Podcasts about Rutgers University

Dr. Dan interviews Dr. Avriel Epps, a dynamic scholar, author, and strategist whose work sits at the crossroads of transformative justice and artificial intelligence. With a PhD in Human Development and a masters in Data Science from Harvard University, Dr. Epps brings a fresh and critical perspective to conversations about technology, equity, and social justice. On today's episode, Dr. Dan and Dr. Epps explore her work around how bias in predictive technologies affects racial, gender, and sociopolitical identity development. She aims to understand the complex ways that algorithm design and computer-mediated social expectations—often communicated through artificial intelligence systems—impact the beliefs, behaviors, and health of developing humans. On today's episode, listeners will hear explanations and examples about how AI can sometimes reinforce unfairness. Dr. Dan and Dr. Epps urge us to be part of the solution by demanding technology that works for everyone, not just a few. Dr. Avriel Epps is a former child actor and an R&B artist turned algorithmic justice expert. Her work shows us that AI is not neutral, reminds us algorithmic bias impacts are real, and urges us to question technology.  In the Fall of 2025, she will begin her tenure as Assistant Professor of Fair and Responsible Data Science at Rutgers University. For more information www.avrielepps.com and follow @kingavriel on Instagram. Please listen, follow, rate, and review Make It a Great One on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow @drdanpeters on social media. Visit www.drdanpeters.com and send your questions or guest pitches to podcast@drdanpeters.com. We have this moment, this day, and this life—let's make it a great one. – Dr. Dan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dry Eyes No More: The Revolutionary Drink Saving Your Vision Theeyedrink.com About the Guest(s): Dr. Roger Wu - Dr. Wu is an experienced optometrist who has been in private practice for over 25 years. He completed his Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry from Rutgers University and obtained his Doctorate in Optometry from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry. Leveraging his extensive experience in eye care and his passion for innovation, Dr. Wu has co-founded 20/20 Incorporated, dealing with eye health beverages. Jorge Olson - Olson is a beverage industry expert with over 20 years of experience. He has launched a plethora of beverages and has been instrumental in taking five companies public, raising over $100 million. He is the author of several business and marketing books, including "Build Your Beverage Empire." Olson serves as the CMO of 20/20 Incorporated, bringing his expertise to the forefront of eye-health functional beverages. Episode Summary: In this enlightening episode of The Chris Voss Show, Chris dives into a fascinating discussion with Dr. Roger Wu and Jorge Olson about the new venture by 20/20 Incorporated. The company has introduced a breakthrough product, the Eye Drink, a functional beverage scientifically formulated to address eye health for digital device users. This episode brings to light the burgeoning issue of digital eye strain affecting millions globally, and how this pioneering beverage proposes a convenient solution. Dr. Wu and Jorge Olson delve into a detailed conversation about the formulation and benefits of the Eye Drink, which targets dry eyes and macular health. The rise in digital device usage has led to an increase in eye-related issues, impacting individuals even at a younger age. The Eye Drink, backed by scientific research and designed to maintain eye health, becomes particularly relevant in this digital age. From insightful case studies to discussing the societal implications of prolonged screen usage, the guests provide listeners with in-depth knowledge and practical solutions to better eye health. Key Takeaways: The Eye Drink by 20/20 Incorporated is the world's first ready-to-drink functional beverage created specifically to aid in eye health for digital device users. Digital device usage has been linked to an increase in eye-related issues such as dry eyes and macular degeneration, affecting even younger populations. The beverage is based on the AREDS2 formulation, incorporating essential nutrients and Omega-3 to combat screen-induced eye problems. Both over-the-counter eye drops and prescription medications have limited efficacy, while the Eye Drink offers a convenient and scientifically-backed solution. Jorge Olson and Dr. Wu stress the importance of reducing screen time and investing in blue light filtering lenses to protect eye health further. Notable Quotes: "We know the cause of digital eye strain and are focused on developing an effective, scientifically-based solution." - Dr. Roger Wu "One bottle a day can help maintain your eye health if you spend two hours or more daily on a screen." - Jorge Olson "It's not just about solving a health problem; it's about addressing a massive social issue created by technology." - Jorge Olson "Our formulation is based on the large international study AREDS2 to ensure efficacy and support macular health." - Dr. Roger Wu "The Eye Drink is made to solve a societal problem, and our go-to-market strategy includes both wholesale distribution and direct from doctors' offices." - Jorge Olson Resources: Visit the Eye Drink website for more details and orders: theidrink.com Explore Jorge Olson's books such as "Build Your Beverage Empire". Follow Chris Voss for more episodes: Goodreads, LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok. Embark on a journey to healthier eyes by listening to this full episode! Stay tuned for more innovative conversations and insightful stories on the Chris Voss Show.

I have had the honor and pleasure to have on the Unstoppable Mindset podcast many healers, thought leaders and practical intelligent people who have generously given their time and insights to all of you and me during this podcast. This episode, our guest Kay Hutchinson adds a great deal to the knowledge base we all have gained from our other guests. Kay's childhood was interesting in that she is half Japanese and half African American. This race mixture provided Kay with many life challenges. However, her parents taught her much about life and understanding so she was able to work through the many times where people treated her in less than an equal manner. Also, Kay being the child of a military father had the opportunity to live in both the United States and Japan. She gained from this experience a great deal of knowledge and experience about life that she willingly shares with us.   After college Kay went into teaching. Just wait until you hear what class she first had to teach, but she persevered. Through all her life she has felt she could assist people in healing others as you will hear. After teaching for a few years, she decided to make energy healing a full-time profession.   Along the way she fell in love and married. Unfortunately, as she will tell us, she discovered that her husband exhibited extreme narcissistic behaviors which eventually lead to a divorce. I leave it to Kay to tell the story.   Kay offers some pretty great insights and lessons we all can use to center ourselves. I very much hope you like what she has to say.       About the Guest:   Imagine the exhaustion, anxiety and utter soul depletion that results when you are in a narcissistic relationship.  Then, imagine being told that you have to go through years of counseling and perhaps even take anti-depressants to begin reclaiming your identity, health, emotional and financial stability, and restore your ability to experience God' joyousness. That's the journey that Kay Hutchinson was on in 2019 when she divorced a narcissist who dragged her through a nearly year-long court battle that almost destroyed her 15-year energy medicine practice where she specialized in helping empathic women make their sensitivities their super powers and left her with relentless shingles outbreaks and collapsed immunity. Through the journey of rebuilding her health and life, she discovered  the one thing that no one was talking about in terms of the recovery from narcissistic abuse…that narcissists damage the five energy tanks that rule our physical, emotional, financial and soul health. Yet no one was showing women how to repair themselves energetically.  But,  without repairing those tanks, women suffer for years with anxiety, depression, exhaustion and a multitude of debilitating physical health challenges. So, Kay created the first medical qi gong recovery program for narcissistic abuse survivors that use 5 minute energy resets to help women effortlessly re-ignite their body, mind and soul potential. For example, Kay's client Donna, whose health was devastated by the stress of a narcissistic marriage, was able to use the resets to reverse stage 5 kidney damage in only 90 days, preventing Donna from going on dialysis and empowering her to reclaim her life. With newfound health, Donna was able to rebuild her realty business and remarry. Her pastor husband and her are now building a successful ministry helping others. Kay is here today to share more inspirational stories like this and delve into the topic of energy vampirism –how we lose energy to toxic people and more importantly—what we can to stop the drain and become unstoppable in reclaiming our body, mind and soul potential when our energy has been decimated by a narcissist.  Ways to connect Kay:   Get Your Mojo Back Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-your-mojo-back-quick-resets-to-help-empathic-women/id1699115489 Website: https://www.aikihealing.com/ Free Healing Session: https://www.aikihealing.com/free-healing-for-narcissistic-abuse-priority-list Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aikihealingresets/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AikiHealingResets/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aikihealing   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And as I've explained, the reason we word it that way is that diversity typically doesn't tend to involve disabilities, so inclusion comes first, because we don't allow people to be inclusive unless they're going to make sure that they include disabilities in the conversation, but mostly on the on the unstoppable mindset podcast, we don't deal as much with inclusion or diversity. We get to deal with the unexpected, which is anything that doesn't have to do directly with inclusion or diversity. And so today, in talking to Kay Hutchinson, we have a situation where we are going to talk about unexpected kinds of things, and that's what we're really all about. So Kay Hutchinson is our guest today. She has quite a story about, well, I'm not going to tell you all about it, other than just to say it's going to involve narcissism and it's going to involve a whole bunch of things. Kay is a podcaster. She's a coach, and she does a number of things that I think are really well worth talking about. So without further ado, Kay, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Kay Hutchinson ** 02:40 Oh, Michael, every cell in my body is happy to be here today. I'm so thrilled. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 02:47 good. I just want to make sure all the cells are communicating with you, and they're all saying good things they   Kay Hutchinson ** 02:52 are. Oh, good, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 02:56 Sell by cell. Let's, let's do a roll call and see how long that takes. But there we go. Well, I'm really glad that you are here. I'd like to start by kind of learning about the early K, growing up and all that sort of stuff. It's always fun to start that way, sort of like Lewis Carroll, you know, you start at the beginning. But anyway, tell us about the early k, if you would.   Kay Hutchinson ** 03:19 Oh my gosh, I'd love to and Michael, what's exciting to me about that, you know, with your show really focusing on diversity, when I look back to my childhood and I think about the various experiences that I had growing up as a biracial child in the 1960s I am half Japanese and half African American, against the backdrop of Malcolm X and at the time Martin Luther King, and all of this different flow of change was happening as I came into the world, and I was born on the island of Honolulu, Hawaii, feeling very much connected to the vibrancy of that space and those islands and that war of the power of the volcanoes, and I found myself just this really hyper sensitive young child where the world came in at me through all of my five senses, to the point where often I was very overwhelmed, but I was really blessed to have parents that understood this child's going to have a lot coming at her in the world, being what the world is at the time, and coming from different two different cultures that I was really well nourished and really was taught by parents who had embraced meditation and mindfulness as a way of really helping me calm my nervous system when I was little. So I really had this beautiful childhood of being able to bounce between different cultures, the US culture, and also living in Asia, but also coming face to face with things like racism face. Things like messages on a very large societal level that I did not belong anywhere, that I didn't fit, and so often I felt that the world outside of the safe space of my immediate family was a world that was very much overwhelming, and felt as if it was not for me, that it was not very nourishing. So very early on, I had to learn how to kind of begin regulating and begin navigating a world that wasn't necessarily set up for someone like myself. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:35 yeah, it's it's interesting when you and you certainly have an interesting combination of parents, half African American and half Japanese, definitely, two different cultures in a lot of ways, but at the same time, they both recognize the whole concept of mindfulness. They recognize the value of meditation and finding a calming center, I gather is what you're saying.   Kay Hutchinson ** 06:00 Absolutely, my father was one of the soldiers that right after he came into the service in the 1950s that got assigned to Japan and was in one of the first all African American military police units. It had never existed before. And so through his journey there, he actually ended up studying a lot of different forms of martial arts, as well as some of the healing arts like acupressure. So a lot of times people say, Okay, you practice Chinese energy medicine. Oh, that must have come from your mother's side of the heritage. But actually, the first exposure to healing and energy came from my dad, because he taught us martial arts, and he taught us actually some of the flows of energy on how to heal the body, because it's that idea that if you spar with a person, you're responsible for having to heal them if you injure them through the sparring. So that was like my first exposure to really learning the system of energy medicine. And then on my mom's side, it's interesting, she grew up with parents that were Buddhist and Taoist in their philosophy as well. So but at a very young age, in her late teens and early 20s, she was very curious about Christianity, and began attending churches that were of a Christian nature, and that's how she ended up meeting my father. And so this beautiful path of spirituality, learning about energy and understanding how to navigate through a world that wasn't necessarily built for me, was really at core of how we moved as a family, and I think that really formed the basis for developing a certain type of sensitivity to the nuances of differences and making those differences into superpowers. And that's really at the heart of what I do, not only as a healer, but and in my early career as a special education teacher, that really was one of the things that allowed me to recognize the value and power of children and help them to optimize their growth and   Michael Hingson ** 08:11 development. So where did you grow up? Where did you live? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 08:15 I lived in both countries. My father was Army, so we would spend some time in the US, primarily Texas, but we also lived part time in California, and then we would bounce back over, over the pond to Okinawa, Japan. So I had a lot of fond memories of both countries growing up.   Michael Hingson ** 08:33 That's, that's pretty cool. And it's, you know, I find that people who come on this podcast, who have had the joy of having the ability to live or having lived in different kinds of environments, do bring some very interesting perspectives on, on each of those countries and just on, on life in general. And they tend to, I think, have a overall better perspective on what life is all about, because they've seen more of it. And if they take the time to really think about life and all the things that they've seen, they come to value all of that a lot more   Kay Hutchinson ** 09:18 Absolutely it is that process of being able to really delve deep into the subtle uniqueness of life through different lenses. And when you travel, and when you get that opportunity to experience cultures directly, and you also have, you know, a heritage that's very rich on an ethnic level, you know, it really does allow the brain to see the world through many different facets. And I think that that really is what's needed in a world where, when we look at what's happening globally, there's rapid, rapid change. So those of us who have that experience of being able to bounce through all of these different experiences and take multiple facets. Because we end up being able to digest and are able to move through those experiences without becoming so overwhelmed, as so many people are experiencing today, with all of the quantum leap changes that are happening, changes happening so rapidly in our world.   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 Oh, we are, and we're we're exhibiting, of course, in this country, with a new president or a new old President, we're seeing a lot of changes, and I think history is going to, at some point, decide whether those changes or the things that that he's bringing about are good or not. And I think it's you can take a lot of different viewpoints on it. Oh, it's bad because he's doing this and he's doing that, and it's good because he's doing this and he's doing that, but I think ultimately, we're going to see, and I'm I think he's made some choices that are interesting, and we and we'll see how it all goes. But I wish that he had had more of a worldview. I think that's the one thing that I see, that he has not had as much of a true worldview as would probably be valuable,   Kay Hutchinson ** 11:11 absolutely, and that's, excuse me, that's really a concern in leadership, right? And how do we support when someone hasn't had that vastness, right? It then comes to us to really bring to the table the perspectives that hopefully will trickle over into influencing and supporting energetically. And here's that thing, because sometimes we can think, Oh, well, you know, the President's way up here, and what can I as an ordinary person, do to help bring more balance to that leadership. Well, I truly believe that energetically, we're all connected, so that when each of us is embracing this more multifaceted perspective, and we're not just embracing it in our brains, but actually living that, integrating that into how we move. We create a energy that ripples out, that absolutely touches every other person on the planet. And why would it not also touch, you know, people in positions of political leadership. So I believe that when we band together in that way, we do create change.   Michael Hingson ** 12:15 Well, I think we all are connected, and I think that is something that most people haven't recognized, and the more they don't and the more they decide they're an entity in of themselves, and there isn't that kind of interconnectionalism, the more it's going to hurt them more than anything else. But hopefully, over time, people will realize that we are all interrelated. Gandhi once said that interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man, I guess, and woman, we should say. But, you know, he was, he was quoting back in the day, much as much the ideal of man as a self sufficiency. And I think that interdependence is all around us, and interdependence is something that we truly do need to recognize. And embrace, because no one really is an island into themselves,   Kay Hutchinson ** 13:08 and that's true, and this is where the challenge is. When we begin to start looking at energy, vampirism and narcissism, we're dealing with individuals who do not have that capacity to really embrace the fact that they are energetically and importantly connected to other people. They're disconnected from that. So how they're moving through life becomes very centered, focused on only their perspectives and their experiences. And that's where it can be really dangerous, because when we're in the midst of people that are moving like that, we may not realize that we're actually losing energy to them. And so it's really important to take a look more than ever, who is in your world? Are you surrounded by people that have an understanding of the value of connecting in with one another and truly having a fair exchange of energy. Or are you amid people that may be pulling energy from you in a one sided way because they have wounds that are preventing them from really being full in their own perspectives and in their own energy fields.   Michael Hingson ** 14:24 Well, and when you mentioned people who don't have the capacity, I wonder if it's true that they don't have the capacity, or they've chosen to reject it.   Kay Hutchinson ** 14:35 Well, I think that's the difference, right there. Michael, when they've chosen to reject it. That's not pathological in terms of the clinical definition of narcissism, that could apply to anyone that has simply made that choice. But part of the clinical definition of narcissism is it is a person who doesn't have the choice they're not capable because of early trauma in their life. During the period of time when they were attaching and beginning energetically to form bonds with other people, as well as psychologically and cognitively, disruption happened or is no longer a choice for them. They're no longer able to say, I want to be connected or not connected. There is a disruption on a trauma level that prevents them from being connected.   Michael Hingson ** 15:21 Is there a cure for that? Though, can people reverse that process?   Kay Hutchinson ** 15:26 So as far as I know, in Searching the Literature and working with colleagues, and I also have background in psychotherapy too, there is not, quote, unquote, a cure for that, but the damage is fairly deep. It's a matter of helping those individuals to manage the facets of their narcissism to minimize the damage. But are they ever disconnected from the intimacy that we have energetically with other human beings that tends to still be pervasive, even with long term therapy, psychotherapy, yeah, well,   Michael Hingson ** 16:03 you, I know, and we'll get to it. Have had some direct exposure and involvement with narcissism, but let's go back a little bit talking about you. Where did you go to college? I assume you did go to college.   Kay Hutchinson ** 16:17 Yeah, absolutely. I went to the University of Texas, at Austin, okay. And then later, for graduate school, I went to the California Institute of integral studies for counseling, psychotherapy, but also longevity Institute for all the energy medicine training. And I loved, I loved that they were the only program at the time in energy medicine, medical Qigong. They had a relationship with the head of the school. Was the head of Stanford's Integrative Medicine Department, and they were doing lots of things with looking at how energy healing impacts cancer and also how it affects the role of fertility. There was a famous Stanford IVF program, and what they were looking at was the idea that when women partook of Qigong and mindfulness techniques, they were able to successfully get pregnant at a higher level than if they did not. So it was a school that really embraced not only the science of energy, but also the spirituality of it as well. How do we develop and grow as beings that are souls in the world   Michael Hingson ** 17:27 and dealing with the practical application of it? Absolutely,   Kay Hutchinson ** 17:30 absolutely. So I often say that it was the place where shamanism met hardcore science and together, and that's kind of a little bit of what people experience, Michael, when they work with me, because I'm one of the few holistic practitioners that says, come in the door and bring me your actual medical data. I want to see the scans. I want to see your blood work data before we ever do an herbal formula, before I ever prescribe a set of medical Qigong resets. I really kind of want to see what we're looking at and what's happening with you on a quantifiable level, so that we can measure changes as we go along and process a few Sure   Michael Hingson ** 18:08 well. So you mentioned earlier Special Education song. What did you do after college?   Kay Hutchinson ** 18:14 So, in college, you know, I was studying cognitive science as well as special education. I was fascinated by how people learn, and so my career began as a special education teacher. The first assignment I had, though as a teacher, was teaching third grade math because I began working for a district mid season, and they didn't have a lot of different openings, and they said, well, Kay, we would love to have you in the school, but the special ed position will not be available till later. Would you come aboard teaching math? Now, little did anyone know, Michael, that I was actually math phobic. I was that kid that when I had to take math and calculus and things in college, had my head in my lap. Oh, I can't do this. This is just not my thing. And so to be asked to teach third grade, it was horrifying to me on one level, but then I said, you know, everything happens for a reason to start my teaching career, and the thing that I'm most fearful of could be a really good learning opportunity for me. What   Michael Hingson ** 19:14 did you learn from that? Oh my gosh, I learned that   Kay Hutchinson ** 19:17 the most important thing is creativity, because I had to say, okay, where, where am I starting? These kids were behind. They were third graders. They were behind in learning multiplication. And so I said, You know what? There's a method to teach multiplication with cubes and blocks and manipulatives that actually leads them to being able to do algebra. So I'm going to be creative and use these different tools to not only teach basic multiplication, but my goal for them is, when they leave me, they will have the basis for being able to do simple algebra problems in third grade. And the fact, Michael, that these kids, when we talk about diversity, inclusion, we. In a community where they were drive by shootings were in a community where other teachers did not believe that just because these children were children of color, that they did not have the same abilities and capabilities and potential to be able to go on to school at Harvard or Yale. It made me even more determined to say, I'm going to teach them a really higher level skill that everybody else will say is beyond their developmental level to prove that these children are just as capable as anybody else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:31 and, and the reality is, they are. They have the capability, and it is something that just has to be encouraged. I know that when I was doing my student teaching. I was getting a master's degree in physics, so I did a little bit with math now and then, needless to say, and I was in the class one day, I was teaching eighth graders. I'm sorry, I was actually teaching high school freshman, but there was an eighth grader in the class, and he asked a question. It wasn't, I don't even remember what the question was, but it wasn't a hard question. But for some reason, I blanked out and didn't know what the answer was. But what I said to him was, I don't know the answer. I should, but I don't. I'm going to look it up and I'll come back tomorrow and tell you what the answer is. Is that okay? And he said, Yeah. When the class was over, my master teacher, who was the football coach, also came up, and he said, that was the most wonderful thing you could do. He said, kids will always know it if you're blowing smoke, if you're honest with them, and if you tell them the truth, you're going to gain a lot more respect. He said, That was the best thing that you could have possibly done with Marty's question. Well, the next day, I came back in with the answer. I went and looked it up, and it was as easy as it should have been, and I should have known. But I came in and I and when the class was all seated, I said, All right, Marty, I got the answer, and he said, so do i Mr. Hinkson? I said, well, then come up here and write it on the board. One of the things that I did not being a good writer, being blind. I just have never learned to have that great of handwriting. I would always have a student write on the board. And everyone competed for that job every day. So that day Marty got to do the job, Kenny came up and described it and said the answer. And I said, that's the same answer I got. And does everybody understand it? But it was so great to be able to interact with him. And it all started with being honest. And I think that's one of the best life lessons I ever learned, not only from being a student teacher, but just in general, that people know it when you're not being dishonest, they can sense it, whether they can articulate it, whether they know it consciously, they'll at least know it subconsciously. If you're not being honest and direct with them, and so it's important if you're going to truly earn trust, to have an honest relationship and and as I, as I put it, don't blow smoke at people.   Kay Hutchinson ** 23:12 That's so true. I mean authenticity as an energy is so very transformative, you know. And I love your story, Michael, because it reminds me too. When I was teaching, you know, I too, was honest with my kids. I just said, you guys feel scared of these problems that we have on our page. Your teacher was scared this morning and had her head in her lap crying like, how am I going to teach this to you? All you know, when they when we can be human with each other. When we are able to really just say what is real and in our hearts, it completely transforms the journey, because suddenly we recognize that we're all in the same space, and then we can lock arms to really move through it together. But if the energy is not even, there's not a fairness there, and part of the fairness is transparency, then it creates a completely different flow. It isn't necessarily transformative, and it can create obstacles and blocks versus being that wonderful thing where your student got to bloom, you got to bloom, and I'm sure the entire class benefited from the authenticity of both of you bouncing off of each other saying, this is the problem that I found, and this is Mike says, here's how I solved it. And together, you guys were able to really get that information across, I'm sure, in a way, that got everybody inspired to think about, how can they come about solving the problems too   Michael Hingson ** 24:35 well, something like 15 years later, we were at the Orange County Fair in July, and this guy with a deep voice comes up to me and he says, Hey, Mr. Hinkson, do you know recognize my voice? Well, there was no way. He says, I'm Marty, the guy from your algebra class 15 years later. And you know it was, it was really cool, yeah, and it was, it was so. To have that opportunity to, you know, to talk with him again. And, you know, we both, of course, had that, that same memory. But it's, it is so true in general, that honesty and connectionalism are so important, it's all about building trust. In my new book, live like a guide dog. We talk a lot about trust as one of the things that you can use to help learn to control fear, and specifically I talk about in the book lessons I've learned from all of my dogs, my guide dogs, and so on. And one of the lessons that we talk about is that dogs may very well, love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally, and you do still have to earn their trust. They may love you, but they won't necessarily trust you until they get to know you. And so with every guide dog, I have to start all over and develop a new relationship and learn their quirks. But the reality is they're learning mind quirks as well, and what we do is we figure out how to interact and work together, and when we are both open to trust, and that's the other part of it, I have to be as much open to trust as the dog, because the way a previous guide dog worked and the things that a previous guide dog did don't necessarily apply with a new dog, and so it's important to really be open to developing that trusting relationship, but it takes a while to develop, but when the relationship develops, it is second to none, and and I wish it were more true with people, but we're always worried about so many things, and we think about what's this person's hidden agenda? We tend not to be open to trust. And the reality is, we can be just as much open to trust as we ever would need to be. That doesn't mean that we're always going to trust, because the other person has to earn our trust too, but we can be open to it absolutely.   Kay Hutchinson ** 27:01 And you know, animals are such an amazing teacher to that process of developing trust. I love what you said that they love unconditionally, but that not necessarily trust unconditionally. To me that is such balance, because I often notice in my work, there's a tendency, especially with empathic women, to over trust, to trust too soon, to not require that others earn that trust. And so I think it's really an important piece to find that balance in being able and being open to trust, but not rushing the process to the point where we lose our boundaries in that and when you interact with animals, you really learn how to do that. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 27:47 why do you think so many women are too eager to trust and do trust too quickly?   Kay Hutchinson ** 27:55 I think in the population of women that I work with in my groups, that they refer to themselves often as women empaths or empathic women. I think some of that can come from the over care taking syndrome that some of them may be exhibiting as a way of working through old wounds, that idea that it's my job to kind of just be this wide open radar and take care of others and be open, and they don't understand that it is absolutely part of self care to regulate that openness, to have a filter and to be able to give that piece of time to really see who people are, because narcissists oftentimes are wearing a facade. May not necessarily see who they are in the early stages of an engagement. So by being open, but still having boundaries, which kind of when your boundaries are respected over time, I think that's where trust really blooms. And by taking that time, then we are able to really make sure that we're in relationship with people where there is a fair exchange of trust, because that's part of the fair energy exchange, as I often say, is trust has to go both ways, and in a narcissistic relationship, it's usually just one way. It's the person you know who's non narcissistic, trusting fully and the narcissist withholding trust. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:17 and you think that men are much more not open to the whole concept of trust, than than women? Not   Kay Hutchinson ** 29:29 at all. I think men are beautiful in their heart spaces, just as open too. So I see men in paths exactly in that same space as well, men that are natural givers who want to connect. They can often also get in that space of trusting too soon. So when my practicing encompassed working with both men and women, that would be something that I would often kind of give guidance to in the dating process of Give it time. And allow somebody to earn that beautiful jewel of trust that is your heart, and allow yourself to also be discovered by the other person as someone who's trustworthy. Give it the space, because I've had beautiful men that were clients that absolutely got their hearts trampled, and also got their energy siphoned by energy vampires, just because they jumped in, just so wholeheartedly, so soon, so having that balance being aware of the pacing of a relationship, and then again, going back to animals, because that was part of the thing that I did. Michael straight out of energy school, I worked with animals first and human second. And I think that dance that we do with animals is really can be a framework or a model for how to move with humans too, because animals don't rush it. You know, they're going to take their time and trusting you. They're going to check you out and notice what your Kirks are and notice how you respond to them. It's not something to give right away. And so when you do earn the trust of an animal, whether it's a cat or dog or in my case, I also worked with wild animals, it is really such a treasure, and it's cherished when it happens.   Michael Hingson ** 31:15 Yeah, but then even wild animals are open to trust there. There are a lot of other things that you have to work through, but still, the the the opportunity to develop a trusting relationship is certainly there. Now I think that cats are more cautious than dogs about a lot of things, but they're but they're open to trust. I know that that stitch my cat does trust me, but she is much more cautious and tends to react to noises and other things a lot more than Alamo the guide dog does. So they're there. There are issues, but there's a lot of love there, and there is a lot of trust, and that is as it should be. But again, I've had to earn that trust, which is the real important part about it. Yeah, that's definitely   Kay Hutchinson ** 32:07 and, you know, you speak about, like, the differences of dogs and cats too. There's a difference in the neurological sensitivity, of course, with dogs too, it depends on the breed. You know, like, for example, chihuahuas can be very neurologically sensitive, so they react to many things, versus, say, like Labradors or other larger breeds of dogs, shepherds and so forth, they tend to have a more steady neurological response to the world. So they make wonderful emotional support and other helper roles in our lives. But cats, they tend to, across the board, be pretty high strung neurologically, which means that's why they would be a little bit more skittish about why   Michael Hingson ** 32:47 they're cats. Yeah, absolutely, it works. Well, how long? How long did you teach?   Kay Hutchinson ** 32:55 Well, I taught in public school. I think it was three years. I'm still a teacher. I never I just left the forum from a public school into I became a writer for textbook publishers. So I created Teacher Guides. There was a lot of teaching in that. And then I also ran the only medical Qigong professional certification certification program that is a one on one apprenticeship program, and I ran that program up until the pandemic, from 2008 or nine until the pandemic, before I slowly shifted into just this really super niche of working with women on the journey of recovering from narcissistic abuse, and really putting my full energy into that, I still get calls for people who want to certify with me, and so I'm I'm still thinking about reopening the school, but it's been such a pleasure going down this road and journey of developing virtual journeys for women online and watching them bloom and seeing the transformation. So I always say that I'm ever the teacher. I never really left the profession. Everything that I do involves education and really helping people to optimize the way they learn as souls and as whole beings in the world   Michael Hingson ** 34:17 well, and I think in reality, and I wish more people understood it. But I think we're all teachers, and I know one of the things that I learned when I first was put in a position where I had to start selling professionally, I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and one of the things that they talked about in that course was sales people. The best sales people are counselors, they guide, they teach, because you'll get a better understanding of your prospects and your customers, but that's what you really should be doing. And again, there's a whole level of honesty that goes with that. But the reality is, I think that all of us teach. I know a lot of. Blind People say I don't I'm blind. I am the way I am. I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to have to educate people. Well, the reality is, we all do that in one way or another. We're all teaching someone, or bunches of someone's from time to time. And the reality is, teaching is so fun,   Kay Hutchinson ** 35:21 it is, and I love that you said that, because we're always teaching people how to engage ourselves just on that level alone, or engage with ourselves. Yes, absolutely. And when we know that and we bring joyousness to the process, right, it can be so transformative, because when we're enjoying that process, we're going to go into those uncomfortable areas, right that may be challenging or difficult, and often engaging with other people, you come up with new facets and perspectives that you otherwise would not have. So I, I love, I love the dance of learning and also in sharing too.   Michael Hingson ** 36:06 My wife was a teacher for 10 years, and always loved it when she she did do special ed and so on. She was in a wheelchair her whole life, so she was sort of bent that way, but she loved teaching third grade. She thought that third grade was the best, because when you start to get older than that, kids get more set in their ways, and when they're younger than that, they're they're just not there. Yet. She loved third grade, so I'm glad you started with third grade math.   Kay Hutchinson ** 36:35 Third grade was really sweet. I went from there to early childhood so, and then later I was tutoring at the university level, I had an opportunity to work as a tutor to actually doctoral foreign students who needed help with writing skills and things like that. So I really have enjoyed that full spectrum, just as I enjoy working with clients that come from vast differences in their backgrounds, and taking the journey into to learning more about holistic ways and moving so a lot of fun. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 37:09 it is, you know, and I think life in general is a lot of fun if we would just approach things the right way and not let everything upset us, we we have a much better life in our own world,   Kay Hutchinson ** 37:21 definitely, absolutely. Well, you,   Michael Hingson ** 37:25 you've talked a lot about this whole idea of narcissism and so on, and I know you've had involvement in your life with that. You want to talk about some of that and tell us how you really got into really doing a lot with it, and what motivates you and so on. Or how much of that do you want to talk about? Oh,   Kay Hutchinson ** 37:42 definitely. Well, you know, I would have to go all the way back to, you know, experiences with racism that I experienced as a narcissism. I'm not saying that every person who has racist thoughts or beliefs or or patterns are narcissists, but many narcissists are racist, and so I think the early exposure to what I would call someone that is an energy vampire bent on manipulating or creating a flow that isn't a fair exchange of energy happened to me at a very young age. So I gained a lot of insight into how do you move through that? So it made sense that when I was beginning my career as an energy healer, as a practitioner, and I started noticing the different physical and emotional issues people would come in the door with, they'd come in with, say, like autoimmune issues, thyroid issues, cancer and different things like that. But when we began to really look at the root of all of those conditions, we began to realize that there was a pattern of having been in some sort of prolonged engagement with another person, where there was not a fair energy exchange. And that's when I began to realize, oh, all of my clients have had experiences with narcissism and of having had their energy siphoned in a way that was not beneficial for the entire body, mind and soul, and so in creating these resets for clients for nearly, I think it was about 15 years I was into that career. I never realized, because I'd never encountered it directly in a personal relationship. What it was like to be in a relationship with a covert narcissist, and I fell in love with a person who was very, very clever as far as really hiding those aspects of his personality. And I've come to understand that the reason that I walked that journey was so that I could have first hand lived experience. I knew what overt narcissism was about, but I had never really experienced the covert variety that hidden, that more subtle type. And by being in this marriage and relationship with a person that was exactly that, it gave me a lot of insight. To the subtle ways that we lose energy to people, and what the impact is on that physical level. For me, it left my immunity completely tanked, and I was having reoccurring shingles all over my face. I was having high anxiety, which was not a part of my emotional walk. Previously, I was also very fatigued. I had resolved many years prior to that severe fibromyalgia, and suddenly that came out of remission, and I was in constant pain every day. So you know, in seeing how dramatically my own health changed, it also changed the way that I was showing up on a business level, how available I was on an energy level, to really serve clients. And it also showed up in terms of my spiritual path, where I slowly began to get disconnected from source and not rely on that as my critical way of moving through life, where previously I have so it was a just a journey of really, truly recognizing what it feels like across every level imaginable to get decimated by the person that You love because they are wounded and are narcissistic.   Michael Hingson ** 41:22 What finally happened that made you realize what was occurring and caused you to decide to deal with the whole issue.   Kay Hutchinson ** 41:31 Well, you know, it wasn't just one thing Michael, because if he was a subtle narcissist, my understandings of what was happening came about gradually. But the thing that really stood out in my mind, that made me say, You know what, I absolutely need to get out of this relationship was when I went to caretake an aunt that had stage five stomach cancer, and I had previously was in the role of caretaking his mom, when she had metastatic blood level cancer. It was a form of leukemia, and also his aunt, who had a form of bone cancer. So when his family members were ill, I was there. I dropped everything, not only just as a healer, but as a family member, as someone who loved these Dear ladies, was by their sides and really helped them to transition. But when it came time for me to be at the side of my relative, my husband was completely lacking in empathy, and I'd spend the entire day with her, just helping her to quell nausea, get more comfortable, feel more peaceful. I completely had not eaten the whole day because my whole attention was on her and also on my father. Her brother, wanted to make sure that my dad was okay in being with her, because he was also approaching soon the final days of his life. He had a lot of weakness going on and things. And I returned home, and I was just exhausted, and I said, Honey, let's go out for dinner, and let's go out and do something kind of fun, because that's what I am, and I give a lot on that heavy level, I like to shift over to something light. And I was met with, I don't want to go anywhere. Why do you always want to go out to dinner, and he just started kind of yelling at me, and I realized, oh, wow, just even on a pure nourishment level, I need food because I haven't eaten all day. This is somehow becoming a challenge. And I ended up going out to dinner by myself at a time when I was really super vulnerable about ready to lose my last living aunt in the States, and thinking, what am I doing in a relationship where merely asking to be fed, not even emotionally, is a challenge? And I said, Ah, he can't even literally feed me. And I knew there was no fixing that. Even though we had gone through counseling, it's like, no, no, this is just not going to continue. I have to leave, right? So that was a critical moment in my life of just and that's what I would say to everybody in the audience. Ask yourself, are you being felt fed well? Are you being well nourished by the person that you're in that relationship with? Because narcissists are not capable of nourishing   Michael Hingson ** 44:29 you. Yeah. So what happened? I mean, you made you, you realize what was occurring. What did you do? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 44:35 at that point, we had been in counseling, so I got on the phone with our counselor, and I said, I really need your safe space the next time we come in, because I need to have a conversation about divorcing, and I really need to make sure that I'm moving through this safely and with the proper support around me. And that's really, really important, because if your audience. Are in relationships with narcissists who have never been abusive, they need to understand that there's a high likelihood of them becoming physically abusive when they decide to leave. Mm, hmm. And so it's really important to make sure that that conversation is happening in a safe space and that there's enough support around to keep violence from escalating, even if you've never seen that person in that more physically abusive space, it needs to be considered.   Michael Hingson ** 45:33 So you, you talk to your counselor about that, and then you, you, I assume, had a session where you, you, you dealt with some of those issues, absolutely,   Kay Hutchinson ** 45:44 with the safety of of the counselor there, we were able to map out a strategy. But Silly me, Michael, I thought, well, you know, we have an agreement that we need to go our separate ways. We're two adults. We can do this peacefully. It's not complicated. We lived in the state of Texas. It's not hard to do. And so we said we'll just go to a mediator, and everything will be fine. They'll do up the paperwork, legally, we'll sign we'll go our different ways. Wish each other well, take what we each learn from this and move on with our lives. So it seemed a simple thing, but at the very last moment when we were scheduled to see the mediator, mediator attorney gets a call from a lawyer that I didn't know he even had saying, oh my, my client can't come into this mediation without me being present, because he's represented. And it was a bulldog attorney that was known for just rolling over the other person. And I went, ah, and so I got dragged to nearly a year and a half legal battle that really didn't need to be there, but I was very blessed in connecting with an attorney who specialized in helping people divorce from narcissist, and she was able to say to me, Kay, I know you have important healing to do for yourself, but also for the clients that you serve, let me take this over and you go, do you, and I'll just ting you whenever you need to sign something. And she just completely took it over for me so that I could move on with my life and decide, you know, what did I want to create in the new phase of my life? But not everybody has that ability to kind of really lock arms with attorneys that are highly skilled in dealing with narcissists, because the narcissist will weaponize the legal system if they're allowed to do that, and it can drive up costs. It can be exhausting on many different levels. So it's really important, if you can't afford to have an attorney that has that experience, there are many blogs and many places where you can connect to get that support, even if you're working with an attorney who is less experienced, right? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 47:55 but eventually you you were able to to deal with it, and I'm sure that it was incredibly traumatic. How long ago did all this occur?   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:06 Oh, this was occurring. 2018 2019 Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 48:10 so it's not been all that been six years. Yeah, six years,   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:15 absolutely. And you know, I often say that when you're going through an experience, after having been around someone that second guessed your reality, that we will tend to second guess our own reality too. And so one of the things I think that really helped me on a mindset level, was continuing to ask myself, well, what do I really feel? What do I really think? Exactly   Michael Hingson ** 48:40 right, exactly right. Yeah,   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:43 and reconnecting with that because I had been separated or disconnected from things that were really vital and important to me, because he had said that they were not important, or perhaps I was overreacting or being too sensitive that I began to discount those things within myself. So it's really this journey of really allowing myself to truly come back into valuing all of the things that were really important to me   Michael Hingson ** 49:10 to you. Yes, what you know narcissism is an interesting subject. What is maybe one thing that so not Well, let me go back. Narcissism certainly deals a lot with emotional issues, and there can be physical issues and so on. But what's maybe the one thing that you've seen in your work that most people wouldn't associate with a narcissistic person or narcissistic behavior,   Kay Hutchinson ** 49:41 I think the one thing that people don't really put enough of a spotlight on is that they are energy vampires. They create an energetic disruption across the five areas of ourselves that are absolutely critical for our physical health. For. For our emotional stability and our soul growth. So we're talking body, mind and soul disruption. You know, often times the talk is on the psychological or the emotional disruptions, or if there's a physical abuse component, it might be on that level. But it's really very rare that we are really associating that idea of energy, vampirism, of energy, of being a predator on an energetic level, with narcissists and so that is really core. Because until we start to heal the energetic damage that has occurred, we end up staying in a state of struggling for years with emotions that may be all over the place. I see felt it in myself. I see it in my clients, anxiety, depression, that feeling of being on an emotion, emotional roller coaster, and then all of the physical health issues that go along with it, whether someone experienced physical abuse or not, and then that soul disconnect. You know, energetically, we have to have, I often say, Energy Tanks. We need to have all five of our energy tanks full in order to have a relationship with source that is evolving that allows us to transform and elevate ourselves on that spiritual level. And so if we're damaged across our five Energy Tanks, we will find it difficult to really connect in with the power that is higher than ourselves. Tell me a little more   Michael Hingson ** 51:27 about this concept of the five Energy Tanks, if you would. Absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 51:31 that's my own wording, but really it's the language of Chinese energy medicine that's over 2000 years old, built on the idea of the five elements, whether you're an acupuncturist, an acupressurist, whether you are a martial artist, everything flows along the five elements, in terms of Chinese energy, medicine and the five elements are a system that helps to explain the relationship between our emotions, the different states of our emotions, our physical selves, and the way that we grow in souls. So I often say, you know that there's five tanks. John Gray made that comparison back I think it was in the 80s when he wrote about the different tanks that people need to have filled in their lives, like relationship tanks and the self care tank and all of these different things. It's kind of similar to that idea, but each one of these areas has a very critical role in our development. So like, say, the water element, this is essence, and then DNA level. So often times when we've been in traumatic situations, we may start to see some DNA level disruptions, and often that will appear as cellular abnormalities. Cancer would be a very good example of that, that when we're under immense stress, on a trauma level, the water element, which rules our DNA, on an element level becomes disrupted. So I see that a lot in my practice, where women have metastatic breast cancer and other forms of cancer as a result of the long term chronic stress of being in a narcissistic relationship, or their nervous systems, like my nervous system was completely damaged and I was hyper vigilant all the time. Had insomnia, had difficulty processing information. My natural dyslexia and learning disabilities that I came into the world with became exacerbated when I was in that narcissistic relationship. That's the wood energy tank that rules our nervous systems. So there's a take for each aspect of ourselves that gets impacted by the experience of being in a relationship where the energy exchange is not mutual and fair.   Michael Hingson ** 53:50 When you're talking about this whole concept of energy vampires and and the whole issue of having to face or deal with a narcissist. One of the things that seems to me happens is that your ability to have creative thinking and to be creative in your thinking goes down, and the result is that you, you you're again, you're you're sucked into something that you really shouldn't be sucked into, but you've lost some of the clearer thinking that you would normally have. How do you deal with that, and how do you get that back absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 54:34 but when we start to look again at the elements and how that shows up for creativity, our metal element has to do with our ability to feel safe and shielded. We can't be creative and stretch into areas that are unknown if we're not feeling safe. So beginning to do resets, where we begin to visualize the shielding around ourselves being restored, can be very helpful to begin to settle that. Sense of, oh, I'm not safe. And so there's specific breath work and energy resets that we do to really help to get that foundation of safety before we even begin to restore other aspects that affect creativity. The next thing that we have to do, Michael is really, once we're feeling safe, we need to be able to center ourselves, because if our thoughts are scattered all over the place, our energy is all over the place, it's hard to get centered, to bring the focus that is also a part of being creative. So the earth element is what allows us to begin to ground and calm ourselves, begin to focus and collect all of these different thoughts that we may be having and feeling so that we can harness them in a creative way to go forward. Similarly, we have to calm our nervous system so that our brains are able to create the rhythms on a brain wave frequency level that is conducive to creativity again, if our brain waves, if we were to look at an EEG right before hitting a moment of creativity, there might be a lot of bouncing activity going on, and it's only when that activity begins to settle and calm that we then are able to implement and bring forth something that is creative. So being able to regulate that becomes very important, as well as getting into the space of reconnecting with a fire element, which is joy. Because I often say creativity is just the expression of joy, right when we are in that joyous state, it's amazing how many different ways our brains can move to come up with something that is unusual, innovative out of the box. And so the restoration of the fire element, take passion, joy, all of that feeds in to the creative cycle. And then last on that water element, that essence level, right? Creativity comes from a deep well that we have as humans. When we're able to tap into that, we not only tap into a level of creativity that is not only unique to us as individuals, but we tap into the collective of the human creativity and consciousness, and so that allows us to ignite what we're doing in many creative ways. And this is why, as women heal these areas. Michael, they go out and do incredible things. They're able to go out and start new businesses. They start new careers at the age of 50 in their passion areas that they never thought that they would have done. They're able to take trips and go and pursue things that once they were fearful of, but now they are excited to open up themselves, up to trying new things in new ways. And so, you know, the restoration of creativity is very much a part of core of recovering from narcissistic abuse, because that's the one area that most people don't think about too going back to your earlier question, that truly gets impacted when we go through a narcissistic relationship, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 58:13 well, you have obviously been through a whole lot. What allowed you, or how were you able to keep I guess, what we would call an unstoppable mindset, through all of the things that that you went through, what, what drove you, if you will, to be able to succeed. I   Kay Hutchinson ** 58:33 think it's exactly what we've been talking about, having the practices that allowed me to refuel those five takes allow the highest level of energy to kind of flow through my brain, to keep that mindset in that positive area, to keep me motivated and passionate when you're working energetically, to restore yourself the mind comes along. It's not the thing you know. A lot of people say, Well, you got to change your mindset first, and I believe there's value in that. But guess what? When you change your energy first, there is no possibility of the mind flowing into negative spaces to hold you back, because your energy is creating this vibration that then fuels the thoughts that keeps you moving, and that's really the life that I've led. And when I find in moments that I may be falling into a place that is challenged on that mental thought level, I do my energetic practices, and boom, immediately, there's a shift from either a sad state to a state of feeling resilient, from a fearful state to being brave and courageous, to say, Hey, I just jump into this deep end of the pool because that's what I'm afraid of, and that's what I need to do, and trusting going back to trust that there's going to be tremendous growth and benefit. So. The more it's not that hard,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:01 no. But the other part of it is, the more of that that you do, the more you do the introspection, the more you analyze yourself, you think about what we're talking about here, the more that you actually go through the process, in a sense, the more you do, the easier it becomes, or the more efficient you are at doing it. And the result of that is that you become better at it, and so you're able to gain that control. It's it. The whole issue of resilience is is something to practice, but, but it is something that you have to work at I made a video recently where I talked about emergency preparedness, and I said most all of us don't prepare for emergencies, because what we don't do is we don't prepare our minds. Oh, we can create a plan so that there's a fire, we can grab a go bag or whatever. But how do we really prepare our minds? And that is something that we need to do a lot more of than we do today.   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:01:03 Absolutely. And the idea, Michael, that it doesn't take like long stretches of meditation, people have that myth in their minds to prepare yourself and be mindful when there are circumstances unfolding that maybe crisis by taking bite sized moments, I teach five minute resets to reset the brain and reset the mind, and you do enough of those over time, then when crisis hits, you have a whole well of cultivation to draw from and that that really ends up carrying you through whatever that crisis is. And I love that it's not enough just to prepare our minds cognitively for things, we must prepare ourselves from that deeper space energetically, so that when we're in the middle of things, we're not pulled so far off of our center that we forget that beautiful plan that we made,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:57 right, exactly right. And the reality is, it all does work together. Well, what's the one thing? Maybe that would surprise people if they knew it about you? Oh, gosh, how's that for a good question.   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:02:14 I think the one thing that that most people don't realize about me is that I am a martial artist, because most people think of me as just that healer that brings that comfort in and that level of soothing that I'm known for, and most people don't realize that there's a really strong warrior inside of K and I think we need to be able to embrace the warrior within ourselves and marry that to our peaceful, meditative selves. That the joining of both of them, I think, is really what makes me one of the strongest beings on this planet,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:55 and that is as good as it gets. So have you written any books? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:03:02 my book, the five elements healing, a practical guide for reclaiming your essential power, is currently being reworked. So you will not find it on Amazon at this time, but watch for it in a few months, because we're completely redoing that. And then also, I've contributed to redesign your nine to five advice and strategies from 50 of the world's most ambitious business owners and entrepreneurs. It was compiled by Bridget McGowan, and that one you can find on Amazon, and I was so blessed to create the chapter on how to create a soul based business, one that really allows you to develop what Michael and I are talking about, the unstoppable mindset as a critical way of moving through what you put out into the world. As a business owner,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:51 well, I definitely want to hear about the new book when it nor the reworked book when it comes out. So you have to let us know. Oh, absolutely. How do people reach out and get in touch with you, if they'd like to to learn from you, use your services and so on. How does that work?   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:04:07 Absolutely on your show notes, people can get in touch with me through the website that's listed in the link, and they can find out about the latest healing journeys, which I'm so excited Michael, because we have a live, free healing session coming up on February the ninth, at noon, Central Standard Time. I do these regularly to allow people that opportunity to begin to experience healing, the five Energy Tanks that narcissist destroying through a soothing distance healing to see if they are ready to take other journeys with me. So that's probably the best way, is to visit the website. And I know it's right here   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:48 on your show. It is in the notes, but go ahead and say the website, if you would absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:04:52 and the website is a, I K I healing.com Easy to remember, A, I K I healing.com   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:00 Um,

Episode Summary: In this episode, Scott Elias, Vice President of Policy & Market Development at CleanCapital, shares expert insights on CleanCapital's investment strategy, his background in clean energy policy, and the fast-moving developments in Washington, D.C. surrounding the fight to protect the Investment Tax Credit (ITC). Scott breaks down the potential implications of proposed changes to the Inflation Reduction Act, highlights which states are leading the charge in clean energy growth, and explores the growing investor interest in solar + storage portfolios.  Read Scott's latest take on the proposed tax bill that could significantly impact clean energy investment in the U.S.: Defending American Energy Dominance – CleanCapital   Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies.  He has extensive project origination, development, and financial experience in the renewable energy industry and in the environmental commodities market.   This includes initial site evaluation, permitting, financing, sourcing equipment, and negotiating the long-term energy and environmental commodities off-take agreements. He manages due diligence processes on land, permitting, and utility interconnection and is in charge of financing and structuring through Note to Proceed (“NTP”) to Commercial Operation Date (“COD”). Benoy composes teams suitable for all project development and construction tasks. He is also involved in project planning and pipeline financial modeling. He has been part of all sides of the transaction and this allows him to provide unique perspectives and value. Benoy has extensive experience in financial engineering to make solar projects profitable. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity which merged with Tesla in 2016.  He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity to move into the east coast markets.  Benoy was the Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners which is a national solar installer where he focused on project finance solutions for commercial scale solar projects.  He also worked for Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund, where he analyzed potential investments in renewable energy projects and worked on maximizing the financial return of the projects in the portfolio.  Benoy also worked on the sale of all of the renewable energy projects in Ridgewood's portfolio.   He was in the Energy Structured Finance practice for Deloitte & Touche and in Financial Advisory Services practice at Ernst & Young.  Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. He has a MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from the Stern School of Business at New York University.  Benoy was an Alumni Scholar at the Stern School of Business.  Scott Elias Scott Elias is the Vice President of Government Affairs at CleanCapital, where he leads the company's federal and state policy strategy to accelerate clean energy deployment across the United States. With over a decade of experience in renewable energy policy, Scott plays a pivotal role in advocating for legislation that supports clean energy investment and innovation. Before joining CleanCapital, Scott held senior policy and advocacy roles at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and other leading organizations, where he worked closely with lawmakers, regulators, and industry stakeholders to shape impactful energy policy. At CleanCapital, Scott helps ensure that the company stays ahead of policy trends and capitalizes on emerging opportunities—particularly around the Inflation Reduction Act, tax equity structures, and energy storage integration. His deep understanding of the intersection between finance, policy, and technology positions him as a key voice in advancing the transition to a low-carbon economy. Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: info@reneuenergy.com  LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com   Scott Elias Website:  https://cleancapital.com/ Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-elias/ Email:  selias@cleancapital.com    Summer Solstice Fundraiser Join Reneu Energy, Positive Deviancy, and the Solar Maverick Podcast for the 2025 Summer Solstice Fundraiser! Celebrate the warm weather with us at the Summer Solstice Fundraiser, hosted by Reneu Energy, Positive Deviancy ,and the Solar Maverick Podcast. This special evening will take place on Thursday, June 5th, from 6 PM to 10 PM at Hudson Hall in Jersey City, NJ. We'll also be raising funds for the Let's Share the Sun Foundation, which aids impoverished communities in harnessing solar energy. Event Highlights: -Venue: Hudson Hall, a Czech biergarten and smokehouse co-owned by Benoy, CEO of Reneu Energy. -Time: 6 PM to 10 PM, with delicious food throughout the evening. -Tickets: $50 https://www.tickettailor.com/events/reneuenergy/1653652   CleanCapital Podcast https://cleancapital.com/thought-leadership/?_categories=podcast   Defend Solar Energy https://solarpowersamerica.org/campaign/defend-american-energy/

I have had the pleasure of conversing with many people on Unstoppable Mindset who clearly are unstoppable by any standard. However, few measure up to the standard set by our guest this time, Katrin J. Yuan. Katrin grew up in Switzerland where, at an early age, she developed a deep curiosity for technology and, in fact, life in general. Katrin has a Masters degree in Business Administration and studies in IT and finance.   As you will see by reading her biography, Katrin speaks six languages. She also has accomplished many feats in the business world including being the founder and CEO of the Swiss Future Institute.   Our conversation ranges far and wide with many insights from Katrin about how we all should live life and learn to be better than we are. For example, I asked her questions such as “what is the worst piece of advice you ever have received?”. Answer, “stay as you are, don't grow”. There are several more such questions we discuss. I think you will find our conversation satisfying and well worth your time.   As a final note, this episode is being released around the same time Katrin's latest book is being published. I am anxious to hear what you think about our conversation and Katrin's new book.       About the Guest:   Katrin J. Yuan Boardmember | CEO Swiss Future Institute | Chair AI Future Council Katrin J. Yuan is an award-winning executive with a background in technology and transformation. With a Master of Business Administration and studies in IT and finance, Katrin is fluent in six languages. She is a six-time Board Member, Chair of the AI Future Council, lectures at three universities, and serves as a Jury Member for ETH and Digital Shapers. With a background of leading eight divisions in the top management, Katrin is an influential executive, investor, speaker and a "Young Global Leader" at the St. Gallen Symposium. Her expertise extends to AI, future megatrends, enforcing AI and a diverse data-driven approach.  Ways to connect Katrin:   Swiss Future Institute https://www.linkedin.com/company/swiss-future-institute LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-j-yuan/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/katrinjyuan/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@katrinjyuan   Speaker Topics: AI Future Tech Trends | Boards | NextGen Languages: EN | DE | FR | Mandarin | Shanghainese | Turkish | Latinum Menu card overview https://www.futureinstitute.ch   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 00:15 Hi. I'm Michael Hinkson, Chief vision Officer for accessibe and the author of the number one New York Times best selling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast. As we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion, unacceptance and our resistance to change, we will discover the idea that no matter the situation or the people we encounter, our own fears and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The Unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessibe. THAT'S A, C, C, E, S, S, I, capital, B, E, visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities and to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025 glad you dropped by. We're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone. Welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. Our podcast has been doing really well. We've been having a lot of fun with it ever since August of 2021 and I really thank you all for listening and for being part of our family. And as I always tell people, if you know of anyone who you think ought to be a guest, let us know, and we'll get to that later on. Today, our guest is from Switzerland, Katrin J Yuan. And Katrin is a person who, among other things, is the CEO of the Swiss future Institute, and I'm going to leave it to her to tell us about that when we get to it. She is a executive. She's an executive with a with a pretty deep background, and again, I don't want to give anything away. I want her to be able to talk about all that, so we'll get to it. But Katrin, I want to thank you for being here and for finding us and for coming on unstoppable mindset.   Katrin J Yuan ** 02:20 Warm Welcome Michael and Dear audience, thank you so much for having me on unstoppable mindset. I'm excited to be here with you a bit about myself.   Michael Hingson ** 02:32 Yes, please, you and growing up and all all the scandalous things you that you don't want anyone to know. No, go ahead. We we're here to hear what you have to say.   Katrin J Yuan ** 02:43 My cultural background is, I'm looking Asian, grown up in Europe and Germany, and then later for my studies in Switzerland, in the French part of Switzerland. And now I'm being in here in Zurich. My background is Mba, it finance. I started with a corporate then in tech consulting. I was heading eight departments in my lab. Last corporate position there of head it head data. Now to keep it simple and short, I consider myself as an edutainer, community builder and a connector, connecting the dots between data, tech and people. I do it on a strategic level as a six time board member, and I do it on an operational level for the Swiss future Institute for four universities, being a lecturer and sharing knowledge fun and connecting with people in various ways.   Michael Hingson ** 03:44 Well, what? What got you started down the road of being very deeply involved with tech? I mean, I assume that that wasn't a decision that just happened overnight, that growing up, something must have led you to decide that you wanted to go that way.   Katrin J Yuan ** 03:58 It's a mixture curiosity, excitement, I want to know, and that started with me as a kid, how things work, what's the functionality? And I like to test do things differently and do it myself before reading how it should be done. What's the way it should be done.   Michael Hingson ** 04:21 So, yeah, yeah, I find reading is is a very helpful thing. Reading instruction manuals and all that is very helpful. But at the same time, there isn't necessarily all the information that a curious mind wants, so I appreciate what you're saying.   Katrin J Yuan ** 04:36 Yeah, totally. There are so many more things. Once you start, it's like one layer after the other. I like to take the layers, lip by layer, to go to a core, and I'm I don't avoid asking questions, because I really like to understand how things work.   Michael Hingson ** 04:55 Yeah, yeah. It's a lot more fun. And. And hopefully you get answers. I think a lot of times, people who are very technically involved in one thing or another, when you ask them questions, all too often, they assume, well, this person doesn't have the technical expertise that I do, so I don't want to give a very complicated answer, and that's all lovely, except that it doesn't answer the question that people like you, and frankly I have, which is, how do things work? Why do they work? Much less? Where do we take them from here? Right?   Katrin J Yuan ** 05:31 Absolutely, and breaking down complexity rather simplifying things, and tell us in an easy way you would maybe tell kids, your neighbors and non tech persons, and at the end of the day, it's the question, What's in for you? What is this for? And what's the value and how you can apply it in your everyday life? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 05:57 I grew up, of course, being blind, and encountered a lot of people who were and are curious about blind people. The problem is I usually have an assumption also, that if you're blind, you can't do the same things that sighted people can do, and that's usually the biggest barrier that I find we have to break through, that I have to break through, because, in reality, blindness isn't the issue, it's people's perceptions. And so that's why I mentioned the whole idea that people often underrate people who ask a lot of questions, and the result is that that it takes a while to get them comfortable enough to understand we really do want to know when we really do want you to give us good technical information that we can process and move forward with   Katrin J Yuan ** 06:47 exactly normally, in a room full of board members, managers, you call it, you name it, CEOs, investors, usually someone or even the majority, is very thankful that finally somebody asks also, dare to ask the simple questions to find a solution. And it's not only the what, but I find it interesting also the how you solve it, and to see and do things in a different way, from a different, diverse perspective. This is very valuable for those seeing and for those seeing in a different way or not seeing and solving it in your own very unique way, and   Michael Hingson ** 07:33 and that's part of the real issue, of course, is that looking at things from different points of view is always so valuable, isn't it? Absolutely,   Katrin J Yuan ** 07:42 this is why I also go for diversity in tech leadership boards. Yeah, because for me, I like to say it's no charity case, but business case,   Michael Hingson ** 07:57 yeah. Well, so you, you've, in a sense, always been interested in tech, and that I can appreciate, and that makes a lot of sense, because that's where a lot of growth and a lot of things are happening. What? So you went to school, you went to college, you got a master's degree, right?   Katrin J Yuan ** 08:17 Yes, correct.   Michael Hingson ** 08:20 And so what was then your first job that you ended up having in the tech world? I   Katrin J Yuan ** 08:27 was in the IT ICT for Vodafone in a country this last station was with Northern Cyprus. For me, very exciting. Yeah, to jump in different roles, also in different areas, seeing the world sponsored by a large company here in Europe. And that was very exciting for me to jump into white, into it and learn quickly. I wanted to have this knowledge accelerated and very pragmatic to see many countries, cultures, and also diverse people in many, many means, from language to culture to age to many, many different backgrounds.   Michael Hingson ** 09:09 So from a technology standpoint, how is Vodafone doing today? I know you've moved on from that, but you know, how is it? How is it doing today? Or is it I haven't I've heard of Vodafone, but I haven't kept up with it. That   Katrin J Yuan ** 09:22 was my very first chapter. So yes, indeed, I moved on, staying in the tech sector, but now I am completely here in Switzerland for another chapter,   Michael Hingson ** 09:35 and Vodafone is still a very sizable and ongoing company. It   Katrin J Yuan ** 09:39 is not in Switzerland, but yes, still in Europe, with headquarter, UK, in Germany and so on. Definitely. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 I'm, I'm familiar with it. And I was thinking Germany, although I hadn't thought about the UK, but that makes, makes some sense. So you, you obviously worked to. Learn a lot and absorb a lot of information. And I like the things that that you're talking about. I think people who are really curious, and who work at being curious aren't just curious about one thing and you talked about, you're curious about the technology and all the things that you could learn, but you are also very interested in the cultures, and I think that that is and the whole environment, and I think that is so important to be able to do what, what kinds of things, if you if you will, did you find interesting about the different cultures, or what kind of commonalities Did you find across different cultures? Because you, you had the experience to to be able to be involved with several so that must have been a pretty fascinating journey.   Katrin J Yuan ** 10:45 Yeah, CEO of a Swiss future Institute, and as university lecturer of four universities in Germany, as well as in Switzerland, mostly about AI data analytics. And also as board member, I have several demanding roles started already in young years. So one of the questions I hear often is, how did you make it, and how is the combination? And here my answer is, start early discipline focus. I'm highly self motivated curiosity, as mentioned earlier in the combination, and I did not expect success to come early. I expected to endure pain, hard work and to go forward and a mixture of discipline, hard work, step by step, and also to overcome challenges.   Michael Hingson ** 11:42 Did you find it to be a challenge with any of the cultures that you worked within, to to be able to be curious and to be able to move forward? Or were you pretty much welcomed across the board?   Katrin J Yuan ** 11:57 It's a mixture. It started with the obvious, the language. So when I was, for instance, on Northern Cyprus, that's the Turkish speaking part, not the Greek part, which is in the EU I accepted the opportunity given by the company at that time to learn Turkish. That was amazing for me. Yeah, as I felt like, if I'm the guest, the least I can do is adapt and giving, showing my respect and openness towards a new culture. And for me, culture starts with a language. With language you reach not only the people, but you really understand as there are so many, and those of you who speak more than one language, you might have find it especially comparing different expressions emotions. Typical expressions in different languages is not only translating, it's really understanding those people. Yeah, and that for me, definitely super exciting. It was a challenge, but a very welcome one, embracing that challenge, and for me, it was like, Hey, let's do an experiment. Being an adult, learning a complete new language, not like English, German, French, and both usually relatively close to each other, so related ones, but a completely new such as Turkish. So nobody spoke Turkish in my friend's neighborhood, closer family as we are, we are not. But I thought that, hey, let's simply start. And I started by learning eight, eight hours per week, so really intense, including the Saturday. So it was only doable that way, to give it a serious try to bridge and be open towards different cultures.   Michael Hingson ** 13:53 Well, the other part about it is, in a sense, it sounds like you adopted the premise or the idea that you didn't really have a choice because you lived there, or at least, that's a great way to motivate and so you you spent the time to learn the language. Did you become pretty fluent in Turkish? Then I   Katrin J Yuan ** 14:13 was there like five months, the first three months, it was rather a doing pain and hard work without having any success. So I didn't, didn't get it. I didn't understand anything, though I had every week the eight hours of Turkish, and it took three months, and that's super interesting for me to perceive like I love experiments, and I love experimenting, also with myself included, that is, it's not, it seems to be not linear, but rather jumping. So you have all the investments in the first where you don't see any immediate effect. Well, after the first three months, there was a jump. Um, and I remember clearly the first moment where I got it, where I understood something, and later on learning intensely, even understood some sort of jokes and etc. And there the meetings were all in Turkish. So it really helped to adapt to that one and get what they say,   Michael Hingson ** 15:20 so until you got to the point where you could sort of understand the language, how did, how did you function? Did you have somebody who interpreted or how did that work?   Katrin J Yuan ** 15:30 Well, they speak English as well, and of course, they adapted to me, such as to the other experts being there as well.   Michael Hingson ** 15:39 Yeah. Did? Did you find, though, that once you started having some effective communication in the language that that they liked that and that that made you more accepted? They   Katrin J Yuan ** 15:52 were surprised, because at that time, I was the only one from from the experts manager sent there and really accepted the whole education package for like, okay, it's free, it's education. Let's definitely accept it and give it a serious try, having the eight hours per week. So several were quite surprised that I did it and that I'm interested in learning a new language as a as an adult, where you could have said, No, that's, that's enough. Let's, let's all stay in our usual, the simple, the simplest way, which is, let's keep it and do it all in English, what we already can speak.   Michael Hingson ** 16:38 But they had to feel more at home when you started speaking their language a little bit. I remember in college, I took a year of Japanese. It just seemed fascinating, and I like to listen to short wave. I'm a ham radio operator, so I oftentimes would tune across stations, and I would find radio Japan and listen to broadcasts, and then I took a year, and I've been to Japan twice as a speaker, talking about the World Trade Center and so on. And although I didn't become in any way fluent with the language, I was able to pick up enough words, especially after having been there for a few days, that I could at least know was what's going on. So I appreciate exactly what you're saying. It makes it a whole lot more fun when people do relate to you. Which is, which is so cool. So, you know, I think that's that's a good thing. Where did you go after Cyprus?   Katrin J Yuan ** 17:34 I went back to Switzerland. Ah, familiar language, yeah, from the French and to the German speaking part in Switzerland, also with French, it's more or less the same. I learned a large part, also per University, and frankly, per TV. Watching television, if you first started, didn't get any of those jokes, yeah, I felt quite stupid. And then one day, you really break the wall, and then it's going all the way up, and you simply get it. You live it. You are widened, and you understand the culture and those people, and they will feel that you are bracing it, that you are not only polite or only there for a temporary of time, and then you're you're gone. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 18:22 you you demonstrate that you are really interested in them and curious about them, as I said, and that tends to definitely make you more relatable and make you more appreciated by the places where you are. So I'd like to go ahead and continue in, you know, obviously learning about you and so on. And I know we talked a little bit about other places where you've been and so on, but you've got, you've got a lot that you have done. So you work a lot with CEOs. You work a lot with investors and board members, and a lot of these people have a lot of different kinds of personalities. So what is your perception of people? What was your perception of working with all those people? And how do you deal with all of that going forward? Because everybody's got their own thoughts,   Katrin J Yuan ** 19:21 indeed, and in that context, what is normal? How do you perceive and how are you perceived by others? That was a question which raised my curiosity. Yeah, by time, it was not clear from the beginning, and for me, I found my answer in what is normal. It's super relative for only what you perceive and know. Got to know taught by your parents as a kid. And for me, looking looking Asian, yeah, looking different, yeah, as. A woman young, you're looking different. And that combination in Switzerland, it's yeah, it weighs some questions, and got me reflecting upon that question, yes, and this all how you deal and see and apply that difference and make that difference to be a value for yourself and for others. You bring   Michael Hingson ** 20:25 up an interesting point, though. You talk about what is normal, and so what is normal? How do you deal with that?   Katrin J Yuan ** 20:33 Normal is what you think is normal. There's no real normal, the so called norms. Does it fit to you, or you will make them fit to you, and you are unique in that setup you know, like what is normal considering beauty standards, it is what you use to know, based on culture, based on your direct environment, by based by your family, what you see is what you get, yeah. And based on some scientific stuff, like relatively high symmetric in in your face, but not too much asymmetric, yeah, just the right mixture, yeah. And so I learned to define, instead of being defined all the time, to define myself what is normal to me, to me, and to be very aware that the normal is quite relative my perception. Did   Michael Hingson ** 21:33 you find that there were times that you had to sort of change your view of what was normal because of circumstances, does that make sense?   Katrin J Yuan ** 21:43 Yeah, totally, and I respect it so much. Also, with your fantastic story yourself, Michael, where I can only say, Chapo, how, how you make your way all the way up. And it's, it's more than respectful. I have you have my admiration for that one for me, it was definitely food traveling, seeing myself, not so much as a small kid, I perceived like, Hey, we are all normal. Yeah, there was no difference as a small kid. But latest for me, when you got a bit older as a kid, between, in between kid and becoming adult, also from the environment, raising questions of how you appear, whether you appear differently from kids and so on. Yeah, the question was brought to me, so I had to deal with it in the one or other way. And I learned it's, it is interesting if you are finding yourself. It's not a point that you know in black, white, okay, that's me, but it's rather walking the whole path with all the stones, Hicks and up and downs, becoming you in all its essence and normal it was defines you, and I like to challenge myself wherever, and all these bias everyone has naturally, it makes us humans. That's the way that I, at least challenge myself to open that quick few seconds box again, after the very first impression, which is built unconsciously, and and, and some, some good moments and valuable relationships appeared not from the first moment, but because I challenge it, and even if we didn't like, for example, each other from the first moment, but then we gave it another opportunity, and even friendships were built with a second and third glance. And this is why I invite you to think about your own normal and to find and define yourself, not letting it be a standard defined by others.   Michael Hingson ** 24:07 I have ever since September 11, I always hear people saying and I read and I reacted to it internally. We got to get back to normal. People hate getting out of their comfort zone oftentimes, and that's, in a sense, so very frustrating. But I kept hearing people say, after September 11, we got to get back to normal. And I finally realized that the reason that I didn't like that statement was, normal will never be the same again. We can't get back to normal because normal is going to be different, and if we try to get back to where we were, then the same thing is going to happen again. So we do need to analyze, investigate, explore and recognize when it's need to move on and find, if you will, for the moment, at least a new normal.   Katrin J Yuan ** 24:58 Absolutely, I'm. With you. What's normal for you? Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 25:04 yeah, what's normal for me isn't normal for you. I think what's normal for me today isn't what it used to be. So for me today, normal is I do get to travel and speak, but when I'm home, I have a dog and a cat. Normal change for me a couple of years ago when my wife passed away. So it was a matter of shifting and recognizing that I needed to shift, that the mindset couldn't be the same as it was pre November 12 of 2022 and so it is important to be able to adapt and move on. So I guess for me, normal, in one sense, is be open to change.   Katrin J Yuan ** 25:50 That's beautifully said. Be open to change.   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 Yeah, I think it's really important that we shouldn't get so locked in to something that we miss potential opportunities, that that change, or that adapting to different environments will bring us   Katrin J Yuan ** 26:10 totally and you yourself, give yourself all the opportunities you have to evolve over time you will not be Exactly and that's good the way it is the same person, yeah? Because environment change, all the factors change, and we humans are highly adaptive, yeah, this is underestimated by ourselves many times. Yeah, but we are, and we make the best out of the situation, and especially with regard to hard moments where really, really, really hard, and nobody likes them, while being in that moment, but looking back and being overcoming it afterwards looking back, I like to say, when do you really grow? It's in the hard times when you grow this is where you endure pain, but you'll be become better, bigger, more resilient afterwards, right?   Michael Hingson ** 27:13 Very, very much. So Well, in your case, growing up, working, being in all the different environments that that you have. Have you ever had an unexpected moment, a hard moment that you had to deal with? And what was that? And how did you? How did you deal with it?   Katrin J Yuan ** 27:29 Sure, just sharing one earlier moment. I had an accident. I was on my way to dancing course and all chilly fun made myself pretty on the day, thinking only on superficial, beautiful moments, partying and so on. And then it crashed on the road, and in a matter of seconds, life can be over. So I woke up in the hospital and the intensive care, that unit, where you only find the hard cases, was, yeah, were really not beautiful to look at. Yeah, I find myself. And I was like, that was definitely a very hard lessons I learned in early years. So I had to relearn everything, and had to look two weeks long at a white wall with an ugly picture on it, and I had plenty plenty of time to think about myself and the world and what, what the heck I should do with the remaining time, and also my perception of normal, of wishes, of expectations, of different perspectives, and my my expectation on life. Yeah. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 28:56 what was an ugly picture? Did you ever come to appreciate the picture?   Katrin J Yuan ** 28:59 It was still ugly after two weeks, just checking.   Michael Hingson ** 29:05 So though you, you chose not to let that become part of your normal, which is fine. I hear you well, you, but you, you adapted. And you, you move forward from that, and obviously you you learned more about yourself, which is really so cool that you chose to use that as a learning experience. And all too often, people tend not to do that. Again, we don't do a lot of self analysis, and tend to try to move on from those things. But, but you did which is, which is admirable by any standard. Well, one of the things that I'm curious about is that you have a fairly good social media followings, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would ask this, what would you advise for people. Who want to build their brand. What did you learn along the way, and what would you advise people to do if they want to build their own brand and and grow? I've   Katrin J Yuan ** 30:07 over 60,000 views, which is not bad for a non celebrity and a simple officer, worker, academic worker, here in Switzerland, and I like to invite people to think, imagine you were a product. What are you standing for? And don't try to cover your weaknesses. It's a unique you as a combination of all of your science, I like to speak about the 360 degree you and starting, and I know statistically that a bit more women are a bit concerned about, hey, how much should I really give and and get over visibility, and is it still in a professional way, and I don't want to waste My time and so on. Somebody told me, and I find this idea very simple and good people talk about you either way. Also, if you leave a room, either you let it the way, in a passive way, so accepting it, or you decide one day, and this is what I did, actively influence it. So I like to, rather if I may have a choice, actively influence and have some take on my life, my decisions, my normal the doings, the happenings and the starts with a perception in our world. Allow me it is very simple. What you see is what you get. Yeah, so the visibility, if you can use it, especially here, now with all the social media channels, from LinkedIn to Insta to YouTube, what you have in place, use it systematically for your business, not as a I don't want to waste my time, and you don't need to open up to everything your private life. If you want to keep that, that's all good. You can just open up enough to build up your brand for business. Yeah, and for me, it's really, really going, definitely, we monetize and open up for business, and so that our clients in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany and Austria, and the dark region we call it, find us in, yeah, and thankful for that   Michael Hingson ** 32:37 interesting and I like something that that you say, which is, you don't need to open up your private lives, we get too nosy, and we get too many people who put too many pieces of information about their private lives, and unfortunately, that's just not a productive thing to do, Although so many people do it in this country now. We're, we're seeing a number of athletes whose homes are being broken into. And you can trace the reason that it's even possible back to a lot of social media. They're, they're saying they're not going to be there, or in some cases, they can't necessarily avoid it. Doesn't need to be social media when you've got sports figures who are playing in games and all that, but we focus too much on private lives rather than real substance. And unfortunately, too many people, also, who are celebrities, want to talk about their private lives. And I, you know, I don't tend to think that is overly productive, but everybody has their own choices to make, right? So   Katrin J Yuan ** 33:45 everybody has their own choices to make. Yeah, I recommend, if you like, stay with them consistently so you feel comfortable. How much you open the door is starting ultimately with you. I like to say in that context, you are ultimately responsible for all the things you do, but also with all the things you don't do. Yeah, and that's totally fine, as long as it's it's very much and that it's something you will feel that's, that's about you, yeah, and social media and visibility, and the business side, the professional side of using your whether Employer Branding, your personal branding, all the stuff, this is controlled by you, how much you give. Of course, you can sense how much, depending on how much you give, how much will come back. And if you don't feel like posting all the time, also with 40 degree fever out of a bat. Don't do it. It might be not sensible in your case, and not giving you back the outcome, the impact, the real consequence and effects it has. Yes, totally.   Michael Hingson ** 34:55 Well, social media hasn't been with us all that long, and I think we're still. So really learning how to best be involved with social media. And of course, that's an individual choice that everyone has to make. But what Facebook is only 20 years old, for example. And so we're going to be learning about this, and we're going to be learning about the impact of social media for a long time to come, I suspect,   Katrin J Yuan ** 35:20 absolutely and nowadays, fusion. Everything merged on the next level with AI, the perception what you get is what you see really fake news is only the beginning in text, in visual speaking of pictures and in videos, which is nothing else than a row of visual pictures in moving so our generation and the next and the next, from alpha to Gen Z, X, Y over and bridging generations, we will have to learn how to deal with it responsibly, both being potentially one of the actors in So, being a creator, creating your own content, and on the other side, accepting seeing, resonating, interacting with other content. What is real, what is fake? How do you deal with it, critically and responsibly for business, for society, yeah? Because whenever you do something, somebody else will see it. And that's that sense every one of us is a role model. So your behavior is not ultimately only what you say, but also what you do. Yeah, measure me and what I do, not what I say, and yeah, and others will see you and observe and that will have an effect, if you want or not. And therefore I am for a responsible way, behaving, reflecting and carry that on, spreading that information. Yeah. It all starts with you, I   Michael Hingson ** 37:01 believe is all too important to recognize it's due and judged by what I do, not by what I say. I think that is so important and one of the biggest lessons that we can learn from social media or anything. And it's nothing new. It's just that now it is such more a visible kind of lesson that we need to learn, because it's all about actions, and they do speak a lot louder than words, whether we like to think so or not. Yeah,   Katrin J Yuan ** 37:30 totally. And you said it, Michael, it's nothing new. Yeah, it's not reinvented, but, yeah, it's all transparent, too much information flooded by all channels, all these voices and people, experts are not commenting, resonating, multiplied, copied, bringing to other dimensions, and it's so easy, yeah, the real ones and the other ones. Yeah, so it's upon you to deal with it responsibly, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 38:00 well, you have been associated with a number of boards. You've dealt with lots of board members. You're the CEO of a company and so on. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on the whole concept of, how do we work to make boards and board members more inclusive and more diverse? Or how do we open boards up to perhaps different things that they haven't experienced before?   Katrin J Yuan ** 38:31 That's a very good one, which means a lot to me personally. I like to say it's not a charity case, but a fact matters, numbers, business case so simple. That is, if you have, let's say, 10 people, high personalities in one room, a decision is very, very easily made. If you all think, look, behave the same, with the same skills, background, experiences and cultural wise, definitely, you will come to one decision quickly. But is this ultimately the best decision of a company and for your future? And have you shared all these thoughts from a different perspective, from a different angle. This implies a certain way, also with efforts with some time are not only easy peasy, but once you challenge yourself, you really grow. You really grow and come to an ultimately better decision, worthwhile, a more valuable perspective, yeah, and thinking of something you have never fought yourself, but another fraction does, and ultimately, the other voice is not only one minority speaking of an easy example of one to nine makes 10. Yeah, but scientifically, we speak here about the 33% and more, so more than three four people in a room, it would make sense to really have a strong voice here, and not only the one exceptional voice, but really a discussion among diverse peers reaching to the ultimate outcome in the best interest of a company.   Michael Hingson ** 40:26 How do we get people to adopt that kind of mindset and expand boards though to make that happen? Because all too often, people are locked into their own way. Well, we want board members and we want people who think as we do, and we don't want to really change, which is getting back to what we talked about before, with normal   Katrin J Yuan ** 40:45 I'm definitely with you, Michael, and if we had one short sentence answer on that one, I would be the first to raise the hand give me that solution. It's very hard to force externally. It's it's, ultimately, the best way is if you really come to that and you you get convinced yourself by your own experience, by seeing observing, by being open minded enough to learn from others. Yeah, that is not with age, with success, with power, with hierarchy, you name it, with title, with salary, package that you find one day, okay, I learned enough. I'm successful enough, I'm rich enough, I can afford and do what I what I wish, means, and I I'm not interested, consciously or unconsciously, and having another, maybe challenging other view which threatens or challenges myself, or which makes it a little bit more uncomfortable, but for the ultimate sake of getting to a better result. So there's a science dimension, there's a psychological cultural dimension, and definitely that's an individual one, but I learned the greatest people, men and women, like the really successful ones, they are quite on the steep learning curve, wherever they stand. And the really good ones, they want to become even better. Now this is for knowledge, learning never ends, and this is also for openness, looking the ball is wound from the 360 degree perspective. And this is ultimately also, as I said at the beginning, the business case to know from science. Okay, if I go alone, I might get the point quite quickly. Or if everybody is a little copy of you, it makes it so easy, isn't it, but if you really challenge, go through this is where you bring yourself and the others and the whole team, and again, the value of your company and listed company, your innovation, your value of the ultimate company, much, much further than it was yesterday, and this is where maybe, how much can we afford, looking at business as competition, looking at the latest technology, all these and also over culture and over borders, yeah, how much can we afford to stay the way we Are because we were that successful and maybe also privileged the last 20 years. I doubt so. So this is, again, plenty of real facts, numbers, arguments. Look at the statistics. It's a clear business case where we go and the smartest one goes first and state an example by yourself. Go through it and then you experience it yourself, the value out of difference and diverse and true means by living it and allowing it in your own circle.   Michael Hingson ** 43:54 The question that sort of comes to mind, and it's hard one to really answer, I think, but if you're on a board with a very strong leader or very strong persons, and you see that they're not necessarily willing to deal with diversity or real inclusion. How do you help them understand the value of doing that and becoming more diverse or becoming more inclusive in the way they think, by   Katrin J Yuan ** 44:21 raising questions in a polite, respectful way, you can do a lot. Everything you do is better than doing nothing, simply accepting on and in a passive way. I think everything else is definitely worth to try, fail, try, do better and try in a row. Repetition is also something which is psychologically therefore we have all these repetition jingles and advertising to some, to some extent, very useful, effective. So if you again, may hear it, not maybe only from one person, but for more than the 33% and. And you might hear it from your best buddy, you might hear it from peers, but you one day come and accept at least question it yourself, yeah, raising that question and you really want to get better, as we said at the beginning. Michael beautifully said, accept change or change. What is normal, yeah. And we are highly adaptive, again, as humans. So allow yourself to grow. There are two ways, either or if, if you should ever meet somebody who is rather not that open to it. So there are two ways and which will show by time. Yeah. But one is, your people only like to change when change becomes necessary, versus where an event happens, yeah, a very hard event, and where you will have face tremendous consequences, so you must have a change, yeah, and it's painful, and the others before, out of being convinced, touching the question before, how much can we afford to stay the way we are like forever, just because it has been like this in the Last 20 years? And I rather invite change doesn't happen overnight. Yes, that's true, but continues and little ones rather the hard cut at the end and and rather from yourself, interior and and intrinsically motivated, rather than being forced only by outside. That's way better. And smart people, yeah, are open, listening, learning, and therefore, do some effort. Make some effort yourself. Normally, it pays back 10 times.   Michael Hingson ** 46:51 You know, one of the best quotes I've ever heard that I really like, and I think it really ties in here, comes from the person who was our 35th president, who's now passed away, Jimmy Carter. He once said we must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And my point in bringing that up is that change doesn't need to be that you have to sacrifice Basic Life Principle. I think so all too often, we don't necessarily learn some of those life principles as well as we should, but change is a good thing, and we do need to adjust to change any times, and it doesn't mean that we have to sacrifice the basics of life that we've grown up with and that we Experience   Katrin J Yuan ** 47:37 beautifully said exactly, I totally agree and to every new year, the new year resolution, stop smoking, becoming more sportive, all of sudden, all these long lists of changes and wishes, potential achievement and potential failures. Scientifically, I'm a bit nerdy. From the person, yeah, for me, no, it is positive. Is it shows that, rather than going for the big, hard cut change, use all these small steps and allow yourself to make these small steps towards change and habits, this is also shown and proven. Habits do not come overnight. They are not accepted. Whether, yeah, it's getting early bird, becoming all of a sudden Early Bird, because, yeah, you want to belong to that 5am breakfast club or something, whatever it is, yeah, make a combination over time in small steps, and reward yourself also, if you make a small step towards change. Now that's that's where magic happens. So you keep it over 234, months, and there become a good habit over time. But   Michael Hingson ** 48:49 also keep in mind why you want to make the change. That is what you don't change just to change. You change because there's a reason, and it's important to understand whatever it is the reason for wanting to change   Katrin J Yuan ** 49:04 having a goal and visualize it as much as you can. It's a strong one. And ultimately, do it for yourself, not for your partner, not because of somebody else, expecting do it for yourself. Yeah, becoming healthier working with a certain amount of discipline towards your marathon, or whatever it is in your life situation, yeah, definitely. Because if you don't have a goal, don't expect to ever learn that would be a pure accident, and that's rather impossible, yeah. But having a goal, you dramatically enhance your probability to reaching that one step by step.   Michael Hingson ** 49:45 Yep, absolutely. So you know what? Let's take a minute and play a game, just for fun. If you were a song, which one would it be?   Katrin J Yuan ** 49:55 A classic one, up to a certain moment, I will be. Surprise and a mixture, rather to the more modern, maybe new, classic one and a Big Bang to the end,   Michael Hingson ** 50:11 you have a particular one in mind. As   Katrin J Yuan ** 50:13 I love playing piano myself. I have two pianos at home, and I like to play from notes, sheets. But also come, come make my own compositions. I have one in mind, which is rather my own composition, starting from the classic, from a known one, such as Chopin, but going into a rather the individual one the end, yeah, it's a mixture.   Michael Hingson ** 50:40 Well, you've you've obviously been around a lot and so on. What's the worst advice you ever received? Stay   Katrin J Yuan ** 50:47 the way you are and come back in five years. You're not ready yet. Well, I simply didn't accept it. I think you're ready when once you feel ready, and that's not you're too young for it, or you are not ready because these things are lacking. And get the first reference, and get the first ones who trust yourself, and start trusting yourself going the first part, whether it's the first leadership role, but it's the first investment role, whether it's a first board membership role, whether it's becoming you, following your dreams, making your own company become reality all these I am convinced, at the end of the day, you are the ultimate producer of your life. So what are you waiting for? For me, it was the accident. Wake wake up. Call for me, where I fought like, Okay, two weeks staring at that ugly wall with that picture that made me somehow aware of my time. So I somehow subjectively really accelerate. I always think like, Hey, I don't have enough time. Let's make and really use the time given. And so, yeah, it's all about you define yourself, rather than letting others to define I   Michael Hingson ** 52:06 think that's really the operative part. Define yourself. You're the only one who can really do that, and you're the only one who can know how well you're doing it. So I think you're absolutely right, and   Katrin J Yuan ** 52:18 nobody knows you better. Nobody should know you better than yourself, because you spend all your time you know all these ugly, weak and really strong, really beautiful sides of yourself. You spend all the time, your whole life, if you like it or not, with you. So some people, however passive or with regard to responsibility, yeah, I would like to, but somehow I'm waiting somebody else who pushes me, who will give me before me that ball in my way, who tell me or who give me this one recommendation I was waiting a long time for. No, it should be you. You know yourself the best way start making use out of it. Yeah, and   Michael Hingson ** 52:59 you should really work to make sure you know yourself better than other people do. It's it makes your life a whole lot better. If you can do that. Let me ask this, if you could go back in time, what would you do?   Katrin J Yuan ** 53:09 I started quite early, and I've had some thoughts about skills, about what I could do, what I what I'm good at, and what I wish. Yeah, all that, and at some point I didn't dare to speak out. I accepted a lot, and I was actually quite silent for a long time. And in private life, I'm rather introvert. When they see me on stage as a speaker, as a lecturer at universities and so on, people tend to think I'm extrovert, but in private life, I'm quite introvert, looking back, maybe starting even earlier in a stronger pace than a faster pace, being more aware and not covering and myself in silence, in good moments, whether it's a meeting or in a lesson, if you know a Good answer, speak out. If you know a good question, speak out. Dare to speak out for yourself and for others. This took me some time to find my voice, many years, but now I somehow finally found it for myself, and I dare to speak out for myself and for others to make a little bit of change and to make dare to make things differently. So it has ultimately your individual impact, your outcome, your own responsible line. So this, this is something I would have wished for me and also for others. Believe in yourself, trust in yourself, speak out earlier, whenever you see and there are plenty opportunities. I'd like to finish on that one. It's like a muscle. It's not born, but rather, you can train it also, but leadership skills, or that entrepreneurial skills or to the skills to deal with difficult situation as you overcame dramatically, wonderfully. My. Yeah, everyone might face over a lifetime, individually with his and hers. Face it, grow with it, become better and share it with others. So you push, pull and get good people on your side. And it's not only you suffering, but the ultimate outcome is so much more than the one moment which was hard. So believe in yourself.   Michael Hingson ** 55:28 What's one thing that you really wish people would see that maybe they don't beauty   Katrin J Yuan ** 55:33 and difference? Yeah, think about it in all its means a bit deeper, and I dearly invite you. It starts with the looks, yeah, with the automatic, subconsciously quickly done, judging others. It's so easy. And yes, we know it's only human, but knowing about yourself, it's about freedom, and with freedom comes responsibility, and also knowing about your limitations and knowing about your weak spots helps you really a lot to grow over time. Knowing you is not only knowing you how to do the small talk when the sunny weather everybody can be a leader or do something in a good means, yeah. It's very, very easy, but I talk about what stormy weather when it comes to really tough situations, when it comes to darkness and different means, then observe yourself. How do you behave? And many, even adults, they don't know, they can't say, or they totally freak out or give up, or some, some, some ways, challenge yourself. Where are your limits? Have you never tried your limits before? Because you didn't swim out into the sea and see how much you can really swim well, better try out. You will find out and get to know yourself in all your dimension. This is definitely something, the beauty and difference accepting. And this is not only finger pointing to others. It starts with you. Yeah, because you are different. I bet you are in some ways, if it's not looking Yeah, being too old, too young, too man, too woman, too beautiful, too ugly, yeah, too fat, too skinny, and all these are, it's maybe your language, your culture, your skills, your different background, maybe you're never the new one, and maybe you are different in all beautiful ways. It is possible to be different. So allowing difference, seeing even inviting it to your circle, is something of tremendous value once you open the door and you nurture it over time, I wish more people could see it and use it on positive impact in this world.   Michael Hingson ** 58:04 I have been a firm believer pretty much my whole life, that life's an adventure, and we have to embrace it. We have to live it to the fullest, and when we do, we're much better for it. One of the things that it does for us is it makes us, by the definition of this podcast, more unstoppable. What makes you unstoppable?   Katrin J Yuan ** 58:26 Life is an adventure. I completely agree with that sentence. I like to say, for me, it's also one day I saw it's like one big game, either you don't play, or I play and want to win it, war, whereas I think there can be several who be the winners, not only one. It's not a one man, one woman show, yeah, it's the team, it's the community, it's the effort. What makes you unstoppable? It starts for me, definitely with your mind, unstoppable mind in every means, not with your body, because the body, the physics is limited, yeah, but our mind, spirit, brain, and what you feel here in your heart and what you hear have in your head is this, ultimately, you, changing, evolving Over time, becoming you, and this makes me unstoppable, knowing and I'm on the way. It's not a point, but rather a long, long path from our phone, knowing me, the skills, knowing what you have overcome, Michael, over time, everything. Why shouldn't you achieve and do and get, ultimately, to your next goal, because you, looking back, have achieved so much already becoming stronger and stronger. If we go back to the simplified game, if it was a video game, you get to the next level. Not only getting to the next level, you're becoming more stronger. Yeah, this is becoming you and. Yeah, I believe that you are the ultimate producer. It starts in knowing, trusting, believing in you, speaking out and helping, not only yourself, but ultimately pulling, pushing others. As a community, we share many things which, when shared, becomes multiplied much, much more worth, such as visibility, value, knowledge, trust and community and connections, all these wonderful things different than a cake, if you share, it becomes more so I don't see you are alone. I see you're not an island. You're not alone. Come with us. Follow and grow with us on the journey becoming, ultimately you and you will be unstoppable   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:49 your way. And I think that's a great way to end this conversation, because I think that you cited it and said it so well and eloquently that reality is, people can be more unstoppable, but they they need to take the responsibility to make that happen, and if they do, they'll be better for it. So Katrin, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank everyone who listens to this for being with us today. This has been a fun podcast. It's been a great adventure, and I really appreciate having the opportunity to keep Catrin busy for my gosh, over an hour now, and just getting to be bedtime over in Switzerland. So thank you for being here, but for all of you, hope you've enjoyed this. I hope that you will give us a five star review wherever you are listening to this podcast or watching it, and also, if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest, we certainly like you to let us know. Love to get your thoughts about the podcast, feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i, b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast. Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, Katrin, if people want to reach out to you, how would they be able to do that?   Katrin J Yuan ** 1:02:20 LinkedIn, Insta, YouTube, you find me. Google me, what's   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:25 your what's your LinkedIn, ID, your handle on LinkedIn.   Katrin J Yuan ** 1:02:29 Katrin J Yuen, Swiss, future Institute. Opportunities don't happen. We create them. Stay, follow and grow with us. Thank you.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:02:41   You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Columbia University faculty and students are reflecting on another turbulent year on campus as commencement wraps. Meanwhile, New Jersey Representative LaMonica McIver appeared in court Wednesday on charges she assaulted federal officers.. Plus a new poll finds most residents say housing in the state is too expensive. Plus, a new Rutgers University poll shows that more than half of New Jerseyans think housing is too expensive in the Garden State.

Charles T. Brown is a longtime friend of the podcast who was last with us in 2023. We welcomed him back to talk about his important new book, Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement, out now from Island Press. Charles is the founder and principal of Equitable Cities, a minority- and veteran-owned urban planning, public policy and research firm focused at the intersection of transportation, health and equity. He is also an adjunct professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University.  In Arrested Mobility, Charles applies his years of experience in the field to examine how what he calls “the four Ps”—policing, public policy, polity, and planning—come together to hold Black people back in fundamental ways, limiting their literal and figurative mobility. We talked about how to repair our cities, the importance of Black leadership, and what it truly means to “love thy neighbor”—as an urban planner and as a member of a community. ***Our new book, Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile, will be published on October 21, 2025 by Thesis, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Pre-order now.*** Support The War on Cars on Patreon and receive exclusive access to ad-free versions of regular episodes, Patreon-only bonus content, Discord access, invitations to live events, merch discounts and free stickers! This episode was produced with the generous support of the Helen & William Mazer Foundation. We are also supported by Cleverhood. Listen to the episode for the latest discount on the best and most stylish rain gear for walking and cycling. Learn more about how an electric cargo bike can change your life and save $500 off a new bike with code WARONCARS500 at Xtracycle. LINKS:  Buy Charles T. Brown's book, Arrested Mobility: Overcoming the Threat to Black Movement, at our Bookshop page. Check out Charles's Arrested Mobility podcast and find out more about his work. thewaroncars.org / lifeaftercars.com

Our guest this time, Dario Valenza, is all that and more. Dario hales from Australia where he grew up and went to high school. He then attended two years of college but then left academia to work on working on designing yachts for, among events, the America's Cup races. Eventually he did return to college to finish his degree. He does tell us that he has a passion for design thinking and designing. As you will discover he has designed yachts, aircraft including innovative drones and even automobiles.   We talk about how his over-arching passion for design thinking also helps him design functioning and successful teams. Dario is a team leader by any standard.   He founded and owns a successful design and implementation company, Carbonix. Much of the work in which he is involved today is around having designed and now manufacturing long-range drones that can stay aloft and travel up to 800 Kilometers before needing refuelling. His products can and are being used for major surveying jobs and other projects that take advantage of the economic enhancements his products bring to the table.   Dario and I discuss leadership and how his design-oriented mindset has helped him be a strong and effective leader. I will leave it to him to describe how he works and how he helps bring out the best in people with whom he works.       About the Guest:   I have a passion for design and design thinking. This is the common thread that has led me to build yachts, planes, and cars - as well as create the teams and company structures to turn visions into reality.   I believe that beautiful design, as well as enabling and inspiring, is inherently valuable. Testing a new design it in the real world, particularly in competition, is a way to interrogate nature and understand the world.   I spent the first decade of my career working on racing yachts as a boatbuilder, designer, construction manager, and campaign manager. My treasured achievements include being part of several America's Cup teams and pioneering full hydrofoiling for World Championship winning boats.   I applied the lessons learned to other fields. This trajectory diversified into aerospace applications including drones.   I work to create products that bring joy by being desirable, aesthetically pleasing, and ergonomically correct, while always adding value through effective and efficient performance. I'm always keen to share my experiences and tackle new challenges with like-minded teams.   Ways to connect Dario:   Main point of contact is LI: https://au.linkedin.com/in/dario-valenza-a7380a23 Carbonix URL: www.carbonix.com.au Personal website: www.dariovalenza.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi everyone. This is your host, Michael hingson, and you are listening to another episode of unstoppable mindset. And today our guest is Dario, if I'm pronouncing that right, Valenza, how do i pronounce it? Oh, good. Oh, good. I can sometimes speak the King's English really well. Dario is a person who has a great passion for design, and he's going to tell us about that. He has been involved in designing many things, from yachts to aircraft to other kinds of things, as well as teams in companies, which I think is very fascinating, that make products and bring things about. So we're going to get to all of that. Daro is in Australia, so it's early in the morning. There for you right now. But welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Yeah, my pleasure. Glad to be here. So what time is it over there right now? About 11am Yeah, and it's little after three here. So, yep, you're 20 hours ahead   Dario Valenza ** 02:27 of us. No, here, it's Saturday, I assume. There it's Friday. It is to the confusion.   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 So, so, as it's always fun to do, can you tell us about the future over the next 20 hours?   02:40 So, so far so good. Yeah, there you are. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:43 thank you for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset. Let's start, if you would, by maybe you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Dario, growing up and some of those kinds of things, so that people listening and watching can get to know you a little bit better.   Dario Valenza ** 03:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think the interest in how things worked was there as long as anyone can remember being exposed early on to different mechanical things and from household appliances to looking at trains and busses and cars outside. I think that all piqued my curiosity. But I remember the first time I came across the concept of a sailboat. Something clicked, or something about the way an aerofoil works, the way it can generate motion out of wind, the balance of forces, the structures, the things that all need to work for a sailboat to work. That sort of got me hooked, and then I spent every waking moment I could reading about it, doing research, making models that I'd sail across the pool, getting involved at the local sailing club, and just being hands on. And I think that's really where the passion started. So certainly, there's a general wanting to see how things work, and there's a specific aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structures, just, I find it endlessly fascinating. And you're always learning, and   Michael Hingson ** 04:10 should always be learning. I think that's one, of course, the real keys is always learning, which some people think they don't do, but and some people try very much not to do, but that's not the way to really progress in the world. So I'm glad that you do that. You've always lived in Australia.   Dario Valenza ** 04:27 No, actually, born in Italy, moved here probably 10 years old, went to high school and uni here.   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 Yeah, you do seem to have a little bit more of an Australian accent than an Italian one?   Dario Valenza ** 04:41 Yeah, I think I was young enough when I moved that I learned the language pretty quickly. I did spend few years in New Zealand and a few years in Europe, so I think my accent is probably a little bit of a hybrid, but mostly Australian. I'd say, do you speak Italian? Yes. Funny, you get rusty at it, though, like when I go back, it probably takes me a few days to get used to speaking it, yeah, but it is in there   Michael Hingson ** 05:08 which, which makes some sense. Well, so you went to high school, and did you go on to college?   Dario Valenza ** 05:15 Did the first couple of years of an engineering degree, dropped out to go and do the America's Cup. Eventually went back and finished it. But really haven't spent more time working than started. Putting it that way, the things I was interested in, particularly the the advent of carbon fiber in in racing yachts, hadn't found its way into any curriculum yet. It was it was happening on the frontier in that environment. And so my judgment was you could learn more by doing it and by going to uni. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:49 yeah, on the one hand, with school, to a large degree, it's theory, and putting it into practice is something that always brings you closer to it, which which makes sense. Well, so you, when you went to your first America's Cup, what did you were you just an observer? Were you involved in designing a yacht, or what?   Dario Valenza ** 06:10 I was a boat builder. I was hands on, on the manufacturing, and that was the way in that was the the opportunity I had to actually be part of a team and prove myself over the course of the campaign, I obviously showed an interest in design, and I became more de facto part of the design team. But I really always like to sit at that interface between the designing and the building, so that there's a practical element to yes, there's a theory, yes, there's a design, there's a bunch of analysis you can do having that practical mindset of, is it easy to build? Is it practical? Is it possible to then tune it and modify it and improve it? And that actually led me to a lot of the logistical challenges of, how do you plan a build? How do you allocate time towards the things that make the biggest difference towards performance. So the journey was really from hands on boat builder to sort of logistics, to design   Michael Hingson ** 07:08 well, and design is clearly been your passion overall. So that makes some sense. When did you do your first America's cut?   Dario Valenza ** 07:17 So I was involved in the 2000 event in Auckland, which was the first time the Kiwis defended after winning in 95 right? Then I did 2003 also in Auckland, 2007 in Valencia. And then there was a bit of a hiatus after Valencia, because of the deed of gift match. And I was involved in a couple of teams as that transition happened. And eventually 2012 I peeled off to start my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 07:44 So let's see the New Zealand won in 2000 right?   Dario Valenza ** 07:48 They defended successfully in 2000 so they they won in 95 in San Diego against Dennis Connor, and it took them five years to basically set up a defense. So from 95 to 2000 and then they won, and they rolled straight into 2003 they lost in 2003   Michael Hingson ** 08:05 that was to Italy. Was it to the Swiss or to the Swiss? Right? Okay,   Dario Valenza ** 08:11 even though the core of the sailing team was the former New Zealand team, the basically flag of allegiance, but yeah, the lingua team. Now, Were you successful challenger, which is amazing. Were you   Michael Hingson ** 08:25 living in New Zealand in 2003   Dario Valenza ** 08:29 Yes, yeah. So when you become involved in a team, basically the whole operation camps out at a at a base in the lead up to the event. At the time, the yacht still had to be constructed in country. So in 2003 for example, I was with a Swedish team. I actually spent a little bit of time in Sweden during the construction of the yacht, and then traveled with a yacht to New Zealand, and stayed there for the duration. I asked,   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 because I went to New Zealand in May of 2003 the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, or of the blind, asked me to come and do some speaking. It was, of course, after September 11, and I was pretty visible, so I went down and actually helped them raise something like close to $300,000 by giving a bunch of speeches around New Zealand, but I remember listening to the radio and hearing all the irate people because New Zealand lost. The government didn't put enough money into it, and we shouldn't have lost it was pretty fascinating to to to hear all of that.   Dario Valenza ** 09:38 There was a campaign called the loyal campaign, just basically trying to reprimand the Kiwi sailors that affected at the end of the day. It's a professional sport. There were nationality rules, but it was really residency, so as long as they signed on with the Swiss team within a certain time. Period, it was like two years or something, and basically set up a residence in Switzerland, and they were eligible to compete. And I think there's been a history of that since the New Zealand government having Lisa supported in New Zealand, because it's certainly an investment in the national industry and tourism, everything that comes with it. And I think they did walk that back, particularly for the last event. And the latest result of that is the Kiwis defended in Spain last time around, which is again, unusual.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 Well, it was, it was fascinating to watch the races, and we watched them was before I went to New Zealand. But that's why my wife and I watched, because we knew I was going there, and it was, it was all being defended in New Zealand. And of course, they were using sails, and the yachts were just going at normal sailboat type speeds. But I know then later, so much redesign took place, and the boats started traveling significantly faster, right?   Dario Valenza ** 11:08 Yeah, absolutely, there's been a change in that respect, just on the atmosphere in Auckland again, with my perspective, having, as I said, obsessed over sailing, worked my way up, got involved in campaigns, helped to put sponsors together with skippers, to get funding to build boats, and arriving in Auckland with the prospect of trialing with a team, you walk out of the airport and there's the actual boat that won the copy, 95 was sitting in The car park. There are posters. You can really see, like they called it the city of sales. And as I arrived the round the world race was stopping by in Auckland, so there was a sort of festive atmosphere around that. And you could really see people were getting behind it and getting involved. And it felt, you know, they had parades at the beginning of the event. So it was really special to be there at a time when there was maybe 12 teams. It was a big event. And to your point, they were symmetrical ballasted monohulls. So they were fairly conservative, you know, long, narrow, heavy boats. And the competition was really to eke out a one or 2% gain to have better maneuverability for match racing. And it was really down to that kind of refinement. And what happened after 2007 I mentioned a sort of hiatus, basically, two teams took each other to court, and they went back to what they call a deed of gift matches, which is the default terms that they have to abide by if they can't agree to a mutually agreeable protocol. And that deed of gift match ended up being in multi holes. So there was a catamaran and trimaran, and they were big and fast. And I think then, when the Americans won out of that, they they sort of got seduced by, let's make this about the fastest sailors and the faster boat in the fastest boats. So they went to multi holes. The next evolution was hydrofoiling Multi holes. And then once the boats are out of the water, the drag drops dramatically, and now they can go really fast. They ended up narrowly the Kiwis ended up narrowly losing in San Francisco. The Americans then defended Bermuda. The Kiwis eventually won in Bermuda. And then they in in sort of consultation with the challenge of record. That was Italians. They wanted to go back to monohulls, but they wanted them to be fast monohulls, and so they came up with this concept of a hydrofoiling monohull. So the boats now are certainly the fastest they've ever been, and the nature of the racing has changed, where it's more of a drag race than a sort of tactical match race. But it's still fascinating, because it's all about that last bit of technology, and it's all about resource management. You have so much time, you have so much budget, how do you get to the highest performance within that time that you can access, that the Sailors can get the best out of? So it's all a balance of many variables, and it's certainly tactical and strategic and very fascinating, but   Michael Hingson ** 14:18 hasn't a lot of the the tactics, in a sense, gone out of it, because it's now so much, as you put it, a drag race or a speed race, that a lot of the strategies of outmaneuvering your opponents isn't the same as it used to be.   Dario Valenza ** 14:37 Yeah. So if you imagine, the way you think about it is, it's a multi dimensional space. You've got all sorts of values that you can dial in, and the weighting of the values changes depending on the boat and the racing format and the weather so on a traditional monohull maneuvers are relatively cheap because the boat carries momentum. So when you tack you go. Through the eye of the wind, you lose drive for, you know, a second, three seconds, but your speed doesn't drop that much because a boat's heavy and it just powers along. And so if you have a three degree shift in the direction of the wind, it's worth tacking on that, because you'll then get the advantage of having a better angle. Similarly, if you're interacting with another boat, tacking to get out of their dirty air, or tacking to sit on top of them, is worthwhile, and so you get that the incentive is, I can spend some energy on a maneuver, because I'm going to get a gain when you have boats that are extremely fast, and we're talking three, four times faster than the wind, if the wind direction changes by three degrees, it's almost immaterial. And so it's not worth tacking on it. If you go through the dirty air of another boat, you get through it really quickly. And on the other hand, when you maneuver, you're effectively, you go from flying on the hydro force to gliding. You only have, like, a few boat lengths that you can do that for before the hull touches the water, and then you virtually stop. And so basically, the aim is you minimize maneuvers. You roll with the wind shifts. You roll with your opponent. And hence they've had to put boundaries around the course to force the boats back together, because otherwise I'd go out to a corner, do one tack and then go to the top mark. And so it's a different racing. It's still there are tactics involved, but the trade offs are different, that the cost versus reward of different tactical choices is very different.   Michael Hingson ** 16:31 But the race obviously goes with the newer designs, goes a lot faster, and it isn't hours and many hours of racing as it used to be, is that right?   Dario Valenza ** 16:42 It's also shorter course, so the format is kind of optimized for television, really, for, yeah, broadcast. So you have many short races, and it's it does mean that if you have a big disparity, like if one boat makes a mistake and falls a long way behind, it's over pretty quickly, because it did happen in the past where you get a boat that was outmatched or did something wrong and just spend three hours following the leader with no chance of catching up. So there's certainly a merit to having short, sharp races, but I think it's probably more physical and less cerebral, like, if you look at, yeah, the way the old boats worked, you had 17 people on there providing all the mechanical power, maneuvering, putting spinnakers up and down, dip ball driving, moving their weight around the boat. He had a tactician. They would have conversations about what's happening and react, you know, in a matter of seconds, not in a matter of milliseconds. Now you have eight people on the boat, four of them are just pedaling bikes, basically to put pressure into an accumulator to run the hydraulics. You have a helmsman on each side, and you have a trimmer on each side, and they don't cross the boat, because the boats are so fast that it's actually dangerous to get out of the cockpit. So it's very much more, I guess, closer to sort of Formula One in terms of it, you've got you've got speeds, you've got the reaction times are shorter. Everything happens more quickly, and there's certainly less interaction between the boats. Do you have   Michael Hingson ** 18:19 a preference of whether you like more the old way or the newer way of doing the races and the way the boats are designed.   Dario Valenza ** 18:28 If pressed, I would say I'd prefer the old way. But that's probably the bias, because I was involved more back then. Yeah. I think it's equally fascinating. And that sort of brings me to Yeah. So even you know, we'll get into how it applies to business and things like that, and it's the same problem, just with different variables. So my view with the cup was, whatever the rules are, you've got to try and win within them. And so they will change, the boat will change, the venue will change, the weather will change, budget limitations, all these things play into this multi variant problem, and your job is to balance all those variables to get the best   Michael Hingson ** 19:10 outcome right in the rules. Exactly.   Dario Valenza ** 19:12 Yeah. I mean, the teams do have a say. So I was, for example, in the committee that designed the rule for the catamarans that went to San Francisco, having said that what we thought we were encouraging by the rules, and what actually happened was nothing to do with each other, because once you set the rules, then the fascinating thing is how people interpret them, and they'll interpret them in ways that you can't possibly imagine, hence unintended consequences. But yeah, you have a say, but ultimately they are what they are, and the point of competing is to do well within those rules. Having said that, if they get to the point where you're just not interested anymore, then don't compete. But it is what it is. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 So how long did you do yacht design and so on, dealing. With the cup,   Dario Valenza ** 20:02 probably 15 years altogether, was 12 or so in the actual America's Cup, and a few years before that, working up to it, doing various different projects, and that's sort of in a professional capacity, getting paid before that as a passion. It's pretty much my whole settling my teens, maybe a few years before that as well.   Michael Hingson ** 20:21 So what did you do after that?   20:25 I started my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 20:26 There you go. Well, tell us about the business and what you what you started with.   Dario Valenza ** 20:36 Yeah. So it the the aim was what we call long range aerial data capture. So fancy way of saying drones with a long range that can carry out surveys effectively. So whether it's taking photographs, video, LIDAR scans or combinations thereof, the sort of underlying motivation was the importance of data. So having come out of the America's Cup and seeing the way you develop is you interrogate what's happening with the boat and the boat and the crew and the conditions, and the more channels of information you have, the more informed decisions you can make about improving now, applying that to real world problems, to things like linear infrastructure, to mining to land management. It seemed like to me there's a gap where if you could have better aerial data, you could make better decisions. And I happened to have a tool in the design and manufacturing processes that came out of the America's Cup that would allow me to create a lightweight airframe that would have that efficiency and be able to give that range. And this was at a time when, you know, people were already starting to think of drones as a solution, though there was a lot of hype around them, but it was really all around the electronics, around multi rotors, around things that you could effectively buy and put up in the air and do a short mission wave and then land. The idea of a long range drone, other than in the military, was pretty much unexplored, and I think largely because to make it work commercially financially, you needed the range you need to be able to cover in the order of hundreds of kilometers in one flight, so that you're not having a ground crew, effectively driving the line relocating from point to point as the surveys carried out. So initially it was fairly conservative in the sense that the main focus was to set up that manufacturing capability. So basically, copy or transfer those process out of the America's Cup into a commercial setting. So making molds, curing carbon, the way you document or the way you go about it, that design process, and I was open to doing custom work to subsidize it, basically. So doing stuff again, for for sailboats, for racing, cars, for architecture, just with that composite manufacturing capability as a way to prove it and refine it. And whatever money was coming out of that was going into developing a drone airframe. And then I was fortunate enough to have a collaboration with a former colleague of mine in the cup who set up a business in Spain doing computational fluid dynamics, and he alerted me to a contract over there for a military surveillance research drone. We, by then, had an airframe that more or less we could demonstrate, and we could show that it was lighter and was more efficient, and then fly further and it had a more stable flying path and all of that. So we won that contract, we supplied that, and then out of that came the commercial offering, and it basically grew from there.   Michael Hingson ** 23:50 But when did you start dealing with the drone design, the airframe and so on,   23:57 probably to 2015   Michael Hingson ** 24:00 Okay, yeah, I think I had started hearing about drones by then, and in fact, I know I had by that time, but yeah, they they were still fairly new. So how far would your drone travel?   Dario Valenza ** 24:16 So we have two versions, the old electric one will do a couple of 100 kilometers, the petro hybrid one will do up to 800 and so we're really squarely in the territory of crude helicopter, smaller, small fixed wing planes like Cessnas, and we're really going into that same way of operating. So we're not so much selling the drone to a utility to do their scans. We are providing the data that comes out of the scan, and we're using the drone as our tool to get that data. And by effectively mirroring the model of the traditional sort of legacy aviation, we can offer, obviously, a lower cost, but also better data. Because we fly lower and slower, so we can get a higher resolution and more accuracy, and there's a obviously carbon footprint reduction, because we're burning about 2% of the fuel, and it's quieter and it's safer and all of that stuff. So it's really doing that close in aerial survey work over large distances the way it's currently being done, but with a better tool,   Michael Hingson ** 25:21 the electric drone, you said, only goes a couple 100 kilometers, is that basically because of battery issues,   Dario Valenza ** 25:27 absolutely, especially power density. So not so much energy density, but power density really how much energy you can store in the battery in terms of mass, and obviously the fact that you're not burning it off, so you're carrying the empty battery around with you. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Any interest in, or has there been any exploration of making solar powered drones?   Dario Valenza ** 25:52 We've certainly looked into it, and we've developed relationships with suppliers that are developing specialized, conformal, curvy solar panels that form part of the structure of the wing. There are a couple of considerations. Most prominent is the trade off that you're making. Like if you take add solar panels to a wing, even if they're integrated in the structure, and you minimize the structural weight, they will have a mass. So call it an extra kilo. Yeah. Right now, if I were to take that extra kilo and put it in battery or in fuel, I would be better off, so I'd have more energy by doing that than by having the solar panel   Michael Hingson ** 26:36 dealing on efficiency yet, yeah,   Dario Valenza ** 26:37 yeah. So obviously, on a hot day, when you're flying with the sun directly above, you probably would be better. But over the course of the day, different locations, banking, etc, it's just not there yet. Net, net, particularly considering that there'll be a degradation and there'll be a maintenance that's required as the panels deteriorate and the various connections breakdown, etc. So it's not something you'd rule out. Then the secondary consideration is, when you look at our aircraft, it's fairly skinny, long, skinny wings. When you look at the area from above, there's not a lot of projected area, particularly the wings being thin and very high aspect ratio, you wouldn't really be able to fit that much area right when it comes to and then you've got to remember also that if you're generating while you're flying, your electronics have to be very different, because you have to have some way to manage that power, balance it off against the battery itself. The battery is multi cells, 12 S system, so you then have to balance that charging. So there's some complexity involved. There's a weight penalty, potentially a drag penalty. There is a Net Advantage in a very narrow range of conditions. And overall, we're just not there yet in terms of the advantage. And even if it could extend the range by a few minutes, because we have an aircraft that can fly for eight hours, doesn't really matter, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 28:04 So dealing with an electric drone again, have you ever looked into things like fuel cells as opposed to batteries? Or does it not make we have,   Dario Valenza ** 28:14 and there's a company in France that we've been collaborating with, it's developing a hydrogen fuel cell, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 28:21 So I was wondering, yeah. And   Dario Valenza ** 28:23 again, this is about, sort of, maybe sounds a bit conservative, but you know, during these lessons from the Americas capitals, talking about being seduced by the latest shiny thing can come at the detriment of achieving what you need to achieve today. So we're very conscious in the business in carbonics, of having this roadmap where there's a lot of nice to haves, there's a lot of capability that we want going forward, and that's everything from the remote one to many operations, detect and avoid fail safes, additional comms, all stuff that will enable us to do what we're doing today, plus x, y, z, but we need to be able to do what we can do what we have to do today. And most of the missions that we're doing, they're over a power line in the middle of nowhere. They're in relatively non congested airspace. The coordination is relatively simple. We have the ability to go beyond visual line of sight. We have the range, so it's really let's use what we have today and put all the other stuff in time and space. As the business grows, the mission grows, the customers get more comfortable, and that's a way to then maintain the advantage. But it's very easy to get sucked into doing cool R and D at the expense of delivering today.   Michael Hingson ** 29:42 Yeah, it's R and D is great, but you still gotta pay the bills. Yeah, so you have worked across several industries. What's kind of the common thread for you, working across and designing in several industries? Yeah. So   Dario Valenza ** 30:00 I think it's a high level problem solving is having an outcome that's very clearly defined and a rule set and a set of constraints. And the challenge is, how do you balance all those elements to deliver the best value? So whether it's, how do you design a boat within a rule to go as fast as possible? How do you develop a drone to fly as long as possible, given a certain time and budget availability? You're always looking at variables that will each have their own pros and cons, and how do you combine them so things like, you know, team size versus burn rate versus how aggressively you go to market, how do you select your missions? How do you decide whether to say yes or no to a customer based on the overall strategy? I see that as you have all these variables that you can tweak, you're trying to get an outcome. How do you balance and weigh them all to get that outcome?   Michael Hingson ** 30:58 Yeah, well, you've I'm sorry, go ahead.   Dario Valenza ** 31:01 I was gonna say, I mean, I have also, like, an interesting motorsport and when you look at a formula, one strategy, same thing, right? Did you carry a fuel load? Do you change tires? Do you optimize your arrow for this? It's a similar type of problem you're saying, I this is my aim. I've got all these variables. How do I set them all in a way that it gives me the best outcome? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:23 and in your design and and as you construct and look at what you're doing, you decide exactly what the parameters are, and you know when you're going to change the tires, or, you know when it's time to put in more fuel or whatever. And then, see, you've got to really know the product very well,   Dario Valenza ** 31:42 absolutely. And again, in the case of salvo racing, it's almost exemplary, because the rules are spelled out, and you have, it's a very artificial set of constraints, and you have a race day, you'll have your budget, and obviously you can work to increase that, but the time is what it is. And then in the rules, you actually get to trade off length versus width, versus mass versus sail area. Do I make my boat more powerful so it goes faster in strong winds, or do I make it skinnier so it goes better in light winds? You look at the history of the weather in the venue, and the teams that win are the ones that get all those mostly, right? So it's not necessarily the latest, fastest, more, most extreme solution, it's the one that best balances all these variables. Yeah, you transfer that into business, and it's a similar thing. You've got, you've got funding, you've got burn rate, you've got people, you've got customers, probably more variables, and it's a little bit more fuzzy in some cases. So you need to work harder to nail these things down. And it's a longer term. It's an open ended prospect. It's not I've just got to race on Sunday, then I can have a break for six months. It's you do it today and tomorrow and tomorrow. So it's going to be sustainable. But I the way you think about it in the abstract, it's the same,   Michael Hingson ** 33:00 and you also have to keep evolving as technology grows, as as the industry grows, as demands change, or maybe better than saying as demands change, as you foresee demands changing, you have to be able to keep up with it. And there's a lot to all that. There's a lot of challenge that that someone like you has to really keep up with. It's   Dario Valenza ** 33:23 a balance between leading and listening. So there's a classic Henry Ford line that if I'd asked the customer what he wanted, he would have told me a faster horse. We've fallen into the trap sometimes of talking to a customer, and they're very set about, you know, we want to use this camera to take these this resolution, at this distance, because that's what we use on a helicopter, because that's what used on a multi rotor. And you have to unpack that and say, Hang on, what data do you actually like? Because we have a different payload. We fly in a different way. So let us tell you how we can give you that solution if you tell us what we want, and I think that applies across various sort of aspects of the business. But to your point about the continuous evolution, one of the most fascinating things out of this experience of almost 10 years of sort of pioneering the drone industry is just how much the ecosystem has evolved. So when we started out, the naive assumption was we're good at making airframes. We can make really good, lightweight, efficient aircraft. We don't necessarily want to be an electronics manufacturer. It's a whole other challenge. Let's buy what we can off the shelf, put it in the aircraft for the command and control and go fly. And we very quickly realized that for the standard that we wanted in terms of being able to satisfy a regulator, that the reliability is at a certain point, having fail safes, having programmability. There was nothing out there when we had to go and design. Avionics, because you could either buy hobby stuff that was inconsistent and of dubious quality, or you had to spend millions of dollars on something out of the military, and then it didn't work commercially. And so we went and looked at cars, and we said, okay, can seems like control area network seems like a good protocol. Let's adopt that. Although some of the peripherals that we buy, like the servos, they don't speak, can so then we have to make a peripheral node that can translate from can to Rs, 232, or whatever. And we went through that process. But over the years, these suppliers that came out of hobby, came out of consumer electronics, came out of the military, very quickly saw the opportunity, and we were one of the companies driving it that hang on. I can make an autopilot module that is ISO certified and has a certain quality assurance that comes with it, and I can make it in a form factor under the price where a commercial drone company can use it. And so it really accelerated the last maybe three, four years. There's a lot of stuff available that's been developed for commercial drones that now gives us a lot more options in terms of what we buy rather than what we make.   Michael Hingson ** 36:13 Well, now I have to ask, since you brought it up, does anybody use Rs 232, anymore? I had to ask. I mean, you know,   Dario Valenza ** 36:21 less and less, yeah, at one point, like we use it for GPS parks, because we didn't have anything that ran on can right slowly we're replacing. So the latest version of the aircraft now is all cap, but it took a while to get there. That's   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 gonna say that's a very long Rs 232, cable you have if you're going to communicate with the aircraft, that'd be I still have here some Rs 232 cables that I remember using them back in the 1980s and into the 1990s but yeah, Rs 232   Dario Valenza ** 36:57 horrendous ones was, there was a, I think it was a light LIDAR altimeter. Someone will correct me, it ran on I squared C, oh, which is the most inappropriate possible thing. And it is what it is. So all we, all we could do is shorten the wire length as much as possible and live with it until we found something better, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:18 then we also had parallel cables. Yes, of course, one connected printers,   Dario Valenza ** 37:26 and we have ethernet on the aircraft for the comms. Well, yeah, there's a lot of translating that we need to do. And again, I'm not an electronic engineer, but I understand enough of it to know what's good and what's not. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 37:38 yeah. The days have gone by with all of the RS, 232, and parallel ports and all that. Now it's all USB and Ethernet and cams and other things like that which making kind of fun. Well, what other industries have you been involved in besides the drone and the boat or yacht world?   Dario Valenza ** 37:56 So I've done a little bit in cinemable Things which was kind of pituitous. The last of the Star Wars prequels was filmed in Sydney, and I happened to be here for a few months between America's Cup campaigns. And there's a few boat builders that were asked to go and do fiberglass work on the set, and they recommended me to do some of the structural design work for some of the sets. I don't think I was credited, but it was fun. Again, not something I planned to do long term. It just happened to come up, and I did it for about three months. As I said, a little bit in motor sport, more as a hobby, but as an interest. But we've made in the early days of carbonics, we made spoilers and wings and bits and pieces for cars when we were getting going, but mainly the sailing of the drones, really, because I've been in the drones now for 10 years. So right?   Michael Hingson ** 38:51 What? Why did you switch? Or maybe, why is it the wrong answer? But what made you switch from doing yachts to drones, and how did the drone story come about?   Dario Valenza ** 39:05 Yeah, so I mentioned the angle of the importance of data, looking for a real world problem where data was going to make a difference, and having the right so that not a solution in search of a problem, but the right solution for this problem, saying, if we can design an airframe that can do this, there's an obvious advantage and an obvious saving that that would make a difference to the world that has a big market. Now that's the theory, then to take the plunge. It was a bit of a combination of things. It was being beholden to the unpredictable movements of the cup, where your career depends on who wins and where it goes, and as a young single man, that's fantastic once you're trying to get married and have a family, becomes a little bit more of a problem. So again, starting your own business doesn't exactly give you stability. Cheap but more stable, I guess. And really that combination of an opportunity, being able to say I can actually see if I can make this work, and see what happens, wanting to be located in one place, I guess, looking for variety as well, and knowing that, you know, I still could have contact with the Americas Cup World, because I said I was doing custom work, and we had people from the cup working in carbonics. But it's really that point where you say, Do I want to keep following the circus around the world, or do you want to try and do my own thing and see how that goes? And I can always go back. And the aim is, you know, once you're committed, then you sort of tend to try and make it work no matter what, and it becomes the new aim, and that's what you put your energy into.   Michael Hingson ** 40:52 I had a guest on unstoppable mindset named Dre Baldwin, and Dre was a professional basketball player for nine years. He went to high school, was on the bench the whole time, went to college, played in college pretty well, but wasn't really noticed until he went to a camp where people could try out and be scouted by professionals who wouldn't come and see you because you weren't famous enough to be seen just by them coming to look for you. But he got a video, and he got some good suggestions, and anyway, he eventually made that into a nine year career. And I asked him, when we talked, why did you end the career? Why did you leave and start a business? And the business he started was up your game LLC, and it's all about helping people up their game in business and so on. And of course, he does it all in the sports environment. But I asked him why he left, and one of the things that he said was it, what people don't know is it's not just the games themselves and the basketball that you play. It's all the other stuff. It's all the fact that if you're going to really do it and be reasonably well, you need to go to the gym a lot, not just when they tell you to practice, but you got to take the initiative and do it on your own. You have to do other things. And he said, I just got to the point where I didn't want to do that, all that invisible part of it anymore. And so he left and started his own business, and has been very successful, but it was an interesting answer. And in a sense, I hear, you know what you're saying. It's really where you're going to go, and what is, what's really going to interest you, which is what has to be part of whatever you do?   Dario Valenza ** 42:34 Yeah, that all makes sense. I think, in my experience, I've never not had an obsession, so to speak. So yeah, with the sailing absolutely like, if you want to be in the America's Cup, it can't be a day job. You have to be committed. You have to be able to concentrate, innovate again, if you're I wasn't an athlete on the boat, so it wasn't necessarily about going to the gym, but certainly doing research, doing testing, working on the boat overnight before I went out the next day. It is a competition, so that the longer, the harder you work, assuming you still keep your performance up, the better you're going to do. So it was an obsession. I accepted that I never it never occurred to me that I don't want to keep doing it right. It was really the logistics. It was thinking, because of the cup had gone to court, we'd had the deed of gift match. Everything had been on hold for a while. It got going again, and the rules changed and there were fewer teams. I'd actually spent a bit of time fundraising for the team that had come out of Valencia to keep it going until the eventual San Francisco cup. So that was interesting as well, saying that, you know, is it getting the reception that I hoped it would, in terms of people investing in it and seeing the value, and kind of looking at it and saying, Okay, now I've got to move to San Francisco the next one, who knows where it's going to be, the format and all those things, you just sort of trade it off and say, Well, if I can make a go of something where I can do it in my hometown, it can be just as interesting, because the technical challenges is just as fascinating. And it's really about, can I create this little environment that I control, where I can do the same fun stuff that I was doing in the cup in terms of tech development, but also make it a business and make a difference to the world and make it commercially viable. And that was really the challenge. And saying that, that was the motivation, to say, if I can take the thing that interests me from the cup and apply it to a commercial technological challenge, then I'll have the best of the best of both worlds.   Michael Hingson ** 44:44 What? What made you really go into doing drones after the yacht stuff?   Dario Valenza ** 44:52 So yeah, certainly that aerial data capture piece, but also the it's very announced. I guess. So most of the work that I was doing in the cup was around aeroelastic optimization, lightweight structures, which really dynamics, yeah. And so, you know, a yacht is a plane with one wing in the water and one wing in the air. It's all fluids. The maths is the same, the physics is the same, the materials are the same. If you do it well in the cup, you win. If you do it well in drones, you win also. But you win by going further and being more efficient and economical at doing these missions. And so it's sort of like having this superpower where you can say, I can make this tool really good that's going to give me an advantage. Let's go and see if that actually makes a difference in the market.   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Well, I mean, as we know, the only difference really, between water and air is that the molecules are further apart in air than they are in water. So why? It really isn't that much different? He said, being a physicist and picking on chemists, but you know, I do understand what you're saying. So when did you actually start carbonics? Was that when you went into the Drone   Dario Valenza ** 46:05 World? So the business itself early 2012 and as I said, those are a few years there where we're doing custom work. And as it happened, I ended up supplying to New Zealand because we built an A class catamaran, which is effectively a little America's Cup boat for the punters, kind of thing that did well in some regattas. It caught the attention of the team New Zealand guys. They decided to use them as a training platform. We did a world championship where they were skipping the boats the carbonics built did really well in that sort of top five spots got a bunch of commercial orders off the back of that, which then brought some money into subsidize the drones, etc, etc. So by the time we were properly so the first time we flew our airframe would have been, you know, 2015   Michael Hingson ** 46:55 but nobody has created an America's Cup for drones yet. So there's a project for you.   Dario Valenza ** 47:01 They're all sort of drone racing, so I'm not surprised. Yeah, and I think again, it's really interesting. So when you look at motorsport and yacht racing in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s it really was a test bet, because you had to build something, go compete with it, learn from it, repeat. And you'd get, you know, the case of motorsport, traction control, ABS, all that stuff. In the case of sailing, that the use of, you know, modern fiber materials for ropes and structures, that was really sort of the cauldron where the development happened. And I think that was sort of the result of an analog world, so to speak, where you had to build things to know. I think now, with better compute and a more sophisticated role that simulations can play, it's still there is value in competition, but I think it's done in a different way. You're doing it. The key is to iterate virtually as much as possible before you build something, rather than building as many things as possible and doing the development that way.   Michael Hingson ** 48:13 Well, here's an interesting Oh, go ahead, yeah.   Dario Valenza ** 48:16 So I think that affects, certainly, how sport is seen in terms of there's probably more emphasis on the actual athletic competition, on the technology, because there are just other areas now where that development is happening, and SpaceX drones, there are more commercial places where control systems, electronic structures are really being pushed well before it was mainly in sport.   Michael Hingson ** 48:45 Well, here's a business question for you. How do you identify value that is something that you uniquely can do, that other people can't, and that here's the big part, people will pay for it,   Dario Valenza ** 49:01 cost per kilometer of scan is really my answer in the case of carbonics, saying you want to get a digital twin of a power transmission line over 800 kilometers. You can do that with a helicopter, and it's going to cost 1000s of dollars, and you're going to burn tons of fuel, and you can only get so close, etc. So you can only do it in visual conditions, and that's sort of the current best practice. That's how it's done. You can do it with satellites, but you can't really get in close enough yet in terms of resolution and independent on orbits and weather. You can do it by having someone drive or walk along the line, and that's stupendously inefficient. You can do it with multi rotor drones, and then, yeah, you might be able to do five kilometers at a time, but then you got to land and relocate and launch again, and you end up with this big sort of disparity of data sets that go stitch together by the time you add that all up. It's actually more expensive than a helicopter. Or you could do it with a drone like. Fly for 800 kilometers, which is making it Yes, and making a drone that can fly for 800 kilometers is not trivial, and that's where the unique value sits. And it's not just the airframe that the airframe holds it all up, but you have to have the redundancies to command and control, the engineering certifications, the comms, the stability, the payload triggering and geo tagging. So all of that stuff has to work. And the value of carbonics is, yes, the carbon fiber in the airframe, but also the the team ethos, which, again, comes out of that competition world, to really grab the low hanging fruit, make it all work, get it out there and be flexible, like we've had missions with stuff hasn't gone to plan, and we've fixed it, and we've still delivered the data. So the value is really being able to do something that no one else can do.   Michael Hingson ** 50:54 So I assume that you're still having fun as a founder and the owner of a company,   51:02 sometimes,   Michael Hingson ** 51:05 more often than not, one would hope,   Dario Valenza ** 51:07 Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of pride in seeing now we're 22 people, some of certainly leaders in the field, some of the best in the world, the fact that they have chosen to back the vision, to spend years of their professional life making it happen, according to the thing that I started, I mean that that's flattering and humbling. There's always a challenge. It's always interesting. Again, having investors and all that you're not it's not all on my shoulders. People that are also invested, literally, who have the same interests and we support each other. But at the same time, it's not exactly certain. In terms of you're always working through prices and looking at what's going to happen in a day a year, six months, but you sort of get used to it and say, Well, I've done this willingly. I know there's a risk, but it's fun and it's worth it, and we'll get there. And so you do it   Michael Hingson ** 52:10 well, you're the you're the visionary, and that that brings excitement to it all. And as long as you can have fun and you can reward yourself by what you're doing. It doesn't get any better than that.   Dario Valenza ** 52:26 So they tell me, yeah, how do you absolutely, how do you   Michael Hingson ** 52:31 create a good, cohesive team?   Dario Valenza ** 52:36 Values, I think, are the base of them would be very clear about what we are and what we aren't. It's really interesting because I've never really spent any time in a corporate environment, nor do I want to. So keeping that informal fun element, where it's fairly egalitarian, it's fairly focused, we're not too worried about saying things how they are and offending people. We know we're all in it together. It's very much that focus and common goal, I think, creates the bond and then communication like being absolutely clear about what are we trying to do? What are the priorities? What are the constraints? And constantly updating each other when, when one department is having an issue and it's going to hold something up, we support each other and we adjust accordingly, and we move resources around. But yeah, I think the short answer is culture you have to have when someone walks in, there's a certain quality to the atmosphere that tells you what this team is about, right? And everyone is on their page, and it's not for everyone. Again, we don't demand that people put in their heart and soul into 24/7 but if you don't, you probably don't want   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 to be there. Yeah, makes sense. So what kind of advice would you give to someone who's starting out in a career or considering what they want to do with their lives?   Dario Valenza ** 54:08 Where do I start? Certainly take, take the risks while you're young and independent, you don't have a lot to lose. Give it a go and be humble. So getting my experience going into the cup like my approach was, I'll clean the floors, I'll be the Gopher, I'll work for free, until you guys see some value, like I'm it's not about what am I going to get out of this? It's how do I get involved, and how do I prove myself? And so being open and learning, being willing to put in the hours. And I think at one point there was a comment during the trial that he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's really keen, and his attitude is good. And I think that's that's how you want to be, because you can learn the thing you. That you need to have the attitude to be involved and have have a go.   Michael Hingson ** 55:05 Have fun. Yeah, you have to decide to have fun.   Dario Valenza ** 55:14 Yeah, absolutely. You have to be interested in what you're doing, because if you're doing it for the money, yes, it's nice when you get the paycheck, but you don't have that passion to really be motivated and put in the time. So right by this is that the Venn diagram right, find something you're interested in, that someone is willing to pay you for, and that you're good at, not easy, but having that openness and the humble and saying, Well, I'm don't try and get to the top straightaway, like get in, prove yourself. Learn, improve, gain skills, and probably, in my case, the value of cross pollination. So rather than sort of going into one discipline and just learning how it's done and only seeing that, look at the analogous stuff out there and see how you can apply it. Yeah. So again, from from boats to drones, from cars to boats, from really racing to business, abstract the problem into what are we trying to solve? What are the variables? How's it been done elsewhere, and really knowing when to think by analogy and when to think from first principles,   Michael Hingson ** 56:23 that makes sense. And with that, I'm going to thank you. We've been doing this for an hour. My gosh, is life fun or what? But I really appreciate it. Well, there you go. I appreciate you being here, and this has been a lot of fun. I hope that all of you out there watching and listening have liked our podcast episode. Please let us know. I'd appreciate it if you'd email me. Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson, that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, and I would ask you how, how can people reach out to you? If they'd like to reach out to you and maybe learn more about what you do, maybe join the team?   Dario Valenza ** 57:09 Yeah, probably the easiest way would be LinkedIn, just Dario Valencia. Otherwise, my email is just Dario D, A, R, I, o@carbonics.com.au.au,   Michael Hingson ** 57:21 being Australian, and Valenc spelled V, A,   Dario Valenza ** 57:25 l e n z, A, but the email is just dario@carbonics.com.au You don't need to know how to spell my last name, right? Yeah, sorry for the LinkedIn. It'll be Dario Valencia, V A, l e n z A, or look at the carbonics profile on LinkedIn, and I'll be one of the people who works. There you   Michael Hingson ** 57:43 go. Well again, this has been fun, and we appreciate you, and hope that people will reach out and want to learn more. If you know of anybody who might make a good guest, or if any of you watching or listening out there might know of anyone who would be a good guest for unstoppable mindset, I sure would appreciate it if you'd let us know, we really value your help with that. We're always looking for more people to be on the podcast, so please don't hesitate. And also, wherever you're listening or watching, we sure would appreciate it if you give us a five star rating. We really appreciate your views, especially when they're positive, but we like all the comments, so however you're listening and so on, please give us a five star rating and let us know how we can even do better next time. But Dario, again, I want to thank you. Really appreciate you being here with us today. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm glad I learned a lot today. So thank you very much.   58:37 My pleasure. You   **Michael Hingson ** 58:43 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Richard Gearhart and Elizabeth Gearhart, co-hosts of Passage to Profit Show interview Sandy Wollman from Westchester Angels and Angel Capital Association, Dr. Simiao Niu from Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers University and Stephanie Donio Cauller from Jerseys and Dresses.   Dive into the high-stakes, high-reward world of angel investing with Sandy Woolman, co-founder of the Westchester Angels and board member of the Angel Capital Association. Sandy shares insider tips on how angel investing really works, what makes a startup fundable, the risks (and big wins) involved, and why the “no jerk” rule is key to success.Read more at: https://westchesterangels.com/ and at https://angelcapitalassociation.org/   Dr. Simiao Niu is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Rutgers Universtiy. He conducts groundbreaking research bridging wearable electronics, energy harvesting, and biosignal processing for healthcare innovation. He develops next-generation devices for chronic disease management and soft robotics. Read more at: https://www.simiaoniu.com/   Stephanie Donio Cauller, founder of Jerseys and Dresses, a charitable fund born from a spark of inspiration in New Jersey. Her mission is to empower and uplift diverse communities by fostering inclusion and unity through Literacy & Education, youth sports and small business initiatives.Read more at: https://www.jerseysanddresses.org/   Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur, a startup, an inventor, an innovator, a small business or just starting your entrepreneurial journey, tune into Passage to Profit Show for compelling discussions, real-life examples, and expert advice on entrepreneurship, intellectual property, trademarks and more. Visit https://passagetoprofitshow.com/ for the latest updates and episodes. Chapters (00:00:00) - Start Your Business With an Angel(00:00:27) - Passage to Profit(00:02:10) - What is Your Path to Ultimate Freedom?(00:04:31) - Sandy Woolman on Angel Syndications(00:05:59) - What Makes Angels Different Than VCs?(00:08:09) - Want to become an Angel Investor? Here(00:10:09) - What is an Accelerator and Is It Hard to Get Into an(00:11:49) - What is an incubator or accelerator in NYC?(00:13:15) - Angel Money: Due Dilution and AI(00:18:40) - Angel Money: The Jerks(00:20:58) - Small Business Health Insurance Hotline(00:23:14) - Westchester Angels: An Intellectual Property Investor(00:25:56) - Intellectual Property News(00:27:32) - Copyright and AI: How to Get It(00:31:01) - Passage to Profit: Intellectual Property(00:32:10) - Elizabeth Gerhardt's Updates(00:33:00) - One cancer patient's complete response with immunotherapy(00:34:02) - The future of the health is in wearables(00:37:27) - Inventing Innovations: The Right Start(00:41:36) - Startup companies for heart disease detection(00:45:07) - How to Charge an Apple Watch(00:47:42) - Hilton Head Island's Jerseys and Dresses(00:53:16) - Community Foundation of the Lowcountry(00:54:08) - Jerseys and Dresses(00:55:07) - Video Marketing: A Rich Source for Your Social Media(00:55:53) - My Eagles Jerseys and Dresses(00:57:15) - Eagles Grads: Jerseys and Dresses(00:58:52) - Running a Nonprofit: From Passion to Profit(01:01:14) - Tax Doctor: How to Get Your Money Back(01:02:29) - Secrets of the Entrepreneurial Mind(01:04:32) - Stephanie on How to Get Out of Recession(01:08:19) - Passive to Profit

We get an update on what caused a Mexican Navy ship to strike the Brooklyn Bridge Saturday night. Plus, police are looking for suspects in three separate shootings across the city. Also, William F. Tate IV will be named the 22nd president of Rutgers University. Meanwhile, New York City wants to make it easier for non-profits to own homeless shelters. And finally, subway service to the Rockaways returns after a four-month shutdown.

From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a three-piece suit, he wrote about everything from politics to jazz to the Mafia. His writing was eloquent, his perspective unique, and his moral judgements driven by a profound sympathy for losers, dissenters and underdogs. His best-known work was written for the New York Post, New York Newsday, and later the New York Review of Books. Kempton could find a good story in a criminal trial or a bureaucratic report, and he peppered his columns with references to history and literature to set stories in context. He enjoyed the respect of people as different as the conservative writer William F. Buckley and members of the Black Panther Party. Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton (Seven Stories Press, 2025), edited by Andrew Holter, brings Kempton's work to old admirers and a new generation of readers. The book includes a biographical introduction by Holter and a foreword by Darryl Pinckney. Holter is a writer and historian who has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Brooklyn Rail. He edited Going Around while he was completing his doctorate in history at Northwestern University. His dissertation explores the history of photography and American policing in the middle decades of the 20th century, especially the use of cameras by municipal "Red Squads" to monitor political dissent and social movements. Robert Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers (Cornell UP, 2025.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/biography

From 1949 until his death in 1997, Murray Kempton was a distinct presence in New York City journalism. Peddling around town on a three-speed bicycle wearing a three-piece suit, he wrote about everything from politics to jazz to the Mafia. His writing was eloquent, his perspective unique, and his moral judgements driven by a profound sympathy for losers, dissenters and underdogs. His best-known work was written for the New York Post, New York Newsday, and later the New York Review of Books. Kempton could find a good story in a criminal trial or a bureaucratic report, and he peppered his columns with references to history and literature to set stories in context. He enjoyed the respect of people as different as the conservative writer William F. Buckley and members of the Black Panther Party. Going Around: Selected Journalism / Murray Kempton (Seven Stories Press, 2025), edited by Andrew Holter, brings Kempton's work to old admirers and a new generation of readers. The book includes a biographical introduction by Holter and a foreword by Darryl Pinckney. Holter is a writer and historian who has written for the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Brooklyn Rail. He edited Going Around while he was completing his doctorate in history at Northwestern University. His dissertation explores the history of photography and American policing in the middle decades of the 20th century, especially the use of cameras by municipal "Red Squads" to monitor political dissent and social movements. Robert Snyder is Manhattan Borough Historian and professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University. He is the author of When the City Stopped: Stories from New York's Essential Workers (Cornell UP, 2025.) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

From time to time I am contacted by someone who says they have an interesting and thought provoking guest who would be perfect for Unstoppable Mindset. Such was the case when I was contacted about our guest this time, Dre Baldwin. Dre and I had an initial conversation and I invited him to appear as a guest. I must say that he more than exceeded my expectations. And now he is back for a second time with us with more stories and insights.   You may recall from my first episode with him that Dre grew up in Philadelphia. He wanted to do something with sports and tried out various options until he discovered Basketball in high school. While he wasn't considered overly exceptional and only played one year in high school he realized that Basketball was the sport for him.   Dre went to Penn State and played all four of his college years. Again, while he played consistently and reasonably well, he was not noticed and after college he was not signed to a professional team. He worked at a couple of jobs for a time and then decided to try to get noticed for basketball by going to a camp where he could be seen by scouts and where he could prove he had the talent to make basketball a profession. As he will tell us, eventually he did get a contract to play professionally. Other things happened along the way as you will hear. Dre discovered Youtube and the internet and began posting basketball tips which became popular.   In this episode we continue to discuss with Dre the lessons he wishes to convey as well as his life philosophy. Dre discuss more about the value and need for personal initiative. He tells us the value of having a personal initiative mindset and how that can lead to high performance.   I asked Dre about how playing basketball prepared him for his work in business. His answer will surprise you. It did me. As he points out, his business preparation came earlier and in different ways than playing basketball.   I also asked Dre why he left playing professional basketball. Again, his answer is fascinating. I will leave that for Dre to tell you.   I hope you enjoy my talk with Dre as much as I. Dre Baldwin provided many lessons we all can use. Who knows? Dre, you and I may talk again. Stay tuned.       About the Guest:   As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 35 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine.    Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000+ subscribers, his content being consumed over 103 million times.    Dre's daily Work On Your Game MasterClass has amassed over 2,900 episodes and more than 7.3 million downloads.    In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany.    Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with High Performance, Consistency and Results.    A Philadelphia native, Dre lives in Miami.   Ways to connect Dre:   http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin http://YouTube.com/Dreupt https://www.facebook.com/WorkOnYourGameUniversity http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay http://X.com/DreAllDay http://TikTok.com/WorkOnYourGame   Kindly use this link for our Free book, The Third Day

Dr. Atal Ahmadzai has been a dedicated advocate for environmental security and human rights. He earned his degree from Kabul University before pursuing further studies at Mahidol University in Thailand. His professional career includes working with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), where he worked on human development initiatives in Afghanistan and co-authored the National Human Development Report for the country. Following this, Dr. Ahmadzai continued his education at Rutgers University, where he obtained a second master's degree and a Ph.D. in Global Affairs, focusing on Environmental and Human Security. Since 2015, he has held various academic roles, including adjunct instructor, post-doctoral scholar, and visiting professor. During his time as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Arizona, Dr. Ahmadzai examined the governance systems of armed non-state actors in South Asia. As a subject matter expert, he has also contributed to the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague. Dr. Ahmadzai's research and teaching interests center on the intersection of environment, development, and conflict. Currently, as a Visiting Assistant Professor, he teaches environmental courses at Colby College. His scholarly and non-scholarly works have been published in numerous academic journals and respected publications. At the Raoul Wallenberg Institute (RWI), he examines the nexus between climate shocks and human rights in Afghanistan.

Geoff Neupert is a former champion in Olympic Weightlifting and was a Division I Strength & Conditioning Coach at Rutgers University. He is known as a "thought leader" throughout the kettlebell industry and has trained over 25,000 people in one-on-one sessions after earning Master Instructor status in Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC). Geoff was co-creator of Original Strength and currently operates Chasing Strength, which has been featured in Men's Health and Men's Fitness, among others. His training programs and online courses can be found at chasingstrength.com.

“Labor's decline over the past half century has devastated working-class communities, undermined democracy, and deepened the grip of big business over our work lives, ourpolitical system, and our planet,” Eric Blanc writes in his new book, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big. “To turn this around, we need tens of millions more people forming, joining, and transforming unions”; however, to achieve that level of growth, “a new unionization model is necessary because the only way to build power at scale is by relying less on paid full-timers and more on workers.” In this episode of Working People, recorded at Red Emma's Cooperative Bookstore in Baltimore on March 27, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with Blanc about his book and how worker-to-worker organizing campaigns at companies like Starbucks and Amazon are breathing life back into the labor movement.Eric Blanc is Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, author of Red State Revolt: The Teachers' Strike Wave and Working-Class Politics, and director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative.Additional links/info:Eric Blanc website, Facebook page, and X pageEmergency Workplace Organizing Committee (EWOC) websiteRed Emma's website, Facebook page, X page, and InstagramEric Blanc, University of California Press, We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning BigEric Blanc, Jacobin, “Bet on Worker-to-Worker Organizing”Maximillian Alvarez, Working People / The Real News Network, “Want to unionize your workplace? These worker-organizers have some advice”Permanent links below…Leave us a voicemail and we might play it on the show!Labor Radio / Podcast Network website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageIn These Times website, Facebook page, and Twitter pageThe Real News Network website, YouTube channel, podcast feeds, Facebook page, and Twitter pageFeatured Music…Jules Taylor, “Working People” Theme SongAudio Post-Production: Stephen FrankHelp TRNN continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Sign up for our newsletterFollow us on BlueskyLike us on FacebookFollow us on TwitterDonate to support this podcast

Tabatha Jones spent 20 years in the corporate world which she joined right out of high school. Soon after beginning work in a call center she began to discover her own leadership skills and began forging her own path in the corporate environment. Tabatha found that she could empower others to be better than they thought by providing a natural, honest and positive leadership style.   As Tabatha describes, she learned how to communicate and help connect the C Suite leaders in companies to those they lead. She learned to be a positive conduit to help all parts of companies where she served to learn and grow. She tells us stories about how she thrived as a leader and how she created positive change wherever she worked. She provides us with some really good leadership tips.   While Tabatha says her programs today are mainly to help women who more often do not have the confidence to lead, she states emphatically that her teachings do help men as well and she has male clients to prove it.   As Tabatha says, while she was a corporate leader for many years, she also used that time to coach and help others to learn leadership skills. Seven years ago Tabatha decided to leave working for others to form her own coaching firm, Empowered Leadership Coaching, LLC. She helps people learn how they can positively grow and advance in their own careers.   I very much enjoyed this episode and found that Tabatha and I have a lot of leadership views in common. For example, we discuss trust and the need for real trust in work environments. She tells a story about a mistake she made as a leader and how she dealt with it to keep the trust of all persons involved. I think you have a lot to gain from Tabatha. At the end of this episode she tells us how to get a free eBook that provides invaluable lessons to help you in your own efforts to rise in the work world.       About the Guest:   Tabatha Jones is the CEO of Empowered Leadership Coaching, LLC, a Career Advancement & Leadership Coach, author, and keynote speaker based in the SF Bay Area, working with clients nationwide. With over 20 years of experience leading high-performing technical teams in Corporate America, she transitioned into coaching at the age of 50, driven by her passion for helping women break through career barriers and achieve leadership success. Tabatha specializes in working with ambitious Gen-X women who are ready to stop playing small and make the next years the most impactful of their careers. Through her personalized coaching programs, she empowers her clients to develop strategic career plans, build unshakable confidence, elevate their visibility, and secure significant promotions. Her clients, including leaders at companies like Comcast, Cisco, Abbvie, PG&E, and Tyson, have successfully climbed the corporate ladder, developed standout leadership skills, and positioned themselves as top candidates for advancement. As a sought-after keynote speaker, Tabatha inspires audiences with actionable insights on leadership, career advancement, and empowerment. She is also the author of Promotion Ready in 3 Months: The Women's Guide to Career Advancement, available on Amazon.   Ways to connect Tabatha:   Website: https://www.empowered-leader.com/   Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabatha-jones-4485854/   Grab a Free Resource: GenX Promotion Planning Assessment: https://www.empowered-leader.com/promotionassessment   Purchase a copy of my book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/gpoqjNw   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition, an exciting edition of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and the unexpected is everything that doesn't have anything to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most things, according to my diversity friends, but that's okay, our guest today. How do I do this? Okay, I'll just be up front. As many of you know, I use a screen reader, which is a piece of software to verbalize whatever comes across the screen. And when my screen reader finds my guest today's name, it pronounces it Tabatha. Don't you like that? Of course, it's Tabitha, but Tabata, so, so Tabitha. Tabatha Jones, welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Tabatha Jones ** 02:09 Oh, thank you so much for having me here. And Tabatha sounds fairly International, and maybe I'll take it, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 02:16 well, you can have it. It's yours. I don't think that the screen reader will mind a whole lot. But But what we're glad you're here now. I met Tabitha, as I have mentioned in the past with others, through an event that I attend, pada palooza. And Tabitha and I were both at the most recent pot of palooza. So what took you there? Are you starting a podcast, or are you just wanting to be interviewed by podcasters, or do you already have a podcast and you've done 1000s of episodes already?   Tabatha Jones ** 02:46 Well, I haven't done 1000s of episodes. I'm a fairly new podcaster. I've launched my own it's called the Gen X, free mix life, laughs and next acts. I think we're at about Episode 11. I was actually really interested in joining pada palusa to meet other podcasters. Here's some success stories and learn some great tips and tricks as I'm continuing to build mine out and and engage my audience well. So if there's   Michael Hingson ** 03:11 any way I can help, you, just need to shout out and glad to do it. And if you ever need a guest, and if I can fit the mold, I'm also glad to do that. It's always fun to to be a guest. When people want to come on unstoppable mindset, and I discover that they have a podcast, I always tell them, Well, you know, and many of them say, Well, do you charge for guests? And I say, Yes, I do. The charges you have to let me be a guest on your podcast, or if I go on to their podcast. I say I charge for that, and the charges that you have to come on my cop podcast to be a guest. So it works out.   Tabatha Jones ** 03:47 It's a fantastic tip. I'm taking that down and definitely having you on the podcast. Oh my gosh, yeah, that'd be fun.   Michael Hingson ** 03:53 Well, it it is cute. Actually, last week of a couple in Australia, a couple people emailed me and they they want to come on unstoppable mindset. And I was glad to do that. And they said, you know, but, but what's your charge? And I said, Well, I know you have a podcast. I have to be on yours. They said, Oh, we can, we can pay that. So it's fine. It is. You know, podcasting is so, so much fun. I did radio for years at the University of California at Irvine, and I like radio. Radio is a wonderful thing, but you're more structured because you have a limited amount of time. You've got to do certain things, you've got commercials you got to do, and sponsors that you have to satisfy, and some of that can happen with the podcast, but it's still not nearly as rigid, which makes it a lot of fun.   Tabatha Jones ** 04:45 Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much variety out there. One of the coolest things for me about starting a podcast is it's led me to so many other podcast shows that I had never listened to before, yours included. So now I think I'm following maybe. 30 to 40 different shows that I hadn't heard of until very recently, I'd say, probably the last six to eight months, and I'm loving it. I learned something new every single day. I learned something about someone's experience that leads me to check more into what they've shared. And it's really been fun. It's been a much more fun adventure for me than the social media that I was kind of, kind of dabbling in a little bit, but podcasts, it's just so much more personal and fun. It   Michael Hingson ** 05:27 is. It's much more connectional. And social media is just so impersonal, and people spend so much time doing it, and I'm amazed at some of the people who spend so many hours on it. I could, I don't do a lot of stuff on social media. I will post things occasionally, and I'm amazed at how fast some people, as soon as they as soon as I post, within minutes, they're responding to it. And I'm going, how do you do that? But anyway, it's people focus on that. But it's so impersonal compared to doing things like podcasting, because you do get to know people. You get to learn about people. And as I tell people constantly, if I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else who listens to this podcast, then I'm not doing my job well, which is kind of the way I look at it. And I always like to learn things from everyone who comes on and who I get to interact with because of the podcast.   Tabatha Jones ** 06:21 Yeah, so much fun. It is. You know, one of the things when we met that really connected me to you was just your story and sharing your author journey on top of it. So, yeah, you're kind of stuck with me in your fan club for a little bit following   Michael Hingson ** 06:40 you Well, thank you. And it is, it is fun to do that and following you back. It's, it's a lot of fun. And as I said, I enjoy getting to know people and connecting and learning which is cool, and to introduce you a little bit more to people, and I'll get to letting you do some of that too. But Tabitha is the CEO of empowered leadership coaching LLC, which is obviously a coaching organization, and you started doing that when you were 50. Of course I could, I could, circuitously get to and and how long ago was that, which would then tell us your age, but I won't that's   Tabatha Jones ** 07:25 all right. As a career advancement coach, I tell people all the time, don't put those long dates on your resume. People will start guessing your age, and then we've got another whole situation. I think the good thing with coaching is age and experience go together, and people see that a little bit differently, which has been fun. Yeah, I left it, you know, corporate at 50, and started my own business. I had been doing it on the side, but now I get to do it every day, and it's so   Michael Hingson ** 07:50 much fun. Well, seriously, how long have you been doing it?   Tabatha Jones ** 07:54 You know, for officially. Oh, I gotta do math. 2017. Is when I started. So,   Michael Hingson ** 08:01 oh, okay, well, there you go. So, 10 years, okay, yeah, and then   Tabatha Jones ** 08:04 I had been doing it as part of my job for more than 20 years. So as a leader in corporate, more than 20 years of coaching experience came from that sure   Michael Hingson ** 08:13 when you've got seven years of official long term, real life, constant experience, which is, which is great too. Well, tell us about the early Tabitha growing up and some of those kinds of things that would get us to know you better.   Tabatha Jones ** 08:28 Well, I grew up in a little town called Livermore. It's not so little anymore out here in California, in the East Bay, I am the oldest of four, and you   Michael Hingson ** 08:37 were never irradiated by the the accelerators, or any of the things that Livermore Labs.   Tabatha Jones ** 08:41 No, there was so much Hush, hush, secret stuff going on out there. But, you know, it was always very cool. They had a swimming pool you could go swim at. I think it was 75 cents to go swim for the whole day at the pool. And, you know, as a grown up, I'm all, should we really have been swimming there? I don't   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 know. Oh, it was safe. Well, it was absolutely Were you ever there after dark? No, so you don't know whether anything glowed in the dark or not. So you didn't probably you were safe.   Tabatha Jones ** 09:07 Probably safe. Yeah, nope. Genetics kids, when the street lights came on, we went home.   Michael Hingson ** 09:11 There you go. But anyway, so Livermore, yeah,   Tabatha Jones ** 09:15 Livermore, and then let's see. So I finished high school. Didn't really know what I was going to do. I stuck a little toe in the telecommunications industry at AT and T and got a job there right out of high school, answering phones and learning all kinds of great things. Did a lot of growing up in that space. Gosh, it was a it was an interesting journey. I actually was sitting in a call center taking phone calls during the 1989 earthquake, which, oh, boy, you may remember, right? I know I was training somebody, and I just looked at the person. I said, we're gonna hang up and go under the desk. That's what we're doing. And that was the day before my birthday. So I got my birthday off that year, which. You know, as they planned   10:00 out very well,   Tabatha Jones ** 10:02 yeah. But terrible, terrible, tragic earthquake, unfortunately. But, you know, I do just kind of try to make a little lighter of it with that. You know, the birthday off, but it is. It was an interesting time, for sure. I lived   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 in Vista, California at the time. Well, actually, I take it back. I lived in Mission Viejo. We hadn't moved to VISTA yet, although I had a job in Carlsbad, and I remember coming out to get on a bus to go from Carlsbad back up to Mission Viejo. And I was going to listen to the World Series, and it wasn't on, and it took me about 15 minutes before, I finally found a radio station that announced that there had been an earthquake. And then we got home, and then we started. We just Karen was was at home, and we just started watching it on TV, and they had all the the live shots and all that, and the freeway collapse and so on. It was, needless to say, quite the event. Karen and I survived. We were in, not married yet in, well, 19, whatever that would have been, 69 or 70 or 71 the Sylmar quake. I don't think it was in 74 I think it was earlier than that. But there was a big earthquake up in Sylmar, and we felt it at UC Irvine, and then we had the Whittier Narrows and Northridge quakes, so we felt those as well. But yeah, that had to be pretty rough in 89 for all of you up there.   Tabatha Jones ** 11:38 Yeah, it was pretty, pretty interesting. You know, from that point, you know, I just was training somebody as I as I mentioned, and, you know, we, we took that next day and couple of days kind of getting things together, working through the call center, handling a lot of emergency calls and things that were going on. And I'd say that's probably the first time I felt that call to leadership, you know, and realized I wanted to do more than being a call center, answering phones. There's nothing wrong with that, but for me, it wasn't the end all. And I started working on mapping out, how am I going to build my career here? Managed to advance a couple of times, and then went through a major layoff. So AT and T we all know, went through a lot of change over the years, but in the 80s and early 90s, there was a lot. So I did a couple of different things in between, and then one day, I walked into what was the Viacom cable office and decided I'm going to apply for a job here. It's just six months for experience, and we'll see where it goes. I fell in love with the cable industry. As weird as it sounds, I loved it, so I worked up really quickly into a lead role, and then started shifting into technology, which is where I spent most of my career, leading those technical teams and just really loving it. But yeah, yeah, that's kind of the journey from the early life into the career side of things. But   Michael Hingson ** 13:05 what kind of things did you do in as a leader for Viacom?   Tabatha Jones ** 13:09 So Viacom was where you in, went through. So I was in the call center. Initially became a lead there, moved into credit and collections and learned everything there was to learn there. It wasn't really my jam, but it was a great place to be. And then I moved into the Information Services Department, and you probably remember this back in the day of punching down phone lines in the little box, in different I don't know if you ever did that, but yeah, soldering cat five lines, crawling under desk, climbing up ladders, doing all those things. So that was early. It days before the internet. Still, I think crazy to say,   Michael Hingson ** 13:48 so did you do that? Or did you lead people who did that? So I   Tabatha Jones ** 13:52 did that early on. I learned everything I could in that department. I learned how to print reports. I knew learned how to compile data. I learned how to code the billing system, moved into project management from there, still on the information services side, and led some really huge projects through that time. We went through three companies. We landed at Comcast. That was where I was for the longest, but never really left, you know, my role, and just fell in love with the technology, because it changes all the time. It's never the same day twice. I loved working with technical people, and learned really quickly that one of my gifts was being able to translate between the Technical Suite and the C suite. So taking those great ideas and going and securing the budget or coming in with here's what the leadership team is thinking. Here's how I think we can do it. What are your thoughts and being able to translate and move things forward really fast. That's where I joined the leadership team and stayed, and I loved it. Climbing the ladder at Comcast was a lot of fun for me. Yeah. Do   Michael Hingson ** 15:00 you think that really taking the time to get that technical knowledge and learn those various jobs, even though you necessarily didn't do them all the time, but learning how to do those jobs? Do you think that was a valuable thing for you, looking back on it now,   Tabatha Jones ** 15:19 yeah, I do in some ways. And I spoke at a women in telecom sorry, it's women in tech and telecom seminar a few years back. And one of the things that we know is women don't advance as quickly into technical leadership roles, and being able to say in that room, leadership is not a technical skill. Just let the light bulbs off for people, because we hold ourselves back. And it's not just women, but it definitely happens in the female space, where we will hold ourselves back. Oh, I'm not technical enough, oh, I don't know enough. Oh, I can't code Python. It. It doesn't always matter for me, having the basis helped because I understood the work the team was doing. I understood quicker ways to do things. I had done them myself the hard way, but it gave me a little bit more, I'd say, street cred with the team, not that they ever expected me to code a macro or build an automation program, but because I could come and speak to them in a language that made sense, then they could go build the thing and do their jobs. So I do think it helped. It helped give me really great insight to what could be and let us really drive innovation quickly, which was super fun. I   Michael Hingson ** 16:41 agree with you on that I felt in everything that I did as a as a leader, working in a variety of different kinds of roles, I felt it necessary to learn the things that the people who worked for me and with me did because at least I could then articulate them. I could talk about them. I didn't necessarily have to do them all the time, and there were some things that I wasn't going to be able to do, for example, for four years or three and a half years, four I owned a company that sold PC based CAD systems to architects, computer aided design systems, for those who don't know, to architects and engineers and so on. And they were some of the early PC based CAD systems. We started in 1985 doing that. And needless to say, that was and and still is very much a highly graphic environment. And that isn't something that I'm going to be able to sit down in front of a computer terminal and do, because the technology, even today, doesn't exist to describe all of that information for me, so that I have access to it as quickly and as efficiently as a person who can see but even though I wouldn't be able to run a CAD system, I knew how to do it. So I could then sit down with an architect in front of a machine and ask them what they wanted to do, and then described them what they needed to do to make it happen. So I actually made them part of the process of showing themselves how the cast system worked by them actually working it. Now I also have people who work for me, but I did know how to do that, and I think that was extremely important. And I've always felt that having that knowledge is is helpful. I do tend to be very technical. I've got a master's degree in physics and so on. And I I think that having that technical knowledge is kind of part of the way I operate, which is fine, but still, I think that having that technical knowledge, really, even if it's only to be able to talk about it at the right times, was a very helpful thing and made me a better leader.   Tabatha Jones ** 18:59 Yeah, absolutely would agree with that, and understanding just the basics of what can and can't be done, or, you know, what my limitations were, and being vulnerable with going back to my team and saying, This is as far as I know how to take it. I need you to walk me through what the next steps are, or what your ideas are, or what your thoughts are. And I had a wonderful team. I'd say one of the benefits of not being the most technical person on the team is then I'm not seen as someone who's micromanaging. I'm not seen as someone who has all the answers. And for my teams, that worked out great because they loved showing their innovation. They loved showing ideas and bringing new technology, tools and things to the forefront, which made it a lot more fun for them, too. And I'd say one of the coolest things I did with my team was I was given, you know, in corporate world, you're sometimes gifted new responsibilities, and one of the new responsibilities. I was gifted with, was creating a quality control team, and this team was going to validate all of the data that the Information Services coding team was developing in the billing system. And it was needed the error rate, I mean, the accuracy rate, rather, was only about 70 ish percent. Wow. So it needed to change. It was impacting our frontline, impacting our techs. It was causing revenue gaps, right, customer experience problems. The vision that was given to me is we want you to hire three people, and they're going to manually validate this data all day long, and me being a hybrid technical people person said, Hold the phone. We're not doing that. So I went and hired someone who was an expert at SQL and Tableau. We then hired someone who was an expert at Quality Assurance, because that's what she had been doing in the call center, was validating orders and making sure the billing their statements were going out correct. So she had the manual aspect. And then we hired a third person who wasn't quite as technical as the first, but definitely a really good balance between the two and between the three of them and their ideas and their skills, and then my abilities as a leader to guide them through. You know, this is what we need. This is the vision. This is the budget, this is the the outcome that we want to get to. We were able to build something that was automated, that drove accuracy up to 98.1% Wow, and it's probably better today, but it's just because that the ability to see people who can bring in the best parts of their knowledge and then work together to build something. That's what helps technology advance so much faster.   Michael Hingson ** 21:44 Yeah, but it's but it's important to be able to do that. And you you learn to have the vision, or innately, you have the vision to to bring that about. And it sounds to me like all of the people that that you were leading really respected you, because you were, first of all, you were not a threat to them, and you clearly showed an interest in what they did, and you loved to hear them talk about it, because that taught you things that you didn't know   Tabatha Jones ** 22:17 exactly, oh my gosh, and they were great about what I'd say is dumbing things down. I'd sit there sometimes and would be listening to somebody, an analyst, who was excited and explaining all these great things they were doing. And finally, my face would say, okay, hold the phone. We need to step back just a teeny bit. I needed to bring it down, maybe just a little bit more. And once I got it, then everybody would be just jazzed and so excited and out to share, and, you know, made sure that they were getting to do part of the presenting when it went to higher levels, so that they could get credit and feel that value, which is so, so critical to help, you know, just boost that morale and keep inspiring people.   Michael Hingson ** 22:53 The other part of that, though, is you are also teaching them some probably sorely needed communication skills, because they're used to just talking very technical, and they're used to just talking to each other, and everybody gets it right away. But the reality is that I would think that they came to realize, well, maybe we need to present it in a little bit different way, because not everybody looks at it the way we do   Tabatha Jones ** 23:21 exactly that's where a lot of coaching came in and helping people work together better in the communication space, and then bringing it forward in a way that people understood. We did a really cool program. It was called insights. It exists out there, and there are people who are certified to administer it, but it basically is a personality assessment based on colors. So red, yellow, blue, green, and blue is generally your very technical, more introverted detail specific people. The Office of that is yellow, and I am very high yellow, which is your, include me. Bring me in. Let's have a party. Let's talk about it. So it was good for me, because it caused me to bring that yellow energy down a bit, which kept the, you know, the conversations going and the conversations open, and they learned to elevate that yellow energy a little bit so we could meet in the middle really well. And some of them had different, you know, red or green in there. But it was really interesting to be leading a team with such opposite energy. From that perspective,   Michael Hingson ** 24:27 did you ever find people who just resisted learning to meet in the middle or learning to do some of the things that you really wanted them to do, and they just didn't want to do that at all?   Tabatha Jones ** 24:41 Oh yes, yes, there were a couple, and that required more coaching, right? So one who had been used to working in a very specific way before we were reorganized and he was moved under me, it took multiple times and finally, a mild threat to. Get him to come forward and come on board with the new process, because sometimes it's really easy to stick in doing things the old way. He had been doing it for 1520, years. And I joke when I say threats. I don't threaten people, but you know, it was kind of a I need you to come up with the rest of the team. Here's what you're doing and how it's impacting the team, and even though it feels like it's making your customer happy in the long run, it's not because they're going to have to work with other people, and we need to make sure that they understand that this has changed, and then another who was more my way or the highway, and that took, you know, again, a bit of coaching. So his leader worked for me, and so his leader and I would come up with different plans and different strategies to put him in positions where he had to stay a little bit more quiet and let the team members bring forward their ideas. And rather than him jumping to a no, it was, we want you to start asking these three questions, and, you know, whatever the questions were to get the conversation going, and then the light bulb started going off for him. Like, wow. Some of these individuals have definitely had different training on, you know, whatever type of technology it is that makes perfect sense. What if we combine this so he was able to actually help us bring out the best in everyone, once he took that step back and really started listening and getting a bit more curious.   Michael Hingson ** 26:30 Well, that that's, you know, of course, a wonderful skill to have, because people need to recognize that not everybody is where they are   Tabatha Jones ** 26:42 exactly. It's true. And you know, I kind of think back when we were talking about the leadership aspect and leading technical teams, I coach a lot of people on interview skills and helping them present their best selves for the job that they're interviewing for. And one thing that seems to be a habit for people who are very technical and are also leaders is deferring so much their technical skills, and it's good, but you've got to have that balance. When you're applying for a leadership role, what happens that is very disappointing, is they'll be told, Well, we're not really seeing your leadership skills or your leadership qualities or not feeling like you're a good fit with this team. Usually, when a company is hiring a technical people leader, they want to know you can lead people, because not everybody can do both,   Michael Hingson ** 27:40 right, or they haven't learned how to   Tabatha Jones ** 27:43 right. It's true. Not everybody wants to. Sometimes they think they do because it's the next logical step, but sometimes people are just really happy being hands on others. To your point, you can learn. You can step into maybe a lead role, and start learning how to let go of some things and and get more comfortable with not being the smartest person in the room, because once you're the leader, you've got to have that balance and, and it's a learning a learning curve, for sure,   Michael Hingson ** 28:09 yeah. And unfortunately, there are way too many people, certainly, a lot of them are technical who think they're the smartest person in the room, whether they are not, and then some of them are. But still, that's not always the solution to making things work, especially if you're working in a team.   Tabatha Jones ** 28:29 Absolutely, yeah, it's all about the team. And it can't be. They always say there's no me and team. But technically, if you rearrange the letters there, kind of is that's maybe snow i Maybe it's No, I in team. No, I in team.   Michael Hingson ** 28:43 Yeah, there's no i That's true. But you know, one of my favorite books I enjoy reading it often, is actually the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Have you ever read that?   Tabatha Jones ** 28:55 I have not read that. I am aware of it. I have not bought it yet. It's a   Michael Hingson ** 29:00 short book, relatively speaking, but it's great because it really puts teamwork in perspective, and it really defines what should happen in a well functioning team, including the fact that members of the team can hold each other accountable when the team is comfortable with each other. And then, of course, it's all the team leader who has to really bring people together and meld the team into a cohesive working group. But the good team leaders can do that and understand what their role has to be in getting everybody to operate at peak performance.   Tabatha Jones ** 29:39 Love that. I will get that back on my list. Radical candor is kind of similar, as far as you know, being able to say what needs to be said and feeling like you're in a safe space to say it. Yeah, that's one of the things that I always found a little, I guess, frightening as a leader, is when I would talk to another leader and say, What feedback have you given this person? Well. Feedback is so negative, like no feedback given with love is there with the intention of helping the person grow and do better and understand what they're doing really well so they can keep doing that. So yeah, being able to let the team members or ask the team members hold each other accountable, be honest with each other, this isn't about feelings. This is about respect, and sometimes it's a hard conversation. It's really crunchy and uncomfortable. But once it happens, the trust that is built is it's unstoppable, well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:30 but feedback can also be a very positive thing. And it can be that you're doing a great job. Here's what you're doing. It isn't necessarily but you're not doing this right? It, it can be exactly a very positive thing. And there, there are certainly times that we all like to get that as well.   Tabatha Jones ** 30:47 Absolutely feedback is my favorite F word. I always say it is just, it's so important. And I've worked with people who have said, you know, I can't get feedback from my boss. I said, Well, what do you mean? And they said, Well, he All he says is just, you're doing a good job. Keep doing that. Yeah. Well, what specifically am i doing that's a good job. So feedback in itself is a skill, both giving it in a positive way and giving it in a constructive way. But all feedback is good when it's given with the right intention and it's given with, you know, just honesty and love. And   Michael Hingson ** 31:20 there's a skill in receiving feedback too and recognizing if you trust the feedback, the feeder backer, if you trust the person giving you the feedback, then you know that they're not out to get you. Yeah. And that's part of it is breaking through the usual shell that most of us probably a build up. Well, that person has some sort of alternative agenda they're out to get me. And that isn't always the case. And, oh, absolutely, unfortunately, sometimes it is, but it doesn't necessarily mean it always is. Yeah, I agree.   Tabatha Jones ** 31:54 You know, if you think back to feedback that you've been given throughout your life, is there a piece of feedback that you were given that really changed the way you do things. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 32:06 I can think of some, and I think that most of us can, because the people giving us the feedback were concerned about trying to help and concerned to try to get us to hear what others in the world are are saying or thinking. And if we take that to heart, that can be a very positive thing.   Tabatha Jones ** 32:32 Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest foundations for me as a leader is trust and trust with my team, both going both directions to them, from me and from them to to from me to them, and from them to me. So complete trust. It's so important. And you know, knowing that I've had employees come and give me feedback, and it doesn't matter what level I was at or what level they were at, once, I knew that they were comfortable giving me feedback. I knew our relationship was strong, yeah, and, you know, I've had people come and say, I didn't really like the way that you said that. It would have been more impactful if you had done this. I've had clients come and say, you know, when you said that, I really reflected on it. And maybe we're not in the same spot. So let me say this again and see if you can, you can address it a different way. Great. If we don't have trust, we're not going to go anywhere. So it's such an important piece of of building trust. In   Michael Hingson ** 33:26 my new book, live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dog about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. Long title, well at the end, the subtitle, but one of the things that I talk about is that I've learned a lot of lessons about dealing with fear and dealing with people from my dogs, because dogs do things differently than we do and don't have any near, anywhere near the stress that We do. For example, dogs are, I think, creatures that do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. What dogs do, however, is that they tend to be less something is really hurt a dog. They tend to be more open to trust, and they want to build a trusting relationship with us if we're open to it, because they are, and when we recognize that and we truly build the trusting relationship, it's second to none. So then you've got the love part that is there, but the trusting part, it's a whole different story. And I know that when I start working with every guide dog and people say, Oh, how long does it take to really get used to a dog? My response is, it takes roughly a year. Because it takes a long time for both sides of the team to truly recognize and have enough confidence in the other that they have that trust that they need to have.   Tabatha Jones ** 34:59 Yeah. Dogs are so much better than people. I will tell you their behavior is so much better, but I get that and you know someone who adopted my last two dogs. One was three years old when I got her from the pound, and she lived to be 15, and my other one is she's eight. I got her when she was three from someone that was re homing her. But they do. They they teach you that I can love you, but I don't know that I trust you yet. I've got to build this up like I will lick you and throw a party when you come home, but don't be trying to pick me up yet. We're not there. Yeah. So, you know, I can imagine, with a guide dog, it's even more elevated, and I can't write to read your that book, because I just finished underdog. I did. I don't know why the name just went blank. I posted it on my Facebook and Instagram. I was so excited, but yeah, oh my gosh. I can't wait to read the new one. If you   Michael Hingson ** 35:48 get a chance with both of them, go review them at Amazon. So lovely. Get a we always appreciate reviews. So Amazon and Goodreads are the best places to go to go do reviews, and they're very helpful. But when you read, live like a guide dog, love to get your thoughts, and you're welcome to email me and love to chat about it as well. But you're right that there are so many things about dogs that really teach us a lot. One of my favorite things that I talk about a lot, and we deal with it and live like a guide dog is we, as people tend to what if everything to death. We What if everything well, what if this? What if that? And the reality is, most of the things that we're dealing with, what if about are things over which we have absolutely no control, and all we're doing is building up our own internal Sears, and we need to learn to get away from that. If we could just learn to focus on the things that we have control over and not worry about the rest. And of course, people will say, Well, but, but all this stuff is going on we gotta worry about. No, you don't. You can be aware of it without worrying about it. You can be aware of it without it interfering with your life. But you have control over that, but there are so many things in your life that you don't have control over. And my, my premier example of that, of course, is the World Trade Center. I am not convinced that all of the government departments working together would have been able to figure out what was happening and stop the attacks from half from occurring. But the result of that is, of course, that we had no control over the events occurring. What we absolutely have total control over is how we individually choose to deal with those events and how we choose to move forward.   Tabatha Jones ** 37:36 Yeah, absolutely, oh my gosh, it's so powerful and so true. And I'd say too with dogs is they don't let that little thing that bothered them four hours ago eat them up, or four days ago or four months ago. They don't generally hold a grudge unless something was pretty atrocious, where we will ruminate on a story or a conversation over and over and over again, sometimes it's just solved by a simple Hey, what did you mean when you said that? Or we'll just go and keep thinking about it and keep thinking about it. Dogs moved on. They're like, I've already had my snack in my walk, like we're good again. There's no grudge, there's no past concern, or I made a mistake this day. I'm never gonna cross that line again, because, you know, I did this thing, but humans are so are just wired so differently, just from, I'm sure, our life lessons and all the things that we've been through. But if we could live a little more like a dog, that would be kind of amazing. That guide dogs specifically,   Michael Hingson ** 38:35 I agree. And you know, the reality is that dogs do make mistakes, and one of the things that we learned to put it in terms of what we're talking about today, one of the things that we learn as guide dog handlers is how to give appropriate feedback, and that process has changed over the years, so now it's a much more positive process. We don't tend to yell at dogs, we don't tend to try to give sharp leash corrections, but rather, when they do it right, that's the time to truly reinforce it and say, what a good job you did it. And if you're training a dog to do a new thing or give them a new skill, reinforcing the time that they succeed is so much more powerful than ever saying you didn't do that right? And I think that's as true for humans as it is for dogs, but humans just don't tend to for all the reasons that you said, Trust like, like, maybe they should, but we always think that everybody has a hidden agenda, which is unfortunate, because we don't always necessarily have a hidden agenda. And even if we do, and if you feel like you can't trust me because you think I have a hidden agenda, you can always ask me about it, or you should, and that's something we just tend not to feel that much that we can do, because those aren't skills that we're taught when we're growing up.   Tabatha Jones ** 39:56 Yeah, it's very true, and you. Know when you mentioned the mistakes even thinking about that from a leadership perspective. When I first started leading in my last team, we had reorganized into a corporate structure, so I had new employees sitting across 40 some odd states. It was a big a big reorg, and I would be talking to people about different things. And I said, Well, why did you, you know, why did you do it this way? Oh, well, I realized I made a mistake, so I didn't want to get in trouble. So I thought if I went and I did this, then that would I'm like, wait a minute, stop. Let's let's pause, let's go back to get in trouble. Tell me about that. And I would hear, and I heard it from multiple people across the team that there was such a level of fear over making a mistake. And I said, you know, you're not coming to work with somebody's heart transplant in an ice chest, like, if you make a mistake, nobody's gonna die. Yeah, somebody's gonna get a little maybe mad because we're gonna hit a little bit of a revenue hiccup, or maybe have to send an apology notice to some customers that have a mistake on their bill. But nothing's that big that we can't learn from it, fix it correctly and make sure it doesn't happen again. And that was a huge shift, and that's something you know, where a dog will make a mistake they get through the correction to your point, positive reinforcement. We've got jerky treats, kind of redirect. If people only could take a jerky treat, that'd be great, but they don't. But you know, when a mistake happens, teaching people, teaching our kids, like it's okay to make a mistake, but let's talk about what we learned from it. Make a plan to do better, and figure out how we just don't let that happen again, and then if it happens again, okay, let's have a different conversation. What? What did you notice? Did we miss something in the process? Less last time? Let's fix that, and then let's take the next steps forward, and let's go back and present to the team how we can improve this process and what we've learned from this mistake, like we can make it positive and as leaders, we can help our employees go faster. We can help our dogs learn faster. Can help our kids learn faster by just being a leader and managing mistakes correctly.   Michael Hingson ** 42:06 How do we get that process kind of more into the mainstream of society? How do we get people to recognize that it's okay when you make a mistake, we'll fix it and really give them and teach people to give the positive reinforcement that we need to do. Because I think it's, it's very true. We don't teach it.   Tabatha Jones ** 42:27 We don't teach it. I feel like younger parents that I'm seeing, in some ways, are getting there, you know, I remember back in the day when we would accidentally break something, or, you know, be roughhousing a little, and the glass would get knocked off the counter, and it was a huge thing, right? You're going to clean it up. You're going to go to your room. You're going to stop playing around in the house. And, you know, with my son, I know when He would break something and be like, Hey, let's clean this up. I need you to be more careful. You know, it's not you need to go sit in your room. You made a mistake. It's okay. And I see the difference in myself. Still, when I make a mistake, I beat myself up when he makes a mistake, he cleans it up and moves forward. So it's definitely happening through parenting and the way that we handle it as parents. We have that great opportunity as leaders once adults are full grown and in the workforce and still have those tendencies of fear and oh my gosh, I need to cover it up, teaching them, I had a situation where I made a mistake, shocking. I know I made a mistake, just kidding. I do it all the time, but I had made a mistake with some data that I collected from my team, I'd had individual skip level meetings, and decided kept all the notes in a spreadsheet, and I had told the team as I spoke with them. Whatever you tell me, it's in confidence. I'm taking themes of the conversation and I'll present it back to your leaders. They're not going to have names. We're not going to know who said what. That's not what this is about. It's about me helping drive improvements through my leadership team so that it's better for you. And they were really open, and it was amazing. It was such a gift to have that trust from the team. Well, I went and took my compilations, put all my notes together on a spreadsheet, sent it to my leadership team, and never took off the original notes. And I was like, shoot, now, what do I do? So I asked a peer. I said, Hey, this is what I did. What would you do? And she said, Well, I would tell my leaders, they need to be leaders, and they need to keep it confidential. And I was like, oh, not good enough. I'm not doing that. So I thought about it, yeah. And I said, You know what? This is a teachable moment. This is the opportunity I've been given to practice what I preach. So I pulled my entire team, 50 some odd people on the phone, on a teams call. So we were on camera, and I said, I need to talk to you about something. And I said, I made a mistake, and because of that mistake, I have let you down, and I've broken my word. And I explained what I did. I explained, you know, I got really excited by the information, because I saw things we could do, which then led me to moving way too fast, and I completely sent your comment. Comments with your names to your leaders, and I apologize. And going forward, when I take data and information from you, I will be learning from this mistake. I will keep two separate spreadsheets. I will not be, you know, just adding to the individual spreadsheet, I will quality control, check it before I send it out, and I will make sure that I do better. And I just ask that you forget me. On this one, I got so many texts and emails and instant messages that just said, Thank you so much, and someone that said, thank you, it helps to see that a leader owned up to a mistake, and I'm like, that's that was a teachable moment so nobody died. I didn't lose a heart. I broke a little confidence and a little trust. But we can fix things, and that's how,   Michael Hingson ** 45:46 yeah, and, and that makes a lot of sense, and we, we just tend to, oftentimes do knee jerk reactions. I was sitting here thinking about sometime after we moved to New Jersey in 1996 my wife and I were in our living room, and I don't remember what was going on. We were having a great time, and we each had, each had a glass of champagne, and my fourth guide dog, Lenny, was with us. And Lenny, like any good lab has a tail that never stops. And Karen, I think it was Karen, I don't even remember, sure. I think it was. Had put her glass down on the coffee table, and tail hit glass, glass, which was crystal, went all over floor, hardwood floor, you know, and I can think of so many people who would blame the dog. And actually, I think Lenny blamed herself for a little while, and we kept saying it wasn't your fault we screwed up. And eventually, you know, she well within, within an hour, she was mostly Okay, but, but the bottom line is that she, she, she knew that something happened, but it wasn't her fault, and it is important to own up to to things and and as I said, I think it was Karen, because I think Karen said I should never have put my glass down, or I should have put it back further away from her tail, because she was So excited. You know those   Tabatha Jones ** 47:21 tails, lab tails are crazy things, yeah, oh my gosh, right, but Lenny didn't stop wagging her tail because of that little mistake, right? It's something that Karen was able to own up to. You two were able to clean it up, and then Lenny was able to go on and keep wagging her tail. Everyone's being more careful. Now,   Michael Hingson ** 47:39 what's really funny is that, because it was a hardwood floor and crystal, there were her pieces that we found days later, but   Tabatha Jones ** 47:47 really years later, oh my gosh. But   Michael Hingson ** 47:50 you know what Lenny was? Was, was a cutie, and Lenny was the, probably the most empathetic dog that I've ever had. We had a pastor, and we had who we had come to know, and we were at a party, and she was at this party, and she came up to us and she said, we let Lenny visit everybody, but we just let her loose. Um, Lenny is the most empathetic dog I've ever seen, because you let her loose. And she went to the person who was feeling the most pain first, and then she worked the rest of the room, and we're talking emotional pain, but Lenny could sense that and and she did. She went to the person who was hurting the most for whatever reason. And then after she felt she had done all she could with that person, then she went around to the rest of the room. Oh, what a wonderful experience that was. Yeah, I know, and we hadn't noticed it, but sharee told it to us, and we we realized it from then on, yeah, she's right. I   Tabatha Jones ** 48:52 always think that the companies that allow people to bring their dogs to work are probably the companies that have the highest performance and productivity. I can't prove this yet, but there is something about having a warm, fuzzy little Snuggler with a cold nose right next to you that makes such a difference. Yeah, like I said, you know, mine's by me all the time, but they're just so intuitive. They pick up on your moods. They pick up on what's going on when you've had a bad day, you know, when you're feeling unconfident. I've worked with people a lot on helping them build confidence. And she'll even come around like, Hey, why you down? Like, what's going on? Let's go play. Go play. And then, you know, they're always so excited when you just do the smallest things. It's like, you know what? All right, I am making somebody, somebody happy today. It's just not that, maybe that other person, or whatever it is. But, yeah, oh my gosh. What made   Michael Hingson ** 49:40 you decide? What Madeline just caused you to decide to go from working for other companies in the corporate world to starting your own coaching career full time.   Tabatha Jones ** 49:52 You know, I just love the coaching aspect, helping people who struggle to speak up for themselves or who. Struggle to recognize the value that they bring to the workplace or to the world in general, just really lights my fire. I work mostly with women in their 50s, mostly with women who are already leaders but feel a bit stuck, and help them just remember who they are. Help them remember you know you are a leader. This is how you can set yourself apart, and this is how we can start preparing for your next promotion. I wrote my book promotion ready in three months, the Women's Guide to career advancement, which was released in August. Just because the concerns were so similar, I thought, you know, I'm going to put these specific the specific framework together in a book so that women who maybe don't have time for coaching right now, or they don't have the means, for whatever reason, they can get that framework in this book and get started on setting themselves apart and rebuilding that confidence. And I just love it. I feel like we tend to play really small, especially after a simple mistake or a simple breach of trust or a simple someone said something, and it just really stuck in our head for whatever reason. So I want women to stop. I want them to start feeling more empowered and start going after those things that they want. Because I don't know if you've seen the movie The longest game. But one of the quotes is the, you know, the field isn't the golfing green. The field is the five inches between your ears. And that's life. It is a fact. It is whatever is going on in that space between your ears is what's going to tell you you can and it's going to tell you what you can't do. So we want to only five inches. They say five inches. I haven't actually measured mine either. I say it and I touch it every time, because I'm like, I don't know if it's really five inches. Maybe it's, maybe it's four and a half. I don't know. I've always prided myself on having, you know, a skinny forehead.   Michael Hingson ** 51:57 Well, you know, but, but it's interesting and and, of course, sort of on principle, just for fun. I'll ask, do you ever find that that men read it or that that you coach men as well? Do you find that there are men that will benefit, or choose to benefit from the same things that you're talking about with most women? Absolutely,   Tabatha Jones ** 52:15 I say I work mostly with women and a few lucky men, because there are men who don't feel as confident or who might be a little bit more of that quieter later, and the strategies in there are obvious. Is probably not the right word. But there are things that are really simple and easy to do, but so often overlooked. So for anyone who finds themselves really kind of hiding behind the keyboard, not getting out and about and working on their visibility and relationship building. There are a lot of great strategies for that. The worst thing to do is wait until the promotion opportunity posts to start getting out there and building your brand. It doesn't serve anyone, and it's going to keep you behind. So, yeah, absolutely, that's a great question. If you   Michael Hingson ** 53:05 want to be noticed, then you have to work at what you need to do to be noticed. And that is a an important skill to learn. And it is all about brand, which doesn't mean you're trying to be so calculating that you're trying to do in other people, it is all about doing the things that you need to do, both to learn and to be able to advance in a positive way.   Tabatha Jones ** 53:30 Yeah, exactly. And there are strategies just for even man, even managing your time, because that's so obvious to some of us who have been there, but to others, they'll allow their calendar to be blocked from 7am to 7pm with everyone else's priorities, and it's important to make yourself a priority so that you can start standing out before the job posts. And that's kind of the secret sauce. A lot of people, like I said, they wait until the job posts and they've just been working hard and then can't figure out why they're not getting ahead. So we want to start doing things, taking action every day before that position posts, one   Michael Hingson ** 54:09 of the things that that I do is on my calendar page, I have time blocked out every day and and people will say, Well, I want to schedule something, but this time isn't available, and this is the only time that I can do it. And what I tell people is I have the time blocked out so that I can do the things that I need to do or that I might want to do. And one of them is responding positively to the fact that you need a certain time to meet, and that time is in one of my block times, but I block times so that I have free time to do what needs to be done. So let's schedule it, and, you know, and I, and I find that that works really well, because it gives me the time to make choices and do the things that I want to do. And I think it's so important to be able to do that. So.   Tabatha Jones ** 55:00 Yeah, the calendar is key. I always say your calendar equals clarity equals confidence. I mean, it just it builds that confidence. What I see happen a lot in the corporate space is the calendar gets booked for again, everybody else's priorities, 7am to 7pm I will see someone sitting in a meeting, totally disengaged. And when I would say, What are you doing? And I ask clients now too, so how do you prepare for this meeting? Because almost always the answer is, oh, I have a big meeting coming up in a couple of hours, and I'm not ready yet. Like, well, why are you in this meeting? If that meeting matters so much, why are you here? Because you're hurting your brand here, looking disengaged, asking, Can you repeat that 72 times where you could have just sent a delegate, or you could have blocked that time to think and prepare, which is so important, the calendar blocks. I don't think I could live without them. They're critical, right? That's how we get things done. That's how we make sure we're focused on the right things. That's how I prepare for clients. I don't just get on and wing it, because that's not going to go well, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:02 and that's why on, on unstoppable mindset. I asked people to send me some things because I want to appropriately prepare, because if, if I'm doing my job right, I learn all I can to be able to be involved in an intelligent conversation, and people have so many skills that I haven't learned or don't have, I get to use the information that they send to prepare and learn about some of those skills, which is part of why I say if I'm not learning at least as much as anyone else who is listening To the podcast, and I'm not doing my job right? Because it's so much fun to be able to explore and talk with people, and it's and it is so much fun. So I I appreciate exactly what you're saying. Well,   Tabatha Jones ** 56:53 thank you. Yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, tooting my own horn a little bit. It's a great book full of strategy. And if you just took it, take it and start implementing those small changes, you'll see a huge difference. And I say that you'll see it, but not only you, your leader will see and your team will see that you're making changes and and making a difference. So yeah, it's just that calendar is so helpful.   Michael Hingson ** 57:16 Life is is an adventure, as far as I'm concerned. And if we're not always learning we're not doing our job right exactly which is so important? Well, do you have any kind of last thoughts of things that you want people to to think about, as far as leadership or as far as moving forward in the corporate world, or or any of those kinds of things? Yeah,   Tabatha Jones ** 57:40 absolutely. And thank you so much for asking. I do want to tie it back to unstoppable mindset, because you are absolutely unstoppable. It's a matter of clearing those blocks, the things that are in your way, the things that are in that five inches, or whatever it really is between your ears that is getting in the way and telling you you can't do something. And I encourage you if you're struggling, if you want to get ahead, if you've had some bad experiences when trying to get ahead, connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Tabitha Jones and D, H, A Jones, thank you. Yes, all A's, Tabata, Tabatha. You can call me what you want. Just spell it right so you can find me. But absolutely connect with me there, and let's talk about what's going on and see how we can help you start moving forward again. Absolutely, we'll share strategies to give at least a little bit of a boost and kind of start relieving some of the discomfort that may be going on, but kind of back to that point you are completely unstoppable. It's just about investing in yourself, and that may look like time, energy or financially, just to get yourself out of, out of where you're at and into that next thing.   Michael Hingson ** 58:52 What's your website? You must I assume you have a website. I   Tabatha Jones ** 58:55 do have a website. It is empowered. Dash leader.com, and if you go out there, I actually have a free gift. I've recently published an ebook which is a career confidence playbook for women over 50, and that also has some great strategies, as well as workbook and journaling pages to help you really flesh out those goals and start taking those small action steps,   Michael Hingson ** 59:21 and guys, the concepts are the same. So don't think it's just for women. Otherwise, learn nearly as much on this podcast as you   Tabatha Jones ** 59:29 should. That is true. That's very true. The color is a little purple and black. Don't let that send you anywhere. Just it's perfect. Come on in. Let's talk   Michael Hingson ** 59:39 colors. Don't bother me.   59:42 Outstanding.   Michael Hingson ** 59:44 Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been really fun. I knew it was going to be, and it was every bit as fun and and informative as as I thought it would be. So I hope people will reach out to you on LinkedIn and go off and. Uh, go to the website as well. Get your free ebook. I'm going to go get it and and I really think that you've offered a lot of good insights that will be helpful for people. I hope all of you listening and watching out there agree. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me. Let me know what you think of our episode today. You can email me at Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S,

Kelly speaks to Melody Wilding, an executive and leadership coach, licensed social worker and a former researcher at Rutgers University. She is a professor of Human Behavior at Hunter College and is a contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Business Insider. She has a new book, “Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from […]

Ukraine and Russia expert, Professor Alexander Motyl of Rutgers University, gives us his analysis of the current situation. Note: This interview took place on May 6, 2025.

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us. Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013. Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that's everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post. Daniel Moran's writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/american-studies

Have you or do you feel stress? What is stress and how can we deal with it? Our guest this time is Rachelle Stone who discusses those very questions with us. Rachelle grew up in a very small town in Massachusetts. After attending community college, she had an opportunity to study and work at Disney World in Florida and has never looked back.   Rachelle loved her Disney work and entered the hospitality industry spending much of 27 years working for or running her own destination management company. She will describe how one day after a successful career, at the age of 48, she suffered what today we know as burnout. She didn't know how to describe her feelings at the time, but she will tell us how she eventually discovered what was going on with her.   She began to explore and then study the profession of coaching. Rachelle will tell us about coaches and clients and how what coaches do can help change lives in so many ways.   This episode is full of the kind of thoughts and ideas we all experience as well as insights on how we can move forward when our mindsets are keeping us from moving forward. Rachelle has a down-to-Earth way of explaining what she wants to say that we all can appreciate.       About the Guest:   “As your leadership consultant, I will help you hone your leadership, so you are ready for your next career move. As your executive coach, I will partner with you to overcome challenges and obstacles so you can execute your goals.”     Hi, I'm Rachelle. I spent over 25 years as an entrepreneur and leader in the Special Event industry in Miami, building, flipping, and selling Destination Management Companies (DMCs).  While I loved and thrived in the excitement and chaos of the industry, I still managed to hit a level of burnout that was wholly unexpected and unacceptable to me, resulting in early retirement at 48.   Now, as a trained Leadership Consultant and Executive Coach, I've made it my mission to combine this hard-won wisdom and experience to crack the code on burnout and balance for others so they can continue to thrive in careers they love. I am Brené Brown Dare to Lead ™ trained, a Certified Positive Intelligence ® Mental Fitness coach, and an accredited Professional Certified Coach by the ICF (International Coaching Federation, the most recognized global accreditation body in the coaching industry).   I continue to grow my expertise and show my commitment to the next generation of coaches by serving on the ICF-Central Florida chapter board of directors. I am serving as President-Elect and Chapter Liaison to the global organization. I also support those new to the coaching industry by mentoring other coaches to obtain advanced coaching credentials.   I maintain my well-being by practicing Pilates & Pvolve ® a few days a week, taking daily walks, loving on my Pug, Max, and making time for beach walks when possible.   Ways to connect Rachel:   www.rstoneconsulting.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/rstoneconsulting/ Instagram: @even_wonderwoman_gets_tired   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well, hi and welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet. But you know, the more fun thing about it is the unexpected. Unexpected is always a good thing, and unexpected is really anything that doesn't have anything directly to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most of what we get to deal with in the course of the podcast, including with our guest today, Rachelle Stone, who worked in the hospitality industry in a variety of ways during a lot of her life, and then switched to being a coach and a leadership expert. And I am fascinated to learn about that and what what brought her to that? And we'll get to that at some point in the course of the day. But Rachelle, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank   Rachelle Stone ** 02:08 you, Michael. I'm honored to be here. Excited to be talking to you today.   Michael Hingson ** 02:12 Well, it's a lot of fun now. You're in Florida. I am. I'm in the Clearwater   Rachelle Stone ** 02:16 Dunedin area. I like to say I live in Dunedin, Florida without the zip code.   Michael Hingson ** 02:22 Yeah. Well, I hear you, you know, then makes it harder to find you that way, right?   Rachelle Stone ** 02:28 Physically. Yeah, right, exactly. Danita, without the zip code, we'll stick with that. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 yeah, that works. Well, I'm really glad you're here. Why don't we start by maybe you talking to us a little bit about the early Rachelle growing up and some of that stuff.   Rachelle Stone ** 02:43 Yeah, I was lucky. I grew up in rural Western Massachusetts, little po doc town called Greenfield, Massachusetts. We were 18 miles from the Vermont border, which was literally a mile and a half from the New Hampshire border. So I grew up in this very interesting area where it was like a tri state area, and our idea of fun growing up, well, it was, we were always outdoors, playing very much outdoors. I had three siblings, and I was the youngest, and it was one of those childhoods where you came home from school, and mom would say, go outside, don't come back in the house until you hear the whistle. And every house on the street, every mother had a whistle. There were only seven houses because there was a Boy Scout camp at the end of the road. So as the sun was setting and the street lights would come on, you would hear different whistles, and different family kids would be going home the stone kids up, that's your mom. Go home, see you next time that was it was great. And you know, as I got older and more adventurous, it was cow tipping and keg parties and behind and all sorts of things that we probably shouldn't have been doing in our later teen years, but it was fun. Behind   Michael Hingson ** 04:04 is it's four wheeling,   Rachelle Stone ** 04:08 going up rough terrain. We had these. It was very, very hilly, where I was lot of lot of small mountains that you could conquer.   Michael Hingson ** 04:17 So in the winter, does that mean you got to do some fun things, like sledding in the snow. Yeah, yeah.   Rachelle Stone ** 04:24 We had a great hill in the back of our yard, so I learned to ski in my own backyard, and we had three acres of woods, so we would go snowshoeing. We were also close to a private school called Northfield Mount Hermon, which had beautiful, beautiful grounds, and in the winter, we would go cross country skiing there. So again, year round, we were, we were outdoors a lot.   Michael Hingson ** 04:52 Well, my time in Massachusetts was three years living in Winthrop so I was basically East Boston. Yeah. Yes and and very much enjoyed it. Loved the environment. I've been all over Massachusetts in one way or another, so I'm familiar with where you were. I am, and I will admit, although the winters were were cold, that wasn't as much a bother as it was when the snow turned to ice or started to melt, and then that night it froze. That got to be pretty slippery,   05:25 very dangerous, very dangerous.   Michael Hingson ** 05:29 I then experienced it again later, when we lived in New Jersey and and I actually our house to take the dogs out. We had no fenced yards, so I had to take them out on leash, and I would go down to our basement and go out and walk out basement onto a small deck or patio, actually, and then I had to go down a hill to take the dogs where they could go do their business. And I remember the last year we were in New Jersey, it snowed in May, and the snow started to melt the next day, and then that night, it froze, and it and it stayed that way for like about a day and a half. And so it was as slick as glass is. Glass could be. So eventually I couldn't I could go down a hill, it was very dangerous, but going back up a hill to come back in the house was not safe. So eventually, I just used a very long flex leash that was like 20 feet long, and I sent the dogs down the hill. I stayed at the top.   Rachelle Stone ** 06:33 Was smart, wow. And they didn't mind. They just wanted to go do their business, and they wanted to get back in the house too. It's cold, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 06:41 They didn't seem to be always in an incredible hurry to come back into the house. But they had no problem coming up the hill. That's the the advantage of having claws,   Rachelle Stone ** 06:51 yes. Pause, yeah, four of them to boot, right? Yeah, which   Michael Hingson ** 06:54 really helped a great deal. But, you know, I remember it. I love it. I loved it. Then now I live in in a place in California where we're on what's called the high desert, so it doesn't get as cold, and we get hardly any of the precipitation that even some of the surrounding areas do, from Los Angeles and Long Beach and so on to on the one side, up in the mountains where the Snow is for the ski resorts on the other so Los Angeles can have, or parts of La can have three or four inches of rain, and we might get a half inch.   Rachelle Stone ** 07:28 Wow. So it stays relatively dry. Do you? Do you ever have to deal like down here, we have something called black ice, which we get on the road when it rains after it hasn't rained in a long time? Do you get that there in California,   Michael Hingson ** 07:41 there are places, yeah, not here where I live, because it generally doesn't get cold enough. It can. It's already this well, in 2023 late 2023 we got down to 24 degrees one night, and it can get a little bit colder, but generally we're above freezing. So, no, we don't get the black ice here that other places around us can and do. Got it. Got it. So you had I obviously a fun, what you regard as a fun childhood.   Rachelle Stone ** 08:14 Yeah, I remember the first day I walked into I went to a community college, and I it was a very last minute, impulsive, spontaneous decision. Wow, that kind of plays into the rest of my life too. I make very quick decisions, and I decided I wanted to go to college, and it was open enrollment. I went down to the school, and they asked me, What do you want to study? I'm like, I don't know. I just know I want to have fun. So they said, you might want to explore Recreation and Leisure Services. So that's what I wound up going to school for. And I like to say I have a degree in fun and games.   Michael Hingson ** 08:47 There you go. Yeah. Did you go beyond community college or community college enough?   Rachelle Stone ** 08:53 Yeah, that was so I transferred. It took me four years to get a two year degree. And the reason was, I was working full time, I moved out. I just at 17, I wanted to be on my own, and just moved into an apartment with three other people and went to college and worked. It was a fabulous way to live. It was wonderful. But then when I transferred to the University, I felt like I was a bit bored, because I think the other students were, I was dealing with a lot of students coming in for the first time, where I had already been in school for four years, in college for four years, so the experience wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted the education. And I saw a poster, and it was Mickey Mouse on the poster, and it was Walt Disney World College program now accepting applications. So I wrote down the phone number, email, whatever it was, and and I applied. I got an interview again. Remember Michael? I was really bored. I was going to school. It was my first semester in my four year program, and I just anyway. I got a call back and. And I was accepted into the Disney College Program. So, um, they at that time, they only took about 800 students a year. So it was back in 1989 long time ago. And I was thrilled. I left Massachusetts on january 31 1989 in the blizzard of 89 Yeah, and I drove down to Orlando, Florida, and I never left. I'm still here in Florida. That was the beginning of my entire career. Was applying for the Disney College Program.   Michael Hingson ** 10:36 So what was that like, being there at the Disney College, pro nominal, phenomenal. I have to ask one thing, did you have to go through some sort of operation to get rid of your Massachusetts accent? Does   Rachelle Stone ** 10:50 it sound like it worked? No, I didn't have well, it was funny, because I was hoping I would be cast as Minnie Mouse. I'm four foot 10. I have learned that to be Mini or Mickey Mouse, you have to be four, eight or shorter. So I missed many by two inches. My second choice was being a lifeguard, and I wound up what I they offered me was Epcot parking lot, and I loved it, believe it or not, helping to park cars at Epcot Center. I still remember my spiel to the letter that I used to give because there was a live person on the back of the tram speaking and then another one at the front of the tram driving it to get you from the parking lot to the front entrance of the gate. But the whole experience was amazing. It was I attended classes, I earned my Master's degree. I picked up a second and third job because I wanted to get into hotels, and so I worked one day a week at the Disney Inn, which is now their military resorts. And then I took that third job, was as a contractor for a recreation management company. So I was working in the field that I had my associates in. I was working at a hotel one day a week, just because I wanted to learn about hotels. I thought that was the industry I wanted to go into. And I was I was driving the tram and spieling on the back of the tram five days a week. I loved it was phenomenal.   Michael Hingson ** 12:20 I have a friend who is blind who just retired from, I don't know, 20 or 25 years at Disneyland, working a lot in the reservation centers and and so on. And speaks very highly of, of course, all the experiences of being involved with Disney.   Rachelle Stone ** 12:38 Yeah, it's really, I'm It was a wonderful experience. I think it gave me a great foundation for the work in hospitality that I did following. It was a great i i think it made me a better leader, better hospitality person for it well,   Michael Hingson ** 12:57 and there is an art to doing it. It isn't just something where you can arbitrarily decide, I'm going to be a successful and great hospitality person, and then do it if you don't learn how to relate to people, if you don't learn how to talk to people, and if you're not having fun doing it   Rachelle Stone ** 13:14 exactly. Yes, Fun. Fun is everything. It's   Michael Hingson ** 13:18 sort of like this podcast I love to tell people now that the only hard and fast rule about the podcast is we both have to have fun, or it's not worth doing.   Rachelle Stone ** 13:25 That's right. I'm right there with you. Gotta Have fun,   Michael Hingson ** 13:30 yeah? Well, so you So, how long were you with Disney? What made you switched? Oh, so   Rachelle Stone ** 13:36 Disney College Program. It was, at that time, it was called the Magic Kingdom college program, MK, CP, and it's grown quite significantly. I think they have five or 7000 students from around the world now, but at that time it was just a one semester program. I think for international students, it's a one year program. So when my three and a half months were up. My semester, I could either go back. I was supposed to go back to school back in Massachusetts, but the recreation management company I was working for offered me a full time position, so I wound up staying. I stayed in Orlando for almost three and a half years, and ultimately I wound up moving to South Florida and getting a role, a new role, with a different sort of company called a destination management company. And that was that was really the onset destination management was my career for 27 years. 26   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 years. So what is a destination management company. So   Rachelle Stone ** 14:41 a destination management company is, they are the company that receives a group into a destination, meetings, conventions, events. So for instance, let's say, let's say Fathom note taker. Wants to have an in person meeting, and they're going to hold it at the Lowe's Miami Beach, and they're bringing in 400 of their top clients, and and and sales people and operations people. They need someone on the receiving end to pick everybody up at the airport, to put together the theme parties, provide the private tours and excursions. Do the exciting restaurant, Dine Around the entertainment, the amenities. So I did all the fun. And again, sticking with the fun theme here, yeah, I did all of the auxiliary meeting fun add ons in the destination that what you would do. And I would say I did about 175 to 225, meetings a year.   Michael Hingson ** 15:44 So you didn't actually book the meetings, or go out and solicit to book the meetings. You were the person who took over. Once a meeting was arranged,   Rachelle Stone ** 15:53 once a meeting was booked in the destination, right? If they needed a company like mine, then it would be then I would work with them. If I would be the company. There were several companies I did what I do, especially in Miami, because Miami was a top tier destination, so a client may book the lows Miami Beach and then reach out to two to three different DMCs to learn how can they partner with them to make the meeting the most successful. So it was always a competitive situation. And it was always, you know, needing to do our best and give our best and be creative and out of the box. And, yeah, it was, it was an exciting industry. So what makes   Michael Hingson ** 16:41 the best destination management company, or what makes you very successful? Why would people view you as successful at at what you do, and why they would want to choose you to be the company to work with? Because obviously, as you said, it's competitive.   Rachelle Stone ** 16:59 Everybody well, and there's choice. Everybody has choice. I always believed there was enough business to go around for everybody. Very good friends with some of my my hardiest competitors. Interestingly, you know, although we're competing, it's a very friendly industry. We all network together. We all dance in the same network. You know, if we're going to an industry network, we're all together. What? Why would somebody choose me over somebody else? Was really always a decision. It was sometimes it was creativity. Sometimes it was just a feeling for them. They felt the relationship just felt more authentic. Other times it was they they just really needed a cut and dry service. It just every client was always different. There were never two programs the same. I might have somebody just wanting to book a flamenco guitarist for three hours, and that's all they need. And another group may need. The transportation, the tours, the entertainment, the theme parties, the amenities, the whole ball of Fox, every group was different, which is, I think, what made it so exciting, it's that relationship building, I think, more than anything. Because these companies are doing meetings all over the country, sometimes some of them all over the world. So relationships were really, really important to them to be able to go into a destination and say to their partner in that destination, hey, I'm going to be there next May. This is what I need. Are you available? Can you help? So I think on the initial front end, it is, when it's a competitive bid, you're starting from scratch to build a relationship. Once that's relationship is established, it is easier to build on that relationship when things go wrong. Let's talk about what worked, what didn't, and how we can do better next time, instead of throwing the entire relationship out with the bathwater and starting from scratch again. So it was a great industry. I loved it, and   Michael Hingson ** 19:00 obviously you must have been pretty successful at it.   Rachelle Stone ** 19:04 I was, I was lucky. Well, luck and skill, I have to give myself credit there too. I worked for other DMCs. I worked for event companies that wanted to expand into the DMC industry. And I helped, I helped them build that corporate division, or that DMC division. I owned my own agency for, I think, 14 years, still alive and thriving. And then I worked for angel investors, helping them flip and underperforming. It was actually a franchise. It was an office franchise of a global DMC at the time. So I've had success in different areas of Destination Management, and I was lucky in that I believe in accreditation and certification. That's important to me. Credibility matters. And so I. Involved in the association called the association of Destination Management executives international admei I know it's a mouthful, but I wound up serving on their board of directors and their certification and accreditation board for 14 years, throughout my career, and on the cab their certification accreditation board, my company was one of the first companies in the country to become a certified company, admc certified. I was so proud of that, and I had all of my staff. I paid for all of them to earn their certification, which was a destination management Certified Professional. That's the designation. I loved, that we could be a part of it. And I helped write a course, a university level course, and it was only nine weeks, so half a semester in teaching students what destination management is that took me three years. It was a passion project with a couple of other board members on the cab that we put together, and really glad to be a part of that and contributing to writing the book best practices in destination management, first and second edition. So I feel lucky that I was in this field at a time where it was really growing deeper roots. It had been transport the industry. When I went into it was maybe 20 years young, and when I left it, it been around for 40 plus years. So it's kind of exciting. So you so you   Michael Hingson ** 21:41 said that you started a company and you were with it for 4014 years, or you ran it for 14 years, and you said, it's still around. Are you involved with it at all? Now, I   Rachelle Stone ** 21:51 am not. I did a buyout with the I had two partners at the time. And without going into too much detail, there were some things going on that I felt were I could not align with. I felt it was unethical. I felt it was immoral, and I struggled for a year to make the decision. I spoke to a therapist, and I ultimately consulted an attorney, and I did a buyout, and I walked away from my this was my legacy. This was my baby. I built it from scratch. I was the face of the company. So to give that up my legacy, it was a really tough decision, but it really did come full circle, because late last year, something happened which brought me back to that decision, and I can, with 100% certainty, say it was a values driven decision for me, and I'm so happy I made that decision. So I am today. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 22:57 and, and let's, let's get to that a little bit so you at some point, you said that you had burnout and you left the industry. Why did you do that?   Rachelle Stone ** 23:08 So after I did, sold my my business, I worked for angel investors for about three and a half years. They brought me in. This was an underperforming office that the franchisee, because they had owned it for 10 years, had done a buyout themselves and sold it back to the angel investors or the private equity so they brought me in to run the office and bring it from surviving to thriving again. And it took me about 18 months, and I brought it from under a million to over 5.3 million in 18 months. So it's quite successful. And I had said to the owners, as they're thanking me and rewarding me, and it was a great first two years, I had said to them, please don't expect this again. This was a fluke. People were following me. There was a lot of curiosity in the industry, because this was a really big move for me to sell my company and then go work for this one. It was big news. So it was a great time. But the expectation for me to repeat, rinse and repeat, that kind of productivity was not realistic. It just wasn't realistic. And about a year and a half later, I just, I was driving from the Lowe's Miami Beach. It's funny, because I used that as an example before, to the breakers in Palm Beach. And if you know South Florida at all, it's, it's, you're taking your life in your hands every time you get on 95 it's a nightmare. Anyway, so I'm driving from the lows to the breakers, and I just left a kind of a rough meeting. I don't even remember what it was anymore, because that was back in 2014 and I'm driving to another meeting at the breakers, and I hang up the phone with somebody my. Son calls about something, Mom, this is going on for graduation. Can you be there? And I'm realizing I'm going to be out of town yet again for work, and I'm driving to the breakers, and I'm having this I just had this vision of myself in the middle of 95 slamming the brakes on in my car, coming to a full stop in the middle of the highway. I did not do this this, and I don't recommend you do this. And I opened up my car door, and I literally just walked away from my car. That was the image in my mind. And in that moment, I knew it was time for me to leave. I had gone as high as I could go. I'd done as much as I could do. I'd served on boards, contributed to books, spoken on panels. I wanted to go back to being an entrepreneur. I didn't want to work for angel investors anymore. I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to build something new, and I didn't want to do it in the DMC world. So I went home that night thinking I was going to just resign. Instead, I wrote a letter of retirement, and I retired from the industry, I walked away two and a half weeks later, and I said I was never going to return.   Michael Hingson ** 26:09 And so I burnt out, though at the time, what? What eventually made you realize that it was all burnt out, or a lot of it was burnt out. So I   Rachelle Stone ** 26:17 didn't know anything about burnout at that time. I just knew I was incredibly frustrated. I was bored. I was over in competence, and I just wanted out. Was just done. I had done well enough in my industry that I could take a little time. I had a lot of people asking me to take on consulting projects. So I did. I started doing some consulting in hospitality. And while I was doing that, I was kind of peeling away the layers of the onion, saying, What do I want to do next? I did not want to do DMC. That's all I knew. So I started this exploration, and what came out of it was an interest in exploring the field of coaching. So I did some research. I went to the coachingfederation.org which is the ICF International coaching Federation, is the leading accreditation body for coaches in the world. And through them, I researched Who were some of the accredited schools. I narrowed it down. I finally settled on one, and I said, I'm going to sign up for one course. I just want to see what this coaching is all about. So I signed up for a foundations course with the with the school out of Pennsylvania, and probably about three weeks into the course, the professor said something which was like a light bulb moment for me, and that I realized like, oh my   Speaker 1 ** 27:40 god, I burnt out. And I was literally, at this   Rachelle Stone ** 27:46 time, we're in school, we're on the phone. It was not zoom. We didn't have all this yet. It was you were on the phone, and then you were pulling up documents on your computer so the teacher couldn't see me crying. I was just sobbing, knowing that this is i i was so I was I was stunned. I didn't say anything. I sat on this for a while. In fact, I sat on it. I started researching it, but I didn't tell anybody for two years. It took me two years before I finally admitted to somebody that I had burnt out. I was so ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated, I was this successful, high over achiever. How could I have possibly burnt out?   Michael Hingson ** 28:34 What? What did the teacher say   Rachelle Stone ** 28:37 it was? I don't even remember what it was, but I remember that shock of realization of wellness, of it was, you know what it was that question, is this all? There is a lot of times when we were they were talking about, I believe, what they were talking about, midlife crisis and what really brings them on. And it is that pivotal question, is this really all there is, is this what I'm meant to be doing? And then in their conversation, I don't even remember the full conversation, it was that recognition of that's what's happened to me. And as I started researching it, this isn't now. This is in 2015 as I'm researching it and learning there's not a lot on it. I mean, there's some, mostly people's experiences that are being shared. Then in 2019 the World Health Organization officially, officially recognizes burnout as a phenomenon, an occupational phenomenon.   Michael Hingson ** 29:38 And how would you define burnout? Burnout is,   Rachelle Stone ** 29:43 is generally defined in three areas. It is. It's the the, oh, I always struggle with it. It's that disconnect, the disconnect, or disassociation from. Um, wanting to succeed, from your commitment to the work. It is the knowing, the belief that no one can do it well or right. It is there. There's that. It's an emotional disconnect from from from caring about what you're doing and how you're showing up, and it shows up in your personal life too, which is the horrible thing, because it your it impacts your family so negatively, it's horrible.   Michael Hingson ** 30:39 And it it, it does take a toll. And it takes, did it take any kind of a physical toll on you?   Rachelle Stone ** 30:45 Well, what I didn't realize when I when I took this time, I was about 25 pounds overweight. I was on about 18 different medications, including all my vitamins. I was taking a lot of vitamins at that time too. Um, I chronic sciatica, insomnia. I was self medicating. I was also going out, eating rich dinners and drinking, um, because you're because of the work I was doing. I had to entertain. That was part of that was part of of my job. So as I was looking at myself, Yes, physically, it turns out that this weight gain, the insomnia, the self medication, are also taught signs of of risk of burnout. It's how we manage our stress, and that's really what it comes down to, that we didn't even know. We don't even know. People don't no one teaches us how to process our stress, and that that's really probably one of the biggest things that I've through, everything that I've studied, and then the pandemic hitting it. No one teaches us how to manage our stress. No one tells us that if we process stress, then the tough stuff isn't as hard anymore. It's more manageable. No one teaches us about how to shift our mindsets so we can look at changing our perspective at things, or only seeing things through our lizard brain instead of our curious brain. These are all things that I had no idea were keeping me I didn't know how to do, and that were part of contributing to my burnout. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 32:43 Is stress more self created, or is it? Is it an actual thing? In other words, when, when there is stress in the world? Is it something that, really, you create out of a fear or cause to happen in some way, and in reality, there are ways to not necessarily be stressful, and maybe that's what you're talking about, as far as learning to control it and process it, well,   Rachelle Stone ** 33:09 there's actually there's stresses. Stressors are external. Stress is internal. So a stressor could be the nagging boss. It could be your kid has a fever and you're going to be late for work, or you're going to miss a meeting because you have to take them to the doctor. That's an external stressor, right? So that external stressor goes away, you know, the traffic breaks up, or your your husband takes the kid to the doctor so you can get to your meeting. Whatever that external stress, or is gone, you still have to deal with the stress that's in your body. Your that stress, that stress builds up. It's it's cortisol, and that's what starts with the physical impact. So those physical symptoms that I was telling you about, that I had, that I didn't know, were part of my burnout. It was unprocessed stress. Now at that time, I couldn't even touch my toes. I wasn't doing any sort of exercise for my body. I wasn't and that is one of the best ways you can process stress. Stress actually has to cycle out of your body. No one tells us that. No one teaches us that. So how do you learn how to do that?   Michael Hingson ** 34:21 Well, of course, that's Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna   Rachelle Stone ** 34:24 say it's learning. It's being willing to look internally, what's going on in your body. How are you really getting in touch with your emotions and feelings and and processing them well?   Michael Hingson ** 34:37 And you talk about stressors being external, but you have control. You may not have control directly over the stressor happening, but don't you have control over how you decide to deal with the external stress? Creator,   Rachelle Stone ** 34:55 yes, and that external stress will always. Go away. The deadline will come and go. The sun will still rise tomorrow in set tomorrow night. Stressors always go away, but they're also constantly there. So you've got, for instance, the nagging boss is always going to bring you stress. It's how you process the stress inside. You can choose to ignore the stressor, but then you're setting yourself up for maybe not following through on your job, or doing   Michael Hingson ** 35:29 right. And I wouldn't suggest ignoring the stressor, but you it's processing that   Rachelle Stone ** 35:34 stress in your body. It's not so let's say, at the end of the rough day, the stressors gone. You still, whether you choose to go for a walk or you choose to go home and say, Honey, I just need a really like I need a 62nd full on contact, bear hug from you, because I'm holding a lot of stress in my body right now, and I've got to let it out So that physical contact will move stress through your body. This isn't this is they that? You can see this in MRI studies. You see the decrease in the stress. Neuroscience now shows this to be true. You've got to move it through your body. Now before I wanted to kind of give you the formal definition of burnout, it is, it is they call it a occupational phenomenal, okay, it by that they're not calling it a disease. It is not classified as a disease, but it is noted in the International Classification of Diseases, and it has a code now it is they do tie it directly to chronic workplace stress, and this is where I have a problem with the World Health Organization, because when they added this to the International Classification of diseases in 2019 they didn't have COVID. 19 hybrid or work from home environments in mind, and it is totally changed. Stress and burnout are following people around. It's very difficult for them to escape. So besides that, that disconnect that I was talking about, it's really complete exhaustion, depletion of your energy just drained from all of the stressors. And again, it's that reduced efficiency in your work that you're producing because you don't care as much. It's that disconnect so and then the physical symptoms do build up. And burnout isn't like this. It's not an overnight thing. It's a build up, just like gaining 25 pounds, just like getting sick enough that I need a little bit more medication for different issues, that stuff builds up on you and when you when you're recovering from burnout, you didn't get there overnight. You're not going to get out of it overnight either. It's I worked with a personal trainer until I could touch my toes, and then she's pushed me out to go join a gym. But again, it's step by step, and learning to eat healthy, and then ultimately, the third piece that really changed the game for me was learning about the muscles in my brain and getting mentally fit. That was really the third leg of getting my health back.   Michael Hingson ** 38:33 So how does all of that help you deal with stress and the potential of burnout today? Yeah,   Rachelle Stone ** 38:43 more than anything, I know how to prevent it. That is my, my the number one thing I know when I'm sensing a stressor that is impacting me, I can quickly get rid of it. Now, for instance, I'll give you a good example. I was on my the board of directors for my Homeowners Association, and that's always   Michael Hingson ** 39:03 stressful. I've been there, right? Well, I   Rachelle Stone ** 39:06 was up for an hour and a half one night ruminating, and I I realized, because I coach a lot of people around burnout and symptoms, so when I was ruminating, I recognized, oh my gosh, that HOA does not deserve that much oxygen in my brain. And what did I do the next day? I resigned. Resigned, yeah, so removing the stressors so I can process the stress. I process my stress. I always make sure I schedule a beach walk for low tide. I will block my calendar for that so I can make sure I'm there, because that fills my tank. That's self care for me. I make sure I'm exercising, I'm eating good food. I actually worked with a health coach last year because I felt like my eating was getting a little off kilter again. So I just hired a coach for a few months to help me get back on track. Of getting support where I need it. That support circle is really important to maintain and process your stress and prevent burnout.   Michael Hingson ** 40:10 So we've talked a lot about stress and dealing with it and so on. And like to get back to the idea of you went, you explored working with the international coaching Federation, and you went to a school. So what did you then do? What really made you attracted to the idea of coaching, and what do you get out of it?   Rachelle Stone ** 40:35 Oh, great question. Thanks for that. So for me, once I I was in this foundations course, I recognized or realized what had happened to me. I i again, kept my mouth shut, and I just continued with the course. By the end of the course, I really, really enjoyed it, and I saw I decided I wanted to continue on to become a coach. So I just continued in my training. By the end of 2015 early 2016 I was a coach. I went and joined the international coaching Federation, and they offer accreditation. So I wanted to get accredited, because, as I said, from my first industry, a big proponent for credit accreditation. I think it's very important, especially in an unregulated industry like coaching. So we're not bound by HIPAA laws. We are not doctors, we are coaches. It's very different lane, and we do self regulate. So getting accredited is important to me. And I thought my ACC, which my associate a certified coach in 2016 when I moved to the area I'm living in now, in 2017 and I joined the local chapter here, I just continued on. I continued with education. I knew my lane is, is, is burnout. I started to own it. I started to bring it forward a little bit and talk about my experiences with with other coaches and clients to help them through the years and and it felt natural. So with the ICF, I wanted to make sure I stayed in a path that would allow me to hang my shingle proudly, and everything I did in the destination management world I'm now doing in the coaching world. I wound up on the board of directors for our local chapter as a programming director, which was so perfect for me because I'm coming from meetings and events, so as a perfect person to do their programming, and now I am their chapter liaison, and I am President Elect, so I'm taking the same sort of leadership I had in destination management and wrapping my arms around it in the coaching industry,   Michael Hingson ** 42:56 you talk about People honing their leadership skills to help prepare them for a career move or their next career. It isn't always that way, though, right? It isn't always necessarily that they're going to be going to a different career. Yep,   Rachelle Stone ** 43:11 correct. Yeah. I mean, not everybody's looking for trans transition. Some people are looking for that to break through the glass ceiling. I have other clients that are just wanting to maybe move laterally. Others are just trying to figure it out every client is different. While I specialize in hospitality and burnout, I probably have more clients in the leadership lane, Senior VP level, that are trying to figure out their next step, if they want to go higher, or if they're content where they are, and a lot of that comes from that ability to find the right balance for you in between your career and your personal life. I think there comes a point when we're in our younger careers, we are fully identified by what we do. I don't think that's true for upcoming generations, but for our generation, and maybe Jen, maybe some millennials, very identified by what they do, there comes a point in your career, and I'm going to say somewhere between 35 and 50, where you recognize that those two Things need to be separate,   Michael Hingson ** 44:20 and the two things being   Rachelle Stone ** 44:23 your identity, who you are from what you do, got it two different things. And a lot of leaders on their journey get so wrapped up in what they do, they lose who they are.   Michael Hingson ** 44:39 What really makes a good leader,   Rachelle Stone ** 44:42 authenticity. I'm a big proponent of heart based leadership. Brene Brown, I'm Brene Brown trained. I am not a facilitator, but I love her work, and I introduce all my clients to it, especially my newer leaders. I think it's that. Authenticity that you know the command and control leadership no longer works. And I can tell you, I do work with some leaders that are trying to improve their human skills, and by that I mean their emotional intelligence, their social skills, their ability to interact on a human level with others, because when they have that high command and control directive type of leadership, they're not connecting with their people. And we now have five generations in the workforce that all need to be interacted with differently. So command and control is a tough kind of leadership style that I actually unless they're willing to unless they're open to exploring other ways of leading, I won't work with them. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 and the reality is, I'm not sure command and control as such ever really worked. Yeah, maybe you control people. But did it really get you and the other person and the company? What what you needed.   Rachelle Stone ** 46:01 Generally, that's what we now call a toxic environment. Yes, yes. But that, you know, this has been, we've been on a path of, you know, this work ethic was supposed to, was supposed to become a leisure ethic in the 70s, you know, we went to 40 hour work weeks. Where are we now? We're back up to 6070, hour work week. Yeah, we're trying to lower the age that so kids can start working this is not a leisure ethic that we were headed towards. And now with AI, okay, let's change this conversation. Yeah, toxic environments are not going to work. Moving forward that command and control leadership. There's not a lot of it left, but there's, it's lingering, and some of the old guard, you know, there it's, it's slowly changing.   Michael Hingson ** 46:49 It is, I think, high time that we learn a lot more about the whole concept of teamwork and true, real team building. And there's a lot to be said for there's no I in team, that's right, and it's an extremely important thing to learn. And I think there are way to, still, way too many people who don't recognize that, but it is something that I agree with you. Over time, it's it's starting to evolve to a different world, and the pandemic actually was one, and is one of the things that helps it, because we introduced the hybrid environment, for example, and people are starting to realize that they can still get things done, and they don't necessarily have to do it the way they did before, and they're better off for it.   Rachelle Stone ** 47:38 That's right. Innovation is beautiful. I actually, I mean, as horrible as the pandemic was it, there was a lot of good that came out of it, to your point. And it's interesting, because I've watched this in coaching people. I remember early in the pandemic, I had a new client, and they came to the they came to their first call on Zoom, really slumped down in the chair like I could barely see their nose and up and, you know, as we're kind of talking, getting to know each other. One of the things they said to me, because they were working from home, they were working like 1011, hours a day. Had two kids, a husband, and they also had yet they're, they're, they're like, I one of the things they said to me, which blew my mind, was, I don't have time to put on a load of laundry. They're working from home. Yeah? It's that mindset that you own my time because you're paying me, yeah, versus I'm productive and I'm doing good work for you. Is why you're paying for paying me? Yeah? So it's that perception and trying to shift one person at a time, shifting that perspective   Michael Hingson ** 48:54 you talked before about you're a coach, you're not a doctor, which I absolutely appreciate and understand and in studying coaching and so on, one of the things that I read a great deal about is the whole concept of coaches are not therapists. A therapist provides a decision or a position or a decision, and they are more the one that provides a lot of the answers, because they have the expertise. And a coach is a guide who, if they're doing their job right, leads you to you figuring out the answer. That's   Rachelle Stone ** 49:34 a great way to put it, and it's pretty clear. That's, that's, that's pretty, pretty close the I like to say therapy is a doctor patient relationship. It's hierarchy so and the doctor is diagnosing, it's about repair and recovery, and it's rooted in the past, diagnosing, prescribing, and then the patient following orders and recovering. Hmm, in coaching, it's a peer to peer relationship. So it's, we're co creators, and we're equal. And it's, it's based on future goals only. It's only based on behavior change and future goals. So when I have clients and they dabble backwards, I will that's crossing the line. I can't support you there. I will refer clients to therapy. And actually, what I'm doing right now, I'm taking a mental health literacy course through Harvard Medical Center and McLean University. And the reason I'm doing this is because so many of my clients, I would say 80% of my clients are also in therapy, and it's very common. We have a lot of mental health issues in the world right now as a result of the pandemic, and we have a lot of awareness coming forward. So I want to make sure I'm doing the best for my clients in recognizing when they're at need or at risk and being able to properly refer them.   Michael Hingson ** 51:04 Do you think, though, that even in a doctor patient relationship, that more doctors are recognizing that they accomplish more when they create more of a teaming environment? Yes,   51:18 oh, I'm so glad you   Rachelle Stone ** 51:20 brought that up, okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Love that. I have clients who are in therapy, and I ask them to ask their therapist so that if they're comfortable with this trio. And it works beautifully. Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 51:36 it is. It just seems to me that, again, there's so much more to be said for the whole concept of teaming and teamwork, and patients do better when doctors or therapists and so on explain and bring them into the process, which almost makes them not a coach as you are, but an adjunct to what you do, which is what I think it's all about. Or are we the adjunct to what they do? Or use the adjunct to what they do? Yeah, it's a team, which is what it should be.   52:11 Yeah, it's, I always it's like the Oreo cookie, right?   Michael Hingson ** 52:16 Yeah, and the frosting is in the middle, yeah, crying   Rachelle Stone ** 52:19 in the middle. But it's true, like a therapist can work both in the past and in the future, but that partnership and that team mentality and supporting a client, it helps them move faster and further in their in their desired goals. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 52:37 it's beautiful, yeah, yeah. And I think it's extremely important, tell me about this whole idea of mental fitness. I know you're studying that. Tell me more about that. Is it real? Is it okay? Or what? You know, a lot of people talk about it and they say it's who cares. They all roll   Rachelle Stone ** 52:56 their eyes mental fitness. What are you talking about? Yeah, um, I like to say mental fitness is the third leg of our is what keeps us healthy. I like to look at humans as a three legged stool, and that mental fitness, that mental wellness, is that third piece. So you have your spiritual and community wellness, you have your physical wellness, and then you have your mental wellness. And that mental wellness encompasses your mental health, your mental fitness. Now, mental fitness, by definition, is your ability to respond to life's challenges from a positive rather than a negative mindset. And there's a new science out there called positive it was actually not a new science. It's based on four sciences, Positive Intelligence, it's a cognitive behavioral science, or psychology, positive psychology, performance psychology, and drawing a bank anyway, four sciences and this body of work determined that there's actually a tipping point we live in our amygdala, mostly, and there's a reason, when we were cavemen, we needed to know what was coming that outside stressor was going to eat us, or if we could eat it. Yeah, but we have language now. We don't need that, not as much as we did, not in the same way, not in the same way, exactly. We do need to be aware of threats, but not every piece of information that comes into the brain. When that information comes in our brains, amplify it by a factor of three to one. So with that amplification, it makes that little, little tiny Ember into a burning, raging fire in our brain. And then we get stuck in stress. So it's recognizing, and there's actually you are building. If you do yoga, meditation, tai chi, gratitude journaling, any sort of those practices, you're flexing that muscle. You talk to somebody who does gratitude journaling who just started a month in, they're going to tell. You, they're happier. They're going to tell you they're not having as many ruminating thoughts, and they're going to say, I'm I'm smiling more. I started a new journal this year, and I said, I'm singing more. I'm singing songs that I haven't thought of in years. Yeah, out of the blue, popping into my head. Yeah. And I'm happier. So the the concept of mental fitness is really practicing flexing this muscle every day. We take care of our bodies by eating good food, we exercise or walk. We do that to take care of our physical body. We do nothing to take care of our brain other than scroll social media and get anxiety because everybody's life looks so perfect,   Michael Hingson ** 55:38 yeah, and all we're doing is using social media as a stressor.   Rachelle Stone ** 55:42 That's right, I'm actually not on social media on LinkedIn. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 55:48 I have accounts, but I don't go to it exactly. My excuse is it takes way too long with a screen reader, and I don't have the time to do it. I don't mind posting occasionally, but I just don't see the need to be on social media for hours every day.   Rachelle Stone ** 56:05 No, no, I do, like, like a lot of businesses, especially local small businesses, are they advertise. They only have they don't have websites. They're only on Facebook. So I do need to go to social media for things like that. But the most part, no, I'm not there. Not at all. It's   Michael Hingson ** 56:20 it's way too much work. I am amazed sometimes when I'll post something, and I'm amazed at how quickly sometimes people respond. And I'm wondering to myself, how do you have the time to just be there to see this? It can't all be coincidence. You've got to be constantly on active social media to see it. Yeah,   Rachelle Stone ** 56:39 yeah, yeah. Which is and this, this whole concept of mental fitness is really about building a practice, a habit. It's a new habit, just like going to the gym, and it's so important for all of us. We are our behaviors are based on how we interpret these messages as they come in, yeah, so learning to reframe or recognize the message and give a different answer is imperative in order to have better communication, to be more productive and and less chaos. How   Michael Hingson ** 57:12 do we teach people to recognize that they have a whole lot more control over fear than they think they do, and that that really fear can be a very positive guide in our lives. And I say that because I talked about not being afraid of escaping from the World Trade Center over a 22 year period, what I realized I never did was to teach people how to do that. And so now I wrote a book that will be out later in the year. It's called Live like a guide dog, stories of from a blind man and his dogs, about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. And the point of it is to say that you can control your fear. I'm not saying don't be afraid, but you have control over how you let that fear affect you and what you deal with and how you deal it's all choice. It is all choice. But how do we teach people to to deal with that better, rather than just letting fear build up   Rachelle Stone ** 58:12 it? Michael, I think these conversations are so important. Number one is that learner's mind, that willingness, that openness to be interested in finding a better way to live. I always say that's a really hard way to live when you're living in fear. Yeah, so step number one is an openness, or a willingness or a curiosity about wanting to live life better,   Michael Hingson ** 58:40 and we have to instill that in people and get them to realize that they all that we all have the ability to be more curious if we choose to do it.   Rachelle Stone ** 58:49 But again, choice and that, that's the big thing so many and then there's also, you know, Michael, I can't wait to read your book. I'm looking forward to this. I'm also know that you speak. I can't wait to see you speak. The thing is, when we speak or write and share this information, we give them insight. It's what they do with it that matters, which is why, when I with the whole with the mental fitness training that I do, it's seven weeks, yeah, I want them to start to build that habit, and I give them three extra months so they can continue to work on that habit, because it's that important for them to start. It's foundational your spirit. When you talk about your experience in the World Trade Center, and you say you weren't fearful, your spiritual practice is such a big part of that, and that's part of mental fitness too. That's on that layers on top of your ability to flex those mental muscles and lean into your spirituality and not be afraid.   Michael Hingson ** 59:55 Well, I'd love to come down and speak. If you know anybody that needs a speaker down there. I. I'm always looking for speaking opportunities, so love your help, and   1:00:03 my ears open for sure and live like   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:06 a guide dog. Will be out later this year. It's, it's, I've already gotten a couple of Google Alerts. The the publisher has been putting out some things, which is great. So we're really excited about it.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:00:16 Wonderful. I can't wait to see it. So what's   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:19 up for you in 2024   Rachelle Stone ** 1:00:22 so I actually have a couple of things coming up this year that are pretty big. I have a partner. Her name's vimari Roman. She's down in Miami, and I'm up here in the Dunedin Clearwater area. But we're both hospitality professionals that went into coaching, and we're both professional certified coaches, and we're both certified mental fitness coaches. When the pandemic hit, she's also a Career Strategist. She went she started coaching at conferences because the hospitality industry was hit so hard, she reached out to me and brought me in too. So in 2024 we've been coaching at so many conferences, we can't do it. We can't do it. It's just too much, but we also know that we can provide a great service. So we've started a new company. It's called coaches for conferences, and it's going to be like a I'll call it a clearing house for securing pro bono coaches for your conferences. So that means, let's say you're having a conference in in LA and they'd like to offer coaching, pro bono coaching to their attendees as an added value. I'll we'll make the arrangements for the coaches, local in your area to to come coach. You just have to provide them with a room and food and beverage and a place to coach on your conference floor and a breakout. So we're excited for that that's getting ready to launch. And I think 2024 is going to be the year for me to dip my toe in start writing my own story. I think it's time   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:02 writing a book. You can say it. I'm gonna do it.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:02:05 I'm gonna write a book Good. I've said it out loud. I've started to pull together some thoughts around I mean, I've been thinking about it for years. But yeah, if the timing feels right,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:21 then it probably is, yep, which makes sense. Well, this has been fun. It's been wonderful. Can you believe we've already been at this for more than an hour? So clearly we   1:02:33 this went so fast. Clearly we   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:35 did have fun. We followed the rule, this was fun. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening and for watching, if you're on YouTube watching, and all I can ask is that, wherever you are, please give us a five star rating for the podcast. We appreciate it. And anything that you want to say, we would love it. And I would appreciate you feeling free to email me and let me know your thoughts. You can reach me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, would love to hear from you. You can also go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and it's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, N, and as I said to Rochelle just a minute ago, if any of you need a speaker, we'd love to talk with you about that. You can also email me at speaker@michaelhingson.com love to hear from you and love to talk about speaking. So however you you reach out and for whatever reason, love to hear from you, and for all of you and Rochelle, you, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, let us know we're always looking for people who want to come on the podcast. Doesn't cost anything other than your time and putting up with me for a while, but we appreciate it, and hope that you'll decide to to introduce us to other people. So with that, I again want to say, Rochelle, thank you to you. We really appreciate you being here and taking the time to chat with us today.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:04:13 It's been the fastest hour of my life. I'm gonna have to watch the replay. Thank you so much for having me. It's been my pleasure to join you.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:04:24 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

In this powerful episode of Verbally Effective, American writer, professor, editor, and social commentator Roxane Gay joins Ena Esco for an intimate conversation that spans identity, intellect, and influence. Roxane reflects on her upbringing in Omaha, Nebraska as the daughter of Haitian immigrants, and how those roots shaped her voice as a writer and cultural critic. We dive into the evolution of feminism, her current role as a professor at Rutgers University, and why she believes HBCUs are more vital than ever. Roxane also shares bold thoughts on artificial intelligence—and why she's not impressed—plus details on her exciting new romance novel project with none other than Channing Tatum. 

Texas school trustees would have to vote on requiring prayer time at campuses under a bill debated Wednesday. Public schools would have to provide a daily period for prayer and reading of religious texts outside of instruction time. In other news, a new leader is coming to the University of Texas at Dallas — Prabhas Moghe, of Rutgers University. Moghe, whose background is in chemical and bioengineering, is currently the executive vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer at Rutgers; Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said officials are not in a hurry to adjust interest rates, adding tariffs could lead to higher inflation and unemployment. Powell said Wednesday, “If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they're likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth and an increase in unemployment.”; and actor Sam Elliott was spotted last week on the patio of Joe T. Garcia's, an iconic Mexican restaurant in Fort Worth known for its celebrity sightings. The legendary restaurant shared a photo of the 80-year-old actor on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do you know how to effectively communicate with someone in a higher position, such as your boss, a board, or anyone in a position of authority? Kevin welcomes Melody Wilding, who shares strategies and conversation frameworks to help professionals at all levels navigate complex relationships with their leaders. Melody and Kevin discuss the concept of “managing up”; not as sucking-up or people-pleasing, but to take ownership of your success by fostering productive and respectful relationships with those in charge. They also discuss the critical conversations outlined in her book and dive into three in particular: the boundaries conversation, the feedback conversation, and the styles conversation. Melody emphasizes the "triple win" philosophy, which focuses on finding solutions that benefit you, your boss, and the organization. She offers practical advice for leaders on how to facilitate managing up for their team members, such as asking, "What do you need from me?" Listen For 00:00 Introduction 01:23 Guest Introduction: Melody Wilding 02:16 Welcome and Opening Question 03:05 The Psychology of Managing Up 04:11 Everyone Has a Boss 05:18 The “Why Isn't My Boss in This Class?” Problem 06:08 Managing Up Isn't About Excusing Bad Leadership 07:11 Managing Up Is for You 08:20 The 10 Conversations Framework 09:01 Boundaries Conversation 10:28 Setting Expectations and Clarifying Priorities 12:06 Creating Win-Win Outcomes 14:20 Feedback Conversation 16:25 Building Trust Through Positive Feedback 17:27 From Labels to Behavior: The ABC Model 19:33 Constructive Proposals, Not Complaints 20:28 Styles Conversation 22:49 It's About Them, Not You 24:54 Avoiding Labels and Confirmation Bias 26:05 Meet the Needs of Your Boss 27:09 Ethical Visibility and Remote Work 28:37 Help Your Boss Help You 29:42 Make it Easier for People to Manage Up to You 30:38 One-on-Ones as Strategic Tools 32:14 The Leadership Book Question 33:12 What Do You Do for Fun 34:23 Learn More: ManagingUp.com 35:15 Final Thoughts: What Will You Do Melody's Story: Melody Wilding is the bestselling author of Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work and Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge. She is a licensed social worker with a master's degree from Columbia University, a professor of human behavior at Hunter College in New York City, and a former emotions researcher at Rutgers University. For more than a decade, she's helped top performers and leadership at the world's most successful companies to communicate more clearly, prevent burnout, and transform complicated workplace dynamics into powerful alliances that impact the bottom line. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, to name a few. She's a regular contributor to Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, and CNBC. https://melodywilding.com/ http://managingup.com/ https://www.instagram.com/melodywilding/ This Episode is brought to you by... Flexible Leadership is every leader's guide to greater success in a world of increasing complexity and chaos.  Book Recommendations Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge by Melody Wilding  Trust Yourself: Stop Overthinking and Channel Your Emotions for Success at Work by Melody Wilding Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World by Anne-Laure Le Cunff Flex Your Feelings: Train Your Brain to Develop the 7 Traits of Emotional Fitness by Dr. Emily Anhalt Like this? Managing Up with Mary Abbajay Trusting Yourself with Melody Wilding Join Our Community If you want to view our live podcast episodes, hear about new releases, or chat with others who enjoy this podcast join one of our communities below. Join the Facebook Group Join the LinkedIn Group   Leave a Review If you liked this conversation, we'd be thrilled if you'd let others know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Here's a quick guide for posting a review. Review on Apple: https://remarkablepodcast.com/itunes    Podcast Better! Sign up with Libsyn and get up to 2 months free! Use promo code: RLP  

We're back with another edition of Fellows' Case Files! Today, we're virtually visiting Rutgers University, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School to work through a fascinating pulmonary case. Enjoy, and let us know your thoughts. Meet Our Guests Khalil El Gharib … Continue reading →

This time we get to meet Jocelyn Sandstrom, my first podcast guest from Hawaii. Jocelyn was born and raised in Hawaii. Tt the urging of her mother, she took her first modeling job when she was sixteen. As she tells the story, she grew up quiet and pretty shy and she didn't have a great deal of confidence in herself. After high school, modeling became her full-time career. She says that the urging and support of her mother caused her to make some of the best decisions in her life. Modeling, she tells us, brought her out of herself. She traveled to 12 countries over a 20-year modeling career. She loved every minute of the experience.   In 2003 she began thinking that she wanted to help others deal with their confidence and career issues. By 2010 she decided that she was experiencing burnout as a model and changed to a coaching career that, in part, helped others to recognize burnout and deal with it. Jocelyn provides us with some good life pointers and lessons to help us change our mindset from the usual negative “I have to do this” to a more positive view “I get to do this”. I leave it to her to tell more.   Jocelyn does offer many insights I am sure you will appreciate. Over her 15-year coaching career she has become certified in several disciplines, and she uses them to teach her clients how to shift their careers to more positive and strong efforts going forward.       About the Guest:   Growing up in Hawaii, Jocelyn has lived and worked in 12 different countries. This experience has allowed her to realize that even though we may speak different languages or have different traditions, at our core, we are all the same. She has used this knowledge to help and support clients around the world in creating next-level success not just in their careers but in their personal lives as well.    Since 2010, she has been providing Quantum Energy Sessions and teaching Neuro-Linguistic Programming, Neurological Re-patterning, and the Millennium Method to clients globally. In 2022, she founded Wellness and Metaphysical, a community-driven platform that promotes a higher level of consciousness through expos and retreats.   Jocelyn's mindset and energy work have propelled her career, allowing her to work with leading global luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Fendi, Cartier, Tiffany & Co., Christian Louboutin, and Yves Saint Laurent, among others. She has been featured on the covers of Elle, Marie Claire, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, and more. Alongside her husband, she has hosted two travel shows and appeared in various feature and short films. After creating a career beyond her wildest dreams through quantum manifestations, her passion is to now help others do the same, whether it's business, health, relationships, or any aspect of life.   Jocelyn specializes in helping clients release deep-rooted issues from their past that are holding them back. She supports clients in building not just success but also fulfillment at the same time because success without fulfillment is empty, leading to burnout and anxiety. She supports her clients to discover their authentic truth and share that with the world, magnetizing their energy to start attracting people and opportunities out of the blue, enabling them to fall in love with themselves and their life while creating more success than ever before!   Jocelyn is a certified:   Neuro-Linguistic Programing Advanced Practitioner + Teacher Neurological Re-patterning Practitioner + Teacher Ericksonian Hypnosis Practitioner + Teacher Millennium Method™ Practitioner + Teacher Yuen Method™ Practitioner Reiki Practitioner.   Ways to connect Jocelyn:   Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jocelynlukosandstrom/?hl=en Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jocelyn.lukosandstrom/ LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocelyn-luko-sandstrom-4789882a/  Website www.jocelynsandstrom.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 01:56 Thank you so much, and I do hope you come back again. It's such an honor to be on your podcast. Well, it's   Michael Hingson ** 02:02 been a while. It's only been 15 years since I've been there, and it is time to come back, but my wife passed away, and so it's kind of not nearly as fun to come alone, unless, unless I come and people keep me busy over there, but we'll figure it out.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 02:17 Yes, I'm so sorry about your wife, and if you want, I will show you around here.   Michael Hingson ** 02:24 Well, we'll have to make something happen. We'll just, we'll just do it. Yes, but I'm really glad that you're here. Um, Jocelyn is an interesting individual, and by any standard, she is a we're a neurological repatterning practitioner plus teacher. She has a lot of things. She does neuro linguistics. She is also a Reiki Master and practitioner, and just a number of things, and we're going to get to all of that, but I want to, again, welcome you and really glad that you're taking the time to be with us instead of being with clients, with all the things that you do.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 03:11 Thank you so much for your time. I love your podcast and everything, all the messages that you're bringing out onto the world.   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 Well, thank you. It has been a lot of fun to be able to do it and continue to do it, and we're having a lot of fun doing it, so I can't complain a whole lot about that. It's just a lot of fun. And I as I tell people, if I'm not learning at least as much as everybody else, then I'm not doing my job right. So I'm really glad that I get to learn so much from from people as well. Well, why don't we start, as I love to do, with learning about the early Jocelyn, growing up and all that sort of stuff.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 03:49 Well, I did grow up in Hawaii, and I, like every a lot of people, we went through a lot of growing pains. I had a lot that I did grow through, and it wasn't until I started my first contract overseas when I was 16 that life shifted for me, and I started to find my people and started to come into my own, get you know, transcending above the bullying and everything that happened in childhood. And then I lived overseas for about 20 years and moved home in 2016 to be with my family again.   Michael Hingson ** 04:29 So where did you live for those 20 years? I lived in   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 04:31 12 different countries around the world. Um, I absolutely for me, it was I just loved exploring different cultures. It wasn't like going on vacation, to me, is amazing, but going to a place, living there, working with the people, learning the culture, learning the different ways that they work in, you know, speaking like the languages I only you know, spoke a very little bit of each language, just like taxi language, right? Um. And then just immersing into the culture, just the food tastes different in every place as well. Like it could be the same thing, but it just tastes different. Life is so different. And for me, that was my passion, really, to just immerse into different cultures, different parts of the world, different parts of me as well. Because every time I went to another country, I became a different person. There was another side of me that got ignited that I didn't even know was there. And so I got to not only discover myself, but I got to discover the world.   Michael Hingson ** 05:30 What made you go to so many different countries? What started all that?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 05:35 Well, I was modeling so I was able to do contracts in different countries. And so whenever I wanted to go to their country, I just contacted an agency there, and I got a contract and went and so basically, the world was my oyster. And I just said, Where do I desire to go next? And then Khan reached out. Instead of waiting for someone to come to me, I reached out to that, you know, to agencies over there and got a contract and went over. So I've never, once I started that. I've never been one to sit around and wait for things to kind of come to me. It's always been this is what I desire. So now let me go and create that to happen. And that's how I created my last career to be so successful. And there's so many things that I learned along the way that not only can you use that, but also to do it in a way that doesn't burn you out. And so that's my passion now, is to help people to build success and fulfillment, not just the success. Because I had burnt out pretty bad, and I in hindsight, if I had done it differently, I probably could have built it even bigger without the burnout. And so that's my passion now, and that's how I built this career, is through that fulfillment and success at the same time, so that it's so fulfilling, as well as creating next level results.   Michael Hingson ** 06:59 Did you go to college? Or did you go from high school into modeling?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 07:03 I went straight in. What   Michael Hingson ** 07:06 started you with that? My   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 07:08 mom, of course, it's always your mom, right? Of course, because I was very shy, and like I said, I went through a lot growing up, through bullying and all of this. So for me, it was like the best blessing that's ever happened. For me, I was very scared, but I knew that I wanted to explore and try, and it brought me out of my shell. It brought me to my people. It was the first time that, you know, people like, wanted to hear what I had to say, really, like, they were fascinated. And I was like, what, you know, and again, again, what I realized, now after all this time, is I had a perception growing up here in Hawaii, so necessarily, I've been finding out that not people did not have that same perception that I had about myself. I realized I was almost the one that was not coming out of my shell fully, and therefore it was hard to connect, I think, and people have a different perception of me. So looking back on my childhood now, when I say bullying, yes, there was bullying and there was, you know, but overall, there were also things that I perceived in a way that wasn't necessarily true for other people, because I would run into them and they'd remember me, and they'd have remember a different version of me, and I'd be like, it's, you know? And so I realize now how much I actually also held my back, held myself back, and, yeah, well,   Michael Hingson ** 08:39 did that affect your modeling career, because I would think as a model, you'd have to be reasonably outgoing and be able to work in a variety of different kinds of situations.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 08:49 I think it was what helped me to be resilient growing up through the hardships of what I went through, you know, with relationships and everything. That's what got me to be resilient, to stick it out. Because not everybody does stick it out. Because there is a ton of rejection, there is a ton there is a ton of things that you're going through at a very young age. My first contract was when I was 16 in high school during the summer, and so to be able to handle obviously, you know, there's a lot of not so nice things in the industry as well, too. So to be able to handle that, I think that came from everything that I grew through as a child, as well as my mom's support, because she was the one, the one thing that was stable throughout my life, where I would always call her, because I was living in so many different countries, I think you know, she was my best friend, and so that, and living in all those different countries helping me to be so resilient, is what Korea helped me to create this business to be so success, successful as well,   Michael Hingson ** 09:55 what some of the countries that you stayed in went to, well, some. Of   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 10:00 my favorite I started in Tokyo, and then I went to Korea, Sydney, Milan, Hamburg, London. I did live in New York for a little while, Taiwan, China, you know, like, there's so many different places. Like, some of my favorites definitely were Tokyo, because that was and Hong Kong was where I spent most of my time at the end. And I, of course, loved Milan and Sydney as well as London as well too. And of course, New York is just Memphis.   Michael Hingson ** 10:33 I enjoy Tokyo. I've been to Japan twice, not for long periods. Well, the second time, actually, I guess the third time I've been there three times, and the last time was when we did work with the Japanese publisher of my first book, Thunder dog. And we were there for almost two weeks. It was a lot of fun, but mostly I spent time around Tokyo until thunder dog, and then we were all over Japan. But it was very enjoyable. What I really remember the first time I went to Japan. We were over there about four days, I tried to eat very healthy, um, although I had ice cream with every meal, because they insisted, and all that, when I came back, I had lost my pal. I can't believe it. Wow. I know that didn't happen the second and third time, but I didn't gain weight either, so it's okay, but I really enjoyed Japan. I've been to Korea. Enjoyed that as well. Not been to Australia. I'm still want to go. I've been to New Zealand, but not Australia. Yeah.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 11:36 Australia is an amazing place, the people, the food, just the lifestyle,   Michael Hingson ** 11:43 yeah, yeah. And it is, of course, so different because it's on the other side of the equator. So right now they're getting into their summer season.   Speaker 1 ** 11:52 Yes, yes, absolutely. So it's pretty   Michael Hingson ** 11:55 cool. Was your mama model? Is that what got you guys to get you into it or No, no, she just, she just thought it was good for you,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 12:04 huh? Yeah, exactly. And thank goodness she did, because, honestly, it was the thing that got me out of my shell. It like for me to go and live in Tokyo when I was 16 during the summer. It showed me that high school wasn't everything, because I was so consumed by, you know, school kids and the cool kids and not being cool and all of those things. And when I went over there, I realized, wow, there is a whole other world outside of this. And it completely changed my life. And so when I came back, I didn't relate to everybody in the same way. I wasn't so consumed with everything, because I knew what was waiting for me. I knew that there was so much more to explore and to experience. So it really was the thing that completely changed my life, and I will always be grateful for that on how it allowed me to grow and through the years, I grew through that. Like each contract I did, I grew, I stretched myself, each country that I went to, where I didn't know anybody except for the agency, and lived, you know, with new people, and had a map that they would give you, and you'd have to go and find your castings on your own, before we had Google Maps, using a paper map, and just, you know, walking down the street and looking for the places like it just stretched me in so many beautiful ways. And I wish everyone could go through that experience. Because when you put yourself into places where you stretch, you just you access the strength that's actually within you. It's just compounding your resilience and your power and your knowing within yourself, and that's what makes you unstoppable. When you know you can do all those things and you've done all those things, the next step is that much easier because you've already done it.   Michael Hingson ** 13:56 Yeah, um, there's so many ways of stretching and growing. I was just reading an email from someone I'm the vice president on the board of directors of the Colorado Center for the Blind, which is a training center that teaches newly blinded people or people who are losing their eyesight, teaching them blindness techniques and teaching them that blindness isn't the problem. It's really our attitudes about it. And one of the things, if you go to the center and take advantage of the full residential program, one of the last things that you have to do is you are dropped off somewhere within some sort of walking distance of the agency itself. But that could be a couple miles Well, it may not even be just a couple miles away. It may be that you're further, but you have to figure out where you are and get back to the center. And you can only ask one question of the public, so it's all about you learning to use your wit, your wits, and people do it all the time, right? Awesome, and it's so cool me, and so I really relate very much to what you're talking about, as far as how you learned to stretch and grow with all the modeling and being in all those foreign countries and having to learn to live there.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 15:13 Yeah, that's so powerful. That's so amazing. What you're what you've done, and your story is so inspiring and so powerful.   Michael Hingson ** 15:21 Well, I I never did go to that center, and so I never actually, directly was subjected to that. However, with all the traveling that I've done around the world, I've had to essentially do the same thing, so I know what you're talking about, and it's so exhilarating when you figure it out, right? Yes,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 15:41 it is, and and that's why we're here. We're here to experience all those things, because if not, it would just be so boring. And so one of the things that I always, you know, remind myself and my clients, is that, you know, we may be in a place that's crunchy and doesn't feel great, but we're growing through it. And when we do grow through it, the feeling of getting on the other side is what why we why we do it. And once we get to the other side, or let's say you're climbing a mountain, and you get to the top of the mountain, you don't want to just sit at the top of the mountain. You want to climb another mountain, because it's the journey. That's the thing that we enjoy. And so when we embrace the journey, not only do we get to where we desire to go, to feel that feeling of like accomplishment, but also we get to enjoy the journey instead of just trying to rush through it to get there.   Michael Hingson ** 16:38 I somewhere in my life, probably when I was fairly young, decided, although I didn't articulate it for a while, but decided that life is an adventure, and wherever we go, we can find very positive things. And I have never found a place that I hated, that I didn't like to go to. I've been all over this country and and I have eaten some some pretty unhealthy food in places, very deep fried kinds of things and so on. But I've also found ways to enjoy some of it, although I tried to eat as little of the bad food, if you will, that's high in cholesterol and so on. I've tried to eat as little of that as possible. But I've enjoyed everywhere I have been. I've been been to all 50 states, had a lot of fun in every place where I've been, and wouldn't trade any of those experiences for anything, much less traveling to a variety of other countries. Mm hmm, so it's a lot of fun to, you know, to do, but life is an adventure, and we should approach it that way. Mm   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 17:40 hmm, yeah, absolutely. And when we do approach it that way, we enjoy it so much more, because I used to always avoid making a mistake or things going wrong or get so frustrated that it wasn't wrong or that it wasn't going well. But now I I lean into those things, and it's those things that make life interesting. It's those things like the mistakes that I make, I grow more from those mistakes than from anything else. And through the hardships that I've been through, I've grown so much from those as well, too. And so when we lean into the journey and just know that there is no good, bad, right, wrong, it's just the experience of what it is. We live in a completely different way, and we can like I was telling my clients in one of the webinars I was running the other day that my husband and I had read the book celestian prophecy. And so he goes on a journey, and he doesn't plan anything. He just shows up and he listens to, you know, synchronicities, and he kind of goes with that. And so when we went to Jordan, we did the same thing. We're like, you know what, let's just go play. Let's go play and have no plan, and just arrive and discover what we're gonna do. And so we did that. And then we ended up, you know, meeting this one tour company, and ended up booking them, but it ended up turning out that they weren't the best, and we kind of got ripped off. But the driver that they hired was amazing, and he gave us like these special tours and things because he felt bad that we did get ripped off. And so the thing that looked like it was something bad actually was a blessing, and ended up turning out into this most incredible trip. And so when we make these so called wrong decisions, and we realize that it's not wrong, that it's leading us to something better, we don't have to get upset about it, like we weren't upset that that happened. We were just on the journey and the adventure of it, and that actually turned out to be one of our most incredible trips.   Michael Hingson ** 19:38 One of the things that I have learned and talked about on this podcast occasionally is that there's no such thing as failure their learning experiences. And I like what you just said, because it isn't that they're something that goes wrong. It happened the way it did. And the question is, what did we learn from it? And I'll bet that that driver. I would never have done those special things for you if you had treated him differently and treated him in a in a negative way.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 20:08 Mm, hmm, yeah, if we were grumpy and angry, he would have said, Okay, well, too bad for you guys. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:15 yeah, forget you guys. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Well. You modeled for you said 20 years, right? Yes. And what made you decided that you wanted to give that up.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 20:29 So I actually started doing wellness in 2003 when my mom got sick, and that's when my whole world shifted. That's when I wanted to find a natural way to help her, to support her, and that's how I started doing neurological repatterning, neuro linguistic programming and Ericksonian hypnosis. Then I went into quantum physics based energy work, and was able to help her and the at the same time, I was working on my career and both her getting, you know, her recovering and getting stronger, and my career taking off, I thought, oh my gosh, like I want to help people do this. I don't want to just use it for myself. I want to help other people do this. So I actually started while I was still modeling, simultaneously teaching and doing sessions for clients, since 2010 and so I've been doing this since then, and now it's, I just want to do it full time. It's just, it's just so fulfilling to be able to support clients through shifts, to create things beyond their wildest dreams, to open up the ease and the flow, to remove the burnout to, you know, to know that anything is possible and that we create our reality, we get to create we, you know, like we're creating an abundance of things every single moment of every single day based on our thoughts. And so we can create an abundance of lack, or we can create an abundance of, you know, happiness and and it's really just not letting anything take our power. So one of the things that shifted in my life as well, too, was when I was able to not let anything ruin my day, not let anyone or anything ruin my day, not that things that weren't going my way ruin my day. I was just gonna say, Okay, well, this is going on. It's happening for me. So now what do I get to do with this? How do I get to transmute this? How do I turn it into something good, or turn it into my superpower? By practicing neutrality, practicing not reacting and creating more fallout that needs to happen. And so whenever things don't go my way. I don't get frustrated about it anymore. I know that it's an opportunity, opportunity for me to practice a new way of being or new way of thinking. And there was one day where everything was just going so wrong, like from the beginning, like big things too, and I didn't let it take my happiness away, and I didn't let myself get down by it. I was like, Well, what can I do instead? How can I transmute this? How can I like when I missed my yoga class, and I'm like, I'm just gonna go home and I'm gonna do it by myself. Nothing is gonna stop me. This is what I desire to do. And that was my, like, favorite day ever. I felt amazing. I got home after the day of all the things that didn't work out, like almost losing a $2,500 camera lens, and by the end of the day, just feeling so good about it. And my son was saying to me, Okay, I'm gonna go check the mailbox. And he went to go check the mailbox. And at the end of the day, after me not letting anything take my freedom. An electric bill came and we opened it up, but it wasn't a bill. It was a refund for $7,200 for some PV panels that we had purchased that we didn't know we were going to be getting a rebate for. And it just showed me that nothing can take my joy, and because of that, I'm not going to slow down the good things that are on their way to me, either. And so it just opens it up. And from that point on there I don't have bad days. I transmute them,   Michael Hingson ** 24:10 yeah? Which? Which is what we all can do, yeah. So how do you transmute them? Though? What? How do you really do that?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 24:19 Well, the one thing that really helps me is realizing that everything is happening for me, everything like everything is happening for me, to help me to learn, to help me to grow, to help me to create my next level of success. And if I look at it that way, I'm not the victim. But if I look at it as the victim like it's happening to me, I have no power. I've given my power to the situation, but if I know that it's happening for me and that I'm unstoppable and I'm resilient and I'm always going to find a way, because I'm never going to give up. So for instance, with that camera lens, I ordered a camera lens that Best Buy was meant to ship me, and I called them because it was a. A week. And they said, Oh, it looks like you actually picked it up from the store. So no one shipping you anything. You got the product already. And I said, No, I didn't there. It was out of stock, and the person that I bought it from ordered it to be shipped to my house. And they said, well, there's nothing we can do on my end. On their end, I have to go to the shop, find the person who sold it to me and talked to them, and so the old me would have reacted, freaked out, created all this necessary Fallout, gone in angry, but now I was like, You know what? It's going to work out. Somehow it's going to work out. I don't know how it's going to work out, but the more calm and neutral I am, the more that I just let it flow, instead of react to this. Somehow it's just going to work out. And if it doesn't, it's just money. Like, it's not my life, it's not the end of the world, it's just money, and I can make more money. And so when I approached it that way, and I went in to talk to them, I wasn't guns blazing, I wasn't, you know, angry, I just came in and I was like, hey, you know, this is a situation. I was wondering if you could help me. And somehow, magically, they were just like, oh yeah, no problem. I can see it. There's an issue, and we'll send you a new one. And then it arrived in a couple days. And so a lot of times it's our reaction that causes the issues. But if you know, sorry, no, go ahead. I was just going to say, if we know that, it's going to work out somehow, because we're never going to give up, nothing is going to break us. Then somehow, magically, it always does.   Michael Hingson ** 26:25 Did they or you have to figure out exactly what really did happen?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 26:31 Nope. And to me, it doesn't really matter, because as long as it works out, I'm just, I'm always taking the next step. I'm always, if something, you know, like I in the beginning, I would launch programs and no one would show up, and it wouldn't matter, I would just keep launching. Or, you know, I heard this one story that completely inspired me about Anthony Robbins, when he first started doing his programs, and he sold his first program out, he rented the the call for it, and not one person bought but it didn't stop him. He said to his four friends, Hey, can I pay you with pizza and soda so that you could sit here for four days so I could teach you my program? Because he knew where he was going, nothing was going to stop him. And so I do the same thing, like I sold a master class here in Hawaii, and most of my networks online. And so one person had showed up, signed up, and I was like, Okay, so maybe do I cancel this? But I just really felt like there was something that was going to happen. If I just teach it, it's going to stretch me, it's going to do something. I just kept showing up and selling it every single day, trying different ways of selling it, not out of scarcity, but out of okay, well, this is the universe or something giving me an opportunity to play, to practice, selling, to have fun with it. And so I did. And you know, the day of, there was still only two people that were going to be there, and I thought, maybe I should cancel it, because I'm going to look like a failure. But then I thought, I don't care what I don't care what people think. If I'm a failure or not, the only part of me that will be bruised is my ego, but I know that I'm so much more than that, and if Anthony Robbins can do that, I can do that. So I'm going to show up and I'm going to teach these people just as powerfully as if there was 100 people there. And so I showed up, and at first nobody was there, and I didn't care, because I didn't care anymore. I knew where I was going to build, but there is traffic and stuff, and then finally, by the end of it, nine people showed up out of the blue, and it was the one of the most amazing master classes that I taught, because I taught it in this new way of thinking, where I had I had overcome my fears of my ego, of failure and people what people Were going to think, because I knew where I was going. I was inspired by Anthony Robbins doing that. And if he can do that and build that, I can do that, you know what I mean. So   Michael Hingson ** 28:50 I do, yeah, I I'm a nosy person, and I would have wanted to try to find out what happened with the with the lens. And the reason I'd want to find out is not to fix blame or anything, but because I figured that's a learning experience too. And I have, I've had situations where it worked out whatever it was, but then I went back and asked, now, how come this happened? And when I and the other people involved figured it out, we all learned from it. But again, it's all about, as you said, not going in with guns blazing. It's not a fixing blame. Yeah, it's really all about understanding, and I think that's the most important thing. So this is all about the fact that you adopted a mindset and you decided that you're going to live that mindset, which makes a lot of sense. Mm, hmm,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 29:50 yeah, it to me. It's all mindset, because nothing is real until you create a story around it, which is why eyewitness, eyewitnesses are. Not reliable sources, because you could have the same situation happen, and people will see different thing Bay things based on the reality that they're looking for. And you know, I've even talking to my brother about childhood memories that are completely different, and I'm like, no so and so didn't say it. This person said it, and this is what happened, and in and he fully has a real, real, real memory of it happening in a completely different way. And so it's just really something happens, and we put a meaning and we put a story on it. And so whatever meaning and story you put on it determines the outcome. And so only thing we can control is the meaning and story that we put on it. So do we want to put a meaning and story that empowers us, or do we want to put a meaning and story that makes us not feel so good? And that's also the other thing that shifted in my life.   Michael Hingson ** 30:51 Yeah, it's all about now, ultimately, you're your own best teacher, and you can empower yourself. Yes. Yes, yes, absolutely. So I am not familiar with but would love to learn what is Ericksonian hypnosis.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 31:07 It's just a type of hypnosis, a different style of how you bring somebody down into the the hypnotic state screen, and then you, then you do programming while they're down in the hypnotic but, yeah, it's just a there's, there's multiple different types of hypnosis, and so that's just one of the types. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:31 I just never heard of of that particular one. I'm familiar with hypnosis and so on, but I wasn't familiar with Eric Sony, and didn't know whether there was something uniquely interesting about that.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 31:42 No, I think it's just the the style got it well,   Michael Hingson ** 31:47 you know, one of the things that we deal with people in general, in general, is we put a lot of our own limitations on ourselves, especially where we don't need to do that. How do we transcend or overcome limitations. One   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 32:02 of the way to do that is to recognize how powerful we are and how powerful our minds are. So a lot of people say that they can't trust, but they trust that they can't trust. They say that they're not confident, but they're confident that they're not confident, a that they don't create their own reality, and so that belief creates the reality that they don't create that reality, right? And so it's just about looking at the beliefs and saying, Do I want to hold on to this story? So a lot of people will come and say, This always happens to me, and I'll ask them, and does it always happen? And they say, No, it doesn't always happen, but this happened, this happened. This happened, this happened. And we'll say, okay, great. You're really good at validating that story. Do you want to keep validating that story, or do you want to start validating the times that it didn't happen? And it goes back to that red car theory, like, if you're driving on the road, how many red cars do you notice that day, versus if you were driving on the road looking for the red cars? How many red cars would you actually notice? And so what are you looking for? Because we're bombarded with billions of bits of information every single second, but we can only take like plus or minus seven every single second based on what we're looking for. So if we're looking for a red car, in reality, we're going to find that red car. If we're looking for a blue car, we're going to find that blue car. So what story are you telling yourself that's no longer serving you, and what story would you desire to tell yourself instead? And I'll give you an example for me, I used to have this belief that I could make a lot of money, but I couldn't hold on to it, because every time I would make the big amount of money, I'd get hit with a bill, or a pipe would burst, or something would happen. And so I kept telling that story, and I recognized that doesn't always happen. Big money's come in and it didn't go out immediately, but I didn't think about those times because I was validating the other story. So once I recognized that, I said, Okay, I'm not going to validate that other story anymore. I'm going to validate the times when I make big money and more money comes in, so that I can then have this belief that I'm building generational wealth. And that's when my finances changed and I started building generational wealth, right? It it's what we're looking for that we are then going to compound over and over and over again.   Michael Hingson ** 34:28 Yeah, again, it's back to mindset. Yes,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 34:32 it's always back to mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 34:36 That's fair. So you talked about, among other things, dealing with quantum physics and so on. Tell me about quantum leaps. So   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 34:43 quantum leaps to me a book. If you've never read this book, it's amazing. It's it's a really thin book called u squared, and the beginning of the book starts out with this fly that's beating its head against the window pane over and over and over again, trying to get out. So. When all it had to do was stop, fly back, look for the door, and fly out of the door. And so that's basically what I was doing. I was like beating my head, trying to force, trying to make these things work, pushing myself to do things that all the shoulds and the have tos, instead of taking a step back, listening to my own knowing my gut, my intuition, my truth, and then that truth being the door that's going to guide me to, you know, where I'm going. The other piece of that is I looked back on my last career, and I saw it from a whole other perspective. I thought it was from all of that pushing, forcing, all of those things, but in hindsight, when I look at it, it was the moments that I was in alignment, trusting my gut, following my intuition, doing the thing that then all of a sudden, out of the blue, this person dropped into my life, or this opportunity dropped into my life, which then quantum leads me into whole new reality. So the first time I ever wanted to teach bank like, corporate workshops, any type of corporate workshops. I knew that I wanted to teach corporate workshops, and so I started, you know, to develop a plan to figure out, like, what kind of corporations would I like to work with to help them to take everything to the next level, to help people to build success and fulfillment at the same time. And I started to think about it, and started to write a few things, and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, I met this CEO, and was starting to talk to him, and he said, Yeah, that would be awesome. Send me a proposal. So I wrote a proposal, and then they loved it, and I did my first corporate workshop. Now to me, that's a quantum leap. It was me being in alignment, knowing where I wanted to go, reprogramming my fears and my doubts. Because at first I'm like, why would a corporation take me seriously? Are they going to think that this stuff is too crazy, too out there? So I had to reprogram myself from those beliefs so that I could actually become the person that could teach the program. And once I reprogrammed all of that, then that person showed up. And because they showed up, I quantum leaped into that reality. Because otherwise I would have had to finish writing the proposal call all the corporate companies that I would want to work with, try and find the person that I wanted to speak with. You know, pitch my proposal to, who knows how many people to then hopefully get my first one. But for me, it was getting in alignment, reprogramming all the beliefs that I wasn't good enough for, then that person to drop in, and then all of a sudden, just start doing workshops. And that's basically how my career, my last career, and this career built. If you look back on your life, it's those moments that things happened, that dropped in, that ended up taking you into a different reality, like those chance encounters, or those chance things that would have happened, right? So it's how do we get in such alignment and reprogram the beliefs that are getting in the way so we could have more of those out of the blue opportunities dropping in faster.   Michael Hingson ** 38:01 It goes back to that same issue of looking for the red car. If you're looking for the red car, yes, you will see it. If you're looking to be able to do the corporate workshops, and you think about what you need to do to make it happen, recognizing that you're good enough, it will happen.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 38:20 Yes, exactly. But most of us never think that. Like, my whole life, I never thought I was good enough, you know. So it was always so much proving pleasing. You know, there's the imposter syndrome of somebody that wants to write a book, but then they're saying, Well, you know, who am I to write a book? But all the people that wrote a book never wrote a book until they wrote their first book, yeah, and so it's just just like letting go of the pressure and the expectation and just, I desire to write a book, so I'm going to write a book and I'm going to put it out in there in the world like everybody else did, every single author like you and your book, you wrote the book. That's the only difference from the people that wrote the book and didn't write the book is that you wrote the book, and you put your passion into it, and then it became, you know, such a massive life changing thing for you and so many people that read that book to hear your story well.   Michael Hingson ** 39:12 And now there are three, which is, which is fun, and you know what? Live like a guide dog. It it really goes along very well with the kinds of things you're talking about, because one of the things that we we advise and try to teach and live like a guide dog, is all about doing self analysis, looking at your your day, every day, at the end of the day, what, what worked, what didn't work, even the stuff that worked, what way might we have done to make it better? And the stuff that didn't work again, not a failure, but rather, what happened, and how do we learn from it so that won't happen again? And the reality is that at the end of the day, when we're falling asleep, we're. We have the time to do that if we really do introspection and and choose to do it. But again, it's a choice, and it's adopting the mindset that says we can do that, and it will help to increase, if you will, the mind muscle. And ultimately, the more of it we do, the less we'll fear about life. Mm,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 40:22 hmm, yes, yes. Because the fear comes from us thinking that we're not going to be able to get through it, that it's going to be so painful, that we're not going to be able to handle it, we're going to be so afraid of the disappointment. And so we don't take the leaps and we get and we just live in fear. But when we recognize our power through knowing that we get to harvest the learnings and that we're going to transmute it. We're going to get through it. We're going to turn it into our superpower. We're going to get stronger all the things we've done in the past, we've already we've gotten through so of course, we're going to get through the next thing. So when you know that you have that power to, like you said, go through the day and say what worked and what doesn't work, and how to make it better the next time, you don't have as much fear of the unknown, because you know you're going to get through it just like you did every other time. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 41:12 and you have to make the decision that it'll work,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 41:20 and then you have to make the decision to not beat yourself up,   Michael Hingson ** 41:22 because then you have the decision to not beat yourself up, right? Yeah, because pain   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 41:27 is inevitable, but suffering is something we create by the story we tell ourselves over and over and over again about the pain. And so if we know that, we're not going to beat ourselves up and create it to be suffering, we're not going to be as scared to take that next leap, because we know we'll get through the pain, and we're not going to turn it into suffering, right?   Michael Hingson ** 41:48 And we know that the pain is there to send us a signal, and we need to learn from that signal. Yes, so much. Yes,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 41:59 I love that.   Michael Hingson ** 42:02 So tell me, what is the difference between creating and achieving? Because I think that there, there really is a difference, and we're talking about both of those here in various ways.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 42:14 Yes. So creating is this playfulness. It's like this is what I desire to create. I know where I want to go. I know this goal that I want to do, and I'm going to create on this journey. I'm going to climb this mountain, and I'm going to take this step every day, and I'm going to enjoy the process of it and look at the flowers, and, you know, maybe hang by the lake for a day and then continue to go up there. But achieving is just achieving is proving pleasing. Achieving, right? It's like, I gotta get to the top of this mountain to prove that I've done this to achieve this thing. And so you rush through the journey. And that's where burnout comes from. So I don't think burnout comes from doing burnout comes from who you are when you're doing it, if you're doing the things, like when I'm doing the things out of creation, and because I love doing it, and because I desire to help people and support people, and bring this into reality, I'm having so much fun doing it, but if I'm doing it to achieve these results, if I'm doing it, because if I don't achieve these results, there's something wrong with me, or I'm a failure, or I'm not good enough, my business isn't good enough, And I'm being judged, and I care about other people's judgments, I will be burnt out, because I'm going to push and I, you know, there's so much emotion and exhaustion around the achieving, and then you're constantly just chasing that carrot, and the carrot always moves, because every time you achieve it, you want to climb the next mountain. And so you don't ever get that fulfillment, because then you're just going to go on to the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing is what I did in my last career. I just kept chasing. Kept saying, I'm going to reach this goal, and I reached that goal, and I'm like, Oh no, I don't have this one. There was, there was no fulfillment on the inside, and it was exhausting.   Michael Hingson ** 43:56 Well, you know, I hear often that people who really like what they do have discovered that it's not a job because they just enjoy doing it so much and and that's ultimately what you're really saying, is it's not a job, and I agree with that. It's we need to decide that we like what we do, and if we truly don't like it, then we should be doing it, or we should look at why we don't like it and deal with that, because it is worth doing. Yes,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 44:29 that is a great example, because when I was building this business, I did a lot of freelance work, and in the beginning I did I did the freelance work so I would have predictable money so that I could build this business the way that I desired to build it, so I wouldn't compromise myself. I wouldn't do it because I just need clients to pay the bills and all of these things. It was my passion project, and so I did the freelance work so I had predictable money to be able to pay my bills. And then this was pure creation of what i. Desired to bring to the world, and how I desired to help my clients. And at first, when I was doing these freelance jobs, I'd be so frustrated while I was there, because I'd be like, Oh, I'm here making this money. And I'm so frustrated because I could be working on my business right now, and I could be making the business grow, but I need this money, right? And my mindset turned it into, every time I did that work, you would just drain me. I'd be I'd leave so exhausted, and then I would go home and not have time to work on my other business because I didn't have energy. Until I recognized this is my choice. How lucky am I that I have this freelance job that I get to do that's bringing in this predictable money so that I get to build my dream business. How grateful I am for this freelance work, that I have this opportunity to work these amount of hours and get paid so well, so that I could build my dream business. So I showed up to those jobs in a different energy. I showed up with pure gratitude that I have that that I get to show up to this job and I'm and to do my best job, because they're giving me this opportunity to build this business. And when I did that, not only did I have more energy, that job started to become really easy, like so before, there was always fires to put out, and there was always drama and everything. But after, I shifted this mindset to gratitude. And I started to just say, How can I serve? How can I be here and be my best self, because I'm grateful for this job. Then all of a sudden I would come on shift, and everything would just work. And like, the dramas would go away, the fires would go away, things would be easy. And then some of the other people would say, I want to be on Jocelyn shift, because whenever she shows up, it's like easy, but that was from gratitude. That was from gratitude, from showing up, you know, wanting to serve. And it shifted my reality. And then I had all this energy, because I felt so good. And sometimes we'd finish early. A lot of times we'd finish early, or the job would be so easy that when I came home, I had energy to work on my business. And then that's how I shifted my business. So it's really the it's not what we do, it's who we are when we're doing it. What are we feeling on the inside that we're then projecting out, that people are then responding to   Michael Hingson ** 47:14 and and the reality is, some of the fires may have still been there, but they're not fires anymore,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 47:21 yes, yes, exactly, exactly, because I perceive them in a different way,   Michael Hingson ** 47:27 right? Exactly, which is the whole point?   47:30 Yes, yes, I love that. So   Michael Hingson ** 47:33 how do we get people to recognize when they're experiencing burnout, much less. How do we get them to change their mindset, to eliminate the burnout process?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 47:49 It just comes from their choice. It comes from their choice to to decide how they desire to see it. So, I mean, a lot of it, too comes from reprogramming. So, I mean, that's what I do in my programs, right? Is that if there are with burnout, we just discover where is it coming from? Like, is it coming from the pushing, the pleasing, achieving, the not being good enough, the worried what people are going to think, the failure, like all the stuff, the hoping that it's going to work out, afraid that it's not going to work out, because that's all the stuff that we leak our energy to. Once we discover what that is and we reprogram it so you don't have that you can just do it as a task. You show up and you do a task. One of my NLP teachers told me something that was so powerful, which was he said that the best, best basketball player in the world also has the highest amount of missed shots in the world, and that's why he's the best basketball player, because he just takes the shot. He doesn't beat himself up every single time he takes the shot. He's just taking a shot and a shot and a shot and a shot and a shot. He's playing to win. He's not playing not to lose. And so there's a difference in that energy. And so once you discover what that is, you get to then shift your mindset. So we it's very it's, it's quite easy to kind of find where the triggers are coming from. It's like, where are you getting pissed off? Where are you getting frustrated? Right? Like, those are the triggers. Then it's about, how do we then remove the triggers with whatever tool that you have, with mindset, with reprogramming, with hypnosis, with quantum physics, like whatever it's going to be, podcasts, listening to these things to come up with a new story, and then the resilience to create that new story to be your new story. So every time it doesn't go the way that you had planned, not getting caught up in saying, Oh, see it happened again, saying, okay, oh well, I'm not fully in that new programming yet, and so it's still showing up a little bit. But how do I harvest the learnings? And then how do I pivot? And then how do I do something different? And you just keep doing that until your reality eventually shifts. This   Michael Hingson ** 49:56 is so freaky. The other day, it was like yesterday, or. Monday or Sunday. I can't remember which day, but I was thinking about basketball players and some of the really famous, good basketball players, and thinking, why are they such horrible free throw shooters? And why are they in a in a sense, why is there a percentage what it is, and I came to the same conclusion that you talked about, but it's just kind of funny that the discussion in my brain was there and now, here it is again. But it's true. It's all about being willing to take the shot and   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 50:34 just taking the shot and not putting the meaning on it. It's when we put the meaning on it that it exhausts us. If you think about taking a shot, it's fine, but the minute you think about taking the shot, but hoping you're going to make it or not going to make it, because what are people going to think and what is that going to mean about you, and all that other stuff, all of a sudden it becomes a big ball of energy that you're leaking instead of I'm just taking the shot, because I know I'm going to get in, I'm going to get one in. So the more shots I take, you know, like Disney, he got rejected 33 times before the 34th time he got the loan. But if he just every single time, like, you know, gave up, we would not have what we have. But he just kept going in and doing it. And if you know that on the 34th time you're going to get accepted. How fast would you keep going back to banks and saying, Hey, until you get the loan right?   Michael Hingson ** 51:27 Well, and the issue with the shots, every time you take a shot and miss, if you're taking the shot, to continue to take the shot, as opposed to this one has to be the one to go in. You're also, I think, subconsciously, studying, well, why didn't that shot go in? What do I learn? Because this shot didn't go in, or the next one goes in, why did that one go in? What do I do to replicate that and become more effective?   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 52:00 Yeah. How do I harvest the learnings and pivot and do it better next time? Yeah? And if you just focus on the solution versus the problem, you'll get there, right? Yeah, okay, well, and the more that you get it in, you know what that feels like. So you get to replicate that again next time, right? And the more that you don't, then you find, like Edison said, he found 1000 he didn't fail. He found 1000 different ways how not to   Michael Hingson ** 52:28 do something right.   52:30 Exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 52:33 You know it is, it is so true, and it's all about that's why I continue to say there's no such thing as failure. The other thing I used to say about myself because I like to listen to my speeches. I record them and listen to them, and I do it because I want to learn what what worked, what didn't work. How can I do this better? And I always used to say, I'm my own worst critic. But I always thought that was a negative sort of thing, and literally only within about the last 14 or 15 months have I started to say, in reality, I'm my own best teacher. It's a much more positive and open way of doing it, and it makes listening all that much more fun and exciting. By the way,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 53:14 I love that, and that's the creating versus achieving, right? Like, that's the different energy. Tweak that when you're doing it now you enjoy it versus before you were beating yourself up, right,   Michael Hingson ** 53:26 right? Very much. So yeah, and that's, of course, the issue. So you, you've you continue to celebrate the fact that you were a model, and now you've gone on to a different life, and you're continuing to create and enhance that life. How do you how do you deal with both of those lives? You You really have adopted this celebration right across the board? I think,   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 53:57 yeah, I don't see it as different parts of, I mean, I just see them all as different, like, it's just a different   Michael Hingson ** 54:04 chapter. It's progressing, right? Yeah, and that's what I thought after   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 54:07 was each chapter was exactly what it was, and it was so amazing, and I and, and the next chapter gets to be more amazing, and the next chapter gets to be more amazing, and because it's an evolution over your entire lifetime. And so you just keep evolving. You know, there's a post out there about, I can't remember the ages, but like all these people that open businesses in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, Walmart and, you know, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and all these different companies that didn't actually like they didn't create it. They tried. They were creating things, but it didn't hit until later in the years. And most people think, Oh, we get to this age, we retire. We're done. But that's not true. We get to keep creating our entire life. We get to keep evolving our entire life. We get to keep climbing more mountains. I've climbed that mountain that was awesome. Now. Me climb this mountain, not because I have to, not because I need to prove myself, but because I get to, right. If you can shift your words from need, have, should to I get to that is the difference between creating and achieving. It's like I get to do this, like I get to show up. I used to when I was starting this new business. I used to not like social media at all, and I just wish that I could just have clients and coach and mentor, because that's all I love to do. I didn't like to, you know, do the marketing and do the social media and do all the rest of the stuff. I was just like, I wish I could just receive clients and coach and mentor, because that's what I love, and that's my passion. And then I realized I can't do that. I can go work for a corporate company, and I can do that, but I don't have time freedom to be with my child. I don't have I'm Max capped out about how much I can earn or create because I'm working for someone else, or I can go off on my own. And I get to get good at marketing. I get to get good at social media. I get to get good at all the other things, as well as getting good at getting better at coaching and mentoring, so that I can be my own boss, that so that I can be with my child and travel and take him and work from my computer around the world, so that I can do speaking engagements around the world, and that I can build this business as big as I desire, the way that I desire. So everything then became a get to so then when I showed up for social media, I was excited for it, versus like, Oh, this is so frustrating. I wish this wasn't part of my job. So you, once you shift the get oh, everything opens up, and then everything starts working as well, because your energy opens up and we get to learn, yes, exactly, we get to learn and now, now in a lot of different things, thanks to that,   Michael Hingson ** 56:51 there you are, right, exactly, which makes a whole lot of sense. Changing your belief really changes your life, changing your mindset and looking for that open way to allow you to deal with all the things that come along, can they get to, as opposed to have to way certainly just enhances your whole outlook.   Jocelyn Sandstrom ** 57:16 Yes, absolutely, yeah. And it can change overnight. If you can just look at everything in your life that you're grateful for, that you a younger version of you dreamed about, that you now have in your life, even your phone, your computer like you wanted that now you have it, but you take it for granted until you lose it, and then you don't appreciate it till you get it back. And you're like, Oh, I love it so much, right? Like, if we just shift from looking from everything that's wrong with our life to everything that's incredible, we get to be full of gratitude while we're creating our next level that frequency, gratitude is this most powerful frequency. It opens synchronicity. It helps you to become magnetized, so that people are then magnetized to you. If you think about going into a shop and there's like, this grumpy person who's complaining all the time, versus this, like charismatic, happy, loving life, loving life, salesperson, which one are you going to be attracted to working with, you're going to be attracted to working with the one that looks for the positive outcome, that doesn't see limitations, that sees ways to transcend them. You know, that's not complaining about all the things that are going wrong, but showing you what could go right instead. And so then your business opens up as well. Because you're magnetized, you start meeting people that want to come and talk to you, you know, like you could be in a restaurant, and you're just drawn to looking at someone that walks into the room and you don't know why, you don't know who they are, what they do, you just there something about their energy draws you to them, and it's that energy that becomes their calling card. And so when you are in this gratitude and this loving of life and not seeing limitations. You just see opportunities to grow. You become magnetized. People want to be around that. People are inspired by that. So now you start attracting opportunities into your life, instead of, you know, trying to force and push and chase them. And it goes back to the saying that I absolutely love, which is, instead of chasing butterflies, build your own garden, so the butterflies come to you. Yeah, so, and it's also like that other saying that the grass is always greener on the other side, until you start watering your own grass. Like those two sayings completely changed my life. Yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 59:38 Well, you know, I, when I was growing up, I lived about 55 miles west of here in a town called Palmdale, and I now live in Victorville. But when I was growing up, I described Victorville as compared to Palmdale that only had like about 2700 people. I described Victorville as not even a speck on a race. Our scope compared to Palmdale. I never imagined myself once I moved away, moving back to Victorville or to this whole area, but my wife became ill with double pneumonia in 2014 she recovered from that. Family started saying, you really ought to move down c

Send us a textIn this conversation, Bob Sorrentino interviews Paula Gambarota, an associate professor at Rutgers University, about her Italian roots, family history, and the impact of immigration on identity. They discuss the historical context of American Naples during WWII, and personal stories from that era. Paula shares her research on the occupation of Naples and her future projects, emphasizing the importance of community engagement and storytelling.Turnkey. The only thing you'll lift are your spirits.Support the showPurchase my book "Farmers and Nobles" here or at Amazon.

Brainfluence host Roger Dooley sits down with marketing thought leader and bestselling author Mark Schaefer, who returns to the show with insights from his latest book, Audacious. Mark shares his unique approach to writing—how each of his books is inspired by real problems facing marketers—and discusses the existential challenges and opportunities posed by AI-driven marketing. Discover how both brands and individuals can stand out in an age of overwhelming content, why out-humaning AI is the key to survival, and what it means to be “audacious” in a world often dominated by the dull and predictable. From tangible examples, like the unforgettable fiberglass pig in a barbecue joint and Liquid Death's disruptive branding, to innovative uses of AI and QR codes, Mark offers practical strategies for earning attention, regardless of budget. He also tackles the importance of organizational culture, the role of fear in stifling creativity, and the critical connection between personal branding and professional audacity. Whether you're a marketer, entrepreneur, or just hungry for the latest thinking on breaking through the noise, this episode is packed with inspiration and actionable advice you won't want to miss. Audacious on Amazon - https://amzn.to/4k55iqp Connect with Mark:  Website - https://businessesgrow.com/ X - https://x.com/markwschaefer LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markwschaefer Show notes, audio, text, links - https://www.rogerdooley.com/audacious-mark-schaefer/ Connect with Roger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dooley/  Website: https://www.rogerdooley.com Mark W. Schaefer is a globally recognized keynote speaker, educator, business consultant, and bestselling author of ten books. With over 30 years of experience in global sales, PR, and marketing, he serves as the Executive Director of Schaefer Marketing Solutions and holds faculty positions at Rutgers University and the University of Tennessee. Known for insightful and practical books like Audacious, which addresses navigating the AI world, and KNOWN, considered the world's number one book on personal branding, his work is used as textbooks at over 70 universities and translated into 15 languages. Schaefer's blog {grow} is hailed as one of the top marketing blogs in the world, and he is the founder and co-host of The Marketing Companion, one of the top 10 marketing podcasts. He consults for diverse clients from successful start-ups to global brands. His work often focuses on helping marketers rise above the noise by emphasizing humanity and finding ways to stand out in the digital age and amidst the rise of AI.

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us. Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013. Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that's everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post. Daniel Moran's writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/politics-and-polemics

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us. Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013. Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that's everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post. Daniel Moran's writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In April of 1975, Communists succeeded in overwhelming their enemies to take over Vietnam. The last major city to fall was Saigon. That event is one of those historic times many remember who lived through it as well as those of us who only experienced it through Television and newspapers. Our guest today, Miki Nguyen, was six and a half years old when he and his family escaped from Saigon on a Chinook Helicopter piloted by his father.   Miki willingly tells us his story and that of his family who all escaped and came to America. Miki tells us of his growing up in a new land and how he eventually was given the opportunity to bring his father's story to life. Miki's dad wanted to write a book about what happened in 1975 as well as describing his life. He passed ten years ago and was unable to publish his book. Last year, Miki found his father's writings and undertook to bring his father's story to life. The book is entitled “The Last Flight Out”.   As Miki tells us the story of his family's flight from Saigon he also provides pictorial representations of what happened. If you watch this episode on YouTube you will get to see those pictures.   Personally, I can relate to Miki's story as in so many ways it parallels my own experiences on September 11, 2001. I hope you like and learn much from this week's episode. Let me know your thoughts please.       About the Guest:   Miki Nguyen is a storyteller dedicated to preserving the legacy of his father, Lieutenant Colonel Ba Van Nguyen, a heroic figure whose daring escape from Saigon during the Fall of Vietnam in 1975 was immortalized in the 2015 Oscar-nominated documentary Last Days in Vietnam. As the son of a South Vietnamese Air Force officer, Miki's life has been shaped by his family's extraordinary journey from the chaos of war to rebuilding their lives in America. Today, he shares stories of courage, sacrifice, and resilience in his late father's memoir "The Last Flight Out" to commemorate 50 years since the Fall of Saigon. Born into a world of upheaval, Miki witnessed firsthand the harrowing final days of the Vietnam War as a child, fleeing Saigon with his family in a dramatic helicopter evacuation to the USS Kirk. His father's bravery under fire and unwavering commitment to saving loved ones left an indelible mark on Miki, inspiring him to compile and share his father's stories decades later. Through The Last Flight Out, Miki bridges the past and present, offering readers an intimate glimpse into the sacrifices of war, the challenges of resettlement, and the quiet strength of his mother, Nho Nguyen, who anchored the family through unimaginable adversity. As a speaker, Miki captivates audiences with a narrative that transcends history, weaving universal themes of resilience, cultural identity, and leadership into his talks. Whether addressing corporate teams, educational institutions, on Podcasts, or cultural organizations, he draws parallels between his family's journey and modern-day challenges, emphasizing the power of hope and community in overcoming obstacles. His presentations, enriched with archival photos and personal anecdotes, resonate deeply with veterans, immigrants, and anyone seeking inspiration to navigate life's uncertainties. Miki is committed to amplifying his father's legacy and honoring the courageous individuals who shaped his family's journey—from Captain Paul Jacobs and the USS Kirk crew, whose heroism ensured their evacuation during Saigon's fall, to the Lutheran church members in Seattle who provided sanctuary and support as they rebuilt their lives in America. Through the memoir, speaking engagements, and other partnerships, Miki invites audiences to reflect on these unsung stories of courage and resilience while embracing a future defined by empathy and unity. Ways to connect Miki:   Email: mdn425@gmail.com / miki@nguyenvanba.com Website: https://nguyenvanba.com/miki/ Instagram: instagram.com/last.flight.out.nvb/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikinguyen44   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello everyone. Once again. Wherever you happen to be, I am your host, Mike Hingson, and you are listening to Unstoppable Mindset, mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and as we've defined unexpected here on the podcast, it's anything that has to do with anything other than inclusion and diversity. A few weeks ago, I got an email from a friend of mine and someone I work with at yesterday usa.net it's a radio station that plays old radio shows all day, and anyway, Walden Hughes, who we really need to get on this podcast as well. Told me about Miki when, because Miki expressed, or Walden has expressed an interest in having Miki on yesterday USA, and Miki had an interesting story, and has an interesting story to tell, and I thought that it would be fun to bring him on to unstoppable mindset, because his father and family were basically, if you will, as you will hear on the last flight out of Saigon in Vietnam when that war ended in 1975 so that's 50 years ago. Anyway, Miki generously agreed to come on. And so here we are. So Miki, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Really appreciate it and looking forward to having a chance to chat.   Miki Ngyuen ** 02:47 Yeah, thank you, Michael, just really honored and appreciate the opportunity to be on your platform and to share with you in your audience, my father and my family story. The this is a story that has been told around the dinner table for many, many years. And as we are here now in early 2025 this marks, this will mark at the end of April here, coming up the 50 year remembrance, as you noted, the the fall of Saigon and so yeah, again, just really happy to be here. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 03:27 let's start as I love to do, and I know it kind of is part of the story, but tell us a little about kind of the early Miki growing up and and things that you might want to talk about from childhood and so on.   Miki Ngyuen ** 03:38 Yeah, I we in at the end of April, 1975 I was six and a half years old, and so, to answer your question, I grew up on a military base, basically my dad towards the end there, Lieutenant Colonel was a pilot for the south of Vietnamese Air Force, and he flew various Chinooks. The the one that we're referencing here is the the Chinook helicopter, CH 47 and so this is young childhood for me, growing up on the barracks, the oldest of three, three kids, brother Mecca and baby sister Mina. And this was a childhood where very curious about things the world around me, on the barracks, there were a lot of heavy artillery. And one story, my mom would sure it's a kid dragging home a box of of ammunition, just to say, you know, Hey, Mom, look what I found laying around. So this was a. In early childhood, growing up during a a war torn country back in those days,   Michael Hingson ** 05:07 yeah, certainly couldn't have been easy to do. So, what schooling did you have while you were still in Vietnam?   Miki Ngyuen ** 05:14 Oh, this is six, six and a half, just kind regarding kindergarten. Yeah, pretty, pretty much. So the Vietnamese that I was able to learn, you know, was just talking with parents, mom and dad, early kindergarten schooling. But otherwise, my Vietnamese now as an adult is not as strong as I would like it to be, but you know the reality of coming to America at six and a half seven. Grew up post war all American high school, so yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 05:53 now were your parents from Vietnam originally? Yes, yes. Okay, so it it had to be tough for you, and it had to really be tough for them, and I'm sure that they were worried about you and your brother and sister a lot and and dealing with all the things that you all had to deal with, that had to really be a challenge. Did they as as you were growing up in America and so on. Did they talk about, or want to talk much about, what your what your life was like, your heritage and so on, from Vietnam?   Miki Ngyuen ** 06:31 No, absolutely. It was my my father, my mom's philosophy, to always continue to keep our culture and our heritage and the things that you know was good about our culture, the Vietnamese culture, and to continue it forward while living, trying to assimilate and live here in in the United States. So growing up, it was straddling of both cultures, both Western and the Vietnamese Eastern culture as well, during our upbringing. And so it continues to be strong today, where for my own kids, you know, we continue to celebrate and our Vietnamese heritage and culture. Although American Vietnamese, I hold a US passport. My blood still runs with a lot of the Vietnamese culture that was raised on. It's   Michael Hingson ** 07:32 an interesting paradox, or paradox is probably the wrong word to use, but you have an interesting dichotomy you have to deal with. You're from Vietnam, you embrace the Vietnamese culture, but you live in America, and unfortunately, in our society today, we have a government that has been pushing so much on anything that isn't really American, isn't really American. And how do you how do you deal with that? What do you think about that, that whole concept, and that, ultimately, there are those who would say, well, you're you're not American because you didn't come from here, and that's a frustrating thing. But I'd be curious to get your thought, well, it's   Miki Ngyuen ** 08:17 to say it's a it's the same conversation as you know, the Ellis Island story, right? The only, the only folks that I would say that can claim that they're here with Native Americans, everybody else migrated either east or west, from Europe or from Asia or from the Middle East or Africa to get here. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 08:36 Yeah, it is. And from, from my thoughts and perspective, it's, it's a joy that you, you have two cultures to be able to celebrate and and work with, which gives you a broader perspective on the world as a whole. I grew up in America. I didn't really do a great job of learning foreign languages, although I took High School German and I learned some Spanish, and I actually took a year of Japanese in college. But still, my whole grounding is is in America, but I do love to go to other countries and see and get to experience other cultures, even though I know I don't live there, but I, and I do come back here, but I, but I think that what you bring is a great perspective for people to understand a whole part of the world that's different than what they're used To, which is a good thing.   Miki Ngyuen ** 09:41 Well, that's why they, they call America the great melting pot, right? We bring, we want to, we want to bring our best. We, you know, there can be conversations around refugees and immigration stories here and there, but. I think for the most part, you know, diverse cultures, different folks coming from other parts of the you know, we contributed to America, whether it be through bringing, you know, food or arts or ideologies, and that's what makes America, you know, strong, is just people bringing their best here. And sure, there's going to be negatives here and there. But you know, if we're come from a place of goodness, a place of positivity and working with each other. I think the spirit of America and the spirit of the great melting pot here can can continue to flourish and be strong from that standpoint. And   Michael Hingson ** 10:52 I and I think it absolutely is exactly what you said. It's the melting pot, it's the spirit, and that's what we need to remember, because that is what has always made this country so great, and will continue to, no matter what some may say. And I'm glad that we we have the the depth of overall culture, which really is made up of so many other cultures. When you got to America, what was it like then going to school here and finishing your growing up period here?   Miki Ngyuen ** 11:30 It was a, I don't want to use the word struggle. My parents struggled more. But for myself coming to the US here it was quickly to assimilate, you know, that's the word that just simply out of survival, simply out of just making friends and keeping the friends that, you know, I had growing up in first grade and second grade and so on. And growing up in the mid 70s here looking different than the rest of the white kids, you know, in elementary school, I got called all sorts of racial names, and so I know on your, you know, with your your message of disability, and   Miki Ngyuen ** 12:25 functioning in, you know, I had my own struggles as well in terms of just being different, you know, then, then the next kid in elementary school. So, but we learned to adapt, we learned to maneuver, and we learned to communicate and develop social skills to blend in, and again, that word assimilate, just to survive. So   Michael Hingson ** 12:51 where did you Where did you all settle once you got to the US? Where did you go to school? Oh,   Miki Ngyuen ** 12:58 so we're located here on the outskirts of Seattle, suburbs of Seattle area, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 13:06 I remember when so many people were coming over and from Vietnam, and they had some refugee encampments for A while. I was contacted by a church group, because at a local area near where I was attending college at the University of California at Irvine, there was such a place, and there was a blind person there, and they wanted to get this person, that was a young man, to meet blind people. So I went out. We even brought him a transistor radio. He didn't speak great English, but we were able to communicate. And that was probably the closest I came to dealing with, in a sense, all the things that all of you dealt with. So I but I do understand we as a collective society, sometimes don't really deal with difference as well as we ought to we we don't recognize that the very fact that we have some things that are difference is what makes us stronger when we embrace the fact that everyone has their own set of gifts and challenge and challenges to deal with, right? Exactly,   Miki Ngyuen ** 14:22 yeah, exactly. The just to provide more context, yeah, the there was a church across the crest, Lutheran Church here in Bellevue, out about 30 minutes from Seattle, that sponsored our family and yeah, that's how that's how we we ended up here in the story of my father and my my family was no the only thing different, because during the. April, end of April timeframe in 1975 the communists finally took over, as many of your audience know, you know, Saigon and the rest of Vietnam, and we had to, we had to get the heck out of there, because if my dad would have gotten captured by the communists, he would have been set in jail for a long time. And so our, our or worse, yes, exactly or worse, our, our family story is no different than anybody else's refugee boat people story coming out of Vietnam. The only difference was what my dad did as a pilot, what he did to to rescue our family and his crew's family and the maneuver that he executed at sea with a large Chinook helicopter, so much that it was was honored 10 years ago to share the same story with in an Oscar nominated film last year in Vietnam, written and produced by Rory Kennedy, and so there are so many, there's so many other Vietnamese refugee stories, but this one was, was our particular family story, and it's the story of my father's bravery, courage, our family's resiliency, among other various leadership kinds of themes. So that's, that's the premise of things.   Michael Hingson ** 16:27 Yeah, I understand. Well, what, what did you say you went to college? Where'd you go   Miki Ngyuen ** 16:35 to? Studied engineering at the University of Washington here in the Seattle area,   Michael Hingson ** 16:42 didn't, didn't try to help the basketball team, huh? Just, just checking, no, it's   16:50 too short for basketball, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 16:52 Well, you know. And of course, in in the March, April, time frame of every year, we have March Madness, which is really crazy. I was disappointed to see Gonzaga get out of it so quickly. But oh well, of course, most people don't even know where Gonzaga is. I actually had the the lovely opportunity to speak there once, so it was kind of fun. So I've been there so anyway, well, so you went off and studied in engineering, and that's what you did after college.   Miki Ngyuen ** 17:23 No, I after college, I was an engineer for a couple years, and then pivoted over into the marketing side of things and focused in in technology. I mean, from your background, you also, you know, did sales, especially with your story 20 plus years ago, worked in technology sales, and your involvement with a tech company today accessible. So yeah, that's, that's, yeah, that's my. My background is tech marketing,   Michael Hingson ** 17:55 well, and I started out doing tech stuff, helping to work in the development of the original reading machine for the blind that Ray Kurzweil developed, but that ended up going into sales for a variety of reasons. So I appreciate where you're coming from and and feel a lot for the kinds of experiences that you've had. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about what happened with your father, and the whole, the whole story of the escape, the last flight out, flying out with the Chinook and all that that happened. Oh   Miki Ngyuen ** 18:32 yes, so let's, let's get into let me go ahead and share the some pictures here. And I, as I told you, for you know, pictures worth 1000 words and but I'll narrate it in such a way that all audiences can can get into the the whole story. So this was, this was a moment again. This is a family story that was shared around the dinner table for many, many years post 1975 and I'm sharing the story through the lens of a six and a half year old boy experiencing what I saw and what I what I went through, and the picture that we're showing here on the First slide here is just images of my father, Bob van win, who, in the early, early 60s, got an opportunity after college to test and train to and finally got admitted into the the Air Force. And in the mid 60s, got an opportunity to come to Fort Rucker and study and fly helicopters, and came to America again in 69 to for additional training. And so my father grew up, family, grandmother, education was of utmost important. Importance, as well as family and community. And so towards the towards and the next slide I'm showing here is towards April 29 1975 we see iconic images in time, Life magazine, in the media here in the US, images of the Communists the North tanks rolling into Saigon and overtaking the city. And in the film, the documentary, again last season Vietnam, we see images. We see video clips of folks trying to get into the US Embassy to get access to a helicopter to get out of there, because folks, people that were serving working with American or the American personnel, anybody that was involved in the south fighting against communism would, have, you know, been in jail or put into, you know, a tough situation post war, if they gotten captured. And so we see a mass chaos, mass exodus trying to get out of of the city there. And so it was my my dad's knew that had he stayed and not figured things out, he would have been either killed or put in jail for a long time, and so he, at this point, waited out for orders from his commanding officers and his leadership at all of the top brass took off with their family trying to figure out how to get out themselves. And my dad, with the Chinook, went and picked up our family in at this moment in time of mom, myself, brother and sister, we were at my grandma's house. Uh, we've been there for about a couple weeks to get out of the the military base that we were on, and at Grandma's house. I remember the night before, my dad coming to get us a bombing and machine guns rattling around the neighborhood and around the city there. So it was pretty tense for our family at that time, my dad with the helicopter, Chinook helicopter in I'm sure you and your in the audience, you driving down the road or over, flying over your house, you hear a Chinook. Is very thunderous of and so it's a big equipment, big, big aircraft. And what he did was land at the Chinook in front of my grandma's house play a play field, and blew, you know, a lot of the roofs and commotion, and folks around the neighborhood were just surprised. You know of this helicopter landing in the middle of the middle, middle of sea.   Michael Hingson ** 23:22 Did you know that he was coming? Yes,   Miki Ngyuen ** 23:25 my dad had told my mom the days earlier that I'll be coming to get you. We'll figure this out, because at this moment in time, there's probably no way that we're going to survive the the Communists were coming and get ready. Get, you know, pack the bags, get get things ready and but we didn't know that he would come in in such a way. We figured maybe he would come in a vehicle, the military vehicle, to come in and get us. But he actually came with a with the with the Chinook, and landed right in front of the right in front of the house.   Michael Hingson ** 23:58 How many people was the Chinook hold. Well, at this time, in front   Miki Ngyuen ** 24:02 of my grandson, just our immediate family and but it would hold a lot of folks, a lot of folks. And towards the towards later on, we'll get to that point. But towards it we had like about 1715, 1617, people, crew member, their their girlfriends and family in in the in the helicopter. Yeah, that was what I was wondering,   Michael Hingson ** 24:28 because you said it was big. So I was just trying to get a perspective on what big really meant. And that's why I asked how many people it would hold. Oh,   Miki Ngyuen ** 24:36 yeah, understood, yeah. So the Chinook is probably, it is probably the largest helicopter in the, you know, the fleet of helicopters Arsenal so but he landed hatch opens up on the back, and the Chinook as a is a double, double, uh. Uh, a rotor, double prop helicopter. And family ran to the back of the the helicopter. They closed the hatch up, and my my father, accelerated, you know, the the engines and lifted up and out of, out of the area there. And the thinking was to rendezvous up with a few other of his squadron crew members and to head further south of the hot zone, Saigon, and to load up on the food and ration and gas so that we would continue further south and maybe perhaps lay low, find an island to just figure out what to do next, from that standpoint, and that's that's where We actually did was, along with our family, he had co pilot, and he had his gunner and the mechanic in their, you know, their their family members or girlfriends in the in the Chinook, once we loaded up On, on all of the, the food and everything fuel lifted up and out. And at the same time, he heard my father continued to monitor the the the radio communication. And he heard that there were US Navy, US ships out in the Pacific, now out east in the Pacific. And so he figured, we'll take a risk and head in in that direction, towards the the ocean there, and he didn't know exactly, you know, the exact GPS location, or the exact whereabouts of it, particularly, just headed out there blind and trying to find whatever option he could find. And out in the distant there, he sees a ship. And he goes, Well, this is my first chance. I'm going to go approach it and see if I'm able to land on it or figure out what to do next from there. And so heads in that direction. And we see, he sees a a uh, what we know now today is the frigate, and it wasn't, it was too small. It wasn't big enough to, you know, it wasn't like a an aircraft carrier, where you can actually land on it. And so the the next slide that I'm showing here, basically, as he approaches this, this ship, the crewman below, the US Navy crewman below was waving him like, you know, waving him away. Don't, don't, don't come here. You're simply you're too big. There's no way that you can land on on this ship. And so he kept circling the ship eventually found out the name of the ship was named the USS Kirk, and the captain was Captain Paul Jacobs. And my father continued to circle and figure out some way to, you know, ask for help. And we see in the one of the images here, that on the port side, the left side of the of the Chinook, my my mom holding up eight month old baby onto the the window part to let the crew in below know that, hey, we're not, you know, we're, we're we got kids, we got family on here. We need, we need help. And so eventually, what my dad was able to speak with the captain below, and both the captain and my father were able to coordinate the next step here, and which was to allow my father to hover right next to right behind the ship the stern to allow folks to to exit the helicopter. But prior to that, the slide that I'm showing here shows many other Vietnamese pilots and their families with smaller, smaller helicopters, the Huey helicopters landing, able to land on on the deck. And after they land, they would push the smaller helicopters over to into the ocean. And the continuing to do that as more families came on on, you know, was able to land. Uh, the next slide I'm showing here is the actual Captain Paul Jacobs throughout, throughout this whole narrative, my father is, is, is the person that my father's my hero. But there are other heroes throughout this whole story as well, and one of those I want to acknowledge is Captain Paul Jacobs, where we see in this image here, he was on the deck. He he wasn't in the command tower, directing, telling his, you know, crew, what to do. He was actually on the deck helping with his crew members, pushing and telling folks, as well as himself, jumping in and pushing smaller helicopters over the the side, making room for to clear, clear the the ship's deck. And so he's an outstanding individual, a hero in my book as well. And so once the deck was clear enough so that my dad was able to hover, what he did was basically fly the Chinook horizontal backwards to maintain the same steady high height, as well as a safe distance away from from the USS Kirk. And we found out later on that the this particular ship of frigate was a submarine destroyer. So it had all of the high tech equipment back, sonars, radars, all of the antenna and so it's very my father's had to be very careful in terms of how close he could have gotten, how close he could get to keeping the the distance as well as allowing folks to to jump down. And that's that's what we did. He kept it steady. And he was hovering about 1315, feet above the deck, and tells the co pilot to open up the starboard door and so that we would have access to jump. The picture that I'm showing you here is an illustration by Adam colts showing myself my mom, family members crews jumping from this Chinook down onto many of the crew members below, catching us as we as we exited. We also have an illustration from that I clipped out from the New York Times doing an illustration of my mom dropping a baby sister onto the crew, the crewmen below, and many years later, many years later on, at a reunion with the crew member and the captain of the USS Kirk, one of the men below, Kent Chipman, introduced himself to us as one of the sailors below catching us. It was like you described as, like catching a a basketball coming out of the the helicopter. And so once everybody exited out, he my father told the co pilot to make sure that everybody safely gotten out, make sure that everybody had cleared the the rear of the helicopter, and then he finally told the the co pilot to go ahead and and jump himself now onto the deck. And so I remember, it's the last thing I remember as a six and a half year old boy who was being ushered inside, inside the the ship. They didn't want any kids running around on the deck. Yeah. And the last thing that we see, you know, is seeing my father hovering away from the ship. Now is just him by himself at this point in this large helicopter.   Miki Ngyuen ** 34:04 So it wasn't, it wasn't until, it wasn't until maybe, like half hour later that we we see my father again. But from from, from the point where he had to hover. After everybody jumped off the helicopter. He hovered away from the the ship. And at this point there was, you know, the only option here was to get a remove himself from from the helicopter. He wasn't going to go back to land or go back to the city. His family was on the ship now, and he need to be with his family. And so what he did was take the Chinook about 100 yards away from the ship, and hovered above the water, and at that point, kept the helicopter steady, and while at the same time taking off his.   Miki Ngyuen ** 45:00 Did the heavy lifting 100% they in so many ways, in terms of when we talk about a challenge or an obstacle, they had my mom had to learn a completely new, different language, had to start all over again, not knowing exactly what their future was going to be, but at the same time, you know the freedom, the freedom in America and what America represented was just an opportunity that they knew that even though it was a struggle as a challenge to re readapt, to assimilate, learn a new language, find a new career, it was still a lot better than the other option, yeah. And then to answer your question, as for me, as a six, six and a half year old boy, or six, yeah, seven year old boy, you're right. It was, it was more of an adventure than it was anything in terms of fear, because, again, as I said, my mom and dad took the burden of all of that paved the way for myself, brother and sister, but throughout my life, up to that point, it was just an adventure to jump off from the helicopter was, to me, like jumping, you know, playing around a tree, jumping off a tree. But for my mom, who had to take the courage to drop a baby, her baby from from an airplane, and the fear of change, the anxiety of of in the struggle of war and everything else at a different at a different level that my hat's off to both my parents from that time.   Michael Hingson ** 46:57 I'm sure that, in a sense, while things were happening, your mom didn't analyze it. And think about the time of war, she did what she had to do, and your father did what they had to do. And then after the fact, they obviously thought back about it and and probably had times of going, Wow, what? What did we do? And not in a regretful way, but at the time something is happening, you do what you have to do, and then you think about it later. And I guess for you, when did all of this really become real and a story? Well, not a story worth telling, but when did it really emotionally all sink into you, what really happened? Because that had to happen, obviously, later than that night   Miki Ngyuen ** 47:48 it it became super, super real for me. 2009 window discovered, again from mister Jan Herman, finding my father's story and sharing with us the pictures from the US Navy. Yeah, because, because, up to that point, from 1975 up to 2009 this was a story that I grew up throughout my life and experienced a bit of it jumping, but the the things that my father shared in terms of doing the ditch maneuver and growing up as a boy, listening to him talk with his buddies around the dinner table. Or when they would have reunions, they would my, you know, I would be, you know, seen and not heard, type of a family situation, just, you know, listening into my father's conversation with his his buddies, hearing, hearing about it, and then finally, seeing pictures from the US Navy in 2009 that was when it really, really kicked in. Because as a kid growing up, I would share these stories. Friends would ask me, how'd you come you know, where are you from, and how did you get here? And I would share, you know, how we got to America and escape from escape from Vietnam. But it didn't really hit until 2009 once we actually saw the images that my dad was, he was, he did what he said, and we got pictures to prove it. So, yeah, yeah. And I want to touch upon the thing they mentioned a few minutes ago, in terms of my mom and dad and I know that you're, you're an Eagle Scout. I I never went that far in terms of Scott. I went to second class, so outstanding for you, going all the way as an ego scout. But the one thing that I learned from Scott is that word always be prepared. Always, always be prepared. I teach my kids that as well. And so in terms of my my mom and dad, they you can be prepared, you know, for the worst case scenario. And that's what actually happened in the end. The South Vietnam lost to commun to the communists, and at that. Point, and I'm going to weave in the story that you've shared as well in your on your platform, in terms of that day 911 where you had to, you had to do what you had to do with with your dog and and with everybody else trying to figure out how to get out of that, try to exit that building for safety and things like that. And so it was one of those things where you just had to, you can only prepare so much. And in the moment of crisis, or in that moment of of things crumbling literally around you, whether it be your country or a building crumbling around you, you have to figure out you have to, you know, cleverness, communication, working with others around you, teamwork, all of that had to come into play for survival. And so both, I mean, you know, both of our, my, your story, my my family, my father and my mother's story, myself as just a kid tagging along was, was that trying to figure out some way to exit yourself from a moment of dire, a moment of chaos, and so I can, I can under, I can resonate, I can, I can appreciate that   Michael Hingson ** 51:15 well. And the thing is that the thing you have to mostly prepare for is, is your mind, and prepare is your mind. It's and it's how you prepare to deal with things that may happen you you can't, as I tell people, there's no way to train someone to deal, as such, with a falling building, or, as you say, losing a country, but you can prepare your mind to be able to say, I can do this, and I don't need to allow the fear of what's going on to stop me. I can use that as a powerful tool to help that preparation is the most important thing we can do for anything that happens in our lives, and that's what we really have to focus on. Because I've been asked many times questions like, well, you know, how do you teach your dog how to escape from a tough, falling building or a tall building like you did in the World Trade Center? Yeah, that's not what you that's not what you teach the dog to deal with. You teach the dog to focus. You teach yourself to focus, and you teach both of you where you are, the leader, you teach yourself how to deal with whatever situation comes along and worry only about the things that you have control over, because the rest isn't going to going to help you to worry about because you don't have control over it.   Miki Ngyuen ** 52:48 Right, right, right. Yeah, go ahead. No, I just letting that sink in. I yeah, there's ever a time to be very present, very calm, very cool and collected. Because once, once you start, once you start, you know lack of a better term, freaking out or losing it mentally, things could fall apart even, even worse. And so staying calm under pressure is critical,   Michael Hingson ** 53:21 which doesn't mean that you're not afraid, but you use the fear in a different way than you would if you allowed yourself to, if you will freak out, which is really the whole point. Well, so you you clearly have written this book. Why did you write it? No, I expect to help. What do you expect to help? To get from it   Miki Ngyuen ** 53:42 Sure. I again, I did not write this book. It was my father. Why   Michael Hingson ** 53:46 did you? Why did you decide to bring it forward? Oh,   Miki Ngyuen ** 53:52 number one, to honor, to honor my father's wishes. Number one, it, and number two, along with that, is to pass down to his great grandkids, and you know, their their kids, his story, our family story of how we came to America. This was the for the Vietnamese community. This was our Ellis Island story. And number one, to archive and to honor my my my father. Number two, the third one really is, this is a story that it doesn't matter what background, what obstacle, what struggle you are in. These are stories of courage, compassion, heroism, stories of suspense, love stories that my dad wrote as well. And there's stories of lessons learned about communism, stories of betrayal. And so it's a story that is a. Uh, relatable to all audience types, but outside of that, for myself and my my mom and for my family, this is our family story, and one that my kids, my great grandkids, what how they knew my father in his courage, in his resiliency, in terms of just coming to a new world and having to start over again.   Michael Hingson ** 55:27 What do you want people to take away from the story   Miki Ngyuen ** 55:32 history? Number one, in terms of the history of because there's a you know, if you don't, if you don't learn from history, you're going to make the same sort of mistakes again. And so, from history, what can we learn out of it, the lessons that we can learn out of it, the lessons of just how to overcome obstacles, dealing with, as you said, with fear, courage, lessons around being curious about the things around you, learning Education and as well as the lasting years, just lessons around teamwork and working with others, working with your community. So those are the kinds of things that we want to get across in this book.   Michael Hingson ** 56:36 What kind of lessons do you think your your father's memoir and yours, because you compiled it. What lessons do you think we all should take away from that, that we should use today? What, what should we be learning from this story?   Miki Ngyuen ** 56:56 Uh, lessons in terms of, uh, leadership, lessons in terms of how to handle yourself in crisis situation, lessons around working with others to overcome a particular obstacle or a challenge working, you know, with teammates. Wait may it be in a corporate environment, or maybe in a community or a setting, or many of those themes that in terms of just everyday life lessons and resiliency, yeah, yeah, many of those themes and lessons that I think is told through my father's experience and our family's experience, from that standpoint,   Michael Hingson ** 58:08 a question that comes to mind, really off the wall, is so it's now been 50 years. What is Vietnam like today? Do you know a   Miki Ngyuen ** 58:16 lot better than it was 50 years ago? I I've visited, not only visited, but lived there in 2016 2017 and life today a lot more prosperous than than in years past. And he continues to to be prosperous. And, you know   Michael Hingson ** 58:43 better from that standpoint, is it a communist country? It's still,   Miki Ngyuen ** 58:47 it's still a communist country today, one of the things that I did learn from the book and my dad was sharing is that in this ties in with the the the the Berlin Wall in the unraveling of communism the Soviet government back then, When the leadership in Vietnam saw that they loosened up many of their their their policies around that. So it is still communism today, but prosperous in a lot of ways, economically, and, you know, trading with with other countries. So, yeah, that's, that's, you know, that's how life is today in Vietnam, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:49 what final words and suggestions do you want to make? We've been doing this now for almost an hour, and it's, it's been as compelling as I think you thought it would. Be, and I imagined it would be, what kind of final remarks or thoughts do you want to leave for people to think about   Miki Ngyuen ** 1:00:09 that, whatever situation, whatever obstacles that you're going through at this moment, that there's always there's always choices and options, and the the the things that we talked about, you and I, Michael here, is just staying cool, staying level headed, staying calm through through challenges, and looking, you know, looking to work with others, looking for help, searching for help, and where you can help others as well. If it wasn't for Captain Paul Jacobs, compassion and humanity, our family wouldn't be here telling the story. And so these are the things that have helped us and our family in return. Look back over your shoulder to see if somebody else behind you would need help as well and offer that. So that's yeah, that's the some of the things that I want to at least share.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:23 There's there's a lot to be said for paying it forward as well as gratitude, and I think that you've exhibited all of that very well. And Miki, I want to thank you again for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful and enthralling, and I hope that everyone has enjoyed it. And I appreciate you being able to be here and tell the story, because it has to be still a challenge, even 50 years later, because you lived through it, but but you've learned how to live through it. And I think that's the issue. It's like with the World Trade Center, you learn how to deal with with it, and we both have learned to tell our stories, and I think that's so important. So I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening today. This has been wonderful. I hope you agree. Love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael, H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, and also wherever you're listening or watching, please give us a five star review. We value your reviews very highly, and we we love the good ones. So please give us a five star review, and as Walden did and Miki for you and everyone listening and watching, if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on our podcast, and you think anyone else who has a story to tell, love to hear it, love to meet them, love to get them on the podcast. So we really appreciate you reaching out again. You can email me at Michael h i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast web page, which is www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, Michael Hingson is m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o, n.com/podcast, you can reach us through that page as well. Hope that you'll listen to more episodes and that you'll come back if you're listening to us for the first time, and whatever you do, be well and be grateful for all that we have. That's the way it ought to be, and we can all be unstoppable if we choose to. So again, thank you for being here and Miki, thank you again for being here and being with us. Yeah,   Miki Ngyuen ** 1:03:32 thank you again, Michael, for the opportunity to share the story with you from your audience.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:41 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

This is the shocking true-life story of how PFAS—a set of toxic chemicals most people have never heard of—poisoned the entire country. Based on original, shoe-leather reporting in four highly contaminated towns and damning documents from the polluters' own files, Poisoning the Well: How Forever Chemicals Contaminated America (Island Press, 2025) traces an ugly history of corporate greed and devastation of human lives. We learn that PFAS, the ‘forever chemicals' found in everyday products, from cooking pans to mascara, are coursing through the veins of 97% of Americans. We witness the pain of families who lost sisters and daughters, cousins and neighbors, after PFAS leached into their drinking water. We discover evidence that the makers of forever chemicals may have known for decades about the deadly risks of their products—because their own scientists have been documenting these dangers since the 1960s. And we see the failure of our government, time after time, to provide basic protections to its citizens. It is impossible to read this searing exposé without being infuriated by the recklessness of corporate America. But readers will also be awed by the spirit of ordinary people who, while fighting for their own lives, took it upon themselves to fix a broken regulatory system. Heart-wrenching and maddening, stirring and uplifting, Poisoning the Well offers a unique window into the worst and best of human nature. It is essential reading for anyone concerned about the unfettered power of industry and the invisible threat it poses to the health of the nation—and to each of us. Sharon Udasin is a reporter for The Hill, covering U.S. West climate & policy from her home base in Boulder, Colorado. She was a Ted Scripps Fellow in Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder and has also reported for The Jerusalem Post and The New York Jewish Week. A graduate of both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Journalism School, Sharon also received a 2022 SEAL Environmental Journalism Award and was honored by the Heschel Center for Environmental Learning and Leadership in 2013. Rachel Frazin covers energy and environment policy for The Hill: that's everything from climate change to gasoline prices to toxic chemicals to renewable and fossil energy. It was through this work that she learned about, and became alarmed by, "forever chemicals." She is originally from South Florida, and she studied journalism and political science at (the very cold) Northwestern University. Previously, her work has appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, The Daily Beast, the Tampa Bay Times, and The Palm Beach Post. Daniel Moran's writing about literature and film can be found on Pages and Frames. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O'Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the long-running podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

Dr. Haley Perlus (@drhaleyperlus) is a Performance Psychology expert, speaker, and author specializing in helping business leaders, entrepreneurs, and high achievers apply the mental strategies of elite athletes to reach peak performance. With a Ph.D. in Sport Psychology and certifications in coaching, fitness, and nutrition, she transforms high-stress environments into arenas for success. A former high level ski racer, her expertise has been sought after by top athletes, Fortune 500 companies, and top executives looking to master mental resilience, sustain focus under pressure, and turn obstacles into opportunities.  She is the author of Personal Podium: How to Use Your Mind to Maximize Your Potential, which distills the psychological strategies of world-class performers into practical techniques for business and personal growth. Her insights have been featured on Oprah, ESPN, Thrive Magazine, and Beachbody, and she has spoken for companies such as Marriott and Starbucks. In our chat today, we discuss how so many important psychological qualities are skills that can be developed, how to show yourself grace in the process without letting yoruself off the hook, and so much more. Connect with her at www.DrHaleyPerlus.com.  BOOK A SPEAKER: Interested in having John, Jerry or both come to your school, club or coaching event? We are booking Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 events, please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com to set up an introductory call. BECOME A PREMIUM MEMBER OF CHANGING THE GAME PROJECT TO SUPPORT THE PODCAST If you or your club/school is looking for all of our best content, from online courses to blog posts to interviews organized for coaches, parents and athletes, then become a premium member of Changing the Game Project today. For over a decade we have been creating materials to help change the game. and it has become a bit overwhelming to find old podcasts, blog posts and more. Now, we have organized it all for you, with areas for coaches, parents and even athletes to find materials to help compete better, and put some more play back in playing ball. Clubs please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com for pricing.  PUT IN YOUR BULK BOOK ORDERS FOR OUR BESTSELLING BOOKS! Programs such as UNC soccer and lacrosse, Syracuse lacrosse, Stanford Lacrosse, Middlebury College, Colby College, Rutgers University, and many other champions are using THE CHAMPION TEAMMATE book with their athletes. Many of these coaches are also getting THE CHAMPION SPORTS PARENT so their team parents can be part of a successful culture. Schools and clubs are using EVERY MOMENT MATTERS for staff development and book clubs. Are you?  We have been fulfilling numerous bulk orders for some of the top high school and collegiate sports programs in the country, will your team be next? Click here to visit John's author page on Amazon Click here to visit Jerry's author page on Amazon Please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com if you want discounted pricing on 10 or more books on any of our books. Thanks everyone. This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket Sports.  Sprocket Sports is a new software platform for youth sports clubs.  Yeah, there are a lot of these systems out there, but Sprocket provides the full enchilada. They give you all the cool front-end stuff to make your club look good– like websites and marketing tools – AND all the back-end transactions and services to run your business better so you can focus on what really matters – your players and your teams. Sprocket is built for those clubs looking to thrive, not just survive, in the competitive world of youth sports clubs.  So if you've been looking for a true business partner – not just another app – check them out today at https://sprocketsports.me/CTG. Become a Podcast Champion! This weeks podcast is also sponsored by our Patreon Podcast Champions. Help Support the Podcast and get FREE access to our Premium Membership, with well over $1000 of courses and materials. If you love the podcast, we would love for you to become a Podcast Champion, (https://www.patreon.com/wayofchampions) for as little as a cup of coffee per month (OK, its a Venti Mocha), to help us up the ante and provide even better interviews, better sound, and an overall enhanced experience. Plus, as a $10 per month Podcast Super-Champion, you will be granted a Premium Changing the Game Project Membership, where you will have access to every course, interview and blog post we have created organized by topic from coaches to parents to athletes. Thank you for all your support these past eight years, and a special big thank you to all of you who become part of our inner circle, our patrons, who will enable us to take our podcast to the next level. https://www.patreon.com/wayofchampions

314: It's Time to Rethink How Your Nonprofit Does Marketing (Lou Kotsinis)SUMMARYSpecial thanks to TowneBank for bringing these conversations to life, and for their commitment to strengthening nonprofit organizations. Learn more about how they can help you at TowneBank.com/NonprofitBanking.Many nonprofits treat marketing as a luxury or an afterthought, but doing so limits their impact. In episode #314 of Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership, digital strategist Lou Kotsinis challenges nonprofit leaders to rethink their approach, emphasizing that marketing must be mission-critical, not secondary. Lou breaks down why an authentic story, a strong digital presence, and consistent audience engagement are essential for growth. He shares how to simplify data tracking, leverage free tools like Google Analytics, and start using AI platforms to better understand and expand reach. For organizations with tight budgets, Lou offers practical tips to build momentum without needing massive resources. If you want to increase awareness, grow fundraising success, and fulfill your mission more effectively, it's time to rethink not just how you market, but how you prioritize marketing across your organization.ABOUT LOULou Kotsinis is CEO and Co-Founder of BCS Interactive, a digital marketing agency focused exclusively on the nonprofit and educational communities. Since co-founding BCS in 2011, Lou leads a team of designers, technologists, and strategists that have helped organizations such as The World Childhood Foundation, The Seeing Eye and the New Jersey Conservation Foundation craft authentic stories, showcase their impact, and grow their causes. Prior to co-founding BCS Interactive, Lou was marketing manager at Time Warner Trade Publishing, the book-publishing arm of Time Warner. Lou graduated from Rutgers University, New Brunswick with a B.A. in English and History. His interests include hiking, reading, and practicing yoga. He's deeply passionate about political reform and pro-democracy efforts and is an advocate of initiatives such as FairVote and the Institute for Political Innovation.EPISODE TOPICS & RESOURCESReady for your next leadership opportunity? Visit our partners at Armstrong McGuireAtomic Habits by James ClearHave you gotten Patton's book Your Path to Nonprofit Leadership: Seven Keys to Advancing Your Career in the Philanthropic Sector – Now available on AudibleDon't miss our weekly Thursday Leadership Lens for the latest on nonprofit leadershipWant to chat leadership 24/7?  Go to delphi.ai/pattonmcdowell

In this episode, Laura  hosts an alumni panel of Black Woman Leading alums from the Early Career and Mid-Career Programs (Alexys Anderson, Shelby Norman, and SherAaron Hurt) to discuss our season's theme of Driving the Narrative of Your Career. Emphasizing the importance of setting a personal vision and advocating for oneself while balancing heart work and head work along the career growth journey, they  explore the significance of mentorship, the challenges of navigating identity, and the importance of community support.  The discussion highlights how embracing intersectionality and self-affirmation can empower Black women to take charge of their career narratives and pursue their professional visions with confidence. In this conversation, our program alums discuss the importance of intentionality in actions, the power of dreaming big, navigating fear and doubt, and the significance of self-advocacy. They also share their personal experiences and insights gained from the Black Woman Leading programs.  The discussion also highlights transformative moments in their leadership journeys, encouraging listeners to embrace discomfort and give themselves grace in their career paths   Guest Bios: ::Alexys Anderson Alexys Anderson is a Higher Education professional with a passion for supporting students on their journeys to and through graduation. Her professional roles have encompassed student success strategies, leadership development, and student retention.She received her Bachelor's in Psychology from Salisbury University and Master's degree in College Student Affairs from Rutgers University.  Connect with Alexys LinkedIn.   ::SherAaron Hurt SherAaron Hurt is a visionary leader in data science education and inclusive community building. As the Director of Workshops and Training for The Carpentries, she oversees global workshop strategy and leads instructor and trainer development, certification, and community engagement. With a background in Business Administration, Marketing, and Hospitality Management, SherAaron brings a service-first approach to advancing equitable, high-impact learning experiences around the world. She supports thousands of instructors and trainers across the globe, creating sustainable engagement and championing inclusive education through thoughtful programming and strategic leadership. She shares her insights on inclusive pedagogy, equitable access, and community-led learning at national and international conferences. Known for her warmth, intentionality, and authenticity, she builds lasting relationships and inspires teams to thrive. Outside of her professional pursuits, SherAaron is a luxury travel enthusiast, fur-mom to her Shih Tzu  Oreo, and a certified fitness instructor affectionately known in gym circles as HypeChicSher. She teaches high-energy Cardio Kickboxing and proudly serves as a Brand Ambassador for Orangetheory Fitness.  Her experience in the Black Women Leading (BWL) community helped spark her pursuit of a deeper calling—combining her passions for faith, flying, and fitness. Through her work and her workouts, SherAaron hopes to inspire others to elevate—one learner, one leader, and one lunge at a time. Connect with SherAaron on LinkedIn and Instagram @sherfitlife   ::Shelby Norman Shelby Norman (she/her/hers) serves as the Associate Director of Professional Development & Outreach for the Office of Academic Excellence and Opportunity. Raised in Atlanta, Georgia, she has always been immersed in diverse expressions of southern culture and community. Shelby is an alumna of The University of Alabama, where she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science with a concentration in Political Theory, and Master of Arts degree in Women's Studies with a research concentration in Critical Gender and Race Theories. As the Associate Director of Professional Development and Outreach, Shelby leads the strategic development and implementation of new professional development opportunities and initiatives for faculty and staff. Shelby also develops and enhances collaborative partnerships across university departments and promotes her office as a consultative resource to support all Tulanians reach their full potential. Shelby's diverse experiences in higher education span across student and academic affairs in small and large state institutions, as well as private. Shelby has a strong history with mentorship and leadership initiatives, especially those rooted in diversity, equity and inclusion practices. Shelby is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Tri Iota Honors Society ,Omicron Delta Kappa National Leadership Honor Society, Order of Omega Honor Society and The XXXI Women's Honor Society. Connect with Shelby on LinkedIn and Instagram   Resources: Event: Join us for the 2025 Black Woman Leading LIVE! Conference +Retreat, May 27-30, 2025 in Virginia Beach! Learn more at bwlretreat.com Full podcast episodes are now on Youtube.  Subscribe to the BWL channel today!   Credits: Learn about all Black Woman Leading® programs, resources, and events at www.blackwomanleading.com Learn more about our consulting work with organizations at https://knightsconsultinggroup.com/ Email Laura: info@knightsconsultinggroup.com Connect with Laura on LinkedIn Follow BWL on LinkedIn Instagram: @blackwomanleading Facebook: @blackwomanleading Youtube: @blackwomanleading  Podcast Music & Production: Marshall Knights  Graphics: Téa Campbell Listen and follow the podcast on all major platforms: Apple Podcasts Spotify Stitcher iHeartRadio Audible Podbay

Dr. Judy Morgan grew up in Pitman and Woodstown, NJ, where she graduated high school as valedictorian in 1977. In 1980 she graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Science and received her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine in 1984. Dr. Morgan is a certified and accredited veterinary acupuncturist, chiropractitioner, and food therapist.After 36 years, Dr. Morgan retired from clinical practice in 2020. She now focuses on speaking, creating educational content, online consultations for clients, and her webstore.Dr. Morgan spends much of her time working with Cavalier King Charles Spaniel and English Toy Spaniel rescue groups by assisting in finding, transporting, and fostering neglected animals. She is Chief Veterinary Medical Officer for Monkey's House Dog Hospice and Senior Sanctuary. She also enjoys public speaking and giving presentations at local, national and international continuing education venues.She is a best-selling author of eight books, hundreds of online and print magazine articles, and host of her own Naturally Healthy Pets podcast. She has been featured on Fox News, local cable television, CNN, PBS, ABC, CBS, and as a guest on over 200 radio shows. Her goal is to change the lives of millions of pets by educating and empowering pet owners worldwide in the use of natural healing therapies, minimizing the use of chemicals, vaccinations, and poor quality processed food.Dr Judy Morgan's Links:Website: https://drjudymorgan.com/Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/JudyMorganDVMInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjudymorgan/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrJudyMorganDr Steph's Links: Top 5 Mast Cell Stabilizers Masterclass: https://stephaniepeacock.com/masterclass-top-5-mcas-stabilizers/Mast Cell Course: https://stephaniepeacock.com/mast-cellTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drstephpeacockInstgram: https://www.instagram.com/drstephpeacock/Sunlighten: https://www.facebook.com/HealthyGutCompany/code: DRPEACOCK AirDoctor: https://stephaniepeacock.com/affiliate-airdoctorAquaTru: https://stephaniepeacock.com/affiliate-aquatruProlon: https://stephaniepeacock.com/affiliate-prolonWork with me: https://stephaniepeacock.com/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://stephanies-newsletter-c410d1.beehiiv.com/subscribe

In this inspiring episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast, host Benoy Thanjan sits down with Bernie Jordan and Lucas Barreto from the Let's Share the Sun Foundation to discuss their recent solar installations in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico. Recorded on-site after a powerful week of hands-on work, this conversation highlights the transformative impact of bringing solar and storage to families with critical 24-hour medical needs. Benoy, Bernie, and Lucas reflect on the mission-driven approach of Let's Share the Sun, the collaborative spirit of the solar delegation, and the real-world outcomes of providing clean, resilient energy in vulnerable communities. From logistical challenges to emotional moments with families, this episode sheds light on how solar energy can directly improve lives—and how listeners can get involved. Don't miss this heartfelt and motivating discussion on how renewable energy is changing lives one rooftop at a time.   Benoy Thanjan Benoy Thanjan is the Founder and CEO of Reneu Energy and he is also an advisor for several solar startup companies.  He has extensive project origination, development, and financial experience in the renewable energy industry and in the environmental commodities market.   This includes initial site evaluation, permitting, financing, sourcing equipment, and negotiating the long-term energy and environmental commodities off-take agreements. He manages due diligence processes on land, permitting, and utility interconnection and is in charge of financing and structuring through Note to Proceed (“NTP”) to Commercial Operation Date (“COD”). Benoy composes teams suitable for all project development and construction tasks. He is also involved in project planning and pipeline financial modeling. He has been part of all sides of the transaction and this allows him to provide unique perspectives and value. Benoy has extensive experience in financial engineering to make solar projects profitable. Before founding Reneu Energy, he was the SREC Trader in the Project Finance Group for SolarCity which merged with Tesla in 2016.  He originated SREC trades with buyers and co-developed their SREC monetization and hedging strategy with the senior management of SolarCity to move into the east coast markets.  Benoy was the Vice President at Vanguard Energy Partners which is a national solar installer where he focused on project finance solutions for commercial scale solar projects.  He also worked for Ridgewood Renewable Power, a private equity fund, where he analyzed potential investments in renewable energy projects and worked on maximizing the financial return of the projects in the portfolio.  Benoy also worked on the sale of all of the renewable energy projects in Ridgewood's portfolio.   He was in the Energy Structured Finance practice for Deloitte & Touche and in Financial Advisory Services practice at Ernst & Young.  Benoy received his first experience in Finance as an intern at D.E. Shaw & Co., which is a global investment firm with 37 billion dollars in investment capital. He has a MBA in Finance from Rutgers University and a BS in Finance and Economics from the Stern School of Business at New York University.  Benoy was an Alumni Scholar at the Stern School of Business.     Bernie Jordan Executive Director, Let's Share the Sun Foundation Bernie Jordan is the Executive Director of Let's Share the Sun Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing solar energy to communities living in energy poverty around the world. With a background in solar development and a passion for social impact, Bernie has helped drive solar installations in underserved areas across Puerto Rico, Haiti, Nepal, and beyond. Under Bernie's leadership, Let's Share the Sun has created powerful partnerships with solar companies, local governments, and mission-driven volunteers to deliver reliable, renewable energy to families with critical needs—especially those requiring 24/7 electricity for medical care. His work sits at the intersection of clean energy, humanitarian relief, and environmental justice. Bernie brings deep insight into how solar can be a tool for both sustainability and equity, and he continues to inspire others to use their expertise for global good.   Lucas Barreto – Director of Operations, Let's Share the Sun Foundation Lucas Barreto serves as the Director of Operations at Let's Share the Sun Foundation, where he leads on-the-ground efforts to bring solar energy to off-grid and underserved communities around the world. With a strong background in engineering, project management, and international development, Lucas plays a vital role in designing and executing solar installations that provide life-changing energy access to families in need. His work spans diverse geographies—from coordinating solar + storage systems in Puerto Rico for families with medical dependencies to deploying clean energy in rural villages in Central America and the Caribbean. Lucas is known for his hands-on leadership, technical expertise, and commitment to building local capacity and community partnerships. Driven by a belief that energy is a human right, Lucas is helping transform the way renewable energy is used for social impact.   Stay Connected: Benoy Thanjan Email: info@reneuenergy.com  LinkedIn: Benoy Thanjan Website: https://www.reneuenergy.com   Bernie Jordan Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernadette-jordan/ Website:  https://www.letssharethesun.org/   Lucas Barreto Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-barreto-652b06189/ Website:  https://www.letssharethesun.org/     If you are interested in donating to Let's Share the Sun, the link is below.   https://www.letssharethesun.org/contribute     Previous Episodes that Let's Share the Sun Foundation was on the Solar Maverick Podcast https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-129-learn-about-a-great-non-profit-called-let-s-share-the-sun-foundation/   https://solarmaverick.podbean.com/e/smp-132-update-on-the-great-progress-of-let-s-share-the-sun-foundation/   Let's Share the Sun Vidoes https://www.youtube.com/@LetsShareTheSun       Thank you to AMS Renewable Energy for Sponsoring this Episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast! This episode of the Solar Maverick Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor—AMS Renewable Energy. AMS is a top-tier solar EPC that operates with the precision and mindset of a commercial general contractor. Headquartered in the Bronx, New York—and licensed nationwide—AMS has over 30 years of construction experience, tackling even the most complex solar projects with unmatched expertise and craftsmanship. Whether it's a challenging C&I rooftop, ground mount, or full turnkey solution, AMS is committed to best-in-class service and results that last. If you're looking for a solar EPC partner who understands construction inside and out—AMS Renewable Energy should be at the top of your list. Learn more at [ams-renewable.com] and tell them the Solar Maverick sent you!    Mid-Atlantic Solar & Storage Insight Conference  Benoy Thanjan will be hosting a live Solar Maverick Podcast Interview at Mid-Atlantic Solar & Storage Insight Conference on May 6, 2025 in New Brunswick, NJ.  The link is below. https://whova.com/web/AVRBHPdoRkL-XvNBu2m3OvHy6VIA89QrX7muVARCKeo=/   Summer Solstice Fundraiser Join Reneu Energy, Rosemawr, Positive Deviancy, and the Solar Maverick Podcast for the 2025 Summer Solstice Fundraiser! Celebrate the warm weather with us at the Summer Solstice Fundraiser, hosted by Reneu Energy, Positive Deviancy ,and the Solar Maverick Podcast. This special evening will take place on Thursday, June 5th, from 6 PM to 10 PM at Hudson Hall in Jersey City, NJ. We'll also be raising funds for the Let's Share the Sun Foundation, which aids impoverished communities in harnessing solar energy. Event Highlights: -Venue: Hudson Hall, a Czech biergarten and smokehouse co-owned by Benoy, CEO of Reneu Energy. -Time: 6 PM to 10 PM, with delicious food throughout the evening. -Tickets: $50 https://www.tickettailor.com/events/reneuenergy/1653652                                                    

What do the drafters of the U.S. Constitution, 19th-century industrialists, and a modern defense contractor have in common? According to economic sociologist Joseph Blasi, they all believed in one powerful idea: that democracy itself depends on ownership, and that ownership should be broadly shared. He argues that if we want work to truly work for humans, we need to think beyond job design to a more fundamental question: Who owns the value that work creates? In this episode, Dart and Joe tell the story of shared ownership, from 1700s fishing crews and America's founding ideals to an $8 billion worker-owned defense contractor, and what it means for the future of work.Joseph Blasi is a Distinguished Professor at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, where he studies the economic sociology of corporations, governance, and the workplace. He is director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing and co-author of The Citizen's Share.In this episode, Dart and Joe discuss:- How democracy depends on shared ownership- The surprising history of profit-sharing on cod fishing ships- How early U.S. policies supported worker ownership- Why ESOPs work and where they fall short- The role of tax policy in spreading employee ownership- What the founders envisioned for property and citizenship- How wealth distribution shapes democratic institutions- Does America have enough ownership to sustain democracy?- And other topics...Joseph Blasi is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University. He directs the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing and is a leading scholar in the economic sociology of corporations and the future of work. He is the co-author of several books, including The Citizen's Share, Shared Capitalism at Work, and In the Company of Owners. His research has shaped public policy on employee ownership and equity compensation in the U.S. and internationally.Resources Mentioned:The Citizen's Share: Reducing Inequality in the 21st Century, by Joseph R. Blasi, Richard B. Freeman, and Douglas L. Kruse: https://www.amazon.com/Citizens-Share-Reducing-Inequality-Century/dp/0300209339Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing: https://smlr.rutgers.edu/content/institute-study-employee-ownership-and-profit-sharingESOP Association: https://www.esopassociation.org/Connect with Joseph:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-blasi-870102111/Work with Dart:Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what's most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.

Author and liver of life absolutely describes our guest this episode, Pat Backley. As Pat says, she was an English woman until the age of 59 when she decided to become a Kiwi and moved full time to New Zealand. Pat grew up in a poor household, but she will tell you that she never regrets not having as much money as many of the people around her. However it happened, Pat grew up with a various curious oriented mind and a desire to explore the world.   During her life which today spans 73 years, Pat has held a number of jobs. She also has been married twice, but clearly really is not bitter over being divorced from both husbands, although the 2nd one simply wasn't ready to be as adventurous as Pat and live in New Zealand.   Pat wrote her first book at the age of 70. Over the past three years she has written eight books and has a number of future books inside her. As with other authors I have met over the years, Pat's characters essentially write their stories. Pat has plans and ideas, but the characters take over and create the stories.   I find Pat to be extremely articulate and personable to converse with. I think you too will enjoy her and what she has to say. So, sit back, or walk or do whatever you are doing, but get ready to hear a most enjoyable and thought-provoking conversation.       About the Guest:   Pat Backley is an English woman who, at the age of 59 , decided to become a Kiwi and she now lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Passionate about people and travelling the world, she has spent the last 73 years living a colourful and interesting life and her books reflect these passions.   She published her first book DAISY in late 2020, just before her 70th birthday, and now says that she intends to write till she dies!   She has published eight books and contributed to several anthologies, as well as writing articles and short stories for various magazines and has several more books in the pipeline.   Ways to connect Pat:   www.patbackley.com I am on Facebook and Instagram @patbackleyauthor. Also on X (Twitter) @Pat Backley Books. And LinkedIn @Pat Backley   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:   ichael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and I want to welcome you to another edition of unstoppable mindset. And today we are going to chat with Pat Backley. Pat is a British woman, as she will tell you, but at the age of 59 which has now been some what, 1314, years ago, 13 years ago, she decided to become a kiwi and moved to New Zealand. We'll have to find out what brought that about. I've been to New Zealand. It's a fun place. I'd love to go back. But anyway, and of late, certainly much later in her life, Pat decided to become an author. She wrote her first book at the age of 70, and that is another fascinating story, I am sure. So we will delve into all of that, and we're going to grill Pat until she's tired of us. Pat, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Pat Backley ** 02:20 Thank you so much, Michael, I can assure you, I won't be tired of being grilled by you. I'm I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:29 we're really glad that you're here. What time is it in New Zealand right now? It's 10 o'clock   02:33 in the morning. Yeah, it's about what I thought.   Michael Hingson ** 02:38 So you're 21 hours ahead of us. Yeah, yes.   Pat Backley ** 02:42 And I have to say, I have to say that tomorrow is looking very good. You'll be glad to know, Oh, good.   Michael Hingson ** 02:49 Should be good. It Well, I'm glad to hear that it's going to look good, and it's actually going to warm up a little bit. Here. We're only getting up to about 65 Fahrenheit, so that's what about 17 Celsius or so. But tomorrow it's supposed to start getting a little bit warmer. We're approaching our winter as you approach your summer, which is kind of interesting.   Pat Backley ** 03:14 Yes, very interesting. When I first moved to New Zealand, that was one of the things I found very strange to have Christmas in the sunshine, because obviously I was, I was born with Christmas in the cook.   Michael Hingson ** 03:29 Yeah. Well, and you could have moved to Australia, where they use kangaroos to pull Santa slay.   Pat Backley ** 03:38 I could have done. I could have done. But Australia didn't have the same appeal for me as No, I   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 like New Zealand. I haven't been to Australia. I'd like to go, but I really enjoyed being in New Zealand. I've been to both the North and the South Island. I spent almost three weeks there, back in 2003 and gave something like 17 or 18 speaking opportunities in 15 days. And I only had one day that I had mostly off and that we spent. What is the the town on the South Island, the the tourist town, oh, Queenstown. Queenstown. Yeah, and so but that only lasted until about six that evening, and then I had to go off and speak again. But it was a lot of fun.   Pat Backley ** 04:28 You must have been exhausted because it's quite a lot of distance. I was I'm what I'm about to say is going to sound ridiculous now, because I've just been to America, and I know about your distances I was going to say, because you have a lot of driving distance between the towns you would have had to speak at. But then, as I was about to verbalize it, I thought, Pat, that's stupid. In America, the distances are far greater   Michael Hingson ** 04:51 well, and also a number of airplane flights between the North and the South Island to make it go faster as well.   Pat Backley ** 04:57 Yes, absolutely, yes. So. It was fun. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:01 why don't we start by you telling us a little bit kind of about the early Pat growing up and all that. We'll start with that. Okay,   Pat Backley ** 05:08 well, I, I was born in 1951 so it was just after the war, and England was still suffering from the effects of the war. You know, there was a lot of it was a bit of a gray place, so my parents couldn't afford to buy their own home, so I lived with my parent, my paternal grandparents, for the first three and a half years of my life. And of course, I had a lovely time because I had four adults doting on me. Then we moved out to the country. We were given a council house, which is like a state house. I'm not sure what they called in in the in America, you know, where the government provides them, right? Which, at that time was very acceptable, because there wasn't much housing, because it had all been bombed out, because we lived in London. So, so I grew up in the country. I didn't realize we were poor until I was 11, and went to secondary school, and suddenly I was the because I was quite bright, I was put in a grammar stream class, so I was suddenly with all these rich kids. One girl was driven to school in a chauffeur driven rolls, Royce and I lived in the little government house opposite the school, so everyone knew I was poor. So yeah, it was, it was tough. I would say it was tough my teenage years, but I   Michael Hingson ** 06:26 did, they teach you a lot about that. Oh, yeah,   Pat Backley ** 06:28 I got, I got, I mean, these days they would call it bullying, bullying. I just, I just, it was just, what my luck you know that I remember one time, and I actually did write about this in my memoirs, because it's still in my head after 60 odd years, one time I was the only kid in the class that went home for school lunches, and one because mum couldn't afford to pay for school lunches, so I used to go home because we lived just opposite. And I remember one day I came back to school and it was raining, so all the kids were back in the classroom early, and the teacher wasn't there yet. And there was this one girl whose name will live in my memory forever. She's etched on my soul, Angela Barrett. And she was standing at the front of the class, pretending to be the teacher, writing on the blackboard, and then wiping it off with this black cloth. And then she said, this is all this rag is fit for. And it was actually my school raincoat, which until then I'd been very proud of, but it was second hand, it'd be my cousins. And I can remember that afternoon thinking, I don't want to be here anymore. I hate it here. Everyone hates me. And I went home and I told mom, and I cried, and she said, Look, love, just because they've got more money than you doesn't make them any better people. And at 11, I could not see that at all like that. I just thought, why don't you just get more money? Why don't you buy me a nicer and go blah, blah, blah. But now in hindsight, I just think she that was the wisest thing she could say, because the time I rebelled, it made me realize that actually it's not an equal playing field in the world. You know, you're going to have people that are on this side and down at the bottom and up at the top, and you just have to grit your teeth and fight your way through it,   Michael Hingson ** 08:13 yeah, and, and the reality is, there are only so many things that you can truly control, and what you what you can control is how you dealt with that situation and situations like that. Yes, that's   Pat Backley ** 08:25 right. Um, and then I think I was a, I was definitely a product of the 60s. You know, we had all the lovely pop music and the short skirts and burning out bras and all that sort of stuff. But when I was just two weeks after my 20th birthday, I got married for the first time, which was ridiculous in hindsight, but at the time, you think you know everything when you're that age, don't you? My parents begged me not to marry him, but of course, I knew best, so that marriage lasted 14 years, and he wasn't always very kind. So then I left, then I was on my own for a beer. Then I had a living boyfriend, and I was desperate to have a child, Michael, but I'm not. I'm I'm old fashioned. I only would have a child if I had a husband. And so I didn't. I got married again when I was 41 and we had a child. I had a child when I was 43 my daughter, and that was that I thought life was going to be great. And then 26 years later, he decided he didn't love me anymore, didn't want to live in New Zealand anymore, and that was that so. So I kind of found myself living in New Zealand on my own, having we emigrated here together just before my 59th birthday. But anyway, I've picked up the pieces. It's been six years now, and because of COVID and because of him leaving me, that's how my life changed, really. And your daughter, my and my beloved daughter, my only child, yes, she's 30 now, and she is the love of my life. Yes, and I'm sorry. I've just realized I probably. Probably haven't answered your question very well. You must always pull me back, because I tend to get very excited and passionate and you know, don't necessarily toe the line with question answering. So forgive me, not   Michael Hingson ** 10:11 a problem. That's why this is a conversation and not a big deal. So is your daughter in New Zealand? She   Pat Backley ** 10:20 is now. When her dad she she was 16 when we came to New Zealand, so she did her last bit of school here, then she went to university in Auckland, and then she decided she wanted to do her master's degree back in London. So she went back to London, and then she got a job there, and she was away for five and a half years, which nearly broke my heart, but she's home now. She's been back four years, and she's got a lovely Kiwi boyfriend, and she's here to stay, so I'm   Michael Hingson ** 10:49 thrilled. What did she get? Her degree in art history. Ah, now, do you? Did you go to college? No, sadly,   Pat Backley ** 10:57 I because we were poor, I just had to leave school at 16, and so now I never went to college. I would have loved to, I would have liked to have been a teacher, but, you know, it wasn't to be and and I've had a great life, regardless of that.   Michael Hingson ** 11:13 So did you during all your married life and then the time in between and so on. What kind of work did you   Pat Backley ** 11:20 do? Well, I started work. I started work in the bank when I was 16. Barclays Bank was a really good place to work, so I spent 10 years working there. Then I lived for two years in the Fiji Islands and just did voluntary work back to the UK. My first husband and I started a furniture business, and then when I left him. Obviously I needed a job, because I didn't claim anything in the divorce. And so I got a job with bernardo's, the children's charity, as a general fundraiser. And that was great, because I just traveled all around the south of England supporting all the fundraising groups and things which I loved. And then I moved on to after a few years, I moved on to cancer research, um, again, as a fundraiser, but this time, setting up all their charity shops in the south, and that was a wonderful thing as well, because during the course of both those jobs, I met so many interesting people. You know, now that I'm an old gray haired lady, well, not actually Gray, because I color it, but now that I'm an old gray head lady. I feel very bad that the 35 year old me went to my new job with with Barnardos and sat there looking at these hundreds of gray head old ladies. And I thought, Oh, I'm too young to deal with all these old people. What on earth am I going to talk to them about? And of course, within a couple of days, I've realized that all these gray head old people were fabulous, that most of them had had really interesting, fascinating lives, and that I could learn an awful lot from them. So now the old gray head me looks back and feels very guilty at how I was at that age. But I guess that's what happens when you're young. You just think anyone over the age of 50 is is past it, don't you really well, but   Michael Hingson ** 13:03 you did learn a lot, I bet, from them, which is, oh, wow,   Pat Backley ** 13:07 oh, I learned so much, and I had so much fun, so much fun. Yeah, in fact, when I got married for the second time, a whole bunch of those ladies and a few of the men came to my, like, hen party the night before I got married, we went to the local, very smart hotel and had cocktails, and I just smiled to myself, thinking, oh, and I thought you were all so boring at the beginning, and actually, you're fabulous. So, yeah. So then, then my then I, then I stopped working, had my daughter, and I desperately didn't want to go back to my well paid job with cancer research. I wanted to be home with my baby because I was 43 I'd lost two children in the year before, with miscarriages, and so I stayed at home for four months, and then my husband said, oh, we need more money. You need to get a job. So I ended up doing having other people's children at my house, looking after them so doing like child minding. And that was when I look back. I don't know how I managed, because sometimes I had five under four year olds running around the house, which was quite a challenge. But we survived. I did that, I think, for seven years altogether, and oh, and in between that time, we came and lived in New Zealand for a year because my husband was a teacher, and he got a year's teaching exchange. So we basically swapped lives with a New Zealand teacher. He and his family moved into our house in England, and we moved into their house here in New Zealand. So for a whole year, we lived like a proper Kiwi family, which was wonderful. Lucy was only two, so it was the ideal time to do it. And I just, I just fell in love with New Zealand and desperately wanted to emigrate there. And then it took me 14 years to persuade him to get back here eventually. And in hindsight, I've probably pushed it too much, because. After he left, he said, I didn't like living in New Zealand. I didn't ever really settle there. So I have to hold up my hand and say, probably I persuaded him to do something that he really didn't want to do. But anyway, it's easy to be wise in hindsight, isn't it, as always, yeah. And then so we went back after our year here, we went back to the UK and we set up a business training and assessing construction workers, because the government realized, the UK government realized that, because they'd stopped formal apprenticeships some 20 odd years earlier, that there were now hundreds of 1000s of men working on construction sites who had all the necessary skills, but no paper qualifications. And so they wanted to redress that, but they realized that these men would not be willing to go back to college for three years to learn, learn their trade that they could already do. So they started this fast track program, and we used to go onto sites. We obviously, I had to get lots of qualifications and things to do it, trainers and assessors, qualifications. But then we used to go on two sites and watch the men working ask them loads of questions. We obviously had trade specific instructor assessors, and they could get that qualification that they would have taken three years to get going to college, they could then get in in a matter of six months or so, just by being observed doing their job. So it was a really, really good system, and it was very rewarding for me personally, because I used to go onto the sites and do the initial talks and whatever. And I've always liked men. I've always enjoyed their company, so I could cope with all the banter, you know, all the right, darling, what you're going to do after work, that kind of thing. I enjoyed all that. The bit I hated was wearing a hard hat, because they're very unflattering and they squash your hair do. But the most rewarding thing for me, we did that, that business for 20 years. The most rewarding thing was when a guy who I'd met on site who didn't even want to do it because he felt inadequate, which I later discovered was because he couldn't read or write, but he'd hidden it from all his colleagues. The most satisfying thing was once he'd passed, which obviously he sailed through. I sent him his certificate in the post, and the next day he phoned me, and he said, Pat. Thank you so much for that certificate. He said, it's the only thing I've ever had in my whole life that says I'm good at anything. He said, My wife is framing it and putting it on the living room wall. And that just made me cry, because I thought, this is, this is a man who's 45 who's gone through his whole life thinking he's stupid, and suddenly, just that one action can give him something to be proud of. So that was, I loved doing that, and we made that's how we made our money. For a few years, it was incredibly successful, and then it tailed off, and that's when we immigrated to New Zealand, and since I've been here, I've just basically been having a lovely time, doing a bit of voluntary work, lots of socializing and becoming an author. So   Michael Hingson ** 18:10 what, what attracted you to New Zealand? Why did you fall in love so much with New Zealand? Do you think   Pat Backley ** 18:19 it's a it's a hard question to answer. Michael, it was something deep inside me after I'd been here for a year, or when I'd been here probably only for a few weeks, I got this real feeling deep inside, inside me that I needed to be here. I just think sometimes places in the world draw you in for whatever reason. Who knows? You don't know if it's because perhaps you've got some association with it through an ancestor or I don't know, but I felt very, very drawn to New Zealand, and once we went back to the UK, we were back there for 14 years. Whenever I spoke to friends from New Zealand, whenever they'd phone me, I would end up in tears for hours. I want to go back to New Zealand. So it was a need rather than a desire, almost. And it's not something I've ever regretted. Even after he even after he abandoned me, we were back in England when he announced he didn't want to be married anymore, and he never came back to New Zealand. I just had to come back alone. Even then my friends in England were saying to me, oh, Pat, just stay in England. You know, we're all here. We'll, you know, we'll all be here for you. And I said, No, no, home is just New Zealand, even though I knew I was coming back all alone because Lucy was still living in London, I had, I've got no family here, so, but there was something that pulled me back.   Michael Hingson ** 19:45 I understand that I really enjoyed New Zealand a lot. And if there's when people ask me a place in the world that I regard as my favorite place to visit, New Zealand always comes out first, but I enjoy. Way wherever I go. I actually took my first trip to London in late October of this year. I was only there for a couple of days, but it was to do a speech. And, you know, it was pretty similar to being here. It just wasn't the same feeling as as being in New Zealand, which I had the opportunity to do, as I said before, for a little over three weeks. So it was really a lot of fun and and the the environment is just so different.   Pat Backley ** 20:28 Yes, I think New Zealand, I think one of the, I mean, obviously it's an incredibly beautiful country, but I think one of the main differences is that we, we've got a land mass pretty similar to the UK, but we we've only got like 5 million people, and the UK has got more than 70 million. And I think that's the thing. You know, the more people you try to cram into a small space, the more the social problems are, are enlarged, don't they? You know, we have exactly the same social problems here that are anywhere else in the world, but because our population is relatively small, it's not such a such such a huge feature of life, I think, yeah. Mm,   Michael Hingson ** 21:10 well, I haven't explained to everyone listening that Pat and I met through the RV Book Festival, virtual book festival, which both of us being authors, we spoke at and participated in, gosh, a little over a month ago now. Mm,   Pat Backley ** 21:28 yes, time flies, doesn't it does. It does.   Michael Hingson ** 21:32 And one of the things that I said, as I usually do when I get a chance to meet with people, is we'd love to have you all come on the podcast. And Pat is the second of the three people who were there. And so I'm glad that that that we got to do this. But let's talk about you being an author. So you started being an author. What, just three years ago or four years ago? Yes, yes. What? Yeah. Go ahead. Oh,   22:01 no, sorry, you carry on. Well, so   Michael Hingson ** 22:03 what just caused you to decide that you're going to try to write a book?   Pat Backley ** 22:09 Okay? Well, when I was a little girl, I had a massive list of things I wanted to be when I was growing up, I wanted to be a nurse, a missionary, a writer, a teacher, a ballerina. They were all my that was my list. So when I was about eight, I edited my first magazine. Is I have one limited copy of it. It was a limited, very limited edition. It only lasted one, one time. But so I guess probably I've always had that desire deep inside me, but because of circumstances, and not coming from, you know, a very privileged background, it meant that I didn't have the opportunity. But in the days when we used to write letters, I always love to write long, long letters to all my friends, my family. And when I lived in Fiji for two years, I wrote, there was no other way of communicating with my parents. They had no telephone. So for two years, I wrote them letters and when my when, when they died, and I had to clear out their house, I found this enormous pile of blue Air Mail, letters that I'd written to my parents over a two year period. They'd kept every single one. So I think I'd always loved writing, but it never occurred to me that I would ever have the chance to write a book. And then we get to COVID, and we, here in New Zealand, went into lockdown on the day of my 69th birthday. It was a beautifully sunny day, and I was all alone because Lucy was in England, and I made myself chocolate brownies, stuck a candle in it, sat in the garden and cried because my marriage was over. My daughter was gone. We had COVID. There were, you know, there were lots of things to cry about. And I then spent the next three weeks lying on my sofa watching rubbish on Netflix, eating too much chocolate, drinking too much red wine. And then I thought to myself, Pat, this is ridiculous. This could go on for a few more weeks, because at the time, we thought COVID was going to be quite short lived, didn't we, and I thought, why don't you do something practical? Why don't you write a book? So I just got out some paper and pen and started writing, and stayed up, probably mostly day and night, for two weeks, and then within two weeks, my first book, Daisy was done, and that was that really the rest is history. Since then I have so I published it self. Published it just before my 70th birthday, and in the three years since then, I've written and published eight more. Contributed to five anthologies, written a little Yes, so yeah, written articles for magazines and been interviewed by lovely people like you, and the rest is history. Are you alright? Have I sent you to sleep? Talking?   Michael Hingson ** 24:58 No, I. Well, I'm just listening. I didn't know whether you were done. You know, it's, it's fascinating to to listen to the story and to hear you talk about what, what brought you to it, what made you decide what kind of books to write. I   Pat Backley ** 25:18 don't think I really did decide, um, my daughter for my birth, for the previous Christmas, had sent me a very dry little textbook, which she knew I love, called, I can't think exactly what it's called, something like the history of architecture, of council houses in the UK, something very boring like that. And it was, it was basically a textbook, because I love architecture as well. It was basically a textbook with just a few pictures in so I'd kind of put it on my coffee table, but not but ignored it. You know how you do when there's books? You know, you should, you kind of don't get around to it. So at the beginning of COVID, I picked it up one day, or a couple of days before I started writing, I picked it up, and within five minutes, I was enthralled. I got out post it notes. I'd stuck those all over little bits and written quotes, and I think that was kind of an inspiration. So I expected the book to be more about, have more of a theme of architecture. And in fact, the book doesn't. There is one guy who becomes an architect in it towards the end. But I think that kind of just just pushed something in my head into gear, because I firmly believe Michael. I mean, they always say that everyone has a book inside them, and I, when I do my talks now, I'm often photographed at a very funny stage where I'm going like this, because I'm just saying how somebody's it feels as though somebody's taken off the top of my head, and 70 years worth of words are just flying out. Because I find writing incredibly easy. The first book Daisy wrote itself pretty much, you know, I just kind of had an idea and and I wrote down a few things about possible people, and then they just wrote their own story, really, which I'm, you know, I know, as an author, you will understand that. And I would say, for all my other books, I've had an idea, but they've kind of, they've kind of written themselves, themselves   Michael Hingson ** 27:17 as well. Yeah. Well, you know, you talk about textbooks. I've been an advocate for some time about the concept that people should rewrite textbooks or make textbooks different than they are, and technical manuals, the same way, as you said, they're very boring and and they don't need to be in textbooks could draw people in a lot more than they than they do. For example, my master's degree is in physics, and when you're looking at a physics textbook, there are lots of mathematical equations and so on, and that's fine, but think of how much more interesting the book might be, and think of how much more you might draw the interest of people to the science by including in the book some stories about the the author. Their their, I don't want to necessarily say adventures, but their experience is why they became a physicist, why they do what they do, and bringing some humanity to the textbook, I think would make a significant difference to textbooks in general, but we don't see that, because people just want to get the facts out there.   Pat Backley ** 28:32 I couldn't agree more. I absolutely, totally agree. When I was at school, I hated doing research because it was boring. You had to learn the names of all the kings of England, and King, you know, Henry, the eighth wives, and when their heads got chopped off and all that stuff. And apart from the really scandalous bits, I wasn't really interested. But now I absolutely adore research. I discovered that my first book, Daisy is is a historical fiction, and so I had to do lots of research to make sure it was accurate, because you you know, if you write something in a book and it's not right, people are going to pick holes in it. I mean, they're going to pick holes in your work anyway, so you don't want to give them extra ammunition, right? But I discovered that I absolutely loved doing research. And of course, these days it's so easy because you just click a button on your computer and you can find out what cold scuttles were used in 1871 whereas in my youth, we had to trudge to the library get out all the encyclopedias. And so because of I've discovered that love of research, all my all my novels, are now historical because it's almost it gives me an excuse to go researching and finding out stuff. So it's opened up a whole new world to me, Michael and I just realized now that that expression education is wasted on the young is so true, because now in my seven. Is I am so open to learning new things, whereas in my teens, I was bored to death and just wanted to go home and play.   Michael Hingson ** 30:09 So what was Daisy about? Oh, well,   Pat Backley ** 30:11 Daisy, I'll just, I'll just read you a little bit on the back to give you an idea. Um, Daisy is a gentle family saga spanning almost 100 years, from 1887 to 1974 It is set in Alabama, Harlem and London, and incorporate some of the evils of society, poverty, racism and snobbery, as well as some of the greatest that life has to offer, family, friendship and love and a couple of quotes, being born poor was a scar that never faded, and she had never experienced racial hatred first hand, so had no real idea of how it could erode a person's whole life. So basically, it's just a story of a young woman born in the slums of London and a young man born into an affluent lifestyle on an Alabama plantation in 1871 and how their lives interwove, they never got together, but, you know, or all their extended people did, so it's right, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:14 right. Well, the thing about about that kind of a story is, again, it draws you in. I I would would say something slightly different. Being poor is a scar that that never fades. On the other hand, being poor also gave you, or would give Daisy the life that she had, which was, was so I would suspect so very invaluable to her overall life experiences.   Pat Backley ** 31:50 Yes, absolutely yes. And her life changes quite dramatically midway because of the people she meets. Yeah, it's I, it was in, it's interesting, because sometimes I reread it and I just think, Wow, this is quite a good story. And I then I feel bad for thinking that about my own writing, but I've written the second Daisy, which is obviously the follow up. And then I thought, actually I and then I wrote a little travel book and my life story and whatever. And then I thought, Oh, I really miss doing research. Perhaps I could write about my own family, my own ancestors. So I then wrote the ancestors series. I've done three in it, and wrote about my paternal grandparents, my maternal grandparents and my own parents. I've just published that book about them that was glorious, but very emotive, because obviously I knew certain bits about them. But delving back further and further into the family histories, you discover lots of things and very emotional to write, yeah, particularly one about my parents, because your parents are just your mom and dad, aren't they? You kind of don't think of them really, as people in their own right, but when you start writing their life story, you're living life through their shoes and and it, yeah, it made me very emotional. I cried every day writing my parents story, but now I'm really glad I did it, because it's kind of honored, honored their lives, and also it means they'll never die their even their photographs are on the cover. And my daughter said that she cried all the way reading it, and she said, Mom, it was wonderful, because I hardly knew them. You know, they died when she was quite young. Yeah, she's but now I understand, yeah, so because she's had, you know, she's had a reasonably nice upbringing. She hasn't had the upbringing that they had, or even I had. So, yeah, I think I try. I've become a bit I've become a bit of a pain now, because everyone I meet, I say, like last week, I did a talk at the local genealogy society, and I said to them, please write your story down or record it some way. Because once you die, your story dies with you, no one knows your life as well as you do. So, yeah, yeah. But I just love research. So now I'm thinking, oh, what else can I write about and do some research? I write about people. Michael, people are my passion. I love people and and ordinary people. I don't need to write about, you know, worthy things people, right?   Michael Hingson ** 34:24 But the other part about it is that you got, as you write about your parents, I'll bet you got to know them better, too, and it helps you understand the kind of life you had and they had. And I still bet overall, you could talk about wealth and all that, but you wouldn't trade your life for anything because it made you who you are today. Abs,   Pat Backley ** 34:49 you're absolutely right, and yes, you're right. Writing about their stories and all that they went through, it was Yeah. Just made me really, really realize that they were even. Special people than I knew they were. But no, I wouldn't trade anything. I mean, I had a wonderfully happy childhood, if you put aside that silly bit of bully in that, you know, I tend to know for the years. But, yeah, we I, I because I didn't know, really, that I got snippets of there being other kind of lives like, you know, I had rich friends who had lots of clothes, traveling all the time and stuff, but basically, my life was just my little nuclear family. In our little we had a little two bedroom house for six of us, and that was my life. We were very happy. There were very rarely raised voices, and that's why I didn't cope very well in my first marriage, when my husband, my first husband, suddenly showed me that he had a rather violent temper because I didn't know how to handle it, because I had never experienced that before in my whole life. So I in that way, I wasn't prepared. But yeah, I will always be grateful to my parents, because with very little, they gave us all a very happy childhood.   Michael Hingson ** 36:05 Well, so you started writing at the age of 70. Do you wish that you had started writing earlier? Or did you think about that? I   Pat Backley ** 36:17 think about it. I don't really, because I think I had to live through everything I've lived through get to the point now of being able to write in the way I do. And also, yeah, no, I don't really. I mean, the only thing I think is, oh, I hope I don't die before I before I get everything written, I want to write. That's my only thing. But no, I I've learned, Michael, not to regret anything in life, because if you do, the only person it hurts is yourself. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 36:47 because you are who you are, because of your life   Pat Backley ** 36:51 exactly, and you would understand that better than most. I mean, you cope so well with with being blind, which is absolutely remarkable, because most of us, if we suddenly can't see and need to wear a stronger pair of glasses, we just go down, you know, go down into a depressive state. So you're a wonderful beacon of hope. I think for an awful lot of people, of course,   Michael Hingson ** 37:15 the issue, and using that as an example, the issue is that you don't know anything about being blind or blindness, and people generally don't, and they make a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily true, but it is again, the lives that they live, and the reality is there's nothing wrong with being blind. We live in a world where most people are light dependent, that is, they can see. But the reality is, of course, in the perspective I try to oftentimes nowadays, to convey to people, is light dependence is just as much a disability as being light independent or blind, because as soon as the lights go out, you lose power, and if you don't have an immediate light source. You're in a world of hurt. And we really should think of disability as a characteristic that everyone has, except it manifests itself differently for different people. But unfortunately, people aren't ready to do that. And the reasons for bringing up the concept in that way is that I think that because disability is really a characteristic everyone has, it is also a way to help level the playing field. And that's something that is so hard to get people to do, because they really think, well, you're blind, you're not as good as I   Pat Backley ** 38:37 Oh, wow. Very profound. I love talking to you. Michael, this is fascinating stuff. Fascinating. I had, I had a little niece. Sadly, she died when she was 14. She had a dreadful genetic disease called battens, but she went blind for the last couple of years. It broke my heart. It broke my heart, but she seemed to just deal with it somehow. You know, it's, I guess we all get the strengths we need at the times we need them. Do you think   Michael Hingson ** 39:04 I think, I think that's true, or we can if, long as we accept it. But the reality is that, of course, she lost her her eyesight, but if she developed an attitude that I have other things that are available to me, so I'm going to be fine, then she would be fine. Yes,   Pat Backley ** 39:23 yeah, yeah. I mean, sadly, she lost all her faculties. She couldn't talk. She so everything went but, but it was when her eyes went and she was still able to understand, that was the hardest thing. So I remember years ago when I worked in Barclays Bank, when I was quite in my 20s, and we were, I worked in a big branch at the time, and we had a blind telephonist, because in those days, back in the 60s, I think it was kind of what they did. It was when there were all those great big telephonic boards, you know, press all the buttons. And we had a guy called Peter, and he had. His dog was called penny, and our branch was on the corner of this huge, wide road in a place called Kingston, just outside London. And to cross the road, there were like six lanes of traffic, and it was really, really dangerous. And we would come out of work in the afternoon, and we'd all be standing there hesitant to cross the road, and Peter would suddenly just march across the road with Penny, and we'd all be standing there in awe. And one day I crossed with I've got brave, and I crossed over with him, and we got to the other side, and I said, Peter, how can you do that? He said, Oh, well. He said, It's always useful being blind, because traffic feels sorry for you, so they all kind of slow down anyway. He said, But, but. He said, But Penny leads me. He said, she just, she just, she just knows it's fine, so she just the dog just, just takes me over. I was fascinated, but he had just recently married about two years earlier he'd been, he'd been fully sighted till he was 11, and then he and some friends were messing about on the railway lines, and he fell over and bashed his head, and he went blind. So he had been sighted and but now he he was married, he had a little baby, and I said, Oh, Peter, can you actually see your baby, or do you just kind of have to feel the outline? He said, Oh no. He said, I got a tiny, tiny bit of vision. He said, so I can see the shape of the baby. And I just always remember thinking you're so brave. That was, that was what I thought. I just felt he was so brave. Well, just remember   Michael Hingson ** 41:27 the dictionary, you know? Well, just remember the dictionary defines to see is to perceive. It doesn't necessarily need to be with the eyes and and there's so many other senses that give us this a lot of information as well. For me, I don't want my dog to decide when we cross the street in general, unless the dog refuses to go because there's a hybrid car or something coming that I don't hear. But it's my job to know when to go and and I know how to do that, and so I can listen for the traffic flow and and, and go accordingly. And at the same time, if I then tell the dog to go forward and the dog won't go my immediate assumption is there's a reason for that, and and, and usually there is because the dog and I have developed that kind of a relationship where the dog knows it's my job to tell the dog where to go, and it's the dog's job to make sure that we get there safely. It's a very close knit team. It's as close knit of a team as you can imagine, and it's what it's really all about. So the dog and I each do our jobs, and when we do them correctly together, what a wonderful world. It becomes   Pat Backley ** 42:47 fabulous. And it obviously works because you're still standing, you're still here,   Michael Hingson ** 42:54 and my and my dog is over here, breathing very deeply, asleep. Oh, so you you stick with historical fiction. Have you ever thought of writing other kinds of books, like adventures or novels or that are not historic in nature, fantasy or any of those? I   Pat Backley ** 43:17 don't think I've got the right brain set to do fantasy or horror or crime. I, I I'm writing historical because I've discovered a great love for it, but I've also, I also have a great love for travel. So I wrote a little travel book, and I've just done a big trip, so I'm going to write another travel book, because that's another great love I wrote. I wrote my memoirs, which was very satisfying, you know, to write my own story down so it's there forever, if you like. And I also wrote a little book called The abandoned wives handbook, which I didn't want to write. I just kept putting it off. And then one day, I woke up at three in the morning and this voice saying to me, Pat, you have to write this book to help other people. So I just wrote this. I cried all the time. Writing it, as you've probably deduced, I'm a great crier. I think crying is is the best way of getting stress out of your system, out of my system. So I wrote this book. It's just a tiny little book that you can pop into a handbag called the abandoned wives handbook. And I've just made it like a little dictionary. I call it a dictionary of distress, and it's just to I'll just just briefly read you the backseat and understand the pain of abandonment is huge. The partner you loved and cherished for so many years has decided you are no longer required past your sell by date of no use to them anymore, so tossed out like a piece of garbage, abandoned with barely a backward glance, in an attempt to keep this a gentle, light hearted read, each chapter is divided into letters of the alphabet, rather like a dictionary of distress, something you can dip into at any time. I am not an expert, merely someone who has survived one of life's great traumas and has come through. Is a stronger, more resilient person, so I didn't want to write it. I hated doing it. I've, I published it, and it's, ironically, one of my best selling books people buy   Michael Hingson ** 45:13 all the time. Do you publish your own books, or do you have a publisher? I   Pat Backley ** 45:17 have, I have done till this point, Michael, but simply because I'm feeling I'm too old to hang around waiting to get noticed. But I have just written, I have just finished another book, which I I just feel might be slightly more commercial, so I may try seeing if I can get an agent for that. But I will probably only try one or two, and then if they say no, I'll just give up and self publish. The only thing against self publishing for me now is that it because I want to do it properly. You know, I pay an editor, I pay a cover designer, I pay a formatter. It becomes quite expensive to pay people. So that's my that's my only downside. But I do like to be totally in control. You know, I can choose my own covers. I can choose when it's published. I can choose what the content is. And if you go with a traditional publisher, you often lose the ability to have the same control   Michael Hingson ** 46:11 well, or you you negotiate, but, but, yeah, I understand what you're saying. I also have to say I understand fully this whole concept of abandonment. When my seventh guide dog Africa retired, and she retired because she wasn't seeing well and she was slowing down, so I knew it was time to get a new guide dog. So it was February 9 of 2018, and we lived here, and her puppy raiser, the people who raised her, they call them, I think, in New Zealand, puppy walkers, but they live about 140 miles south, or about 120 miles in a town called Carlsbad. And they came and I, and I said that they could have Africa, and the only reason I gave her up was because we already had my wife's service dog and a cat, and I was going to get another dog, and Karen wasn't really going to be able to handle taking care of two dogs and a cat when I traveled to speak, so we agreed that Africa could go live with the bill And Peggy, and they came and picked her up, and she walked out the door without a backward glance. I was abandoned.   47:26 Oh, that's awful,   Michael Hingson ** 47:28 yeah. Well, we actually, we went. We went down and visited her several times. She was just excited. No, she's, she was a great dog. And, yes, yeah, you know. And they got to have her for two years before she passed. But she was, she was a good dog and and she had a good life. And I can't complain a bit, but it's fun to tease about how obviously we have abandoning issues here. Yes, yeah.   Pat Backley ** 47:53 And I think that's the secret in life, Michael, to always find something to be happy about and smile about, because life can be very tough, can't it? I mean, you know, it's, yeah, life is tough. And so I think if we don't find, try and seek a little joy, we might as well all give up, you know, yeah, yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 48:14 there's no need to do that. I mean, God put us on this earth to live an adventure. And life is an adventure,   48:21 absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 48:22 no matter what we do. Yes,   48:25 absolutely. Well, how do you   Michael Hingson ** 48:26 develop your characters? I mean, you're writing historical fiction, so you're you're using history and and periods of time as the the setting for your books, but you're creating your own characters primarily, I gather,   Pat Backley ** 48:39 yes, yes. To be honest, in my head, when I start writing, I almost have an exact picture of my characters. I know exactly what they look like. I mean, if I was to, if I was to suddenly get a film offer, I could easily say how these people should look, because I they're real for for example, a few months after I oh no, maybe a year or so after I published Daisy, I was talking to my daughter one day, and I just said, Oh, do you remember when Theo did whatever? And she looked me straight in the eye, and she said, Mum, I don't know your characters as well as you do. And I just, we both burst out laughing, because to me, they're real people. You know, I I can picture them. I know exactly what they look like. And I think even when I start a new book in my head, I already know what my characters look like. They may not as the plot goes on, behave in the way I want them to, but I know how I know who they are. I know how they how they look. Yeah, they're going   Michael Hingson ** 49:43 to write the book and they're going to tell you what you need to do. Yeah, totally. But you use, but you use, I assume, real places in your books. I always   Pat Backley ** 49:51 use real places, always Yeah, and always places I know, because I think you can write more authentically then, like in days. I wrote about Harlem and Alabama and New York and London, or not New York in that one, but London and because I know all those places, I've been there and you know, they're, they're familiar to me, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 50:13 yeah. So you, you, you let them do what they do, and out comes the book.   Pat Backley ** 50:21 Absolutely, that's right, yes, yeah, have you   Michael Hingson ** 50:25 written any yet in New Zealand?   Pat Backley ** 50:29 You mean, based in New Zealand? The funny thing is, Michael, being an immigrant is and I have spoken to lots of other immigrants about this. In fact, I co authored a book in lockdown called the warrior women project, a sisterhood of immigrant women, which is based in the States. And all the other women are are living in the States, except me, and I caught up with them when I came over to the states. Couple of months ago, we had a reunion, met for the first time, which was wonderful, but we all said, once you are an immigrant, you never truly belong anywhere. You know, when I go, I always feel a little bit of an outsider here. I've been here 14 years now, and that's nobody's that's nothing anybody does. That's just my feeling deep inside. I go back to England, and I feel like an outsider. I used to live in Fiji when I was in my 20s, and then I had a house there. Until my divorce, I go back there, and I've got a lot of extended friend family there, I go back there, and I always feel like an a bit of an outsider. So I think that's the price you pay for wanting a life less ordinary. You know, you somehow become like a little bit of a floating person. And I don't to answer your question, I don't really feel qualified to write about New Zealand. Obviously, I talk about it in my travel book and I talk about different places, but to base the whole story here, I don't feel qualified. There are enough fabulous New Zealand authors who are doing that already, who've been born here, who understand the country, who, you know, who, yeah, they're   Michael Hingson ** 52:07 just at the same time you wrote Daisy, which took place in part in Alabama. How much time did you spend, you know? So it may be, it may be something in the future where a character will pop out and say, I want to be in New Zealand, but that's something to look at.   Pat Backley ** 52:23 Yes, I love it when somebody like you calls me out on my own, my own things, because you're absolutely right. I That's That was a silly argument to say. I don't know it enough. So thank you for that. You've made me rethink. That's good.   Michael Hingson ** 52:37 Well, so I gather that when you're writing, you think you have the plot planned out, or you you try to have the plot planned out, but it doesn't necessarily go the way you plan it. Does it?   Pat Backley ** 52:49 No, not at all. I mean, I know roughly what I want to say. I think what I'm definitely, definitely know what I want to do is get certain little messages across. And that doesn't matter what my characters do, because I can weave that in, like in Daisy. I wanted to get across that slavery was dreadful, and racism is dreadful, and the way black people were treated when they went to England in the 1950s was dreadful. So I managed to we, and that's and that's snobbishness and stuff is dreadful. So I managed to always weave those kind of themes into my books. And apparently, it has been said by reviewers that I do it so well that people it just makes people think about what that how they think how Yeah, so, so those main themes, if you like, I managed to weave into my stories, regardless of how badly my characters behave.   Michael Hingson ** 53:45 So when you're writing, are you pretty disciplined? Do you have certain times that you write, or do you just sit down and write till you're ready to stop for the day? Or what I   Pat Backley ** 53:56 am very non disciplined, undisciplined, whatever the term is supposed to be. I have great intentions. I think, right, I'm going to spend tomorrow writing. I'll be at my desk by eight o'clock, and I'll sit little five. And then at nine o'clock, I get up to go make a cup of coffee. And at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, I'm out weeding the garden, and then I might come back in and do a little bit, and then I go off and do something else. So I am dreadfully undisciplined, but I work really well to deadlines. Just before I went away on my big trip in September, I was part way through a book, probably a third way through writing a new book, and I woke up one day and I thought, right, I'm going to get that book finished before I go. I had three weeks left. In that three weeks, I had masses of appointments. I had to sort out my wardrobe, which, as a woman, is a huge problem, one that you've probably never had, but you know, you have to decide what goes with what and how many dresses you should take, and it's a huge issue for a lot of women. So I had a lot of jobs to do in that three. Weeks instead of which, I decided to set myself as self imposed time to get the book finished. Crazy. Just, I mean, why? Why? Why crazy?   Michael Hingson ** 55:09 And did you the day   Pat Backley ** 55:11 before? There you are. I was so proud of myself because I just that was it. I decided I and what I did to make myself accountable, I actually put a post on Facebook and Instagram saying, why, and all these little yellow post it notes, and I'd written on their pack suitcase, Do this, do this, do this. And so I just said to everyone that I'd given myself this self pointed deadline so I had made myself publicly accountable. If I hadn't done that, I probably wouldn't have finished it, but I find, for me, that's the best way of disciplining myself is to have a deadline with everything in life, really, yeah. But the   Michael Hingson ** 55:49 other part about it is, even when you're as you would put it, being undisciplined, your brain is still working on the book, and the characters are are mulling things over, so it does pop out. Oh, totally,   Pat Backley ** 56:00 totally. And I end up with lots of little scrappy notes all over the house, you know, where I've just grabbed a piece of paper and written down something. And then, of course, I have to gather them all together. And when I was in the States recently, I spent two months, and I've got scrap I was doing a lot of research, and I've got scrappy notes everywhere. So I've now got to try and pull those all together while my brain still remembers what they were meant to be, you know, like lady in red dress in New Orleans. Well, what does that really mean? So, right? I'm, I'm my own worst enemy in many ways, but,   Michael Hingson ** 56:37 but she thought, and so you went through it exactly, exactly, yeah, that's okay. Where did you travel in September?   Pat Backley ** 56:45 I went to Atlanta first to meet up with these warrior women, which was truly fabulous. Then I went to New Orleans, and my friend who lives in Alabama, picked me up, and we went to New Orleans, and then we drove back to Alabama. She lives in Huntsville. So I was there for a week and was doing lots of research, because Daisy is partly based right and then we then she drove me back to Nashville, and I flew to New York, where I was meeting some friends from New Zealand who lived there six months of the year. So I spent six days there and went to Harlem for more research and stuff like that, and then flew to Canada, to Toronto, where two friends, a lady I'd met when we had our daughters together, and her daughter, they now live in France. They flew from France, met me in Toronto, we hired the biggest SUV I've ever seen in my life, and we drove across Canada for three weeks, which was such fun, such fun. And then I came home. So I've got millions of scrappy notes that I need to pull together to write a travel book and to use as inspiration for my novels.   Michael Hingson ** 58:01 So you so you're going to write another travel book? I   58:05 am going to write another travel book. Yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 58:09 And the the abandoned wives handbook, that's kind of a self help book. That's a self help book, yes, yeah. Just you think you'll write another one of   Pat Backley ** 58:17 those? No, no, I'm done with that one's enough of those, huh? Yeah, that's right. I'm not an expert, Michael and the I just, I just, but the funny thing is, when I do talks, I always talk about all my books. And a few weeks ago, I was talking at this very smart meeting of ex business people, both ladies and gentlemen, and they were all over 60. Um, so quite a conservative audience. And at the end, or towards the end, I just mentioned this abandoned Wise Book, I tend to skim over it. I don't really, I don't really talk about it too much unless the audience is particularly relevant. But I just said to them, oh, and this is my little book. And someone said, Oh, could you read us an excerpt from it? So I said, Okay, I'll just open the book at random. And I opened the book and the title, what you won't be able to see here, the title of that chapter was K for kill. And I thought, no, no, I don't want to read about kill front of this audience. So I just made a joke of it and and I'll just read it to you, because it will make you laugh, as I have said previously under Section indecisive. You may, in your darkest moments, think about hurting him. This is not really a great idea, as you would undoubtedly be caught and end up in prison. Yeah, you so, you know, I and then I went on a bit more, but, you know, it's some yeah and no, I'm done with that book. I've, I've done my bit for humanity with that. It seems to be helping a lot of people. So that's that's enough.   Michael Hingson ** 59:45 Yeah, I would never make a good criminal, because I know I'd be caught and and I don't know how to keep from getting caught, and frankly, don't care about trying to get worry about getting caught or not getting caught. It's easier just not to be a criminal. So it works out fine. So. Yes,   1:00:00 exactly. Yeah, me too. Me too. So much   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:02 easier. So much easier. Absolutely, absolutely yes. Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe learn a little bit more about you or meet you, how do they do that? Okay,   Pat Backley ** 1:00:12 well, my website is just patch back league com, so it's very easy. Um, I'm Can you spell that please? Yes, yes, of course, P, A, T, B, A, C, K, L, E, y.com.com, yeah, and I'm on all the channels, as you know, Facebook and Instagram and x and LinkedIn and stuff as Pat Backley author or pat Backley books. And my books are all available from Amazon, all the online retailers, Barnes and Noble stuff like that, as ebooks or paperbacks, or if someone desperately wanted a signed copy, I'm very happy to send them a signed copy, and you can get them from you can request them from libraries.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:59 Have you? Have you thought about making any of them an audio format?   Pat Backley ** 1:01:05 I have someone's. A few people have suggested that this year, when I've been doing talks, they've come up to me afterwards, and yes, I think I'm going to, as long as it's not too costly, because at the moment, my budget is extremely limited, but I'm going to do them myself, because everyone feels that my books will be come come across better in my own voice so well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:25 and you read well. So I think that makes a lot of sense to consider.   Pat Backley ** 1:01:29 Thank you, Michael, that's very kind of you. Well, Pat,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:33 this has been fun, and I've enjoyed it. I've learned a lot of things as well, and I'm and I'm glad that we've had this chance. We need to do it again. When are you going to start a podcast?   Pat Backley ** 1:01:47 Well, funny, you should say that I've decided I'm going to I'm going to just dip my toes in very gently. I'm going to start it in the new year, and I'm going to call it and this makes everyone who knows me laugh. I'm going to call it just 10 minutes with Pat Backley. And everyone has said, Oh, don't be ridiculous. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:05 I agree, 10   Pat Backley ** 1:02:06 minutes, but I thought it's a way of just gently edging in. And then if people enjoy listening to me, they might want to listen for longer after a while. But I thought initially, just 10 minutes, little snippets, if they like what they hear, they might come back.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:21 They'll come back. Oh, I don't think there would be a problem. Well, if you, if you ever need a guest to come and spend at least 10 minutes, just let me know. I   Pat Backley ** 1:02:30 certainly shall. I have absolutely loved talking to you. Michael, thank you so much for inviting me as well. This is a very joyful morning. I've really loved it. Thank you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:39 this has been fun, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it and reach out to Pat. I'm sure she would love to communicate with you, and maybe in some way, you'll end up in a book, which is always a nice, good thing to think about as well. I'd love to hear what you think about our podcast today. So please feel free to email me. Michael, h, i, m, I, C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is at w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S O n.com/podcast, wherever You're listening. We would really appreciate it if you would give us a five star rating. And we we value that. We value your thoughts and input. Pat for you and all of you listening. If you know an

Differences between generations aren't anything new. But, this generation entering the workforce - mainly Gen Zers - seems to be throwing all of us for a loop. We've heard a lot about struggles with communication, motivation, and accountability. What's going on here?! We wanted you to learn from an expert on all things generational differences, so we welcomed on Mark Beal, Assistant Professor of Professional Practice, Communication at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information. He's also a Keynote Speaker and the Author of several books on Gen Z. And as always, if you need Strategic Counsel, don't hesitate to reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com. FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/forthrightpeople.marketingagency INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/forthrightpeople/ LINKEDIN https://www.linkedin.com/company/forthright-people/ RESOURCES https://www.forthright-people.com/resources VIRTUAL CONSULTANCY https://www.forthright-people.com/shop

On this episode I have the pleasure to talk with Kathi Sohn who I met just two weeks ago at the latest Podapalooza event. Kathi, as it turns out, is quite knowledgeable and fascinating on many levels. Kathi grew up in Rhode Island. She describes herself as a shy child who had been adopted. While in her mother's womb, her mother tried to conduct a self-abortion when Kathi was six months along. I tell you about this because that fact and others are quite relevant to Kathi's story. Kathi will tell us that at some level we have memories that go back to even before we are born. Science supports this and it is one of the concepts that Kathi's late husband utilized in creating what he calls the “body memory process”.   Kathi graduated from high school and went to college. As you will learn, over time Kathi secured several college degrees and even became a certified nurse. At some point she joined the army. That story is best told by her. Suffice it to say that Kathi says that joining the army on the advice of her adopted father was one of the best moves she could have made. From her four years in the military she learned commitment, responsibility and discipline.   After the army, Kathi went to work for the Department of Defense and at some point she met and married her husband David. Again, a story better told by Kathi.   For many years Kathi and David lived in Maryland. Eventually they moved to Alabama.   Kathi will tell us about the work David conducted to develop the “body memory process” which he used to help many overcome fears and life challenges. After David's death in 2019 Kathi decided to retire from the Department of Defense after 36 years and then to continue the work David had begun regarding the body memory process which is the discovery and release of self-limiting beliefs (vows) we all create in early childhood. Today she is a coach and she is an accomplished author. Her book about the body memory process is entitled, “You Made It Up, Now Stop Believing It, which was released in 2023. It has reached twice bestseller status on Amazon Kindle.   Our conversation ranges far and wide about medicine, our limiting beliefs and how to deal with our limitations using the body memory process. I think you will like what Kathi has to say. She has some good nuggets of wisdom we all can use.       About the Guest:   In 2020, Kathi Sohn retired from her first career as a senior manager after 36 years with the Department of Defense. When Kathi lost her beloved husband David in 2019, she decided  to devote her life to sharing the powerful work he created – the Body Memory Process, which is the discovery and release of self-limiting beliefs (vows) we all create in early childhood.   Kathi wrote a book on the work, You Made It Up, Now Stop Believing It, which was released in 2023 and it has twice reached bestseller status on Amazon Kindle. This information-packed book not only gives the reader the entire childhood vow discovery and release processes, but also has practical exercises for increasing self-awareness and fascinating stories of real people who experienced personal transformation by using the Body Memory Process.   Kathi is also a speaker and coach, sharing as broadly as possible the importance of healing childhood wounds. She is dedicated to mitigating the cycle of inter-generational trauma.   Ways to connect Kathi:   WEBSITE: https://kathisohn.com FREE GIFT: https://bodymemoryprocess.com/free-gift/ FREE PARENT GUIDE: https://coaching.kathisohn.com/freeparentguide "RESILIENT TEEN": https://coaching.kathisohn.com/resilientteen PURCHASE BOOK WITH FREE GIFTS: https://youmadeitupbook.com/bonuses FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/bodymemoryprocess/ INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/kathi.sohn/ TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kat_sohn LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathisohn/ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC9R0noiiPPWf1QjzrEdafw           https://linktr.ee/MCAnime   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Hi everyone. I am your host, Mike Hingson, and welcome once again to another episode of unstoppable mindset today. Once again, as we've done a few times already in the last few weeks, we have the opportunity and joy to interview, well, not interview, but talk with someone who I met at our recent patapalooza Number 12 event, and today we get to talk to Kathi Sohn Kathi was at podapalooza. Pat Kathi has a lot of things going for her, and she'll tell us all about all of that. She had a long career with the Department of Defense, and if we ask any questions about that, then probably we'll all have to disappear. So we won't, we won't go into too much detail, or we'll have to eliminate you somehow. But in 2020 she left the career that she had with DOD and started working to promote something that her late husband, who died in 2019 worked on the body am I saying it right? Kathy, body memory process, yes, and and she will tell us about that, so we'll get to all that. But for now, Kathi, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Kathi Sohn ** 02:37 Michael, it is great to be here. You are such a big inspiration to me. So thank you so much for having me on your show.   Michael Hingson ** 02:44 Well, thank you. I really am very glad that we get to do this. Do you have a podcast? No, I don't. Well see, did PodaPalooza convince you to start one?   Kathi Sohn ** 02:55 No, but there's always. I'm open to possibilities in the future. So   Michael Hingson ** 03:01 as as I tell people, potable is a pretty neat event. You go because you're a podcaster. You want to be a podcaster, or you want to be interviewed by podcasters, which covers basically a good part of the world. And so you're in the I want to talk to podcasters. And there we are, and we got to meet Kathi and chat with Kathi, and here we are. So it's a lot of fun. And so why don't we start, if you would, by you telling us a little bit about maybe the early Kathi growing up and all that sort of stuff, that's always fun to start at the beginning, as it were, yes,   Kathi Sohn ** 03:37 my goodness, so I, I grew up not in A a neighborhood where, you know, kids just played together and ride their bikes. I was, I was in a rather along a kind of a rural road in in Rhode Island, going down to the beach. If anyone has heard of watch Hill and westerly that area. So it was a beautiful, beautiful area. But because I didn't have a lot of, you know, again, I didn't have the neighborhood kids to play with, and I tended to be a little shy and to myself, I spent a lot of time after I was old enough and my mom let me just sort of exploring the woods nearby and learning, you know, just really kind of going within myself and thinking, and I would look at things in nature, and I would write this very deep poetry about it. So I think I was very fortunate, on the one hand on to have a very introspective life growing up. On the other hand, it didn't help me to work out, you know, some of that, that shyness, so that's something I needed to tackle a little bit later. As an adult, I had two older brothers, all three of us were adopted from very, very difficult beginnings. And again, it wasn't until I was an adult. And in fact, doing using the work that I'm going to talk about today, that I was able to understand some of the things that I was feeling and didn't understand growing up about myself, because some things were were shrouded in mystery, and I was able to get to the bottom of it, but basically, I had a very happy childhood. My adoptive parents were just so loving and wonderful and very, very fortunate to had a great education and parents who told me that I could do anything that I put my mind to.   Michael Hingson ** 05:38 It's great when parents do that, isn't it? Oh, yeah, I was very fortunate to have parents that took that position with me. When the doctor said, Send him up to a home, because no blind child could ever grow up to be anything, and all he'll do is be a drain on the family. And my parents said, No, I was very fortunate. So it's yeah, I I definitely sympathize and resonate with that, because it's so wonderful when parents are willing to really allow children to grow and explore. And obviously parents keep an eye on us, but still, when they allow us to do that, it's great. Yeah,   Kathi Sohn ** 06:13 I had heard you. I've heard you talk, because I have your your your book, live like a guide dog. And hearing about that story, and it reminds me, if anyone of your listeners are familiar with the Barry cowfield and his wife, who had an extremely autistic son, and the doctors were telling them, You need to institutionalize them that you can't you're not going to be able to deal with that. And they said, Are you kidding me? He's our son. If the best that we can do is just love him, then we're going to have him home. You know, he's our son. We're not going to put him anywhere. And then, of course, they they work with him, actually brought him out of autism through an amazing, amazing process. But yes, you're absolutely right. The parents are just, I know it seems almost cliche, but really, parents are instrumental, not just taking care of the physical needs, but those emotional needs, so, so critical and related to what we're going to talk about today.   Michael Hingson ** 07:20 Yeah, well, and it's, it's unfortunate when parents don't do that and they give into their fears and they don't let children explore, they don't let children grow. That's, that's so unfortunate when that happened. But I'm really glad that my parents and I'm glad your parents allowed you to to stretch and grow as well. That's a neat thing. So you and of course, being a reader of a variety of Stephen King books, when you talk about Rhode Island, although the Stephen King things were a little bit further north, but and the woods sort of makes me think of, oh my gosh, did you ever run into Pet Cemetery? But we won't worry about that.   08:03 Fortunately not,   Michael Hingson ** 08:06 yeah, yeah, that was a that was a scary book. Yeah, he's a pretty creative guy. But anyways, enjoy him. But anyway, so you went through school, you went to high school and and were a little bit shy. I kind of, again, I kind of empathize. I was in a neighborhood. It was not as rural, probably, as as what you grew up in. And kids did play, but I didn't really get a chance to do much playing with the kids, because I didn't do baseball and sports and all that. So I did a lot more reading. I hung around where the kids were, somewhat the other kids were, but my brother was the one that that really interacted with them. And I, I have to admit, that I didn't do as much of that, and was was probably a little bit shy or at least hesitant as a result, but I did make some friends. And in fact, when I was seven, there was a girl named Cindy who moved into our neighborhood, who had a bike, and she asked if I ever rode my bike, and I said I didn't have one. And she let me learn how to ride a bike on hers. And my parents saw that, and so then they got me a bike, and my brother had a bike, so we did a lot of bike riding after that, it was kind of fun.   Kathi Sohn ** 09:21 Yes, I love the part of the book where your dad took a call from the neighbor who was so nonplussed about the fact that, well, did he, did he fall off right? Did he? Did he run into anything? No, what's the problem? I got a good laugh out of that. Yeah, well, and   Michael Hingson ** 09:39 I know many blind people who, who, when they were kids, rode bikes. You know, it's not that magical. You have to learn how to do it. But so do side are kids. So it's, it's the same sort of thing. So what did you do after high school? Did you go to college?   Kathi Sohn ** 09:56 Yes, it's kind of a long. Story. Let's see if I can, if I can, sort of summarize, I had, I went into college in actually, was, in my mind, pre med, my I it was the major was zoology. Where did you go? University of Rhode Island. Okay, and I, I had been well when I was 12, I started piano lessons, and then I had private singing lessons when I was 14. So here I found myself on a college campus where there was a Fine Arts Center, and I had continued to, of course, develop in music. And a part of me kind of wanted to pursue becoming a sort of a music star, while the other part of me, of course, was more practical and guided by my parents about, okay, get yourself some, you know, a more dependable career. And so here I am on this college campus and spending more time in the fine arts center than than the library. So my college years were a little turbulent, as I was still trying to figure out really what I wanted to be. I went from pre med into nursing because, again, my grades weren't that great. And because of the distraction, and I even that, even that wasn't working, the problem essentially came with me. And instead of a fine arts building, it became, you know, playing, playing the piano in local bars was just kind of trying to find my way. And my dad told me one evening I was visiting, I was home with my parents, and I was very distraught. I don't know what I'm going to do. My grades aren't that great. And he said, I think I have an idea. I'll talk to you in the morning. Well, he worked for General Dynamics Electric Boat division. So he was involved working with the Navy building nuclear submarines. Did   Michael Hingson ** 12:10 he go to rotten Connecticut? Yes, yeah. And   Kathi Sohn ** 12:15 I actually ended up working there myself briefly. And he said, you know, the military may just be what you need. So, long story short, I ended up in the army and for, you know, for four years, and really did turn everything around. Then I started getting building that self confidence. I finished a undergraduate degree in political science. And then when I started working for the Defense Department, and there was I took advantage of the benefits of them helping me with paying for graduate degrees. I i got a graduate degree in conflict resolution and one from the Naval War College where I graduated top of my class in national security studies. Wow. So turned it all around. And yeah, so in the in, you'll love this too. A little loose end that I tied up. My dad encouraged me to do this the New York regions. It was called regents college, I think, yeah, University of the state of New York had a Regents college where you could challenge a nursing degree program. So with all the courses I had taken, and I just I went to a local hospital, I they helped me to practice stealth, adjusting changes and, you know, and all of that, giving IVs, and I passed the test. It was a weekend of clinical, one on one with a nurse evaluator failure. I could not, you know, had to be 100% and I passed. So I also have an Associates in nursing. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 13:57 I wanted to, you know, is this the time to say I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't have any patients anyway. Go ahead, yes,   Kathi Sohn ** 14:06 gosh, I'm still interested in medicine, but I figure it all, it all comes in handy if I'm, you know, I have my kids at the doctor, and I can, I can talk with them at a level, you know, a little bit of a notch above just being a worried mom. What   Michael Hingson ** 14:20 do you think of a lot of the tendencies and the trends, and I've talked to a number of people on on a stop level mindset about it, a lot of the things that go on in Eastern medicine that Western medicine doesn't practice.   Kathi Sohn ** 14:34 Well, yeah. In fact, with the body memory process, my late husband factored that into what he developed as the body map, which I can can can discuss when the time comes, very, very important stuff that's just really being missed, although there are more and more doctors who are understanding the value. Yeah. That the body is an energy system and energy and information system, and they're starting to integrate that more.   Michael Hingson ** 15:08 And at least, my opinion, is they should. There is a lot more to it. It isn't all about drugs and surgery or shouldn't be. And so it is nice to see a lot of movement toward more, what, what many might call spiritual but there's, there's so much scientific evidence and anecdotal evidence that validates it, that it's, it's good, that more people are really starting to look at it. Yeah,   Kathi Sohn ** 15:37 absolutely. And this, if this might be an appropriate place to talk a little bit about some of the scientific underpinnings of the work that I'd like to discuss. There is science behind it, and you know that when there's research that's done in, say, the pharmaceutical area, it ends up the public will find out about it through, say, new new medications. With technology, you know, you went there's some breakthrough. You end up with something new for your phone. But some of the breakthroughs that were made in the 80s about the awareness of babies and children, especially babies in the womb, and also the mind body connection. You can you can see it referenced in some, you know, scientific papers, but it doesn't really often make it to to the public, and it is very relevant to the to the public. And that's what my late husband did, was he took this research and he turned it into a practical application to people's everyday lives. One of the most really stunning discoveries back in the 70s and 70s and 80s was made by someone named Dr Candice PERT. She wrote Molecules of Emotion, and they were trying to figure out why drugs work in the body. They figured it was sort of a lock and key that if, if you know so APO opiates worked in the body. They they figured that there was an opiate receptor somewhere. And during the course of this, they sort of accidentally discovered that during emotional events, the neurotransmitters from the brain travel to receptors all over the body, that they're actually located everywhere and in the organs, in the muscles. And Dr pert would make statements like deep trauma puts down deep roots in the body. You know, your body is your subconscious mind, so that is very, you know, very strong underpinning for the body memory process at that whole mind, body connection that we never really understood so well before   Michael Hingson ** 18:00 one of our earliest podcasts, it was actually number 18. I just looked it up. Was with a gentleman, Dr Gabe Roberts, and it was also from, I think a pot of Palooza was the first one I attended. And he is a psychologist, and he or he deals with psychological things, but one of the things that he talked a lot about, and talks a lot about, is people's traumas and their injuries and the things that bother them and and even the things that are good are all actually holograms that are in your memory. And he calls them holograms because you can get to a particular one, and hologram usually is really something that's just composed of a whole bunch of littler holograms. But what he does to help people is to work with them to find that hologram that they thought they got rid of, that they didn't really get rid of, because everything is always in your memory, and if you don't really deal with it, then it's going to sit there and continue to to affect you. But what he does is he works to help people find those memory things that really need to be corrected, and then helps them to correct it was fascinating interview. As I said, it's number 18 and unstoppable mindset. So my point it'd be, I think you might find it fun, and I think other people might find it fun to   Kathi Sohn ** 19:30 listen to. Yeah, definitely that. That sounds incredibly interesting. He's   Michael Hingson ** 19:35 in Kansas. I'm not sure if it's Kansas City, but he's in the Kansas area somewhere, as I recall, well, so you did all that, and then you, you were working at the Department of Defense. Were you a civilian and working essentially as a contractor, or working,   Kathi Sohn ** 19:52 yes, as a civilian? I It was sort of a natural, you know, from being in the military. Then I was. Able to find an assignment as a civilian when I got I only did four years in the Army. I never intended it really to be a lifetime career, but it was enough time again for me to turn things around. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 20:14 that's not the issue, isn't it? Yes,   20:17 yes, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 20:19 So I mean, that's, that's and your father. So your father was right, and obviously he cared a lot about you Yes,   Kathi Sohn ** 20:27 and helped me with that. I Yes, I, my father did me such a great service by pointing me in that direction. I mean, my, my, you know, incredible career that I could not have imagined myself in if he hadn't pointed me in that direction, so I don't know what I would be doing. Hopefully it's still not floundering in college somewhere.   Michael Hingson ** 20:49 Yeah, so is there a truth to the old Jerry Lewis song, the baby gets a gravy and the army gets the beans. But anyway, it's a cute song. I listen to it every so often on my little Amazon Echo device. It's cute, yeah. But so, so when did you meet your husband through all this?   Kathi Sohn ** 21:11 Yeah, so it was 1994 and so I was pretty much square in the middle of my my career, my civilian career. And it was a there was a friend of mine that was sort of a mutual friend. She she knew him as well. I was living in Maryland, and David was living in Alabama, actually, where I live now. And she kept saying, You got to meet this guy. And kept saying to him, You got to meet this girl. It was one of those sort of matchmaker deals. And and she was right, even though the the both David and I weren't really looking for someone. So when she actually dragged him to my doorstep on Fourth of July, 1994 you know, there were some sparks, I think that we acknowledged that, but it took some time. I mean, we dated for almost three years before we were married, and then we were we were married for about 25 years, wow, before I last, before I lost David, and it was, you know, really wonderful. And, like all marriages, you know, some some, some ups and downs, but the overall theme was that we supported each other, you know, he was, you know, really incredible. I spent I would go to, I would go to war zones every now and then he would tell people, yeah, and then she came home with a flack vest and said, you know, by the way, this is where I'm going to be going. You know, when, when I came to him, and I guess it was 20 so 2017 I'm trying to what exactly, before that was 2015 the kids were still pretty young, but it was, it was really important for me to do a job, actually, in Afghanistan that was going to take me away from home for six months there. And he said, You know what, if it's if it's important to you, it's important to me, and we'll make it work. And he came from a military family, so we really understood that type of, yeah, he understood mission and commitment, right? And yeah. So he was probably never,   Michael Hingson ** 23:38 I never, needless to say, got to serve in the military because they they don't. When the draft was around, they wouldn't draft blind people, and later on, they wouldn't allow blind people to enlist, although, during the time of Afghanistan and Iraq, there were a few people who lost eyesight while in the military, and a couple of a few of them were allowed to to continue. But they never let me do that, and I, and I, and I understand the the prejudice, if you will, but it, it doesn't really stand that everyone has to be able to go into combat directly, and they could have found other jobs, but that's okay, and I certainly don't hold it against the military in any way, but I do appreciate the responsibility, and I've learned enough about military life from talking to a number of people and and my father was in World War Two, so starting with him, but others learning a lot about military. I appreciate what you're saying about it taught you a lot about responsibility. It taught you about commitment and so on. The closest I come to that is when I worked at Guide Dogs for the Blind any number of the puppy raiser families, those are the families that have agreed to take a guide dog puppy when they're about nine weeks old and they'll raise the dog, teach them basic obedience, teach them how to behave. In public and so on. And one of the things that children say, young kids who want to be puppy raisers and who take on the responsibility, is they learn so much about responsibility from doing that, because when they take on the job, it means they have to do the job, because the dog has to get used to somebody doing it, and they do such a wonderful job of raising these dogs who come back and they, a lot of them, become successful guide dogs. Not every dog does, because not every dog is really cut out to be a guide dog, but it's, it's not military, but it is still teaching responsibility and commitment. And the young kids who do it and really catch on are great. Yeah,   Kathi Sohn ** 25:42 yeah. So yeah, I can see the corollary there,   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 yeah, oh yeah. There's definitely some. It's pretty cool. Well, so I'm sorry, of course, you you lost your husband. I lost my wife Three years later, as you know, in 2022 but tell me so he was for a lot of the time when you were married. Was he in the military, or did he do other things? No,   Kathi Sohn ** 26:06 he was not in the military. They would not let him in the military because when he was 14, he was he had a near death experience. He had double staff pneumonia, and he was pronounced dead for a period of time, no respirations, no heart rate for a significant period of time. And then his dad noticed Bill something on the monitor, and there he was back again, and it's one of the reasons why he had ended up actually pulling this work together. So he he wanted to be in he was actually in ROTC, and I think it's interesting that he got through all of that, and then they decided that they didn't want to medically clear him to go into the military. But the men in his family always became military officers. His his dad was a general in the Air Force, and the closest that he got was helping with medevac, like Tanzania. And I remember him telling me the some stories about that he was working as an EMT, and he managed to do some connections to be able to do this work, just to be somewhat a part of, you know, the Vietnam War, but he really wanted to to be a military officer, and they just wouldn't allow him. But I think that maybe God wouldn't allow him because he had a different mission. I'm pretty convinced of that. So,   Michael Hingson ** 27:36 so he became a doctor.   Kathi Sohn ** 27:40 No, he, he had a couple of very advanced degrees, and, let me had a couple of doctorates, but he did not choose to not a medical doctor, to be a medical doctor, right, and do any type of mainstream work, because what he, what he brought in, was really kind of cutting edge, and you wanted to have the freedom, to be able to to put the work together without somebody telling them that, you know, is got it for regulations. He couldn't do that.   Michael Hingson ** 28:11 Well, let's get to it. I know you've alluded to it, and we've kind of circled around it. So tell us about the body memory process, and tell us what he did and all that you want to tell us about that Sure.   Kathi Sohn ** 28:24 So I talked a little earlier about the some of the the I talked about Dr Candice Kurt and the what she talked about with the by the mind body connection, what she learned and right about that time was also some research by Dr David Chamberlain about the consciousness of babies. Just, you know, they didn't even realize, I mean, the birthing practices were actually rather traumatic, really, just regular birthing practices in terms of the baby coming from that warm environment into a rather cool temperatures and very bright lights. So Dr Chamberlain did a lot of work. He wrote books like babies, remember birth and the mind of your unborn baby. And really brought a lot to bear about about how influential that period of time in our life can be. So then to take a couple steps backwards. First, we talked about David having that near death experience, and as he was growing up, the doctors kept telling him that he was never truly going to be well, and he kind of railed against that, and he was like, Well, you know, it really brought him to wonder, okay, what truly is wellness? So back in, back in that day, nobody was really talking about it. I think that if you look online these days, you see a lot of different theories about wellness and. You know, is across a spectrum, right of not just mind, body and spirit, but so many other things, including environmental factors. But he, in his quest for wellness, he did study the Far Eastern medicine medical practices, and he he studied Dr Chamberlain's work and about the such as Dr perks work, about the mind body connection. And so he pulled together what he called the body memory process, based upon the fact that what we believe, like the power of belief and the mind body connection and the awareness of babies and children that we had never really realized before about how they actually can create their reality. I mean, they they, but Dr Bruce Lipton calls if you're familiar with biology and belief, he talks about putting these programs in the place that we you know, we're born with sort of the operating system, but we need the programs. And so what we observe and what we experienced before we're seven years old, largely, we put together the core belief system. And so that's the body memory process is about, you know, basically how this all comes about. That's sort of like the this, the sort of the in the information part, there's a discovery part, which is, you know, what are your childhood vows? David called them vows, because, just like wedding bows, they're about what we promise ourselves, about how we're going to be in life, based upon these decisions we make when we're very, very young and and then so between, you know that that mind, body, spirit, side of things, he pulled together this process where, after you have discovered what your vows are, then there is a release process, how to be able to let that go. And these, these beliefs are in, these Vows are actually in our cell memory, kind of like that hologram that you were talking about before, and David created a process for people to be able to then, sort of like, if it's a vow, then to disavow it, to be able to empty the cell memory. Because he said, If you, if the cup is full, right, you can't put anything new in, you know? You can try with affirmations, you can try, through willpower, to change a habit, but if you, but if you have these, these, this energetic you know aspect to yourself, these vows that are actually in your subconscious and are there, then it needs to be dealt with. That energy needs to be released in order to be able to truly create what you want in the present moment as an adult.   Michael Hingson ** 33:11 Hence the title of your book. You made it up now stop believing it. Yes, yeah. I figured I love the title. That's a great title. So, so what exactly is the body memory process then?   Kathi Sohn ** 33:27 So it's the book goes into live details about it, you know, there, there is a discovery aspect to it, you know, and there's that's that involves both subjective and objective data, if you will. It's, you know, what, what am I feeling in my body? Where do I carry tension? Maybe, if I have the same thing, you know, sort of happening over and over again, like I I always, maybe, maybe it's the right side of my body where I'm always, maybe I'm stubbing my right toe or, you know, maybe I've, whenever I have a I fall down, you know, it's always like, I land on the right side, and I create problems there, and maybe I have a really tight right hip. You know, it's like, what, what's going on in your in your body? It's about what's going on in your life. I mean, how are, how are things overall, with your health, with your finances, with your relationships, with your career. And then there's, you know what? What was going on start in your very early life, starting with when you were in the womb, like, what was going on with mom, you know what? And that's sort of like an investigative process that clients get to do, you know, if mom is still around then, that she's really probably the best source of information there, but there could be other family members who are who are aware, and sometimes you don't. Get a lot, or maybe you don't even get any information from that period of time, and you need to just do a lot of this work through, through, you know, through intuition and and being being able to take a look at sample beliefs, which I have a collection of over 900 that David had gathered over the years of working with his clients, and to be able to take a look and see what resonates. You know, clients find that very valuable. To be able to say, oh, yeah, yep, that's absolutely me, you know, right there, because sometimes it's difficult to access it, because it's in the subconscious. I I have a video that I've created to help walk people through that discovery process. And since losing David, I've done whatever I can to sort of replicate what he was able to do quite intuitively. He would, he would be with someone for about three, three and a half hours, and he could just laser being right to do what was going on based upon how they were talking about what was going in their life, on in their life now and then, talking about what their childhood was like, Mom, Dad, how the relationship was. He would listen to how they would talk. He called it listening them, not listening to because when you're listening to someone, sometimes you're already thinking about what you want to say next to contribute to the conversation, which is fine, but when you're when you're listening someone. You're giving them that full space. You pull in all your energy, and you give them the full attention so that you can catch them saying pretty much their script. He said, you could, you know, you could hear even their birth script like they would, their belief system would just sort of come out. And the things that they would say, like, well, I know nobody ever really believes me, right? So as an example, and sometimes we might say that sort of in just in talking, it's sort of an assumption there that people just let that go, unless there's someone who's really engaged and says, Hey, wait a minute, let's talk about that a little bit like, what's the evidence that you have that nobody ever believes you and and sometimes people need to be able to take some of these assumptions that they that they just find they live their life by, and actually challenge them and say, you know, where does that come from? And try to get back to, you know, when, when that first occurred, because then thereafter, a lot of times it's just a self fulfilling prophecy, and every and he just keeps reinforcing itself.   Michael Hingson ** 37:48 Well, yeah, and we, we sell ourselves short in so many ways. And one of the things that you talked a little bit about is is childhood and so many people think, well, you're when you're when you grow up, your childhood is left behind. And I gather that you're saying, No, that's not true, because even from the womb, there's memory. How. How do we know that?   Kathi Sohn ** 38:16 Really, I think it's if you don't just sort of deal with whatever was going on back then, then it is going to sort of reach up and bite you at some point. I mean, everybody has something, even the people who say they have the have had the most perfect childhood. Because it's not about when I talk about childhood trauma in the book, and I talk about trauma, it's not about abuse and neglect. I mean, unfortunately that happens to many, but it's about how we actually sort of traumatize ourselves, because we're not yet logical. So before we're seven, we're not we're not even logical, and we're largely, you know, in our emotional brain, and we're the center of our own universe. We're very egocentrical During those years, and so we tend to jump to the conclusion that it's about right, it's about me, something happened, or mom and dad are fighting. It's about me, right? Or anything that goes wrong, it's either about something I did or something I didn't do. That was really big for me, like it's one of the other damned if I do, damned if I don't. So yeah, I would, I would be willing to make a rather bold statement that says everyone has something that they could look at from their early life, and that, because it's having some type of an impact on your adult life.   Michael Hingson ** 39:45 Has anyone ever used hypnosis to help somebody actually go back and and either at least learn about maybe that early childhood or even pre birth kind of thing   Kathi Sohn ** 39:59 I'm. Sure. I mean, so, you know, David created his work, and he called it the body memory process. It's not the only game in town, right there. There are other people who are are doing other things that are similar. I think Hypno, hypnosis, hypnotherapy, can get you there as well. I think that there's also something called rebirthing that was something that was going on, I think, that came out of the of the 80s as well, which was about, very specifically, getting you back to when you were born, right? What was going on during that time? So I think that you know anything that that that works for for you, to get you, you know, back into that time period is good. I think what makes David's work so especially powerful is that he has a very balanced sort of mind, body, spirit approach. And that is not just about, well, here's the bad news. It's about, you know, here's the good news too, because here's a way to be able to let that go and and to be able to move on. You know, I when we talk about, when I talk about this topic of going back to your childhood, I always think of that scene from The Lion King, where the monkey, you know, Rafiki, sort of bops The Lion, the young lion, Simba on the head right with the stick that says, It doesn't matter. It's all in the past. And that's true to on the one hand, because we need not dwell on the past, we need to be able to get the goodness from it, learn from it. That's the point, and then be able to let it go. And I think that's what the body memory process does, is it takes us back to be able to do that, that self examination, and then gives us a way to then be able to move on and not dwell on it, because it's not who we are. It's not it doesn't define us, even though, if we're not aware of it, we inadvertently let it define us. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:10 and that's the issue. It's like I always say, and many people say, in the National Federation of blind, blindness doesn't define us. It is part of who we are, but it doesn't define us. But when we allow something specific to define us without understanding the importance of it, that's a problem, but that is something that we have control over if we choose to do it.   Kathi Sohn ** 42:32 Yes, yes, absolutely. So how did David   Michael Hingson ** 42:36 come to actually create the whole concept of the body memory process.   Kathi Sohn ** 42:42 Well, you know, again, I think it was his personal quest for wellness that got him, you know, into doing the the investigative work that he did. He actually had other other work that he was doing for a while. He did a home restoration, you know. And he was a builder, a home builder, at one point, but this work just really kept calling him. And it was, I think, the early 80s. It was somewhere around 1984 I think that he started actually working with clients where he had pulled together all of this information and created the the discovery and then the release process for poor beliefs. But he there was someone who actually paid for him to go through a lot of the trainings that were going on in the 80s, like life, spring was one of them, and there's a few others where I think there was this human potential movement. Back during that time, people were starting to turn inward. And then, of course, at the same time all of this research was was coming out, like Dr Chamberlain and Dr PERT. So I think that David was is sort of like in the middle of a perfect storm to be able to create this because he had his own personal motivation. He had access to the all of the state of the art research that was going on around him during that time period, and he was also very intelligent and very intuitive. So he said that when he came back from his near death experience, he he knew that there, there was a reason that he came back. So I think he always had a sense of mission that he wanted to make a contribution to the world. And then it just over time, it just became clearer and clearer what that was. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 44:51 So have you had any direct experience with the body memory process? I.   Kathi Sohn ** 44:59 Yes, I absolutely have. I used to tell David that I was his poster child because of, because I had a lot of stuff that I was dealing with. I I had a birth mom, and then I had an adoptive mom, and I had, you know, my own, my own baggage that came from, from both. So I had, you know, many layers to, you know, to work through. But I guess, you know, there's always got to be something. You know, David said that he would work with the greedy, the needy and the greedy. He said the needy were the were people who ended up in some sort of crisis, because this, if you call it, your life script, which was another word for this collection of vows that we create during early life, that your your life script can either keep you in your comfort zone or it will keep you in crisis. There's really, there's, there's really two, but two, those two avenues, when you have this unexplored stuff that's that's going on, right? And then the greedy are the people who would like pretty good and they just want more, and he's so and it's all valid. It's all good, right? The different avenues that lead us to the work. For me, it really was a personal crisis that had been simmering for me through all of my life, starting when I was very, very young. I mentioned earlier that I was kind of shy, but it was really, really difficult for me just to just through school when you know I knew the answers to things. I wanted to be able to to talk in front of the class, but it was so scary for me just to be the center of attention. It was just, I just think of, there's some of the stories are kind of funny in my mind about what happened, even to the point where once I got in front of the class and I was laughing at my own science fiction story that I had written, and then everybody else started laughing. And that was actually a pretty positive experience, but most of them were rather negative, but it didn't really come to a head for me until I was a manager. I worked my up, my way up in at the Defense Department, and I was in in charge of an office. I I needed to be able to speak to my personnel. I had staff meetings, and I had greater and greater responsibilities. I needed to lead conferences and things like that. And I became face to face with my own fears of just being in front of a great as bigger and bigger rooms of people. And I know that, you know, this is a common thing for for for people, common fear with public speaking. But for me, it was, it's just, I can't even explain on the inside how difficult it was. I managed to pull it off a lot of times, and people would compliment me, and they didn't, you know, like you didn't look nervous. But I realized that I had to deal with it, or it was going to make me ill because of internally, the turmoil I was going through. And so I did use the work and ended up discovering, I told you that my parents adopted kids from very difficult beginnings, as it as I discovered, again, that's another story, but a little bit later in life, I had been, you know, basically At six months I had been born, though, from from an attack from my birth mom, so she tried to to do a home abortion when I was six, only six months along, and so that was rather traumatic, you know? I ended up born. I was an orphan, and I didn't have, you know, I wasn't received into the world by a loving mom. And then I think what was piled on top of that was the fact that I was in an incubator, and I was peered at by the medical staff, probably many of whom didn't think I was going to make it. So, you know, when you again, based upon the work that Dr Chamberlain did, and the idea of the connectedness, and that everything is about energy, and that there is communication that's going on, but it's at a sort of at a vibrational level, and that the infant is actually able to pick up on that, it's not, it's not about language, right? It's not about their mental development. It's something else that, you know, it just, it puts it's it puts these foundations within us into into place, until again, we're able to get back into that energy and be able. To deal with it. So for me, it was about that judgment. Whenever I got myself, got in front of a room, you know, I was that little baby in an incubator, and people that were, you know, like, I don't think she's going to make it. And so that was sort of a, if you picture, if you, if you kind of take that and overlay that on, you know, speaking in front of a room, what is not being able to make it or, you know, or dying, you know, it's like, Well, I kind of screw up, right? I forget what I was going to say. Or, but, and again, it's not, it's not, it's not rational. I couldn't say that it was I knew very specifically of what the turmoil was about. It was just about this intense energy that I could not define. But it was there for me. It was like I was right back in that incubator being evaluated and fighting for my life.   Michael Hingson ** 51:01 So what did you do?   Kathi Sohn ** 51:04 Well, I did the body memory process. Well, first I had my my my David and I sat down, and we really explored it, and I was able to put words to it. So for me, it was they watched me to see when I'm going to die and when I was able to do the body memory process, and again, it's all outlined in the book, but you know, the specific process around that I was able to, over time, increasingly, be able to feel comfortable in front of a room. And now I do public speaking, I'm able to be on camera and take David's work, you know, really to the world, and be the face of the work. If he had said that I was going to be doing this back in those years, I would have said, You've got to be kidding me. There's no way that I could, that I could do that through most of the years. When I had David, I was so thankful that he was the one who stood in front of the room right he was the one in front of the camera, and I was very happy to support him from behind the scenes. But I think that when I made the decision to carry on his work, and I think that's when I did the final steps of the process of being able to release all of that and say, Okay, again, that's in the past. Right to to be able to have to let that go, realize it for what it was. But it's not about who I am now. But   Michael Hingson ** 52:35 the issue is that you recognize it, you you learn from it, which is why it's important that you acknowledge it, yes. And you know, in live like a guide dog. We talk, as you know, about self analysis, introspection and so on. And I wish more people would do it. And I wish people would do it more often. I'm a fan of saying that people should do it every day. You should look at what at the end of the day. Look at what happened today, what worked, what didn't work, and even the stuff that worked, could I do it better, or the stuff that maybe didn't work? It's not a failure, it's a learning experience, and you should use it and treat it as that, which is why I also tell people never use the term. I'm my own worst critic. I've learned that I'm my own best teacher, which is a whole lot more positive anyway.   Kathi Sohn ** 53:25 Yes, absolutely. The other thing, Michael and Anna, and this is from, I think, in an interview that you were in when they were talking about what you were going through on 911 and you know you as the you were thinking to saying to God, gee, we got through one tower, and now there's another one coming down and and what are we facing? And that you you your own guidance you heard about. Just don't try to just what you can control. Can worry about what you can Right, right? And I think that's what this work is about, is that if we go through life and we're not we don't know that all of this is operating below the surface. It's so easy to blame events and people and circumstances and conditions for everything, but if we're willing to take personal responsibility, and go back to those early years, then we are doing something about what we can do, and then when we go forward in our adult life, we can handle those crises, and we can be much more in control of ourselves. And that's where we're we're truly in a place of power, because we can't control all those events and conditions, but we can be, you know, I just think again, that's why you're so inspirational. Like, okay, you know, you couldn't do anything about what was going on around you in in New York, but you were able to be. Com and trust your dog and to trust God, and that's the way we want to be in life.   Michael Hingson ** 55:06 Well, and that went both ways. The dog trusted me as well, and it and it really is a two way trust situation. You know, I read articles even as late as 30 years after I was born, about people who became blind from the same thing that I did, retroenter fibroplasia, now called retinopathy or prematurity, and I'll never understand why they changed the name doesn't change anything. But anyway, people sued their doctors, even 30 years later, and won lawsuits because medical science had started to learn. At least a couple of doctors had discovered. One specifically discovered that giving a child in an incubator, a premature baby, a pure oxygen environment, 24 hours a day, could be a problem for retinal development, and even if you gave them a little bit of regular error, the incidence of blindness went to zero, but it wasn't accepted by medical science, and so people sued, and they won, and I and I asked my dad one day, what do you think? Should we go back and sue the doctors? And he said, and what would it accomplish? Yeah, and he was absolutely right. And I wasn't asking him, because I was ready to go do it. I was just curious to see what he thought about it. And he thought, really, the same thing that I did, what would it accomplish? Even if we won, it doesn't do anything, and it ruins lives, because the doctors were doing the best with what they had. You couldn't prove negligence, yeah,   Kathi Sohn ** 56:39 absolutely it's they were doing the best with the information they had, and that's the way we should be with ourselves too, right? This isn't about going back and then get feeling guilty or blaming your parents or, you know, blaming yourself. We did the best that we in our own lives, at every stage of our lives. You know, we really are doing the best that we can with the information and the resources that we have   Michael Hingson ** 57:04 exactly, and that's what we should do. Yes. So what are some ways that people can benefit from the body memory process?   Kathi Sohn ** 57:14 Well, you know, again, I get, I had mentioned that 360 degree, look at your life there, there's, there's so many ways that you you can can benefit, because when you have this energy that you haven't discovered these, these, these beliefs, there, there is, there are words that You can put to it, and that actually plays out in your life, sometimes in very, very limiting ways. And you know, if you're looking at, say, finances, if you were raised with, you know the root of money, the root of evil is, you know money is the root of evil. You know that in you have that operating, then you're you're going to have a limit, a limit, you know, a limited way that you're interacting with money. I like to talk about some of the rather innocuous ways that, you know, relatives talk to us when we're little, and, you know, they end up impacting us as adults and limiting us, for example, if, if I have an uncle who says, Well, you know this, the Smiths are hard workers. We work hard for every penny. We don't make a lot, but we work really hard for every penny we make. It's like, okay, well, gee thanks. Now, you know, I'm going to grow up, and that's in there, in my subconscious. And, you know, I, I'm gonna, I believe that I have to work hard. And not only do I have to work hard, but I'm, you know, I may, I can't really earn money easily, right? So maybe investments are off the table for me, investments that might yield, you know, a lot of money. I mean, there's, there's, there's so many ways that this plays out in our life, and we don't even know that it's it's impacting us in what we do, and then what we're not doing, you know, if we're not taking risks, that could actually be good for us because of this. So people would benefit from from just taking a look, because you don't know, you know where it could could help you, but I can say that it can help you across health, across finances, relationships. That's huge about you know, what you observed in your parents and how they talk to each other, and then how how you are in relationship as an adult. So in so many different really, those important areas of our lives, this type of work can really benefit. There   Michael Hingson ** 59:57 are so many things that. Happen to us, or that we become involved in in some way or another, that are really things that we chose to have happen, maybe whether we realize it or not, and it's really all about choice, and likewise, we can choose to be successful. It may not happen exactly the way we think, but it's still a matter of choice, and that is something that is so important, I think, for people to learn about and to understand that you can make choices, and it's it's all about learning. So when you make a choice, if it doesn't work out, or it doesn't work out the way you thought, and it's not a problem, or it is a problem, then you make another choice, but if we don't explore and we don't learn, we won't go anywhere, right, right? Well, this has been a lot of fun, and I hope people will go out and buy the book again. You made it up. Now stop believing it. I love the title and and I hope that people will get it. We put a picture of it in the show notes, so definitely go check it out. And I want to thank you for being here and spending the last hour plus with us. I I've enjoyed it. I've learned a lot, and I always like to learn, so that's why doing this podcast is so much fun. So thank you for that. And I want to thank you all for listening wherever you are or watching if you're on YouTube. Cathy was a little bit worried about her room isn't as neat as she maybe wanted it, so she wasn't sure whether it was going to be great to video. And I pointed out, I don't have a background or anything. Don't worry about it. The only thing I do is close my door so my cat won't come in and bother us.   1:01:41 Oh, yeah, me too, yeah. Well, stitch   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:44 is probably out there waiting, because it's getting close to one of them many times during the day that she wants to eat, and I have to pet her while she eats. So we do have our obligations in life. Yes, we do, but it's fun, but I want to thank you for being here. But thank you all, and please, wherever you're listening or watching, give us a five star review. We value it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about today and our episode. So if you would email me, I'd appreciate it. Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, or go to our podcast page. Michael hingson.com/podcast, Michael hingson is m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S o, n.com/podcast, definitely love to get your thoughts Kathy. How do people get a hold of you if they want to learn more? Or are you are you doing coaching or working with people today?   Kathi Sohn ** 1:02:37 Yes. So if you go to Kathi sohn.com, that's k, A, T, H, I, s, O, H n.com, there's a lot of information on there. You can learn more about body memory. You can get a free chapter of the book. I have a couple other free gifts on there. You can and you can learn about my coaching programs. I have private coaching and for individuals, and I love to work with parents as well.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:06 Well, there you go. There you go. So Kathisohn.com and I hope people will do that again. We really appreciate a five star review. And Kathy for you, and all of you out there, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, because you feel they have a story they should tell introduce us. And if they don't think they can come on and tell the story, I'll talk with them. And oftentimes I can show people why it's important that they come on and tell their story. A lot of times, people say, I don't really have anything that makes me unique or different. Well, yeah, you do the fact that you're you, but anyway, if you know anyone who ought to be a guest, we'd love to hear from you and Kathy, if you know anyone same for you. But again, I really appreciate you being here and being a part of unstoppable mindset today. So thank you very much for coming.   1:03:56 Yes, thank you for having me here.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:02 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

What would happen if you woke up tomorrow fundamentally believing in your worthiness, regardless of your accomplishments? This question lies at the heart of our conversation with transformational leadership coach Toya Gavin, whose journey from burnt-out prosecutor to authentic coach reveals profound lessons about reclaiming our true selves.Toya shares the vulnerable moment when she publicly admitted her burnout and depression to thousands of fellow attorneys, expecting little response. Instead, she received an outpour from others suffering silently with similar struggles. This act of courage not only launched her coaching practice but demonstrated the transformative power of vulnerability.At the core of Toya's philosophy is "Woke Up Worthy", the revolutionary idea that our worth isn't tied to achievements or others' approval. This perspective offers liberation especially for women and people of color who often feel they must be perfect and never falter. As Toya explains, "We're expected to be these perfect things where nothing goes wrong and we never make mistakes...but for women and people of color, we don't get the room to try and see what we can create."Guest Bio:Toya Gavin is an attorney, coach, and founder of Woke Up Worthy. At Woke Up Worthy, Toya helps women of color stop chasing degrees so they can start going after the life they want. Toya is an ICF-certified coach and holds a Juris Doctorate from the George Washington University Law School and a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Engineering from Rutgers University. She also is licensed to practice law in New York and New Jersey. Toya's work as a coach is informed by numerous teachers, authors, artists, and practitioners, both personal and professional, including her sisters, aunts, husband, and mother.Connect with Toya:Website, LinkedIn, Instagram, Substack Connect with Theresa and Ivana:Theresa, True Strategy Consultants: tsc-consultants.com LinkedIn @treeconti, Insta @tscconsultants Ivana, Courageous Being: courageousbeing.com LinkedIn @ivipol, Insta @courbeingSITP team, Step Into The Pivot: stepintothepivot.com LinkedIn @step-into-the-pivot, YouTube @StepIntoThePivot

Sam Morse (@sammorseski) began skiing at age 23 months on the slopes of Sugarloaf. Nicknamed “Moose”  for his solidness and Maine woods roots, he followed in his brother Ben's foot steps to Carrabassett Valley Academy and then onto the US Ski Team. The 10 year veteran speed specialist on the US Ski Team, first broke onto the world stage when he became the Jr. World's Downhill Champion in 2017, and he has continued his progress with top 10 finishes and a continual rise in the FIS points ranking. Also an avid climber, kayaker, and all around sports person, Morse is also involved as a speaker in CFO, a Christian Family Camp Retreat organization,  as well as running his own faith based ski racing camps each summer called FAST camps. In our conversation today, Sam and John discuss the path to making the US Ski Team, the mindset required to ski 95mph downhill, how to maximize training opportunities and time on the snow, and how important it is that your identity be more than just winning races and a single sport. We discuss the importance of knowing yourself, having clarity of purpose, and a sense of true belonging as the path to peak performance.  BECOME A PREMIUM MEMBER OF CHANGING THE GAME PROJECT If you or your club/school is looking for all of our best content, from online courses to blog posts to interviews organized for coaches, parents and athletes, then become a premium member of Changing the Game Project today. For over a decade we have been creating materials to help change the game. and it has become a bit overwhelming to find old podcasts, blog posts and more. Now, we have organized it all for you, with areas for coaches, parents and even athletes to find materials to help compete better, and put some more play back in playing ball. Clubs please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com for pricing.  BOOK A SPEAKER: Interested in having John, Jerry or both come to your school, club or coaching event? We are booking Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 events, please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com to set up an introductory call. PUT IN YOUR BULK BOOK ORDERS FOR OUR BESTSELLING BOOKS! Programs such as UNC soccer and lacrosse, Syracuse lacrosse, Stanford Lacrosse, Middlebury College, Colby College, Rutgers University, and many other champions are using THE CHAMPION TEAMMATE book with their athletes. Many of these coaches are also getting THE CHAMPION SPORTS PARENT so their team parents can be part of a successful culture. Schools and clubs are using EVERY MOMENT MATTERS for staff development and book clubs. Are you?  We have been fulfilling numerous bulk orders for some of the top high school and collegiate sports programs in the country, will your team be next? Click here to visit John's author page on Amazon Click here to visit Jerry's author page on Amazon Please email John@ChangingTheGameProject.com if you want discounted pricing on 10 or more books on any of our books. Thanks everyone. This week's podcast is brought to you by our friends at Sprocket Sports.  Sprocket Sports is a new software platform for youth sports clubs.  Yeah, there are a lot of these systems out there, but Sprocket provides the full enchilada. They give you all the cool front-end stuff to make your club look good– like websites and marketing tools – AND all the back-end transactions and services to run your business better so you can focus on what really matters – your players and your teams. Sprocket is built for those clubs looking to thrive, not just survive, in the competitive world of youth sports clubs.  So if you've been looking for a true business partner – not just another app – check them out today at https://sprocketsports.me/CTG. Become a Podcast Champion! This weeks podcast is also sponsored by our Patreon Podcast Champions. Help Support the Podcast and get FREE access to our Premium Membership, with well over $1000 of courses and materials. If you love the podcast, we would love for you to become a Podcast Champion, (https://www.patreon.com/wayofchampions) for as little as a cup of coffee per month (OK, its a Venti Mocha), to help us up the ante and provide even better interviews, better sound, and an overall enhanced experience. Plus, as a $10 per month Podcast Super-Champion, you will be granted a Premium Changing the Game Project Membership, where you will have access to every course, interview and blog post we have created organized by topic from coaches to parents to athletes. Thank you for all your support these past eight years, and a special big thank you to all of you who become part of our inner circle, our patrons, who will enable us to take our podcast to the next level. https://www.patreon.com/wayofchampions