and get all those arrows on one side. Cause if we can collectively pull… and that just kind of became our quest. And so we took all those answers and, you know, basically the the big thing was, um you know, and I don’t know where I learned this, but I feel like when there’s clarity in an organization, ‘no’ is really easy and ‘yes’ is is really difficult. It’s like really easy to say no. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And what I found at Atlanta Mission was we were just saying yes to everything. And the reason we were saying yes to everything is because there was no strategy, there was no clarity. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And so we took that first year and a half, wrote our strategic plan, identified who we want to be and why we want to be that. And then what would it look like to be that organization? And so we just kind of built it backwards. And that’s the journey we’ve been on now for the last four years since I’ve been here. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s, ah yeah, that’s incredible. I love that that feeling. In fact, i I took over a nonprofit ah kids camp and much smaller scale than what you’re running. But I remember those early days where there yeah people are looking at you and and and there is this sense of like, okay, so like you got to tell us where we’re going. What is the thing we’re doing next? Like and it’s easy to like… the easy thing is, let’s try this. Let’s try that. Let’s do a bunch of different things. And that can lead to that pulling, those hundred different, you know, it’s lots of activity, but it’s not focused. Tensley Almand — Yeah. Rich Birch — And trying to get everybody on a kind of a shared page of or shared picture of what the future looks like, man, that’s great through this, this process of kind of we’re going to do a strategic plan over a year. What, what would you, what would you say to a leader that is feeling the pressure of like, Hey, I want to define the future now, as opposed to that feels like a step back. We’re going to year and a half and define this stuff. What would you say to a leader? Why should we slow down? Talk us through why that, how that benefited now that you’re on the other side of all that. Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the first thing I would say is it’s it’s totally worth it. I mean, it it was hard. It was challenging. It it does feel like a step back. But I don’t know how to step forward without without clarity, you know. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And that’s, you said at the beginning, I got to ah got to be one of the campus pastors at North Point Community Church for years. I can remember Andy always saying, The beauty of North Point wasn’t that we got to start with a blank page, just that we started on the same page. Rich Birch — That’s good Tensley Almand — And I just think that like that, that is always set with me. And so when I when I started here, I realized like, hey, I don’t I don’t get the luxury of a blank page. I mean, this organization has been around since 1938. You know, when I when I started Decatur City, it was so easy because I just told everybody what we were doing and why we were doing it and there was nothing else we were doing. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so it was just like… But here it’s like, OK, if I can’t get to a blank page, the best thing I can do is we’ve got to get on the same page… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …or else we’re just we’re going to spin our tires. And, and you know, I think I’ll I’ll this story probably sums it up and maybe somebody can relate to this. I have a monthly breakfast with our board chair and our vice chair. And the very first breakfast I went to in this role, it was my predecessor’s last breakfast and my first. And so we’re all so it’s him, it’s me and it’s a board chair a vice chair, all of which have been around this organization 3x the amount of time I had at that point, I had been there like three days. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Couple weeks. Tensley Almand — And and we got this email the night before the breakfast, and it was from a developer. And they were offering $14 million dollars for the piece of property that my office sits on, which is a widely underused piece of property… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …that we’ve always kind of wrestled with, like, what do we do with this thing? Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — $14 million dollars. Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — That’s almost our entire year’s budget. Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — And I remember showing up to this breakfast with this LOI and I asked the question, should we take it or should we not? Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And nobody could answer my question. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Tensley Almand — Nobody knew if it was a good idea to take $14 million dollars or to walk away from $14 million dollars Rich Birch — And if that group doesn’t know, nobody else in the organization is going to know, right? Tensley Almand — And that’s exactly what I said. I was like, if you don’t know, and I don’t know… Rich Birch — Yeah. Yes, exactly. Tensley Almand — …nobody knows. Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Tensley Almand — And so I started with that small group and I said, hey, would you give me the freedom to to take however long it takes for us to make sure we can answer that question? Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Tensley Almand — And so in our first board meeting, I raised my hand and I just said, hey guys, I know I’m new, I know I just started. But I shared the story and I said, hey, we have to be able to answer questions like this. Or we’re never going to get anywhere. We may do a lot of good things, but we are going to have no idea if we did the best thing. Rich Birch — Right, right. That’s good. That’s good. So kind of double clicking on that, continuing to kind of focus in on this. You know, there are churches, organizations that will do the strat plan or roll. We go away for the big retreat. We come up with the new value statements. It’s got great strategy on paper. But it doesn’t end up translating into practice. What are you doing at the mission to try to make sure that we’re going from that wasn’t just a great document that’s like in a nice book somewhere, but it’s actually rolling out. Maybe give us some examples of that. And what are those kind of rhythms, cadences, all that? How how are you making that happen? Tensley Almand — Yeah, it’s wish I could really tell you we’re crushing it in this area. It’s this is a new habit for us. Rich Birch — Sure. Sure. Good. Tensley Almand — And so we’re I’m four years in. We just finished our first full fiscal year under our new strategy. And so I can tell you what we’ve learned. Rich Birch — Hey, that’s good. Yeah, good. Tensley Almand — One, once you get it built you have to start small. We, I wish I could remember the exact number, I think as a senior team we committed and told our board we were going to do 392 new initiatives or something in year one, you know. Rich Birch — Wow. Right. Tensley Almand — And this is a seven-year plan… Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — …we’re like we got almost for it and I think we got 100 through of the 392. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And we celebrated like crazy at the end of the year because it was like, that’s 100 things that were all in alignment that we’d never done before. We learned so much. So, start small. Tensley Almand — The other thing is we built our plan. And I was I was very intentional about this because of what you just said. I did not want another notebook that was going to sit on my shelf. And so our strategic plan is really a strategic roadmap. And what I have told our board, what I’ve told our staff is I want an organization that knows how to think. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And our our plan is really a roadmap for how we should think. It’s not overly prescriptive in necessarily what that means. Because it’s it’s designed to take us all the way through 2030. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Well, I have no idea what’s going to happen between now and 2030. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tensley Almand — But I do know that if what we said we want to accomplish, we’re accomplishing, however that looks, by 2030, we’re on the right track. And so that would be the other thing is just like, I would build, I wouldn’t make it so prescriptive that it tells you like, Hey, next week you’re doing this. And the week after… It needs to teach the organization how to think, how to act so that the person who’s brand new on the front line, if I’m not in the room, they don’t need to spend any time going like what, what would Tensley want me to do? They just, this is who we are as an organization. It’s how we think. Tensley Almand — And then we at a senior level and then we pushed it all the way down to our organization. We built a meeting cadence around it. Rich Birch — Nice. Tensley Almand — And so we have our senior team meets once a week. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — That’s my six direct reports and plus my admin. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — And we, one, so we do that on Tuesday morning, one, the first Tuesday of the month is a strategy meeting. We talk all about the strategic plan. That’s like a, how how are you doing and your department doing towards what you said you were gonna do? Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And we have a dashboard to measure that against. And then the next Tuesday is an operations meeting. And it’s just like, hey, what are what are we working on? We can’t live at 50,000 feet all the time. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Let’s get down to 1,000 feet or whatever it is. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — And so we have that operations cadence. And then the third meeting is kind of like a catch-all, like, hey, what you know what needs to happen? And then our last meeting of the month is a monthly ministry review with the entire, not just my direct reports, but all the managers that sit under my direct reports. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Tensley Almand — And they lead that meeting. I listen in that meeting. And I get to hear what’s happening at every campus, what’s going on. And I get to hear how people are implementing or not implementing the strategy. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And then the very next meeting, if you’re keeping up, is then our strategy meeting. Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — So then I’m like, hey… Rich Birch — Here’s some stuff I heard. Tensley Almand — …tell me more about this. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Tensley Almand — Or I didn’t hear like, Hey, I thought we were working on this. Why is that not happening? And so we have dashboards. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Tensley Almand — We’ve never had those before. We have data that we can follow. We have metrics we’ve identified as a, as a team, our wins. And so it’s like, Hey, how are we tracking towards those wins and just have created a layer of accountability that didn’t exist probably three years ago. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Let’s talk a little bit more about the data thing. I’ve, or data thing. We, I’ve, I’ve said with younger leaders, you know, spreadsheets are the language of leadership. Like you’re going to have to get used to this stuff. This is just… Tensley Almand — Yep. Rich Birch — …this is how we care for people at scale is, is that is what it looks like. So data can either inspire or intimidate. How do you track outcomes? How do you, how do you how have you seen, you know, data over this last year actually change behavior and move things, improve care, better outcomes, all that kind of stuff. Talk us through what, cause you know, what we measure can get, can, you know, steer us in the wrong direction or steer us in the right direction. Help, help us think through that. As we’re thinking about what numbers should we pay attention to? Tensley Almand — Yeah. So again, when I started, that was a big question I had. So if you were to look at our numbers, you would see that we serve, you know, let’s, these are rough, but right at about 3000 people a year come through our doors. Rich Birch — Okay. Tensley Almand — Right. Which is huge. Rich Birch — Yep. Tensley Almand — You’re like, man, that’s amazing. Well, then I, as I walk you through that, by the time you get to the end of our vocational training a year later, we may graduate like 400. And then 70% of those 400 are still doing well the the next year. And so, you know, on paper, you’re like, man, is that good? Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Tensley Almand — Like that, that there’s a lot of attrition there. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — Like should, is, is, are we fail… And that was, again, when I started, that was a question nobody could answer for me is, Hey, is that good? Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so even backing up before we built our strategy, our senior team spent so much time defining our outcomes. And we had all of these statements, you know, but it was like we want somebody to be healthy vocationally. Tensley Almand — It’s like, okay, what does that mean? Crickets in the room. Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — Wait, if you don’t know what it means and I don’t know what it means, does the person who’s leading that program know what it means? Better question: does the person who’s receiving our services know if they’ve actually achieved help in that area? Tensley Almand — And so we went through, defined all of those terms so that there was a clear outcome to it… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …so that we could then measure it. And then we built both a one-page dashboard that our senior team could look at at a high level. So I could I can open this dashboard on any Monday morning. It’s just in Tableau, so nothing super you know exciting. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Tensley Almand — And I can just see, i can see progression through our program. I can see healthy exits. We’ve defined what are healthy exits. I can see, ah you know, are people getting stuck? That was a big thing we were we were learning is like, people are just getting stuck in our program and we’re committing to somebody. You’re going to be at this phase of the program 30 days. Well, then they spend 60 days. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And what we were finding. We were, so this, this probably long winded way of saying this, but what we, we didn’t know what was happening or why it was happening and it felt good. But you know, you’re like, I don’t know. Tensley Almand — And so what we were finding is it’s like, Hey, so that’s an example. Like, somebody gets stuck in our program. We promised them 30. It takes 60. All of a sudden, we were able to track that, hey, there’s a certain amount of fallout rate at this stage of the program. Why is that happening? Oh, people are stuck. They’ve been here too long. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — We got to fix that. And so it it enabled us to know what needed to be fixed and and not fixed. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Tensley Almand — And probably the the best real-time example of that is just recently. So I keep telling you the 70% number of graduates are successful. That’s kind of our historical data. Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Tensley Almand — Well, this year, that number fell for the first time ever. It’s gotten better every year. Rich Birch — Wow. Tensley Almand — This year it fell and it fell like dramatically. And this is one of those I don’t like to talk about it because it doesn’t look good. Rich Birch — Interesting. Yes. Tensley Almand — I mean, like it fell down to almost like 45, 50 percent. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Tensley Almand — You’re like, what’s happening? Rich Birch — Almost inverse. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Tensley Almand — Exactly. And so at first, you’re like, our program is no good. We got rewrite our program. Well, thankfully, we had been tracking all of the kind of whys and we understood what was happening in people’s lives. And what we have found out is no, like the economy shifted. You can’t get a job in 30 to 60 days anymore. Rich Birch — Interesting. Tensley Almand — And so a gate in our program is when you graduate, you have 60 days to get a job. If you don’t get a job, you can’t move into our transitional housing because if we just allow you to stay, beds back up and then more people can’t get in. Tensley Almand — Well, our clients then would stop taking our advice and stop waiting for a good job. And at day like 50, they would just go get that job that doesn’t pay well. Rich Birch — Ohhh. Tensley Almand — And they knew it wasn’t going to be a career builder job. It was just going to keep them sheltered. Rich Birch — Right, right. Tensley Almand — And so it was our our like metrics were actually driving a behavior we didn’t like. Rich Birch — That’s interesting. Tensley Almand — And so we’re in the process now of like, hey, we’ve got to change this. The length of time it takes to get a job now takes longer. and Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — The job market’s more you know fierce right now. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so we don’t want nothing against these types of jobs. We don’t necessarily want our client leaving to go get a job at McDonald’s Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — But for them, leaving it to go get a job at McDonald’s versus not having a place to stay, I’ll take the McDonald’s job… Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Tensley Almand — …even though I know I’m only going to be there three months. Rich Birch — Right. Right. Tensley Almand — And so it was throwing off all of our numbers and it’s because we were incorrectly driving a behavior that we don’t want to drive. So. Rich Birch — Wow. That’s cool. That’s a great, very vivid example. And there’s lots of that in the church world. I know you I know you know that. There was a church I was doing some work with last year, large church, 10,000-person church. And they were we were talking one of the numbers I obsess with my clients over is documented first-time guests, the actual number of people that come every single weekend. And I was convinced that this church was just was missing a whole bunch of first time guests. And so they were telling me about how great their, their, their assimilation numbers were. They were like, Oh, this is so great. And I was like, I just don’t believe it. I’m like, because, because if you are not capturing the number of, of documented first time guests, then yeah and you’re comparing against half of what you probably actually have coming into your church, then then every number be below that, all your integration stuff looks twice as good as it actually is. Tensley Almand — Yeah. Rich Birch — And you know that that happens in lots of places across our numbers. We’ve got to get real clear and benchmark against other people. Tensley Almand — If I could go back and if I could go back, no, no, it’s just, like I’ve often thought like, what would I do different if I was a church leader now? Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good question. Tensley Almand — And I would I would measure so much differently. Rich Birch — Yeah, interesting. Tensley Almand — You know, historically we’ve measured nickels and noses, right? Like how much money’s coming in and how many people are sitting in the pews. But it’s like, those are important. Rich Birch — Yeah. Tensley Almand — I wouldn’t stop measuring them, but I would pay attention to like this. I would try to find a way to measure progression, you know. Rich Birch — Yes, 100%. Tensley Almand — It’s like to your point how many first-time guests are you having okay well then of those first-time guests how many of them are actually moving to your small groups. Rich Birch — Yeah, 100%. Tensley Almand — Of those who moved your small groups do any of them ever volunteer like and and really understand the behaviors you want. And then measure to those behaviors and i think especially in a world where just church attendance looks so much so much different, we could gauge health of our churches so much more effectively if we were Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true. I’d love to I’d love to kind of pivot for a few minutes in a slightly different direction. Tensley Almand — Okay. Rich Birch — So we have a lot of church leaders that are listening in and I’d love to understand how Atlanta Mission partners with churches. What does that look like? How do you work together? So specifically at Atlanta misha, and then what would you, Mission, and then what would you say to churches in general? Hey, um what advice would you give now that you’re on this side of the equation of actually partnering with an organization like Atlanta Mission? How can you be kind of the best partner? How do we what are what are people on your side of the table actually looking for from a church like ours? Because I’m sure there’s all kinds of stories of like, yeah, that didn’t work well. Talk us through what that looks like, partnerships specifically, and then kind of in general, how can we be better at that? Tensley Almand — Yeah, and partnership is one of our pillars of our strategic plan. I think I think for nonprofits, especially when you’re large and you’re self-funded, you can it’s easy to get siloed. And we we fell into that category, not just with outside partners that wanted to come in and help us, but also with other service providers across the the, you know, continuum of care in our city. is It’s just it’s easy to kind of put your head down and do your own thing. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And so this is a huge emphasis for us, mainly because it’s really woven into the vision of our organization. Our organization is a community that’s united to end homelessness one person at a time. Well, I mean, it’s like partnership has to be built into that. Rich Birch — Right. Yes, baked into it. Yeah. Tensley Almand — So what who are we to then go get siloed? Like, that’s like, wow, you can’t even accomplish what you said you wanted to do. And so um we… I’ll back into this answer by telling you one of the things we’ve discovered at Atlanta Mission is that this isn’t this, you know, this isn’t novel, but, you know, material poverty, we all know is debilitating. Relational poverty is just as debilitating as material poverty. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Tensley Almand — And what we find with our clients is that almost 100 percent obviously are struggling with some version of material poverty, but they are just relationally broken and poor. They are void of healthy relationships. And so this is this is so much where partnership comes in, because we we literally have a metric that we track of how many healthy contacts does a client have in their phone before they graduate our program. And what we were finding is I mean we were their only healthy contact. Rich Birch — Oh, wow. Tensley Almand — And it’s wait this is this is not good. And this is such a great place for churches to partner with us because we have so many opportunities that we just call we call them “be with” opportunities there’s like there’s “do for” service projects but there’s also “be with” service projects. And they’re just designed for you to establish healthy community with our clients, build relationships, throw a birthday party for somebody… Rich Birch — That’s so good. Right. Tensley Almand — …have a Christmas party at one of our shelters. Come, you know, we’re moving into the holiday season, you know, come and build gingerbread houses together with our kids who are staying with us and just create an hour in somebody’s life that’s normal. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — And I feel like churches are better at this than anybody. Our corporate partners are fantastic at the “do for” projects. They can then come in and beautify our campuses in 30 minutes in a way that none of us can. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — You know, Home Depot comes in and it’s like, we’re going to transform your landscape. Great. This is awesome. Rich Birch — Yeah, yeah. Tensley Almand — I love it. But a church can come in and just be authentic and be real and be with our clients. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — And you would be amazed at how different somebody’s life looks after just that hour. And so, and I think that’s a huge thing. And then what I would tell churches, I think even as a church leader, I I probably overlooked how vital we were to nonprofits. You just you know, you think it’s an hour, but you know, even the day of, you know, you wake up that morning and you’re like, they don’t really need me. Like, I don’t know. Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — This is, am I not really going to make a difference? Yes, you are. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — You are going to make a huge difference. It is worth the hour. It is worth the drive. Tensley Almand — And we we tell people all the time, and I’ve seen this in my own life. The thing that happens at Atlanta Mission is there’s always two stories of transformation happening. There’s the story of transformation that’s happening in a client’s life. But God transforms my life every day. Rich Birch — That’s so true. Tensley Almand — And it’s that’s the part I didn’t expect, Rich, is that… Rich Birch — Right. Tensley Almand — …my life is being changed as much as anybody else’s. And so I would, I would tell a church, Hey, our clients need you. But you need this as well. Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Tensley Almand — Like God’s going to do something in your life. Tensley Almand — And then the other is just, um I think, especially for really big churches, it’s easy to think like, I bet they need my expertise. It’s like, actually, that’s not like. We need your partnership. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Tensley Almand — You know, we, we know how to do this. Come put wind in our sails. Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, Tensley Almand — Come just serve, be a part of what we’re doing. Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so good. That’s super helpful. Love love that. Well, just as we’re coming to land, any kind of final words or encouragement you’d you’d say to church leaders that are listening in today that are, you know, wrestling with maybe clarity or wrestling with some of the stuff we’ve talked about today? This has been a really fruitful conversation. Thank you for it. Tensley Almand — Yeah, I think the, you know, probably the biggest thing I would say, and I have to tell myself this all the time. I mean, I’m an entrepreneurial type A. I’m going to like, you know, go conquer the world in a day is that, you know, remind yourself, you know, more than likely what you can accomplish in 90 days is nowhere near what you think it is, you know. But what you can accomplish in a year or two years is probably way more than you ever imagined you could. Rich Birch — Right. So true Yeah, that’s good. Tensley Almand — And so just again, kind of back to the strategy thing, it takes time. It’s messy. You know, you’re going to feel like, is this worth it? It creates conflict on your team. It feels uncomfortable. We were, we were joking as a senior team the other day. There was, it was about a year where I just, every Tuesday morning, I thought I want to cancel this meeting because I just didn’t enjoy, like we were just, we were at conflict because we were… Rich Birch — Right. Yes. Tensley Almand — …hashing out who we are and why we exist and what are we going to do and why are we going to do it? Rich Birch — Yes. Tensley Almand — But now it’s my favorite hour of the week. Like, I just love it. And so, you know, I would say that… Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — …you know, and I think, yeah, I don’t know that I have anything, you know, much more. Rich Birch — That’s good. Tensley Almand — Yeah. Rich Birch — No, that’s good. Well, I really appreciate being on the show today. Where do we want to send people if they want to connect with you or with Atlanta Mission? Where are the best places for us to send people online? Tensley Almand — Probably the easiest place is just our website, atlantamission.org. You can find everything you want to about us. If you want to know more, you can email info@atlantamission.org. And that actually goes right to my assistant and we’ll get you connected to the right person. And you can, you know, next time you’re in town, you partner with us. You can help us. You can be happy to give you a tour, show you what we do. Rich Birch — That’s great. Thanks so much, Tensley. Appreciate you being here today. Tensley Almand — Thanks.

Judge Sherry Moore & Tom Sheldon     Jackson County Mental Health Task Force Join Probate Judge Sherry Moore and other community leaders for a monthly meeting of the Jackson County Mental Health Task Force, a collaborative effort focused on improving mental health awareness, expanding local resources, and reducing stigma across the county. Launched in […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Georgia Senator Frank Ginn       Senator Frank Ginn, a Republican, was first elected to the Georgia State Senate in 2010 and proudly represents District 47, which encompasses Madison County and portions of Barrow, Clarke, and Jackson counties. In 2000, when Franklin County transitioned to a county manager form of government, Sen. Ginn was […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Georgia Senator Frank Ginn       Senator Frank Ginn, a Republican, was first elected to the Georgia State Senate in 2010 and proudly represents District 47, which encompasses Madison County and portions of Barrow, Clarke, and Jackson counties. In 2000, when Franklin County transitioned to a county manager form of government, Sen. Ginn was […] The post Georgia Senator Frank Ginn – District 47 appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Dr. Tim Cummins   Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research and […]

We visit Providence Farmstead in Demorest, Georgia, where the Russell family raises American Wagyu by crossing full-blood Wagyu sires with Jersey cows. You hear how careful nutrition, low-stress handling, and family teamwork shape beef prized by chefs across the Peach State. 

Nick Bryant Velvet City Sound is a tight-knit group of live music enthusiasts dedicated to bringing energy and excitement to any event--big or small. From casual backyard parties and community festivals to black-tie galas and corporate celebrations, the group creates the perfect ensemble tailored to each occasion. Their talented musicians deliver vibrant, dynamic performances that […] The post Nick Bryant with Velvet City Sound appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Dr. Tim Cummins   Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research and […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Clayton Kramer The team at Floor Coverings International® of Northeast Georgia is ready to help you design the perfect flooring for your home. They proudly offer a wide variety of high-quality flooring options and bring samples directly to your door. Whether you're considering carpet, tile, laminate, vinyl, or wood, their design knowledge and installation expertise […]

Clayton Kramer The team at Floor Coverings International® of Northeast Georgia is ready to help you design the perfect flooring for your home. They proudly offer a wide variety of high-quality flooring options and bring samples directly to your door. Whether you're considering carpet, tile, laminate, vinyl, or wood, their design knowledge and installation expertise […] The post Clayton Kramer with FCI of Northeast Georgia appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Corey Moser Delivering hope, dignity & God's love through every kit. Faith-driven logistics with purpose. Redeemed Reach Logistics, Inc. is a newly established nonprofit based in Commerce, Georgia, dedicated to creating positive community impact through service and outreach. Founded in 2025, the organization focuses on helping individuals and families overcome barriers through faith-driven initiatives and […] The post Corey Moser with Redeemed Reach Logistics appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Shannon Sell “I am humbly asking for your vote and support in this election. I have the time, experience, education, drive and knowledge to lead our great city. I do this because this is my home and I want the best for our city. It doesn’t matter what subdivision you live in. I will represent […] The post Hoschton Mayoral Candidate Shannon Sell appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

GDP Script/ Top Stories for October 16th Publish Date: October 16th PRE-ROLL: From the BG AD Group Studio Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. Today is Thursday, October 16th and Happy birthday to Tim Robbins I’m Peyton Spurlock and here are your top stories presented by KIA Mall of Georgia. Truck driver charged in I-85 crash that killed Gwinnett family Alice Kim Appointed to Gwinnett Place CID Board of Directors Longtime Gwinnett resident joins Northeast Georgia Physicians Group in Dacula Plus, Leah McGrath from Ingles Markets on grass fed beef All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen daily and subscribe! Break 1: Ingles Markets 3 STORY 1: Truck driver charged in I-85 crash that killed Gwinnett family A Gainesville truck driver, Kane Aaron Hammock, 33, is facing 12 charges after a devastating six-vehicle crash on I-85 in Jackson County that killed eight members of the same Gwinnett County family. The Georgia State Patrol said Hammock’s semi was following too closely and slammed into a 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan, sparking a chain reaction. The van and semi burst into flames. The victims, reportedly on their way to Tanger Outlets, included three adults, five children, and possibly an unborn baby. Names released by family include Kenia Ramirez, 22, who was pregnant, and her 4-year-old daughter, Kayle. The tragedy has left a community reeling. STORY 2: Alice Kim Appointed to Gwinnett Place CID Board of Directors The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners has tapped Alice Kim, financial director of Nam Dae Mun Farmers Market, to join the Gwinnett Place CID board of directors. She steps in for June Lee, a long-time member who resigned last month. Kim brings over 20 years of experience steering Nam Dae Mun’s financial growth—think rebranding, expansion to eight Georgia locations, and major capital projects. She’s also a pro at supply chain management and HR. STORY 3: Longtime Gwinnett resident joins Northeast Georgia Physicians Group in Dacula  For Dr. Khaja Ahmed, healthcare isn’t just a job—it’s personal. After more than 20 years practicing in Georgia, the longtime Gwinnett resident is joining Northeast Georgia Physicians Group Dacula, staying close to the community where he’s lived, worked, and raised his family. “Being there for my patients, through every step of their health journey, is what drives me,” Ahmed said. His journey started in Bangladesh, inspired by family doctors and a love of science. Now, after residencies in New York and Pennsylvania, he’s back where he belongs: home. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We’ll be right back Break 2: 07.14.22 KIA MOG STORY 4: Golf with a Purpose: Mitsubishi Electric Classic Sets Sustainability Standard in 2025 Report  The Mitsubishi Electric Classic, presented by Vensure, just dropped its 2025 Sustainability Report, and it’s packed with big wins for the environment, the community, and the local economy. From planting nearly 8,000 trees to diverting over 29,000 pounds of waste from landfills, the tournament is proving it’s more than just a golf event—it’s a movement. Solar charging stations, e-waste recycling, scholarships for military families, and programs like Girls Got Drive™ are just a few highlights. Check out the full report for all the details. STORY 5: Lawrenceville church to host free Candy at the Cabins trick-or-treating event LVfirst United Methodist Church is bringing back its beloved Candy at the Cabins event, and honestly, it’s the kind of wholesome fun we all need. On Sunday, Oct. 19, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m., families can head to the historic LVfirst Campground (700 Braselton Highway) for free trick-or-treating, snacks, crafts, and more. Yep, free. Picture this: kids collecting candy at 11 cozy cabins, a family movie under the arbor, chili and hotdogs, inflatables, popcorn—it’s all there. It’s not just an event; it’s the church’s way of saying, “Hey, we’re here for you.” Details? Check out www.lvfirst.org. Break 3: And now here is Leah McGrath from Ingles Markets on grass fed beef Break 4: We’ll have closing comments after this Break 5: CITY OF SUGAR HILL Signoff – Thanks again for hanging out with us on today’s Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger Podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, or the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties. Read more about all our stories and get other great content at www.gwinnettdailypost.com Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the BG Podcast Network Show Sponsors: www.ingles-markets.com www.kiamallofga.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Nonprofit Fundraising Made Stronger with Mark Wilkison (Good2Give Podcast, Episode 18) In this episode of The Good2Give Podcast, hosted by DePriest Waddy and underwritten by the Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia, fundraising veteran Mark Wilkison, Principal and Partner at Columns Fundraising, shares timeless lessons on nonprofit fundraising, governance, board engagement, and major gift strategy. With […]

Mayor Jon Howell Mayor Jon Howell currently serves as Mayor of Jefferson, Georgia. Beyond his role as mayor, he is active in regional and civic affairs; he is a board member of the Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce, representing the City of Jefferson. Under his leadership the city has emphasized advocacy, quality-of-life investments and […]

Mayor Jon Howell Mayor Jon Howell currently serves as Mayor of Jefferson, Georgia. Beyond his role as mayor, he is active in regional and civic affairs; he is a board member of the Jackson County Area Chamber of Commerce, representing the City of Jefferson. Under his leadership the city has emphasized advocacy, quality-of-life investments and […] The post City of Jefferson Mayor Jon Howell appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Jamie Patton & Patrick Evans Greenworks EcoScapes is putting the GREEN back into landscaping. Utilizing electric mowers for your landscaping maintenance and landscaping solutions, they provide quiet, clean energy and eco-friendly services without compromising quality. The Greenworks Pledge: “We deliver what we promise. Period. We are committed to environmentally friendly systems, on-time service, up-front pricing, […] The post Jamie Patton & Patrick Evans with Greenworks EcoScapes appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Chairman Marty Clark Marty Clark is a second-generation poultry and cattle farmer and native Jackson Countian. Raised on the West Jackson farm where he currently resides, Marty graduated from Jackson County Comprehensive High School where he was very active in the FFA program. Marty joined the United States Navy after graduation and served for four […]

Chairman Marty Clark Marty Clark is a second-generation poultry and cattle farmer and native Jackson Countian. Raised on the West Jackson farm where he currently resides, Marty graduated from Jackson County Comprehensive High School where he was very active in the FFA program. Marty joined the United States Navy after graduation and served for four […] The post Jackson County Board of Commissioners Chairman Marty Clark appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Dr. Tim Cummins     Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research […]

Samuel Vaughn Velocity Technology Partners has been serving companies throughout North Georgia and beyond since 2005, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. It’s always been their goal to provide enterprise-level IT practices and solutions to the small business sector, with small business prices. Experience […]

Samuel Vaughn Velocity Technology Partners has been serving companies throughout North Georgia and beyond since 2005, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses. It’s always been their goal to provide enterprise-level IT practices and solutions to the small business sector, with small business prices. Experience […] The post Samuel Vaughn with Velocity Technology Partners appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Kyle Rosenbaum Barrow Business Group is a marketing and technology agency. They aim to help local businesses in Georgia to attract, grow and retain customers. Their services include creating and managing websites, online storefronts, seasonal marketing campaigns, social media marketing, customer loyalty campaigns and more.   Our Community Partner for this episode of Northeast Georgia Business Radio […]

Kyle Rosenbaum Barrow Business Group is a marketing and technology agency. They aim to help local businesses in Georgia to attract, grow and retain customers. Their services include creating and managing websites, online storefronts, seasonal marketing campaigns, social media marketing, customer loyalty campaigns and more.   Our Community Partner for this episode of Northeast Georgia Business Radio […] The post Kyle Rosenbaum with Barrow Business Group appeared first on Business RadioX ®.

Dr. Tim Cummins     Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research […]

Marc McMain Real Country Q92.3 FM is Northeast Georgia's home for authentic country music, blending timeless classics with today's top hits. Serving listeners across the region, Q92.3 FM delivers the perfect soundtrack for work, play, and everything in between. With a strong commitment to community, the station highlights local news, weather, sports, and events, keeping […]

Dr. Tim Cummins     Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research […]

Jake Blickenstaff Jake Blickenstaff is a Commercial Real Estate Broker, Investor, and Developer based in Athens, GA. As a founder of Altitude Development Group and co-owner of UC Premier Properties First Team, Jake helps business owners, investors, and communities revitalize downtown areas through creative deal structuring and redevelopment projects. His brokerage team covers Georgia, South […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Dr. Tim Cummins     Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research […]

Judge Sherry Moore & Tom Sheldon       Jackson County Mental Health Task Force Join Probate Judge Sherry Moore and other community leaders for a monthly meeting of the Jackson County Mental Health Task Force, a collaborative effort focused on improving mental health awareness, expanding local resources, and reducing stigma across the county. Launched […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

Dylan Wilbanks Life can take sudden turns, and legal challenges often arise when least expected. The Wilbanks Law Firm, based in Commerce, Georgia, provides trusted guidance in probate matters, estate planning, contract disputes, real estate transactions, and judgment collections. The firm's team is equipped to respond quickly, offering direct and clear answers to clients' questions […]

Dr. Tim Cummins     Dr. Tim Cummins/Infinity Wellness Center Dr. Tim Cummins has been in the health and wellness space since 1992. Earned his bachelor's degree in sports medicine and then continued on to chiropractic school where he graduated with honors in 1999. After establishing a successful family practice, Dr. Cummins dove into research […]

Ashley & Jacqui Derrick   Ashley Derrick & Jacqui Derrick/Workright, LLC The Drug Lady is an important team member for any business wishing to create or maintain a Drug Free Workplace. Our "Drug Lady" is powered by two amazing ladies- a mother-daughter team who have been working together for almost 30 years. Jacqui Derrick developed […]

GDP Script/ Top Stories for August 23rd Publish Date: August 23rd PRE-ROLL: MONSTER JAM From the BG AD Group Studio Welcome to the Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. Today is Saturday, August 23rd and Happy Birthday to Barbra Eden I’m Peyton Spurlock and here are your top stories presented by Gwinnett KIA Mall of Georgia. Lawmakers discuss ways to discourage tobacco sales and use North Gwinnett Co-op suffers thousands in losses after break-in Candidate fields set for most Gwinnett cities municipal elections All of this and more is coming up on the Gwinnett Daily Post podcast, and if you are looking for community news, we encourage you to listen daily and subscribe! Break 1: 07.14.22 KIA MOG STORY 1: Lawmakers discuss ways to discourage tobacco sales and use Smoking kills. We all know it, yet people keep lighting up—and now vaping’s taken over, especially with kids. A small group of Georgia lawmakers is trying to change that, but their main idea? A tax hike. And let’s be real, taxes don’t win popularity contests—especially in an election year. At Thursday’s hearing, Rep. Sharon Cooper, R-Marietta, acknowledged the uphill battle. The proposal wouldn’t even hit the floor until 2026. Other ideas? Banning flavored vapes, requiring ingredient labels, and raising the laughably low $10 licensing fee for vape shops. Georgia’s cigarette tax? A measly 37 cents per pack, one of the lowest in the country. Stephens argued it’s time to raise it, not just to discourage smoking but to cover the healthcare costs that inevitably follow. Meanwhile, federal budget cuts have already gutted Georgia’s Tobacco Use Prevention Program. Advocates are calling for the state to restore $2.1 million in funding, but for now, the fight continues. STORY 2: North Gwinnett Co-op suffers thousands in losses after break-in  For nearly 35 years, the North Gwinnett Co-Op in Buford has been a lifeline for families—offering food, clothes, and help with essentials like meds and utility bills. But now? They’re the ones who need a hand. Early Tuesday morning, someone shattered a window at their Second Blessings Thrift Store, making off with over $10,000 in goods. The store closed for repairs but reopened Thursday, thanks to an outpouring of community support. Donations are welcome. STORY 3: Candidate fields set for most Gwinnett cities municipal elections Gwinnett County’s cities now have their lineups for this fall’s elections—well, most of them. Fourteen cities wrapped up candidate qualifying on Wednesday, with one exception: Auburn. Their qualifying runs through Friday, so no word yet on their candidates. And Mulberry? No elections there until 2027, per the city’s founding legislation. Elsewhere, though, changes are coming. Snellville’s losing Councilwomen Cristy Lenski and Gretchen Schulz, while Sugar Hill’s Taylor Anderson is stepping down. Loganville? A new mayor and two new council members are guaranteed, with Mayor Skip Baliles and others not seeking re-election. Meanwhile, Norcross Mayor Craig Newton, recently cleared in a city probe, is running unopposed. Grayson’s Mayor Allison Wilkerson? Also unchallenged. But Sugar Hill Mayor Brandon Hembree and Braselton Mayor Kurt Ward? They’ve got competition. Peachtree Corners, though, is staying steady—no challengers, no election. We have opportunities for sponsors to get great engagement on these shows. Call 770.874.3200 for more info. We’ll be right back Break 2: Ingles Markets 10 STORY 4: Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia raises record $450K at 40th anniversary celebration The Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia threw quite the party for its 40th anniversary—and raised a jaw-dropping $450,000 in just two hours at its Good2Give Celebration on Aug. 14. More than 500 guests packed the Gas South District for an evening of jazz, philanthropy, and heartfelt stories. Radio personality Mara Davis and Aurora Theatre’s Jono Davis kept the energy high, while Jose Garcia’s jazz set the perfect mood. The funds will help CFNEG continue its mission of empowering over 300 local nonprofits through training, consultation, and financial support. The night also honored community leaders like Ethel Andersen, Mike Tennant, and Sir Timothy Minard for their lasting contributions. Forty years strong—and just getting started. STORY 5: Two more Georgia paper mills closing International Paper is shutting down two pulp and paper mills in Coastal Georgia, leaving about 1,100 workers without jobs. The mills in Savannah and Riceboro, along with a Savannah packaging facility, will close by the end of next month, cutting the company’s containerboard production by a million tons annually. The closures hit hard. Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns called it a “devastating blow” to Southeast Georgia’s economy and timber industry. Georgia’s pulp and paper sector has been shrinking for decades—down from 18 mills in 1977 to just nine now. Marshall Thomas, president of F&W Forest Services, told leaders at the Ag Issues Summit that lawmakers are exploring ways to boost timber demand, including sustainable aviation fuel from biomass. Burns vowed to work with state and federal leaders to find new opportunities for those affected and protect Georgia’s timber industry. Break 3: MONSTER JAM STORY 6: Suwanee Wine Fest tickets go on sale Friday Suwanee’s Wine Fest is back! Mark your calendars for Nov. 8 at Town Center Park, and if you’re planning to go, don’t wait—tickets dropped yesterday. Last year, VIP tickets sold out in minutes. This year’s festival promises over 150 wines to sip, swirl, and savor—perfect for everyone from casual drinkers to wannabe sommeliers. VIPs get early access at noon, while general admission runs from 1 to 4:30 p.m. Not into wine? No worries. Head to the Taco Mac Tailgate Tent for craft brews from StillFire and Social Fox, or check out the new Margaritaville Cocktail Corner for some tropical vibes. And yes, the grape stomping is back—because what’s a wine fest without stomping grapes, right? Plus, there’ll be local vendors, food, and plenty of shopping to round out the day. Best of all, a portion of proceeds supports Annandale Village, a Suwanee nonprofit helping adults with developmental disabilities live full, independent lives. STORY 7: Gwinnett's GSMST named 13th best high school in the nation Gwinnett County residents are no strangers to hearing about the Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology (GSMST) topping Georgia’s rankings. But nationally? It’s a whole other level. U.S. News & World Report just named GSMST the 13th best public high school in the entire country—the only Georgia school in the top 25. With a 100% graduation rate, 98% AP participation, and near-perfect proficiency in math, reading, and science, it’s no wonder. Other Gwinnett schools? They’re solid but not quite in the same league. North Gwinnett High came in at No. 527 nationally, Paul Duke STEM at No. 659, and Brookwood at No. 1,360. Meanwhile, some schools didn’t even crack the top 100 in Georgia, with a few so far down they weren’t given specific rankings. Still, GSMST’s achievement is a big win for Gwinnett—and a reminder of the high bar it sets. We’ll have closing comments after this Break 4: MONSTER JAM Signoff – Thanks again for hanging out with us on today’s Gwinnett Daily Post Podcast. If you enjoy these shows, we encourage you to check out our other offerings, like the Cherokee Tribune Ledger podcast, the Marietta Daily Journal, or the Community Podcast for Rockdale Newton and Morgan Counties. Read more about all our stories and get other great content at www.gwinnettdailypost.com Did you know over 50% of Americans listen to podcasts weekly? Giving you important news about our community and telling great stories are what we do. Make sure you join us for our next episode and be sure to share this podcast on social media with your friends and family. Add us to your Alexa Flash Briefing or your Google Home Briefing and be sure to like, follow, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Produced by the BG Podcast Network Show Sponsors: www.ingles-markets.com www.kiamallofga.com #NewsPodcast #CurrentEvents #TopHeadlines #BreakingNews #PodcastDiscussion #PodcastNews #InDepthAnalysis #NewsAnalysis #PodcastTrending #WorldNews #LocalNews #GlobalNews #PodcastInsights #NewsBrief #PodcastUpdate #NewsRoundup #WeeklyNews #DailyNews #PodcastInterviews #HotTopics #PodcastOpinions #InvestigativeJournalism #BehindTheHeadlines #PodcastMedia #NewsStories #PodcastReports #JournalismMatters #PodcastPerspectives #NewsCommentary #PodcastListeners #NewsPodcastCommunity #NewsSource #PodcastCuration #WorldAffairs #PodcastUpdates #AudioNews #PodcastJournalism #EmergingStories #NewsFlash #PodcastConversations See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.