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My son Benny is back from a four week trip halfway around the world with a non-diabetes camp program. He says it was amazing! To be honest, I had a really hard time with it. This week, we share how we prepared, what went wrong, how Benny deals with feeling different on these types of trips and a lot more. Previous episodes with Benny: 14 years of T1D Benny & Stacey talk untethered and more on their way to the endo Talking about Control IQ & addressing kids' questions about diabetes Our 12 year diaversary Ten years of T1D - our whole family speaks up This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcript below: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen the first pre mixed auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. This week, I sent my teenager with type one halfway around the world for a month with a non diabetes regular camp program all the way to Israel. He's home safe, and I thought it would be fun and interesting to talk to him about how it all went. Are you glad you went with all the work you had to do?   Benny  0:43 I am so happy I went I'm so happy you guys let me go. It was amazing.   Stacey Simms  0:49 Benny is 16. And we share how we prepared what went wrong, how he deals with feeling different on these types of trips, and a lot more. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. Always so glad to have you here. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. My son Benny, who you're going to hear a lot of this week was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two. He is now 16. My husband lives with type two diabetes, I don't have diabetes. I have a background in broadcasting and that is how you get the podcast. And I've talked about this for a while on the show. We've been planning for quite some time. But if you are brand new, earlier this summer, we sent our son Benny to Israel for four weeks. I still can't believe we did it. bit of background. He has attended this irregular summer camp about four hours away for us in Georgia since he was eight years old that first year for two weeks. And for a month every year since except 2020. Of course due to COVID. He also goes to diabetes camp. He started going to the sleepaway diabetes camp for a week, when he was seven, he went to a little day camp in our area, he mentioned that he gets called kudos, he went to that when he I want to say he was three or four years old, he was very, very little. And that's a wonderful program as well. But for this year of the regular camp, when you are a junior, when you're going to be a junior in high school, there is an option to go to Israel. So while we don't know all the staff who went we know the program, they know us the kids know Benny, and they know the type one situation as much as friends can. Even so this was really hard. It was mostly hard just for me. But I'm going to come back after the interview and tell you a little bit about the lowest moment I had for real when he was away. And how it was it was honestly perfectly timed. I was so lucky to have the support that I did. I'll do that after the interview. A couple of notes before this interview. If you are new to the show, and you haven't heard any of my interviews with Benny before, he is a bit silly. He's a bit sarcastic. And you know, I think our whole parenting or family style leans a bit toward that toward darker humor. So please No, and I'm sure I don't have to say this. We take diabetes very seriously. He is in great hands in terms of health care, and our endo who we've had, we've been seeing him since he was two things were doing great. I also want to say that I am a bit troubled by the comments you're going to hear Benny make about diabetes camp, but I'm choosing to leave them in like it's how he feels right now. Just remember when you listen, this is a 16 year old, who may not have the best memory of when he was younger. But I know how much he loved diabetes camp and how important it was for I think for the confidence that you're coming from him now. And we'll revisit this issue when he gets older. But we have done other episodes about how much he liked camp. So I'm gonna link those up as well if you want to listen. But look, how you feel is how you feel. And that can change at different ages doesn't make it any less valid. So I'm leaving those comments in. And after you listen to the interview, if you have any questions or stuff you'd like us to follow up on, please reach out, you can always go to Diabetes, Connections comm and contact me through the website. We have a Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group, and of course, I'm all over social media. But I'd love to know what you think especially those of you who have teenagers or young adults who were not teenagers so long ago, you know, I'm curious to know because I wonder and I worry sometimes about being so open about this, you know, we are so far from perfect. I do worry a little bit about you know some backlash, frankly, and some people thinking we're really doing it wrong. So let me know what you think. But be nice about it. All right. Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario, we first noticed Dario a couple of years ago at a conference and Benny thought being able to turn your smartphone into a meter was pretty amazing. I'm excited to tell you that Dario offers even more now. The Daario diabetes success plan gives you all the supplies and support you need to succeed. You'll get a glucometer that fits in your pocket unlimited test strips and lancets delivered to your door at a mobile app with a complete view of your day. The plan is tailored for you with coaching when and how you need it. And personalized reports based on your activity, find out more go to my dario.com forward slash Diabetes Connections.   Benny  5:13 Hi, Benny, how are ya? I'm great. How are you?   Benny  5:14 I'm great. How are you?   Stacey Simms  5:16 I'm doing very well. You've been home for three weeks as how are you settling in?   Benny  5:20 Great. I want to go back. I miss my friends.   Stacey Simms  5:23 Yeah, I'm sure. I'm glad you had a good time. So I have a lot of questions for you.   Benny  5:28 From Listen, stop. Hi, listeners,   Stacey Simms  5:33 parents and adults with type one. But first, let me just ask you How was the trip? I mean, I tell everybody how the trip was   Benny  5:40 very, very fine.   Stacey Simms  5:43 And we'll talk more in detail about diabetes stuff. But did it meet your expectations? Like Was it a good time?   Benny  5:49 Honestly, the most fun was when they just kind of let us do whatever in the hotels,   Stacey Simms  5:54 history, religion, majestie, no big shakes, just hanging out your friends.   Benny  5:59 Two days before we went to some banana boating thing. All the counselors were talking about how much fun it is like they all did it. And it's super cool. And it was really boring. Oh, you're the worst.   Stacey Simms  6:11 Alright, so let's talk diabetes stuff.   Benny  6:13 Oh, okay.   Stacey Simms  6:14 Um, we planned a lot of this. We talked to the staff and they knew you because you've been there for a long time. But not all this stuff know me.   Benny  6:21 I had one of the counselors as a counselor at Camp Coleman. Two years back, no, three years back. And then one of the other counselors was in our unit early early.   Stacey Simms  6:35 I guess my point is, you have been to this camp since you were eight years old. So while perhaps the people that were on your bus, you know, the the staff Yeah. familiar, the system, the people that I needed to talk to you understood that this was just you didn't just show up that day, and say, I'd like to hang out with these campers, so they knew who you were. So we did a lot of planning in advance that I can talk about at a different time, because I don't want to get too bogged down in all of that. But let's start with what involved you, which was the packing anything to share. I mean, we just went through and figured out what you needed, and then added half more, we gave you like, 150% of what we thought you needed. had that go for you.   Benny  7:11 I didn't touch 80% of what was medical wise. I mean, there wasn't much need for it all. Like it was nice to have it in case I didn't need it. Most of it was like die hard situation. Like if you're going through the desert for 18 weeks, and then swimming through the negative. What.   Stacey Simms  7:32 I don't know if you can swim through it. But I mean, like knock wood we sent you with, I think two vaccines and one GMO pipe open. So you didn't use any of that. Right? So that kind of stuff. Thank God. Now of course, of course, we sent you with more insulin than you needed normally. And you use a ton less insulin. Yeah. Which we'll talk about. Well, I   Benny  7:51 used most of the vials, right You certainly with   Stacey Simms  7:54 right? But I sent you with pens. Also, you know, I sent even lots of extra stuff. I'm curious and I mean, not to put you on the spot. But why don't you use a nice medical bag? Why won't you let me send you with something that is organized easily? much work the blob of a bag that you use too much work. It's so gross. It's one big compartment.   Benny  8:15 It works. It does its job.   Stacey Simms  8:18 We do break it up with little bags inside. But I gotta tell you, I know it's not me, but I would I would get like a nice medical bag   Benny  8:25 with little find a medical bag, and we can talk about it.   Stacey Simms  8:29 I have like 10 that I would get Oh, you're the biggest pain. Okay, so we'll look for that. Like this thing. No, that's a that's a packing cube.   Benny  8:37 Hmm. That Well, mine is packing you.   Stacey Simms  8:40 Well. Yours is part of a packing cube system. Yes, you have. For those of you who know packing cubes, I enjoy them. I have them all different sizes. Then he uses just one big rectangular bag for your medical supplies that he carries out at home in his backpack. And it's great because it has everything in it. But it's horrible because it has everything in it. I like you should compartmentalize. I   Benny  9:02 already do that. Give me a face in different way.   Stacey Simms  9:04 Yeah. Alright, so then you had everything packed. And you had your medical bag of all your diabetes stuff inside a backpack that I assume you took every year. Okay. Is it a Camelback? Did it have water? I don't remember Oh,   Benny  9:14 so I had a hiking bag right that I threw a Camelback bladder in   Stacey Simms  9:20 Was it easy to get water all the time?   Benny  9:22 Oh yeah. They made sure you had a you weren't allowed off the bus if you didn't have three liters minimum of water would you   Stacey Simms  9:29 perfect What about the the plane ride there that I know it's so long but you know for me not fun for me you got on a plane in Charlotte and you flew by yourself from Charlotte to Newark then you met the group went Newark to Israel and for me once the Dexcom signal disappeared in Charlotte like that was pretty much it cuz you got on the plane oh yeah appeared you had it but I didn't have it that was pretty much it for the day for me cuz I'm not gonna do watch you How so? How was it? You know? Did you do okay? Especially on the plane.   Benny  9:58 I didn't do anything. Special, like at all. When I got to new work, my blood sugar did go low a little bit, but I had food. And then I was fine.   Stacey Simms  10:07 He told you look out for this baggage claim Lowe's, when you get off the plane after you've been on the plane for a while and start walking, it was terribly described with it we're going to be this is going to be one big complaint episode I can tell grievances will be aired.   Benny  10:19 I just like to make it known. I may complain a lot about it. But I loved it.   Stacey Simms  10:23 Thank you for that disclaimer. Because I know you loved it. You read you just like to complain when you get a chance. Yeah. So you get there. I'm not going to I promise I'm not going to go blow by blow the whole trip. But I am curious. That's a very long plane ride. As you said you didn't do anything really special? Did you consider changing basil rates walk around or anything?   Benny  10:43 So the first trip the flight there, I didn't even think about it. And it worked out pretty fine. So on the way back, I didn't touch it.   Stacey Simms  10:51 Alright, well, that's control IQ helping. That really helps a lot. Because in the past, we've, if you've been in the car for three or four hours or a plane ride, you've gone so high, so that's really good. Okay, so we had set up different basal rates in your pump. Yeah, because we assume there would be a lot of activity. So as I recall, we had the regular one, then we had a 15% less insulin and the 30% lessons, and we labeled them. Yeah, 10% less, you switch to that when you got there.   Benny  11:15 The first full day we were there, I switched immediately to the 30%. Less one. And I was Hi, pretty much the entire day. And I did that for about a week. And then I texted you. And I thought the 15% less would be too much. So we made a 20 like 3% one. But eventually, I ended up just switching back to my normal basal rate. And I mean, that was fine.   Stacey Simms  11:40 One of the questions that we got and that I was going to ask you about here is talking about how difficult it was to carb count. Forget the activity for a minute or two. But like with all the foods that you do, yeah, no,   Benny  11:50 it was next to impossible to know exactly how much I just kind of guessed. And sometimes, or at least most of the time, breakfast and lunch, it was next to impossible to know how much I should give myself because I didn't know what kind of activities we were doing. And I didn't know how like extraneous they would be.   Stacey Simms  12:10 Well, they would tell you in the morning, though, wouldn't they what you were doing? I mean, I knew   Benny  12:14 what you were doing. Well, they they tell us the night before, but like it was vague. It was like okay, we're going to go on a hike tomorrow. And that could mean we're going to walk 10 feet up in elevation, up some stairs and then look at a valley or canoeing. We're going to walk through the negative for four days.   Stacey Simms  12:32 I feel like I should have asked you more about like when you were going high when you first got there because you gave yourself 30% less insulin. How did you feel like were you uncomfortable was fine. Yeah, you never feel bad when you're high?   Benny  12:42 Well, I mean, sometimes. Yeah, I know. I know. But yeah, no, I was fine.   Stacey Simms  12:46 But mentally were you? I mean, I I don't even have to ask because you you didn't get stressed out. You never get stressed out because of diabetes. Like Were you worried like no, no, I mean,   Benny  12:59 the only time I was where I was worried about going low during the desert. Yeah, but that was about it.   Stacey Simms  13:05 So tell us about that. What was the desert when you say that? What was that?   Right back to Benny answering that question. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke Hypopen and when you have diabetes and use insulin, low blood sugar can happen when you don't expect it. That's why most of us carry fast acting sugar and in the case of very low blood sugar, why we carry emergency glucagon there's a new option called Gvoke Hypopen the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar to Gvoke Hypopen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle in usability studies. 99% of people were able to give the book correctly find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit Gvokeglucagon.com slash risk. Now back to Benny talking about the only time he was really nervous about diabetes on the trip   Benny  14:05 is like the third or fourth day we were there. And they made us pack our bags. We left the hotel. We put our big bag with money with the majority of our clothes under the bus and we didn't see that for three days. We had a medium sized like duffel bag, which had clothes for the next few days. And then we had our you know our backpack. So the bus would drive our medium bag to the next camping spot. We'd unload that and we'd carry our our normal bags with us. About 20 minutes into the first hike. I immediately went low. So the medic that was with us, like prepared. You know I talked to her. She was great. She had like four like hand sized bottles of like squeeze honey, and I downed like half a one like 20 minutes into the trip. That was pretty much the hardest, battling Those lows was the hardest, like the most difficult thing I had with that diabetes pretty much the entire trip.   Stacey Simms  15:05 What was the medics reaction? Was she just met? Oh,   Benny  15:07 no, she cool. She was, um, she was a medic in the IDF. She had worked with kids with diabetes before she'd been on the trip. And she was fine about it. So   Stacey Simms  15:15 she didn't make you feel weird now. Okay. How was the honey? It's pretty good.   Benny  15:20 You know, eventually, I just got to the point because I mean, it was a constant battle for the entire trip. Make sure it Angola eventually just got to the point where I just like, tapped her on the shoulder and she'd be like, okay,   Stacey Simms  15:31 and that was three days. Yeah. Okay. So that was probably the hardest part. Yeah, I miss those three days.   Benny  15:36 It didn't help that we were grotesquely underfed.   Stacey Simms  15:40 Okay, complain away. Hit me with the breakfast so late   Benny  15:43 for lunch and dinner. We're fine everyday. I still don't understand why. But breakfast, you know, we'd like in the early hours of the morning 530 to 11. breakfast every day was a cup of tea and a single cookie. And I will never understand it. We'd hike, you know, and then at 11 we'd sit down and have lunch. And then we wouldn't do anything until dinner. And I don't understand why lunch and dinner were so big. If we're not doing anything. Did you ever put anything in your bag?   Stacey Simms  16:11 Like for the next morning was? Yeah,   Benny  16:12 well, so my friend Nathan had these like, you know, those like gels that bikers use on there. Yeah, he had a bunch of those. So I stole a couple. They had like 100 milligrams of caffeine in them to be perfect. But you   Stacey Simms  16:23 never put like a pita in your bag for the next day. No,   Benny  16:26 gingers weren't like, stuff we could take with us. I'm just kidding. And then they were like, I mean, it wasn't like we were literally in the middle of the desert with no way. Yeah, we had to walk or we wouldn't be able to get out. There was always you know, bus was always a 20 minute drive away.   Stacey Simms  16:40 What food Did you like the best shwarma   Benny  16:44 shwarma in a pizza with hummus. There was some spice, we can never figure out what it was. It looked like a red chili sauce. But they always just pointed at it and said you want spicy. You know that when you know lettuce, pickle, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Every time, every lunch.   Stacey Simms  17:02 That was yummy. So good. I would assume that after a month of eating pretty much the same thing. You figured out how to dose for food if not for the activity. Yeah,   Benny  17:09 after a while, we stopped doing, you know, like intense, hard activity. So I kind of had to readjust again, because it was like in the middle. It was you know, it was hot. And we'd walk a lot, but it wasn't like, hard. You know, like, I'm gonna die. It's 106 out.   Stacey Simms  17:28 So everybody wanted to know what surprised you about the trip or about the trip about diabetes, whatever that means to you.   Benny  17:33 Um, how bad the plane food was,   Stacey Simms  17:36 oh, plane food has a reputation of being delicious. I can't I mean, why would that surprise you?   Benny  17:41 I've never had like, a long in a flight. But yeah, but you ate it? I didn't on the way back. Oh,   Stacey Simms  17:48 that's what surprised you. Yeah. I'll tell you what, surprise me. Oh, okay.   Benny  17:55 So closer to the end of the trip, they took us around to a bunch of different kinds of people. We met Orthodox Jews, a Palestinian, a druid drude, we met someone who just lives in Israel, you know, doesn't believe in anything. And we got other perspectives on everything. And just the way, you know, as a complete outsider, in the way they all see everything is just so different in the way that they saw things compared to each other. I mean, I had never taken into, like thought how different people could see the same thing.   Stacey Simms  18:31 That's really interesting. That's great. What surprised me the most was that you didn't have one instance while you were there. And this is all about diabetes, for me of the kind of thing where every once in a while, you'll forget to put your pump back on, or you will have a site crash out and you won't change it or just something happens where every once in a while you are 400 you know, for three hours, and I'm like, what's going on? You're like I fixed it, I rage bullets and all that stuff. And I was sure that that was going to happen a lot. It didn't happen once. It didn't have only one high, you went low, but it didn't happen once. And I gotta tell you, I'm so proud of you. And maybe that sounds like a low You're welcome. Maybe it sounds like a low bar as you listen. But you send a 16 year old off by himself, right? Nobody was. And to be clear, no one was checking you every night. Nobody was right, nudging you. So   Benny  19:17 Yoni, I love him. He's my favorite person of all time. I love you. And I know you're not listening. He was the counselor that we decided would check in on me make sure I'm not dying. Because he was in my cabin. A couple years ago, the counselors would come around and do room checks, make sure everyone's in their room. And he'd always you know, he's like many of you dead. That's what he'd say, you know, I'm good. And but you know, we both met you know, we both knew he meant like, is your blood sugar? Good. You know, you're dying. Yeah. And every once in a while, maybe once a month, once a week. I get a false low in the middle of the night because I'd be sleeping on my Dexcom my Dexcom was super sensitive to compression lows. Ya know, cuz   Stacey Simms  20:01 I got those low alerts to   Benny  20:02 every low in the middle of the night, besides one or two of them were compression lows. And it was crazy. But he was following you. Yeah. So so that's where I was going with that he'd text me in the middle of the night, you know, like 1am 2am. And he'd be like, Do you need help? because he'd wake up to it. Sure.   Stacey Simms  20:20 I shouldn't laugh. That's   Benny  20:21 fantastic. And don't get me wrong. I was funny. Yeah, I was fine. And then in the morning, every day, I'd have to go up and like, hug him and say, I'm sorry for waking him up.   Stacey Simms  20:29 But that was really cool. And I probably should have mentioned that already that we did. That was part of our protocol. And then on the other side of things, we decided I would follow, I turned off all my alarms except urgent, low. And the idea was, well, what am I going to do? If he's 50? Right. And I'm in Charlotte, and you're in Tel Aviv. So what we decided was, I would not text you right away, I would wait like 20 minutes or something. And then I would text you if I couldn't get you over text only. And I would text a D, a D. And I think in my head, then I was like, then I'll text the people in New York. And then I'll text the embassy. Like, I had this plan in my software. Forgive me, I was so nervous. But it never got to that point, because let me just give you some credit. The two times there was urgent lows that came in, but they resolved or I could tell that they were fake. They resolved very quickly. There were two times when I texted you and you texted me right back. And that was I don't know if you know how great that was. That helped me so much that you just said it's wrong. I'm fine. It was great. So thank you.   Benny  21:29 We had three Israelis on our bus as counselors. And when then we had two Americans from Camp Coleman. One Israeli was like the main guy, he was our tour guide. I mean, he was also a counselor, but he was he was like the unit head of the bus. But the other Israeli shy. Me Yoni and Shai would went outside on like the third day and your neighbors like just in case I'm not there, I want you to show her how to awake you. So I showed her the hypo pen and the vaccine me showed her how to use it. And I told her on my pump, if the numbers red, use those if it is yellow, do not use those. I don't use them both. Oh, yeah. You know, I talked to one of the others. But like if the number is yellow, do not use those color hospital. Use the thing den call hospital. Every time we moved hotels, we'd get a new room with new people. So every night on the first night, I'd tell them you know where the type of pen in the back seam er, I tell them how to use it. And I'd tell them not to use it. Unless you couldn't get hold of Yoni. Yeah, or shy. If anything happens. Look at the number call Yoni. If you can't get ahold of Yoni calls, you know, keep going up the food chain until you can.   Stacey Simms  22:41 How did they react? Did anybody you seem nervous?   Benny  22:43 Everyone was like, Don't die. You know? Like, if I have to use this, I'm gonna kill you. Everyone's super chill.   Stacey Simms  22:49 Alright, I'm confused though. Red and yellow numbers because I don't want   Benny  22:52 so on the pump. If your blood sugar's low, the number like we're, like tells you the actual number. It's red. And if you're high, it's yellow. Oh, so   Stacey Simms  23:01 you were saying don't give you the vaccine and the hypopyon if you're hot. Yeah, I thought you were saying like, give it faster. You're telling the story.   Benny  23:07 Okay, that was it. Yeah, if if you look on the T slim, it's yelling at me right here. My blood sugar is totally 120 right now. Perfect. I thought you ate before the interview, please. But yeah, I told them on the right side of the screen. There's a number typically with an arrow. If that number is yellow, and you give the hypo pan or the vaccine between me that is very bad.   Stacey Simms  23:32 gone, it's gone. It's gone. Okay, that's why you needed to go to the hospital. Now I get it. I just you can tell I'm very involved parents that I look at all the time. And I know the numbers. You know, you got the T slim right when I stopped looking at stuff. And as a started to stop looking started to stop. But I mean, you were 12 because we're up for renewal. Now you're 12. And that's like, exactly the time when I'm not going to start looking in your pants. Right?   Benny  23:59 Sorry, that was a weird way to word that.   Stacey Simms  24:01 But you know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna go in your pocket in your pocket. And you do it yourself when you were a little like kind of like give me your pump? Or let me see, you know, or with the animals that we had the remote so it was a lot easier. But yeah, so I don't I'm familiar with the T slim but it's not like you had animals for 10 years and I could like fly through that pump. The TCM I have to put my glasses so   Benny  24:19 funny, because I can fly through this. But it's so funny watching her dad tried to do it once. bless his heart. Oh my god, it was painful.   Stacey Simms  24:32 One of the other things that I was worried about was when you were going in the Dead Sea or doing some of the swimming because not only is the Dead Sea super salty, some of the other places are salty too. But it's so salty. We've been told you have to protect your Dexcom transmitter. I know everything worked out. Did you cover it?   Benny  24:47 I did. And then it fell off in the Dead Sea. The transmitter. No the cover. Oh, so we went in the middle of summer. The water was almost boiling. You're come we're complaining It Like It wasn't unbearable. We all went in for like 10 seconds to see if we could flow and then we ran out when we went Yeah, it was great. I know what it was warm say nice things. Did I not put a disclaimer? I loved the trip, but there was a lot to complain about. So   Stacey Simms  25:17 the band aid thingy cover fell off.   Benny  25:19 Yeah, we had one of the clear, you know, the clear one,   Unknown Speaker  25:21 we got a waterproof check agenda. Yeah.   Benny  25:23 So we got in and it started to peel off. And then I got out and got back in for a second. And it came off. And you know, my Dexcom was fine. Okay, good. That's good.   Stacey Simms  25:33 I guess you could have floated by you would have seen it. Haha. Okay, come off. I did see it. But I'm glad so it did hit the salt a little bit kept working. Alright, that's good to know. Did you wear anything on your feet? Remember, I told you you should bring shoes.   Benny  25:45 So remember those like $20 rubber shoes? I got? Yeah. Those broke on the trip to Israel, like in my backpack. So well. So one of them broke. So I had one on my left foot. And then the one on my right. I was like holding on to with my toes. Yeah. And eventually it just kind of let it go.   Stacey Simms  26:05 But at the Dead Sea, they were able to wear anything on your feet. Yeah, that those good because that stuff hurts.   Benny  26:11 Well, I took them off eventually. Because Yeah, whatever.   Stacey Simms  26:14 Oh, to be on. Alright, so let's talk about diabetes tech and gear and everything. You didn't seem to me like you had any issues we gave you. I said 150% of supplies. I think I gave you 300% of Dexcom and inset so I probably lied. Yeah, so you didn't run out? You didn't have any troubles. It didn't look like you lost anything. Really. I remember texting you at one point. I remember why we were texting. But you said something like, I think I was pretending to joke but really telling you like, hey, make sure you change your insert because I was trying to stay away and not do it. Then I was trying to do like that mom thing where you joke what you're really you know? And you said I just changed because it fell off in the ocean. So did you have an issue with stuff coming off in the water? Or Okay,   Benny  26:57 well, we were only in the water twice.   Stacey Simms  26:59 Oh, there you go. Did you change your inset every three days? Like I didn't.   Benny  27:04 It was either until it stopped working or it fell. I   Stacey Simms  27:06 hate that you do that? Come on, man. Well, my skin heals fast enough for it. So Alright, this is the point in the podcast where I give the disclaimer again that Vinnie has had diabetes for a very long time. He knows what he's doing. We wish certain things   Benny  27:22 worse diabetes mom, but at   Stacey Simms  27:23 some point, I have to kind of let him make some mistakes. And I can only yell at him when he's home. So I'm glad you changed it when you needed to. I can tell by your numbers that you know everything was okay. I will tell you that my biggest fear was not an emergency, although obviously that's very fearful to think about because I knew you had a medic, I knew Israel has good health care, you know, wasn't worried about that kind of stuff. I mean, I was worried that diabetes would slow you down and make you feel different give you problems that your friends wouldn't have. He's smiling. You feel different? Yes, I   Benny  27:54 did. You really Of course. That's what I worry about the most. I thought we got over that face.   Stacey Simms  27:58 You got over it a long time ago. But I worry still that like what I mean by that is by slow you down is you'd be on a hike and you would go low and they'd have to stop and everybody else would go ahead. And then you'd be like with the staff catching up and feeling bad, you know? Or you'd be on a camel, you got to write it down. It's   Benny  28:16 so much fun and so disappointing at the same time.   Stacey Simms  28:19 Are you tell the story then I'll tell you my fear.   Benny  28:21 They hyped us up for this camera ride for a full week. We got on the camels walked two minutes in the direction we were supposed to be heading and then walked back. They made it sound like we were gonna like full day through the desert on the camel. You say   Stacey Simms  28:35 you're gonna adopt a camel and bring it home? Yes, I have never been on a camel. So that's two minutes more than me.   Benny  28:41 Did you know that camel milk is actually designated as a superfood because it has all the vital nutrients.   Stacey Simms  28:47 I just read somewhere. And I'm not putting it in my newscast because it looks like garbage to me that camel milk cures type two diabetes?   Benny  28:54 Because that's real. Yeah, since but I just read that this.   Stacey Simms  28:59 Yeah, this is super food though, right? It's supposed to be really nutritious.   Benny  29:02 It has all the essential nutrients.   Stacey Simms  29:04 Oh, fabulous. But my fear would be that you'd be on the camel, you'd be low. You'd feel lousy, you'd have to get off, right? you'd miss out things. And your friends would be like, Oh, well, you're slowing us down. You know, he's laughing at me. But that's the kind of stuff I worry about that more. Because you're smart enough. The one thing that I really think we've we've really taught you well is that when you need help you ask for it. You don't let things go, right. You're not going to be in pain or feel uncomfortable and not tell somebody and with diabetes. I think that's really, really important. So I know you laugh at me, but I worry about the feeling different, even though you're pretty cool about   Benny  29:42 Well, I mean, I don't worry about that. But it's also the fact that I don't hang around people that would dislike me for something I can't control. I don't interact with those kind of people. You know, if we all had to stop which, you know, we we almost never had to stop for me. I mean, I could I could keep going and drink coffee at the same time. But we stopped a lot anyway, just because everyone got tired. You know, if we stopped because of me, everyone would be like, Oh, thank god we're stopping. With the I don't know, can I? No, no. What the heck, Benny? Thank you.   Stacey Simms  30:14 Alright, so here's a question from my friend Steven, who says at this camp, how often did you think about diabetes, versus how often you thought about diabetes at diabetes camp. It's been a while since you've been to diabetes camp. But   Benny  30:26 diabetes camp, in my opinion, made diabetes feel like a disability, more than anything I've experienced,   Stacey Simms  30:33 will actually tell me more about that.   Benny  30:35 Every time we were doing something, they were like, I don't know how to explain it. It's just everything was centered around it, you know, and someone did their inset for the first time by themselves. But you know, good for you pat on the back, the entire cafeteria would clap for them. Like, while you just conquered cancer. Like, I mean, I don't mean to compare it to that. But like, it's, from my opinion, it's like, they were like, the mindset of the staff was like, you know, even if they did have diabetes, his mindset was like, these kids have the worst life in the world. And I need to try and make it better for a week.   Stacey Simms  31:12 Interesting. Because when you were little when you were seven, or eight, and you did your inset for yourself for the first time, didn't they applaud you didn't that feel good at the time at the time, but like, I look back on it, and it's like, okay, you clap for me, that didn't change my life. If you clap for me, and my pancreas started working again. I think that that's, I'm going to kind of keep this as a time capsule thing, because I think that your perspective may change as you get older, but I think very valid. Right. And you're 16. But I think diabetes camp. I will, we'll agree to disagree. I think it prepared you for camp.   Benny  31:47 It might have but   Stacey Simms  31:49 so back to the question, if you think you can answer it. Did you think about diabetes more or less, less, significantly   Benny  31:55 less, just because everything at diabetes camp was centered around diabetes, and everything was like, Alright, check your blood sugar. Now, I can check my blood sugar when I need to. I don't need someone five years older than me to tell me that I need to check my blood sugar. And that something I've been doing for 10 years is wrong. Because they think it's wrong. You know, they wouldn't let me use my Dexcom as my number until one of the last years I was there. Yeah. And we had been doing that for four years by that.   Stacey Simms  32:21 Yeah. So when you're on a trip like this, maybe because you're the only one, somebody like you who's confident, doesn't really feel like they need tons of I don't know supports the right word. But you don't need a lot of attention to diabetes. And other than yourself, you felt like you thought about it less just enough to take care of what you just take care of. Yeah. How do you do that? Do you? I'm curious, just for a little insight into your psychology. Do you wait until you get an alarm? Are you thinking about it when you're eating? Like how does that work?   Benny  32:47 I wait until I get an alarm. It is not on my mind. until something is wrong. Well, you   Stacey Simms  32:52 pull us for food. Please tell me you bolus for food when   Benny  32:54 you eat. Well, yeah. But like, other than that, other than that diabetes 90% of the time. Unless something's wrong with it. It's you know, there's not on my mind, just in the background. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  33:04 I think this interview was good. I'm not sure people will stop listening to me, because you're so great.   Benny  33:08 I don't know. I think every time I'm on the I'm on the show your views go up about Oh, yeah. I can eat the mic again. If No, please   Stacey Simms  33:16 don't. So Stephen went on to say, is there a lesson in the different kinds of attention? Is there a lesson in there for you as you get older? Or do you view diabetes camp at Camp like this as being completely non related?   Benny  33:28 Hmm. Because my chair gonna say   Stacey Simms  33:30 my answer is that diabetes camp, even though you enjoyed it less as you got older diabetes camp, when you were younger, prepares you to be more independent whether you remember it or not, because I remember Benny before diabetes, can't think any after diabetes camp.   Benny  33:42 That's all I'll say. Yeah. You know, looking at it right now. I think I would have done just fine at Coleman without not without kudos. Definitely. Could I think everyone should go to kudos. It is the best thing in the world. That's for little kids. Yeah, it is amazing. I must have changed, if it hasn't changed, and your kids are right now. But CCT and Morris, they're good for kids that aren't, you know, 100% confident in themselves. But I mean, by the time I was like, 910, I had already gotten comfortable with the fact that I had diabetes, and I couldn't change it. So like, be sad about it.   Stacey Simms  34:16 Well, and that leads us to another question that someone had, Sally asked, Do you ever feel it's unfair that you have diabetes? And if so, how do you work through those thoughts?   Benny  34:25 I absolutely think it's unfair. I mean, it sucks. But the way I look at it, it's just, you know, I can't change it. What am I going to do about it? Why be sad about it, and then I move on.   Stacey Simms  34:35 You've always kind of been that way in terms of accepting diabetes. And since I mean, when we're very young, you didn't really understand what's going on. And then once or twice in middle school, you had some real like, I'm really upset about this, but we just talked it through. Do you remember ever kind of feeling differently or have you always you're just such an easygoing?   Benny  34:53 Every once in a while when like two or three insects wouldn't work, and like I had to change my Dexcom my inset and my car. At the same time, I lose my transmitter, you know, every once. Every once in a while, it's like, this sucks. But I mean, that comes around so rarely. There's so very little times when I genuinely can't do something because of diabetes. There are times I can't do things, but not because of diabetes. But I've learned to just what are you gonna do?   Stacey Simms  35:22 I think to the fact that we, I mean, I'll pat myself on the back, I guess a little in that we've never really told you. You couldn't do it. Let you do all these crazy things, even though I'm at home, frankly, wanting to puke. What was I thinking? But we'll let you do it. And hopefully that helps with your attitude. I'm hoping it helps you you know as you get older. It's the worst. All right, we got to start wrapping it up. Now. When you Okay, so you hurt your foot while you were there. You can tell that story if you want to in whatever detail you want to but I'm curious when you got to the doctors in Israel, he kicked your kicked a coral there. So   Benny  35:57 over, you know, a couple events happened I ended up getting a pretty nasty infection on my foot.   Stacey Simms  36:01 When you saw the doctors in Israel. What did they talk to you about diabetes in anybody's feet? Sometimes people get the wrong idea and freak out.   Benny  36:09 So I don't really know what the healthcare system is. Because everyone spoke Hebrew. I just kind of went along with it. I was shy. Um, so she was translating. Yeah. Well, she just told me Okay, we're gonna do this now. I mean, I felt perfectly safe,   Stacey Simms  36:22 I'm sure. But she speaks Hebrew and English. Yeah.   Benny  36:25 So we get into the clinic. We go to the front desk, we tell them what's wrong. They said, Okay, wait here. She told me this process normally takes about four or five hours. We were done in like, 45. That's great. We go in to the room. We sit there for maybe a minute waiting for the doctor. He comes in. He takes like two looks at my foot. He like touches it for a second. He's like, does it hurt? And I'm like, sometimes he's like, yeah, it's just really bad infection. So he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and antibacterial cream. And then we went to the pharmacy and got him.   Stacey Simms  36:55 So there wasn't a lot of discussion about him diabetes, nobody   Benny  36:57 asked No. I mean, it wasn't even a thought.   Stacey Simms  37:00 All right. Well, I like that. I don't like that. I mean, obviously, you can take antibiotics. It's not a big deal. But you know, it makes me a little nervous.   Benny  37:07 If I was concerned.   Stacey Simms  37:09 I know. I know. And then the opposite spectrum is they go they fuss over feet too much because they might go Have   Benny  37:15 you ever told the river told the story about Yes, Simon will tell it again real quick.   Stacey Simms  37:19 Can I tell ya, basically, about two or three years ago, at the end of camp, Vinny had a large blister on his foot and went to the infirmary to get a band aid for it. And they sat him down, they soaked the foot they called me they made me promise to bring them to the endocrinologist. They were very concerned with his footwear. They wanted special diabetes socks. Now listen, as you listen, if you're newer to diabetes, neuropathy and feed can be a big issue. If you've had elevated blood sugars for years. It's not going to happen at a 14 year old type one with Goodyear one sees what happened was I finally and I yelled at them, Benny. And if you heard, but I got on the phone. I said, Give me Benny and he got on the phone and I said, are they scaring you? Like did they make you think there's something wrong with your feet like? And he was like, Mom, it's fine. It's fine. I was just terrified. They were gonna put thoughts in your head that didn't belong there. And then I wasn't gonna bring you to the endo, because we didn't need to. But finally, when I saw him, we told him the story. And he was like, should I examine your feet? And he was like, No, it's fine. All right, it was great. He was like, Okay, are you good? You're good.   Benny  38:18 I think the funniest part of it all was, so there's one nurse there every year that's only there for the first few weeks, which is a shame. She is the best. She knows that I know what I'm doing. And trust me, right? So at the nurse's office at the camp, there's the front desk, and then there's a closet in the back with all the meds. I just kind of go to bed and get ready. But you know, most of the other nurses are like, Oh my god, what's wrong? You okay?   Stacey Simms  38:41 That's Karen, by the way, who you love.   Benny  38:42 I love Karen. So Karen, who had like, was either in the process of leaving or was leaving the next day. And she walked in after everything had happened. You know, she wasn't there yet. And she was like, Benny, what are you doing? That's like, they made me do this.   Stacey Simms  38:59 It was fine. It was all fine. Yeah, no,   Benny  39:01 I'm not mad. I just think it's funny. You   Stacey Simms  39:04 roll with those things very well.   Benny  39:06 Okay, so the camp director of Coleman is leaving, which is very sad. I love Bobby so much. I mean, him I have a pretty good relationship. But here's a video of him going on the zip line over the lake, and he flips upside down. And it is so funny. I will show you later.   Stacey Simms  39:19 Okay. He loves you. I think he appreciated that you took on the challenge of going to regular camp with diabetes, and they've always been very good to us. Um, but start wrapping this up. Are you glad you went with all the   Benny  39:30 work that you had to show? I am so happy I went I'm so happy you guys. Let me go. It was amazing.   Stacey Simms  39:36 What would your advice be to other kids that are looking at programs that are that are difficult like this?   Benny  39:43 Take a job Oh, it is gonna be fine. If you know what you're doing at home. You know what you're doing anywhere. If you trust yourself enough to go out to dinner one night, I think you trust yourself enough to go somewhere without your parents for a couple days. It might not be a month long trip. in a foreign country, it might be to your friend's house for a couple days. But if you think or know, you trust yourself enough to be able to take care of yourself for a couple of days, I think you should go for it. You're always going to have someone with you, or at least you should, that cares about you, and will do things that you need for you.   Stacey Simms  40:19 Right as a minor. Yeah, on these programs is what you mean, right?   Benny  40:22 Yeah. Especially on these programs, there's always going to be at least two or three people that can and will help you with whatever you need. I will be your question for you.   Stacey Simms  40:33 You don't have to answer this. We stress experience confidence, responsibility over perfect numbers. Do you sometimes worry about your health or your numbers? or Why? What Why do you feel good about it? I mean, I think you're doing great. I don't want you to think you're not. But you're a one C is not going to be 5.8.   Benny  40:50 I mean, my thing is, you got to enjoy life. You can't worry about every little thing all the time. If your blood sugar goes high, your blood sugar goes high, darling, give yourself some insulin and go to have some damn ice cream. Sorry,   Stacey Simms  41:05 well, when you're high,   Benny  41:08 but like, if you're 200, and your friends want to go get ice cream, go give yourself some insulin and go get ice cream. Don't say no, because you don't want your number to be perfect. Can I tell them the celery and kid crying in the corner joke you can try. So we have a joke. There are some parents that are really strict with their kids. And those kids eat celery and cry in a corner all day.   Stacey Simms  41:29 And I worry sometimes that the kids eating celery and crying in the corner are going to be healthier long term.   Benny  41:34 So the thing is, you know, they have perfect most kids that are eating celery and crying in the corner have perfect numbers. I don't have perfect numbers. And I'm doing not crying in a corner. I don't think there's or you don't like to watch it. But I mean, it gets the point across you know, unhappy perfect numbers. You know, you might live a full life and have perfect numbers. If you do good for you. You're top 0.1% of diabetics. But there's no point in worrying about being perfect all the time. Because it's unrealistic. And it's not fun.   Stacey Simms  42:06 So the last question here is when you came home, I said it's going to be really hard for me to feel good about nagging you all the time since you just did a month successfully away from me. You're going to be a junior in high school. We're looking ahead to college. So I was joking. And I said I want to try to be here just for customer support. Like you tell me when you need me and I'm here for you. I don't want to be in your face anymore reminding you. It's been three weeks. This has been so hard because you're in my house and now I see everything and I know what's going on. How are we doing on that? Or is this a good situation? This is perfect. Oh God, I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I want to make you more   Benny  42:42 you good. You have done great. You have done wonderful. And if you want to get a bit more naggy you can get a bit more naggy it's not gonna change anything. But   Stacey Simms  42:50 all I want is for you to change that instead every three days. Put it on your calendar. I don't   Benny  42:54 use my calendar, only old people use. It's the worst. But I'll try harder.   Stacey Simms  43:00 Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for joining me, I appreciate you coming on. I as always, I don't know how much of this I can actually use. We see Dr. vanderwaal. Next week, we go back to the end or next week so you can tell him all about your adventures. In fact, I need to take all the forms with us for Dr. V next week. Because we need your DMP. And you're I'm looking for the forums he's making fun of me looking around because we have a we have a DMP we have your 504 I gotta get all that stuff. My 401k   Benny  43:26 I have one it has $7   Stacey Simms  43:30 you really do from the grocery store. Alright, we'll leave it there. Benny, thank you so much for joining me, I appreciate it. I'm so glad you're home safe. Love you.   Benny  43:39 If your listener count doesn't go up for this episode, I'm suing Stacey Simms  45:24 you're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Oh, boy, so you tell me good idea to put them on the show? Let me know what you think. And I will link to our other episodes with Benny. And you know, when he was younger, and maybe had some different opinions about things, you can listen to those at Diabetes connections.com, click on the episode homepage. I also want to mention, I realized that we left out a question that you may have, which is how did we keep the insulin cool? How did we keep the supplies cool, as you heard Benny talking about, you know, hiking through the desert and swimming in the Dead Sea and all that. And it was very, very hot in Israel at the time that he was there. And so the backpack that he carried with him that had about three to five days of supplies in it, we had the vial the Insulet vial that he carried with him in a frio you know, the pack that you can wet, we've talked about this many times before it keeps insulin at room temperature does not keep it cold. But it was a little free to pack that he could keep his vial in. And we also use a vivi cap. And that was new for us. And that's something that you can only use on pens right now they're working on vials, but that worked out really well. And you take the cap actual cap off your insulin pen, you slide the Vivi cap on it, it's it just looks like a bigger, fatter insulin pen cap. If I'm describing it correctly, I'll put a link in the show notes too. And it's got a little battery in it that you don't have to replace it lasts for a year. And it keeps it room temperature just like a frio. And that was phenomenal as well, because the that pen was really there as a backup and he uses vials, but he'll use an insulin pen as a backup. If he needs to take a shot if he needs to pull the insulin out and stick it in his pump, that kind of thing. And that lasted the entire time. He actually never used the pen which surprised me. He says he actually forgot it was in his bag. So when he came home, we decided to see how well the Vivi cap worked. And we pulled the insulin out of that pen it had been at that point five weeks. So longer than you're supposed to use insulin, FDA people don't listen, we put in his pump. And that backpack had been right through the desert 100 degrees or more with him the entire trip, the Insulet in the pen worked fine. So big thumbs up on 50 cap, I'm not an affiliate, I may they may become advertisers in the future. They are not advertisers. Now there is a promo code, I think flying out there from the episode we did with them, I'll have to check and see if that promo code is still valid, but I don't get a kickback from it. But that product worked really well. But that's how we did it. And the rest of the supplies were kept on the bus or you know, in the hotel, those were kept cool while he was traveling. So he had a separate backpack that he would pull from. So the main supplies for the entire month were kept in one place. The backpack supplies were for three to five days were kept with Benny the entire time. So it was an interesting way to do it if you have longer term travel stories. We've talked to a lot of people who've traveled the world with diabetes, I'd love to hear more. I'm always interested in packing kind of stories, or don't want to tell you about my really low point when he was gone because I had some some very nerve racking moments. But I had one that I want to tell you about for sure. And I was so lucky it happened while I was at the friends for life conference. So I'll tell you about that first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And one of the most common questions I get is about helping children become more independent. Be careful what you wish for. Those transitional times are tricky. elementary to middle middle to high school. I mean, you know what I'm talking about right? Using the Dexcom makes a big difference for us. And it's not all about sharing follow up. That is helpful. Think about how much easier it is for a middle schooler to just look at their Dexcom rather than do four to five finger sticks at school or for a second grader to just show their care team the number before Jim at one point Benny was up to 10 finger sticks a day and not having to do that makes his management a lot easier for him. It's also a lot easier to spot the trends and use the technology to give your kids more independence. Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo. So every summer when I send Benny away for four weeks, when I send my daughter away for four weeks, both of my kids went to the same camp they both went away for you know, a month every summer since they were eight or nine I would get the same kind of questions from all of my friends. Don't you miss them? How can you send them away? You know, don't they miss you? Aren't you worried about them? And that are my diabetes friends, I would get lots of different questions right? Like how are you doing that? If the camp is not a diabetes camp, you don't you freak out when you can't follow him because we never use share and follow at camp, all sorts of questions and worries and things like that. So I honestly didn't talk a lot about this Israel trip other than to a few close friends because I knew that being around other moms with type one would be supportive. Like most of Would be great. But I also knew that some of the questions would make me even more nervous than I was. And I was really nervous about this. Letting Benny get on that plane. I didn't even go to the airport. When we dropped him off in Charlotte, my husband had to take him to the airport, because I knew I would just be so so nervous. And I didn't want to make Benny embarrassed or freak out. I mean, he's so calm and cool. But I didn't want to pass that nervousness off to him because I knew he was ready. And I knew he'd be safe. I knew this was a good group of people. But I was freaking out. So I didn't even go to the airport to drop him off. I made it I did. Okay, the first couple days were very, very, very hard. But when I got to friends for life, which was what about two weeks in, I felt great. And people were, you know, we were talking about it, and they were very supportive. But I also felt, I felt really, almost more nervous in a way. And I still don't know exactly what that was all about. But I think part of it was, I had worked out a plan. And I'll be very frank, I had worked this out with my therapist, I've been seeing a therapist for a couple of years, not just for diabetes, but because life is just so freakin stressful anyway, but we had worked out a plan that I thought was really good, I would only check Benny's numbers. And I shared this on an episode a couple weeks ago, I would only check his numbers at times of day that I decided I would check them twice a day, we had turned off all the alarms, except for the urgent low. And I did that I did that October of 2020. That had nothing to do with Israel. That's just in our developmental teenage plan that has worked really well for us. So I only had the urgent low. And I said, I'm only going to check it at these times of day. Well, when I got to friends for life. We were all having like a mom meetup. And everybody threw their phones on the table. And I really should share this picture. It was fabulous. Whatever your kid is, you know, who cares high low out of range in range, whatever. Let's all show at this moment of time where our kids number is. And I didn't do it because it wasn't the time of day to check his number. And I just didn't want to do it. And they were like Liz, that's a great group of moms super supportive. They were laughing everybody was doing it. And finally I was like, Okay, I'm gonna peek. I'm just gonna peek. And wouldn't you know it, he was 78 double arrows down. I didn't get alarmed. Because as I said, All my alarms were off except urgent, low, and I burst into tears. I just all came out at that moment. It was so stressful. It was so much. I'm not sure be dramatic. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. But 78 double arrows down. And I'm 1000s of miles away. And I don't know why it hit me so hard at that moment. Did I feel left out? Because I couldn't just look at my kids number. Did I feel left out because I had taken you know what many would consider a big risk? Did I regret it? I mean, I'm still having processed all those feelings. I'm still working it out. But oh my gosh, did I get hugs? Did I get support? Did I get people who understand? Thank you, Heather. And thank you, Heather, my to Heather. Thank you to everybody who really made me feel okay, and not judged. And of course, a few minutes later, that number turned around, you know, I didn't call him it wasn't part of our agreement. It turned around and he was fine. Now, later that night, you heard Benny and I talked about that one urgent load that I called him because it was like 20 minutes, and I kept going off and it was a compression low. It was fine. And he texted me back right away. That was actually that same night, but much later, it was about 11 or 1130 our time. So you know, he did what he was supposed to do. He communicated with me, but boy was I excited to have my community around me when I needed them the most. Nobody understands like we do. Nobody understands that pit of your stomach feeling. I knew he was safe. I knew he was okay. But still. Oh, diabetes. I'm sure I'll be sharing more about this experience. If not the months, the years to come probably we're still learning a lot from it. I hope to be able to you know, give some wisdom. Maybe some advice about just you're down the block sleep over because of it. interesting note. I can't say we paved the way for anybody. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but he was not the first kid with type one to go on this trip. Kudos to those other parents. I obviously don't know who they are. But knowing that other kids had done it certainly made us feel better. And it made it easier because the program knew that it could be done right. The leadership of the program knew it could be done.   Thanks so much for listening to all of that. I really appreciate it. All right. Thank you as always to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you for listening. Our Wednesday, newscasts are growing strong. I'm so happy I decided to do this. It is so much fun. And it's really taken off especially over on YouTube. If you don't catch it on Facebook Live and you want to watch it with captions, the YouTube channel, just Diabetes Connections. And I'll put a link in the show notes to YouTube. Check us out over there. But the newscast is every Wednesday live on Facebook at 430. And then I loaded to YouTube and it comes out as a podcast episode on Fridays as well. And if you're not familiar with that is all the latest headlines for diabetes, all types of diabetes for the past week and I love doing it. That's been a lot of fun. Alright, I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here in just a couple of days until then, be kind to yourself. Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by musical parents, Stephen Evans naturally had the desire to perform music.  He began by making his friends watch him perform to records of his dad’s band, Four Saints. He progressed by playing the trumpet in various school bands, singing in the choir, and performing in musicals.  In his 20’s, Stephen was inspired by his brother, Scot Evans, who was the bassist/vocalist in the regionally successful band, Floating Men, from Nashville, TN.  So Stephen started his own rock band, Mean Season, in the late 80’s where he began honing his songwriting skills on the guitar.  After a few years of local success and radio play in Tallahassee, FL, the band moved to Atlanta, GA to increase their success.  Unfortunately, the band broke up, and left Stephen to try his hand at performing solo around Atlanta.

Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by musical parents, Stephen Evans naturally had the desire to perform music.  He began by making his friends watch him perform to records of his dad’s band, Four Saints. He progressed by playing the trumpet in various school bands, singing in the choir, and performing in musicals.  In his 20’s, Stephen was inspired by his brother, Scot Evans, who was the bassist/vocalist in the regionally successful band, Floating Men, from Nashville, TN.  So Stephen started his own rock band, Mean Season, in the late 80’s where he began honing his songwriting skills on the guitar.  After a few years of local success and radio play in Tallahassee, FL, the band moved to Atlanta, GA to increase their success.  Unfortunately, the band broke up, and left Stephen to try his hand at performing solo around Atlanta.

Listen and follow Stephen https://www.facebook.com/stephenevansmusic https://stephenevansmusic.com/bio https://stephenevans.bandcamp.com/   Find Distance Walk here - https://distancewalk.bandcamp.com/releases https://www.distancewalk.com/    Subscribe to the podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wnc-original-music/id1378776313 https://www.iheart.com/podcast/wnc-original-music-31067964/ This link has all the other places to subscribe https://gopod.me/wncom   Follow on Social Media https://www.facebook.com/wncoriginalmusic https://www.wncoriginalmusic.com https://www.instagram.com/wnc_original_music/   All music used by permission   Stephen Evans & the True Grits Folk Rock  Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by musical parents, Stephen Evans naturally had the desire to perform music.  He began by making his friends watch him perform to records of his dad’s band, Four Saints. He progressed by playing the trumpet in various school bands, singing in the choir, and performing in musicals.   In his 20’s, Stephen was inspired by his brother, Scot Evans, who was the bassist/vocalist in the regionally successful band, Floating Men, from Nashville, TN.  So Stephen started his own rock band, Mean Season, in the late 80’s where he began honing his songwriting skills on the guitar.  After a few years of local success and radio play in Tallahassee, FL, the band moved to Atlanta, GA to increase their success.  Unfortunately, the band broke up, and left Stephen to try his hand at performing solo around Atlanta.  Soon the jammed highways of the big city drove him to the beautiful mountain town of Asheville, NC in 1996, where he quickly began soaking in the creative influence of his amazing surroundings.  After many years of vacillating between being a professional musician and being building a nest in Asheville, Stephen has focused on his love for creating and performing music.  In June of 2015, Stephen released his debut CD, “Something to Bleed”, with his band, the True Grits.  The record received local and national praise for its passion and creativity.  The band members are Brian Shoemaker (bass/electric guitar)  Sam Hess (drums) and Woodstock (mandolin), along with special guests:  Halli Anderson of River Whyless (violin/backing vocals), his brother, Scot Evans of Floating Men (bass on ‘1000 Roses), and his mother, Barbara Evans (backing vocals on ‘Sound’).   The latest EP release, “Under the Bridge” came out in 2017 to positive reception and local radio play as well.  This record was engineered by Kyle Corbett, who can occasionally be seen joining the True Grits to provide colorful lead guitar for the live band shows.  The EP has 5 songs that range from rock to folk rock and describe an appreciation of Stephen's time in Asheville. Shawn Duxbury, Stephen's former bandmate in Mean Season, is a guest Grit performing lead acoustic guitar on the song 'Waiting'. The last track, 'A Rose for Emily', is a cover song written by Jeff Holmes & the Floating Men, and is based on the short story by William Faulkner of the same name.  Stephen’s strong melodic songwriting style is a blend of creative imagery of darkness and hopeful optimism.  There is no denying the passion that shines through with his powerful vocals and lyrics.  Songs like ‘The Garden’, ‘Cherokee Hills’, ‘1000 Roses’ and ‘Shining Star’ are beacons of his folk rock songcraft.  With some local radio play on WNCW 88.7, 103.7 WPVM, and 98.1 The River, and upcoming shows with the True Grits as well as solo shows spreading around the Southeast, be sure to check out what Stephen Evans wants to share with you.

In Episode #16, Camille and Tanya explore opportunities for silver linings in the many challenges we are all facing this year by radically re-storying 2020.   Tanya shares a deeply personal story of her ex-husband’s 19-year struggle with mental illness and recent suicide. Stephen’s death is tragic, but it has also provided a needed release for his family and loved ones, who felt like they had lost him years ago.   From mental illness to concentration camp memoirs to activism, over-identifying with the victim or the perpetrator can cause us to lose ourselves in our trauma. When we are out of our power, we cannot help or support each other.   In the short term, 2020 may seem like the year from hell, but in the long term it may lead to needed clarity. Tanya and Camille each share what they have lost and gained this year and how the challenges of 2020 have led them to reclaim their wholeness.   “When the worst happens...there is still the opportunity for incredible blessing through connection. That's what can't be taken: our connection with ourselves and with each other.” -Tanya Taylor Rubinstein   Episode Transcript [00:00:01] Restoring the Culture is hosted by Tanya Taylor, Rubinstein Story mentor, and Camille Adair, family constellation facilitator. [00:00:11] In this podcast, these long term friends explore how stories servi lives. Their inquiry meanders into the realms of science, theater, health and consciousness, moving the individual and global narratives forward as they draw upon their relationship as the laboratory for their experiments. In truth, so many of us feel isolated and alone in our deepest longing. [00:00:38] Each one of us is necessary rediscovering the truth of our human story and listening to what is calling us forward so that we can restoring the culture together. [00:00:52] Hey, everybody, this is Tonya. And welcome back to another episode of Restoring the Culture with my dear friend Camille Adair and me. And today we are going to talk about radically restoring 20/20 and what that means to us. [00:01:11] And Camille's going to start with a little passage from Victor Frankel's man's search for meaning. [00:01:19] But in robbing the prison of its reality there lay a certain danger. [00:01:26] It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make something positive of camp life opportunities, which really did exist. [00:01:39] Leaves me speechless, right? [00:01:42] Amazing. Yeah, this speak by leaving us speechless. Sort of not unlike this year. Right. [00:01:49] There's a lot of speechlessness. And I think I mean, to think if you could find a silver lining. [00:01:56] And living in a concentration camp, surely we can find silver linings. For 20/20 with. [00:02:08] The pandemic. With massive fires, with many deaths from the pandemic. [00:02:17] With social isolation and the wave of depression that's resulting from that increased suicides. Right. [00:02:27] I mean, we can pay the the dark picture, but what's underneath it that's wanting to get our attention? I'd love to know your thoughts on that. Mm hmm. [00:02:38] Well, thanks for asking. It's such a huge. [00:02:42] Such a huge topic that we're biting off here. [00:02:46] And I just want to say to our listeners, as always, there's no dogma here. [00:02:51] There's no agenda here. [00:02:55] We just let you all in on our personal exploration, which is what Camille and I have been doing and our friendship for 20 years. So, I mean, it's it's a humbling thing. It's interesting that you chose Victor Frankl, because I have been moved to. [00:03:12] I've been rereading Elie Wiesel's night and day, also concentration camp memoirs. I'm thinking about the children at the border and concentration camps and also reading about the forced sterilization of people of color, women of color in Georgia. And you know just what's happening in this moment. Right. So I just want to first acknowledge this moment, September 20th, 2020, a couple days after Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. That being in the news also. Right. Right after Rosh Hashana. Right after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. So and in the midst of it all were 40, I think 45 or 46 days from the U.S. presidential election. So so why are we both being called to return to Holocaust stories now? [00:04:06] It's like. Well, I think about Steven. Yeah. If we read story, what's going on personally, right? I mean, that takes me to the personal. [00:04:15] Well, it's very interesting. So Stephen was my is my was my daughter's father, and he committed suicide. [00:04:24] This in the last three weeks ago today. [00:04:30] And he had schizoaffective disorder. [00:04:33] He was. Jewish. [00:04:38] From L.A., sort of the nice Jewish boy stereotype or a trope or whatever, but he really was that very, very brilliant and. [00:04:51] His family had Holocaust drama on his father's side. I think this is what I want to say about all of it. What I want to come back to when you asked me that question. OK. There's trauma. We are a traumatized society where traumatized culture, we're traumatized species. And I think about like the Peter Levine work about in our animal self and our nervous systems, how animals have been attending to their trauma and had because of our mindset and because of things we talk about patriarchy, white supremacy and on and on colonization, all the things that have kept us in boxes and how those things traumatize us individually and collectively. So how do we seek liberation? [00:05:44] In the camps while holding space to get out of the camps. How do rats, how do we open to liberation in the prison of our trauma? Wow. Walking our way out of that trauma to the best of our ability. [00:06:02] I guess I'm curious to know in what way have you been released from a concentration camp since Stephen died? [00:06:10] Such a great question. Well. The love was liberated. The mental illness and his trauma. [00:06:22] Played into my own trauma when I lost my daughter's father and it was in a very traumatic so circumstance and what it did was it triggered my trauma and I started getting panic attacks. I stopped performing my own. One woman shows I became afraid to speak about my life publicly onstage when that had been my art form before. And I became terrified that something would happen to my daughter. It felt life or death to me. [00:06:57] When I saw what happened to Schizophrenic's, what I saw, there was no Stephen unknown in his eyes. [00:07:05] And he was trying to strangle me on my daughter's fourth birthday. And it was that was not who he was in any shape or form. You know, I said to you earlier. He was the least racist. Most feminists that I knew about in the best sense of the word, the least homophobic, white, cis straight man I ever met. He was truly committed to social justice. [00:07:29] He had been an anti-apartheid advocate when when he was in Berkeley as a young man. And he was just so about justice and about love. But when I lost him and this is the help mental illness, when you're on the other side of it and of course, for the person is we lose the ability to access. [00:07:51] But what happened was that trauma cut off my voice. [00:07:55] And like I was saying to you, as soon as he died, there was total grief. I smashed my finger really hard that night and had to go to the emergency room the night before. He jumped that night, that same night. And I smash my grandmother's wedding ring that I always wore the diamonds into my finger and it was bleeding and had to be cut off by the doctor. And a few hours later he'd jumped and there was some kind of cosmic connection. But and I screamed when when that finger was hurt, I screamed like this, this hellacious scream that I only remember screaming twice before and once had to do with his suicide attempt before. [00:08:44] Oh, wow. So. I think we're all cosmically connected. I know it, I know it in my being. I. [00:08:55] I think the support from the other side of the veil is greater than it's ever been teaching us, showing me personally that the connection and the love is always there. [00:09:07] All the ancestral work, both you and I have done all the personal healing work. I like to come to that the love is always there and that we can move back and forth the Brit across the bridge. And I love what Victus Franco says and Elie Wiesel to a different story. [00:09:23] But this thing of the opportunity of the present moment, even in the worst of circumstances, to me that's radical radical resilience. So how in 2020, you know, the year people are calling the hell a year. [00:09:40] How can we restore it to see the incredible opportunities to be in service to each other, to love each other more at this time? [00:09:52] Well, it's interesting. As I hear you talk, one of the ways that I wonder about. This restoring for you and for me, I met Stephen. Fortunately knew him before his mental illness. Yeah. You know, set sat in. One of the things that strikes me is that you refer to him as the father of your daughter. He was your husband. And I remember that hit me when you told me that he died, that he suicided. [00:10:25] I remember at 4:00, as sad as I was for your daughter, I was sad for you because you lost a husband who you divorced only because of his mental his untreated mental illness. You didn't divorce Steven. You divorced his mental illness. [00:10:47] It's a very interesting thing you are saying. [00:10:52] And because I was thinking yesterday, I mean, I wrote something up and I said, I don't have a problem. [00:11:02] With white people, I have a problem with whiteness. I don't have a problem. [00:11:08] I never did with Stephen. I have the problem with mental illness. [00:11:11] If we can separate out the toxicity, whether it's individual or cultural, and of course, it's not just toxicity that sounds so harsh. [00:11:21] It's a byproduct of trauma. All of it. [00:11:24] Well, and because of that, every race has that trauma, which absolutely watching that makes it really hard and how we language all of this. Right. [00:11:35] It's why I'm reading this book right now, my grandmother's hands. [00:11:38] And it's about racialized trauma and the pathways to mending our hearts and bodies. And it talks about the different things we need to do if we're in white bodies versus black bodies because it's all DNA memory from our own clusters. [00:11:53] And that's different. It takes on a different tone and tenor. [00:11:59] That's right. That makes a lot of sense to me. [00:12:02] You know, just like schizophrenia takes on a different tenor than somebody who loses somebody to drug addiction or somebody who loses somebody to cancer. There's all there's a loss and all those things. But there's a different human story right attached to it, which is why, once again, the thing you and I talk about the as above so below path. [00:12:25] But yes. And Steven was my husband. He was my best friend for sure. We shared values in a profound way, which was the only reason I agreed to have a child with him. I wasn't sure I wanted a child. I wasn't one of those women that always knew they'd have a child. It was his idea. And I was 32 when I got pregnant and. [00:12:53] The love once again is released and I feel him helping me. You were the one that said to me it's like after 19 years of losing him to mental illness. [00:13:04] I got the FA. I got the other parent back. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You have him back? [00:13:11] I have him back as the other parent. And I do want to say that was always more our natural relationship was friendship and co parent. [00:13:20] It wasn't some big love affair on either side. There was love, but we felt familial immediately when we met. We felt so deeply familial. And in many ways I'd say, yeah, definitely like co parents and best friends. And so that's the honest energy of us. And I can own the honest energy of us because I think we spent a lot of time. We had problems besides his schizophrenia. That was what took us down. [00:13:52] But there was definitely a trying to make our relationship a big love affair, and it wasn't. [00:14:01] And so there's something to about like that was conflict in our relationship that had nothing to do with his mental illness. [00:14:06] We were great co parents and best friends. And we have a beautiful daughter together, a beautiful, brilliant daughter. [00:14:17] So I wonder, what is the relationship? I mean, I'm not saying there's an answer to this, because the most profound wisdom is I think at these in these days is held in the unknown. But I guess I want to skirt the edges of an inquiry which is feeling into the relationship between covered and Stevens, the timing of Stevens death. [00:14:40] Well, then I want to hear from you. The relationship between Kofod and everything that's changed in your life because, yes, like, well, people are saying 20-20 right is the worst year, the year from hell. And I would say through the Ecos lens. [00:14:57] That's the truth. [00:14:59] I mean, from the souls lands and from the long stories lands, because that's what we're here for, right? The long story, my friend and teacher, right now, produ taffin talks all the time about the long story of the soul and all the threads past, present, future, quantum time, no matter what's going on in the body now. [00:15:23] So in the long story, I feel like 2020 is a blessing. I could never say it will be a blessing that my daughter's father was in that much pain and that he had to end his life, felt he had to end his life that way. [00:15:41] But the the liberation that I feel personally and that that knowing he is also free of that suffering, there's like I feel like there's an outbreath. [00:15:53] And I was talking with his mother about it like that we're all taking an outbreath cause and eat and, you know, like we know how the story ends now. And there's something holding with that that's so hard. I think it's a metaphor for this time. [00:16:07] The tension part of what the tension of those 19 years did teach me was holding with the tension, not knowing the ending of the story. And it's hard to hold with that tension. [00:16:22] And then the story changed, right? It didn't really. And it changed. [00:16:28] Yeah, well, it reminds me of the living dead. I mean, I think it's that way with people, you know, who have Alzheimer's or dementia. [00:16:35] Yes. Yes. People with with severe mental illness, untreated mental illness. [00:16:41] People with, you know, late stage substance abuse addiction. I think it's like the person left a long time ago. And so what you are left with is this body that is acting things out in certain ways and a voice that may still sound like them. And, of course, their soul is still there in some way. [00:17:01] But the relationship that we had was interrupted. [00:17:08] Exactly. And and they become unavailable for a long time for the relationship. And it's actually in the release of the body that the love, the availability comes back. So for me, in terms of 20/20. Right, so many deaths. [00:17:24] And I think we're seeing like. The death culture we live in, the extreme materialism, the extreme pressure on us all to do something. Be something the. My God, the struggles, you know, and where it's taken us at this moment in humanity around the big issues and that the intimacy issues. So I don't know. But I just know you have for me that there's a clarity. [00:17:59] And I have my voice back in a way, and I feel him supporting me. And so what happens? Like Victor Frankl in the camps. What happens when the worst happens? And there is still this opportunity. For incredible blessing through connection, right? That's what can't be taken if we have connection with ourselves and with each other. [00:18:26] I think that's been the silver lining for me, even though the process has been hard, very hard at times, is that it's forced me inward, right? It's like I was traveling a lot. I had a lot of ways in which I was had developed really sophisticated coping mechanisms for some things that were difficult for me to face. [00:18:46] And. [00:18:48] And we all do that. Right. I mean, it's not a bad thing. That's like kind of some part of human brilliance is that we we find our ways. Right. [00:18:56] And and then to be someone who loves to travel and loves to engage with a lot of people. [00:19:02] And then here I am. And my you know, I mean, what is it? [00:19:06] It's like maybe 14 by 14 foot office where I spend most of my time. And so it has definitely driven me inside of myself. [00:19:18] And. [00:19:20] I have to be careful, right, that I don't get lost. [00:19:23] But I also feel like, you know, we've been moving into such a different direction in our culture. Right. [00:19:31] We've been doing this inflationary move for so long around, get bigger, get louder, be more visible. Right. And I feel like something's happened for me where I'm going into this reverse place and I'm finally I'm fine. And it's happening organically. It's not been something I've contemplated. It just is happening because of the circumstances. But it's become so deep for me that it's like I'm going. [00:20:00] I'm going into almost like a gestational phase. And I think it's really good. I mean, I think that that's really the blessing of it. Right. [00:20:09] It's and it's amazing. And you and I talked about it's almost like we're like the sliding doors because I realize her to me really went small and small for me. Doesn't necessarily look like small for somebody else. Like somebody could look at me and say, that's not small, that's big. But for me, I contained for 19 years and it was a big deal when I stopped performing and felt a lot of fear about what had always come naturally to me and what I'd been trained in as an actor. [00:20:40] And I know that right now, as you're going in, my call is to show up with my team now in the world and to lean all the way and with my voice and what I learned and what I've integrated. And all of a sudden there's a congruency in my voice that hasn't been there before. There was like fragmented. [00:21:02] I had parts of myself, but I actually feel that I have my whole self back. Maybe for the first time since I was a young child. [00:21:14] You know, it's interesting when I think about because you said you lost your voice when Steven's mental illness came as to play, right? Yeah. [00:21:20] And I think that there are many ways which in which the soul can become entangled. And it's not just past and future can be in the present. [00:21:29] But it almost makes me wonder if part of you. [00:21:34] Was occupying a space with Steven. And that that's part of where your voice went, was sort of in accompanying him in a way where he was at. Like, could there have been almost some kind of an entanglement in the present moment? That isn't about time, but it is about space and conditions, right? [00:21:53] Yes, there totally was. And you're so intuitive to ask that question, because what I got. And I haven't said to anybody out loud was when he tried to strangle me because his schizophrenia had kicked in. He was looking in my eyes and tried to strangle me and kill me on my daughter's fourth birthday. Somebody had to stop driving by and pull them off. And from my point of view, there was no conflict. Then I looked in his eyes that I went, Oh, Steven's gone mad. There's no Steven there. Nobody. He didn't have his diagnosis shed. Nobody believed me. But I knew there was something that was. I'm a cop, cautious with my words here, because it's not going to sound maybe politically correct, but there was an energy in him that was very. [00:22:47] Evil. It looks like a demon to me. And I met its gaze cause it was a Steven, I met this energies gaze and. The night Stephen died, when I set my finger was smashed and I yelled. There was that energy came out of me in the scream. [00:23:14] And it scared my scared my current husband. And I felt it come through my eyes. [00:23:20] And I looked up, said like Steven looked at me and I was like some part of me. I swallowed part of the energy perhaps for him. And it was suppressing me. [00:23:35] I mean, it was wild. And then when I when I heard about his death, I knew immediately the energy that had come out of me the night before that. [00:23:44] Like in quantum time before he jumped, I was released from that energy. [00:23:50] It makes a lot of sense and, you know, it's interesting because in one of the traditions I work in schizophrenia because of schizophrenia is an identification with both the victim and the perpetrator. [00:24:04] Well, Steven told me getting back to the Holocaust, I had a very, very strong belief and a past life memory that I was put to death in the camps as a Jewish pope, Polish woman. Steven had a very strong belief that he was a guard, a Nazi guard in the camps. [00:24:24] Really? Well, what's really interesting, when we think back on Victor Frankl, he that's well, that was his sanity. Was that. [00:24:32] He didn't identify with the perpetrators. He also didn't identify with the victims. He stayed, Victor. [00:24:41] So, like, how do we remain who we are amidst all of the turmoil is happening in the world and stay ourselves when we when we identify with the victim or the perpetrator. [00:24:54] It's like we don't even recognize that we literally have stepped in to some kind of like a toxic field. [00:25:04] Perdita would call it a puddle. [00:25:07] She calls it like we step in the puddle of our issue and our ancestral issue, perhaps. And certainly for me. [00:25:15] That has happened with particularly my activist self, like Around Black Lives Matter. And my relationship to really decolonizing myself and whiteness. But there was a point when I over identified with black women's pain. And then when we when I realized when I did that I was out of my power. I was actually out of even being useful to them. And it was I was re traumatizing myself. I also wasn't in deep relationship then. And you could always tell. I could always tell on social media, like white women who are just sort of like I just want to say kissing ass to black women. [00:25:54] And they're they're out of their power. They just think, now I've got to give all my power away. [00:26:00] I can't. And when the reality is it's not an intimate relationship unless we can actually address these things and talk about them. Right. So there's so many ways, so many puddles. [00:26:13] We can step in and be outside of our integrity, around the power we do carry. And being honest about it because of our overidentification with the victim or the perpetrator. And I do think in our culture we celebrate overidentification with victimhood. It's really hard to support ourselves in each other and standing actually and owning our full power. Right. And you and I have talked about the self victim. [00:26:39] Identifying with the victim leads to entitlement and then we become the perpetrator. Right. I mean, it really is. They really are on the same continuum. Yes. They're not separate continuums. They're completely related. [00:26:51] It's a different paradigm. And they we move back and forth between victim, perpetrator and inner victim, outer victim, inner perpetrator out of victim. Right. It's a different paradigm to say I'm here. I'm here with my ancestors. I'm here. I'm right. Relationships are willing to become right. [00:27:08] Relationship with everybody. Right. I mean, and it's messy. I do want to say it's not a linear process in my experience. Right. [00:27:17] Right. [00:27:19] So what else do you want to say about 2020, 20-20, like, what is your what is your wisdom? Like, if you had to distill it of like what you've gotten so far from this year and perhaps your hope moving forward, I think. [00:27:37] One of the things that's happened for me is that I've given myself permission to really have more limitation, like in awe. [00:27:50] It's almost like the pathway to me for me to unfold in my fullness is by saying, knowing when to say no and knowing when to say yes, that there is no price like the price of leaving part of myself behind is not negotiable now. That's become a reason. And that's a real shift inside of me. That is, it's changing me. And I would also say that I've. [00:28:17] I feel like I have cut I've come into contact with the intelligence of love and not just the love between people, but the intelligence of love. And I really feel like for me, that's. [00:28:36] It's not only the gift, it's like I'm waking up to something that I've always known. Mm hmm. So what Cobbett, what the pandemic and what all of this has done for me in getting more in touch with myself is it's actually more of a remembering than a learning something new. Right. It's detaching from all the distractions that kept me, you know, spending more time on the level of persona than the level of soul. Yeah, totally. [00:29:05] How about you? [00:29:09] I think this time has really awakened me to embodying. [00:29:16] Myself and has confronted my own spiritual bypass, my desire to spiritual bypass or do emotional bypass and really land more in my body land and become more human. [00:29:35] I feel like like containment is my medicine because I've been able to express myself throughout my life despite saying I lost part of my voice. [00:29:48] That's true. And I've still been able to express more than contain. So everything is about simplicity, structure. And that's to me, the sacred masculine I'm bringing in to the relationship with the divine feminine. I'm feel. [00:30:07] Much more whole from coming through this year. [00:30:10] And and great fall like for the expiated lessons of this year, because I know we have to learn now as a species, not individually only, but as a species in quantum time, because there is no time with everything that's happening in the big cosmic narratives. And my hope going forward is, you know, one of the things I've been saying to my clients is how are we going to write news stories of the culture? [00:30:40] I think it's now about getting smaller, not bigger. And why smaller? I mean, more intimate. [00:30:48] I do, too. Hundred percent sharing our deepest, most intimate stories and making the unspeakable, unspeakable. And moving past shame. Right. That's how we're going to. Those are the news stories said the old stories. They're also the news stories going deeper in that connection. [00:31:09] Sounds like we're moving, huh? Things are moving and shifting and. As always, it's a privilege to be here. I feel. [00:31:20] Yeah, this one feels important. That's all I'll say. Mm hmm. [00:31:24] Thanks, everybody, for listening. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for being with us. [00:31:33] Thank you for joining Camille and Tanya for this episode of Restoring the Culture. If you were inspired, we would deeply appreciate it if you would leave a review on iTunes or any other platform where you heard our podcast. For more ongoing inspiration and support, please join our no cost global Facebook community. Restoring the culture. You can support that podcast by making a donation here. And remember, we are each restoring the culture as we reach story. Our own lives. See you next time.

This week, Lace is taking the weekend off. So Stephen brought Todd back to the palace for a rundown of the week's scarce amount of news, a ton of conversation and an unexpected return of an old game! twitch.tv/LaceyaFinley Twitter: @SuperMegaCrash Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/supermegacrashbrosturbo Email: supermegacrash@gmail.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pencilandpaperproductions Podbean Patron: https://pencilandpaperproductions.podbean.com Theme music composed by Setsuo Yamamoto/ arranged and performed by FamilyJules Subscribe to Family Jules here: FamilyJules7x

On this special segment of Client Convos on the ROI Online Podcast, Steve chats with Stephen Eoff about the importance of having a digital presence in today's fast-paced world, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.Stephen Eoff is the current owner of Jack Tyler Engineering, a third-generation family-run business. Back in the '60s, Stephen's grandfather Jack Tyler started the company with an engineering mindset. His mission: provide top-of-the-line equipment and repair services to municipal, industrial, and commercial operations. When Stephen's father, Sherman, married into the family, he started working in the business as well, eventually becoming an owner in '92.One of the interesting things about Stephen's story is that he found his passion at home, but he had to leave home to realize it. Stephen grew up in the business and felt comfortable working alongside his family, but his father talked him into working out in the world instead. There, while studying engineering and working in the field until he turned 30, Stephen realized how much he loved working for Jack Tyler Engineering. It was more than just supporting the family. It was his passion.While he studied engineering, he found the sales aspect of running a business to be much more interesting. Stephen preferred to spend his time talking with people than working behind a computer. It's a skill that, to his surprise, ended up working to his favor. When he came to take over the family business, it became clear that Jack Tyler Engineering needed a strong salesAs a business owner, Stephen recognized a problem many of us entrepreneurs have to face sooner or later: the business wasn't built to scale. The world has changed, and the word-of-mouth strategies that worked for Sherman and Jack used weren't standing the test of time. The people he worked with now expected the company to have a strong digital presence. It was a kick in the gut since Jack Tyler Engineering didn't even have a CRM at the time. So Stephen did some digging into the world of marketing and discovered "Building a StoryBrand" by Donald Miller. That discovery led him to ROI Online, where he learned how to build a digital business foundation that helped him grow his business even during a pandemic. Today, he's continuing to create the pieces his business needs to secure the right talent, keep vendors happy, and maintain customers' trust.Stephen Eoff is the owner of Jack Tyler Engineering:https://www.jteng.com/To learn more about StoryBrand, pick up your copy of Donald Miller's book, Building a StoryBrand, by clicking this link.And you can get a shiny copy of The Golden Toilet on Amazon here:https://amzn.to/2X3NKlB. Listen for FREE when you sign up for a 30-Day Trial Membership with AudibleThinking of starting your own podcast? Buzzsprout's secure and reliable posting allows you to publish podcasts online. Buzzsprout also includes full iTunes support, HTML5 players, show statistics, and WordPress plugins. Get started using this link to receive a $20 Amazon gift card and to help support our show!Support the show (https://cash.app/$stevemfbrown)

In this episode Tom declares that The Professional and The Man from Nowhere are the same movie. So Stephen and Tom put the two in the Cinema Square Off! They compare, contrast, review, and declare which movie reigns supreme! So come along with us and see how crazy Tom is.

Part 4 -Sending cards for all occasions. There are so many occasions to send someone a card in the mail. You can always thank somebody when you've first met them. You can thank someone for doing a good job. You can thank someone for getting on the phone with you to talk about business. You can also send a card just to congratulate somebody on a special event, an anniversary, or a promotion. You can send a card for sympathy if somebody loses a loved one, or a “get well” note if they're in the hospital recovering from an injury or surgery. The business of gratitude is being grateful for people in a caring way. Connect with someone when they're going through a difficult time. You can say: “I understand you're going through a tough time. I just want you to know that you're in my thoughts, my heart, my prayers. If you need someone to reach out to, I'm here for you.” One of the most powerful notes Stephen writes is the “regret.” He shares an example from his industry. In the mortgage business, not everybody's approved for their loan. Even when you approve someone for a loan, they sometimes get their loans somewhere else. So Stephen will send a note, even on that occasion: “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you. I regret that I wasn't able to serve your needs at this time. In today's business world, things change. So if anything changes in your world, feel free to contact me.” Writing this note keeps the door open. Stephen says it got him more business because people would send him referrals, or they'd come back to him when their credit got fixed or their job became more stable.

If children are like sponges, what happens when they are born into a sea of sorrow? Meet Stephen Lew. When a family tragedy struck on his first birthday, his world shifted forever. As his family struggled to heal, his birthdays were now a painful secret, not to be celebrated. Seeking a sense of belonging, Stephen felt the quiet suffering of others. He looked externally to find comfort in a shared experience. But learning how happiness feels is an inside out experience. It cannot be handed to you. So Stephen realized he needed to “get naked with happiness” and that he did just that launching his namesake podcast. Join us and learn Stephen’s habits and tactics on his journey in his pursuit of happiness and spreading happiness to millions around the world through his School of Positive Psychology! Follow Stephen Lew at https://www.positivepsych.edu.sg/ https://open.spotify.com/show/2cNIhBNwWmamJs75G3tMxY Build Up One Another Apple iTunes https://apple.co/2JMtxLf / Spotify https://spoti.fi/2BVZyw2 INSTAGRAM https://bit.ly/2Pm4BxP

Listen to part 2 of 4 of my keynote presentation from FHL. During this part of the presentation, I start diving deeper into how to create your irresistible offers. On today’s episode you will hear part 2 of 4 of Russell’s first presentation at Funnel Hacking Live 2019. Here are some of the super awesome things you will hear in this part: Hear Russell give ideas for a written offer, an audio offer, and a video offer, that are all super easy. Find out why it’s so important to not be a commodity and how you can avoid it. And see why Russell always has several things he can use to bulk up his offers. So listen here to hear the second part of Russell’s keynote presentation at this year’s Funnel Hacking Live. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone this is Russell. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets podcast. I hope you enjoyed the first 25% of my keynote presentation at Funnel Hacking Live. During today’s episode I’m going to start diving deeper into actually how you create an offer. We talked about so far the fact that the offer increases the value, you have to have amazing offers because that’s how you decommoditize yourself and how you make people desire and lust and go crazy for the thing you’re trying to sell. So the next thing is like, “Okay, that’s cool Russell, but you know I’m selling physical products, and I’m doing this or whatever and I don’t know how to bulk up my offer.” And the easiest way to bulk up offers is with information products. So the next section of my presentation, I started going deeper into exactly how to create information products. I walk through nine different ways that I think you’re going to enjoy. We’re going to kind of go through nine different ways, and then do a couple of potential exercises and things like that, and then we’re going to move into story. So with that said, I’m queue up the theme song and jump into part two of my keynote presentation. So the question is, how do you do that? Some of you guys are like, “I sell this thing, how do I make it sexier? How do I make an offer?” So the fastest way to increase an offer is to bulk it up by adding other types of information products. So I’m going to go through a couple of ways you guys can create quick information products to bulk up any offer without actually having to write a book. Does that sound like fun? Alright cool. So I’m going through 3 different things you can do. Number one, there are written words, but I’m going to show you how to do that without actually writing any words. Number two is audio and number three is video. This will give you guys ideas so no one will be able to say, “I can’t create an offer, Russell.” With these things I’m going to show you, you can create millions and millions of offers. In fact, if you start looking at everything I do, you’ll notice there’s always one of these three things I’m using to bulk up my offers every single time. So the first are written things. So the first thing I want to show you guys is, how many of you guys would love to have a book but you don’t want to write a book? Books are the most painful part of anything I’ve ever done, ever. By far. So this is a book that was a crowd source book called chicken soup for the soul. How many of you guys have read Chicken Soup for the Soul? How many of you guys have read one of the 8 million versions since then? The most amazing thing about this book is that they authors who wrote this book didn’t actually write any of the words in the books. Isn’t that great? Yet, they still made millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars. The other day my son came into my little office, it was Bowen again, he came in and he saw this book and he said, “Dad, is that your new book?” and I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “You wrote another new book?” I was like, “Well, kind of.” And he’s like, “What do you mean kind of?” I’m like, ‘Well, I wrote the title and that was it.” He’s like, “Did you cheat?” I’m like, “No, I didn’t cheat. I have 30 people who’ve got Two Comma Club awards write how they would get a two comma club award if they could do it again.” He’s like, “And then they just wrote the chapter?” I said, “Yeah, then I put it in a book, then we sell the book.” And he’s like, “But you didn’t write anything.” I’m like, “I wrote the title. It’s a really good title.” And he’s like, “I don’t think that’s a real book dad.” I’m like, ‘No, it really is.” How many of you guys inside whatever business you’re in could find a whole bunch of experts in whatever it is, and you could write a book like this? This book alone, we did the very first launch of the one funnel away challenge where we gave this away, and we closed it down for like four months, people were auctioning these things off. Someone sold one for over $500 on eBay. People were going crazy for this book. Now when we’re launching one funnel away challenge again, we’re like, ‘you guys get this book.” And people flip out. People buy just because they want the book, and I didn’t write a word of it. So think about this, how could you guys like, Chicken Soup for the Soul trailblazed it for us, I trailblazed it for you, how could you guys do that same thing in your market? Find people around you and be like, “Let me interview you,” do 30 of you, or 20  of you, or 10 of you and put together and make a book. There’s a million things you could do with that, but it’s a fast, easy way to create a book but you don’t actually have to do it. Number two way to get written books really fast is to compile examples of stuff. How many of you guys have read my 108 Split Tests book? This is literally just screen shots of 108 of our split tests and people go crazy for it. How many of you guys are doing stuff in your business or whatever it is you do, where you have this byproduct? We weren’t planning on selling this, we were just doing split tests and it takes screen shots of the split tests and eventually two years later we’re like, we should just put these all in a book. We just compiled a whole bunch of examples and we sold it. This right here, how many of you guys are members of Funnel University? Every month we find a couple of funnels, we compile them, talk about them, and show them to people. Not my funnels, other people’s funnels. We just find the cool ones and we show them and put them in a newsletter. How many of you guys have seen this book, the 74 Funnel Swipe File? None of you guys have seen it yet. Another product coming out soon to a funnel near you. Same thing, we’re just compiling cool stuff. How many of you guys have seen cool stuff before? You should just compile it then, make a book, and then it’s amazing. More people have probably read this book than my other books that I spent years slaving on to write, and they’re like, ‘Oh, this is better.” One of my favorite ones, this is kind of a tricky one. How many of you guys have heard of the public domain before? This is where Walt Disney got all his ideas by the way, he never wrote anything. He just went to the public domain and he’s like, “Oh sweet, someone wrote a story about a beauty and a beast, or about a snow princess, or about all these things.’ He found public domain stories and produced movies out of it. Anything that was written pre-1923 in the United States is in the public domain and you can republish it as your own. One of my friends, Matt Furey, he took this old 1914 wrestling course, Farmer Burns, published the book and made over a million dollars selling that course. Have any of you guys read Think and Grow Rich? Master Key Systems? Tons of the books that you guys know and are aware of are all in the public domain, you can republish them. There are two places I go for public domain stuff. Number one I go to Gutenburg.org, everything on Gutenburg.org is on the public domain. They just publish, there’s like 50,000 ebooks there, you could find one in your market, you can take it and republish it as your own. The second secret, I go to eBay and eBay in the non-fiction book section, you can search by year, so I search by year and I start typing keywords in my market. And you will be amazed at how many amazing books that have been written that people are selling on eBay for $1.50, that you can then republish and sell for whatever you want. Bundle inside of your offer to quickly get amazing books. Okay, so there’s three fast ways to make books. Crowd source them, compile a bunch of examples, or go in the public domain. Okay now here’s a concept I need you guys to understand as we move from the first three to the next three and beyond. This will make this whole process simpler for you. The concept is this, people will spend more money for the exact same content packaged in a different way. I’ll say it again. People will spend more money for the exact same content packaged in a different way. When I first started this business, I remember going to events like this and the speaker, it seemed like every single time some speaker would say, “Who here has read Think and Grow Rich?” By the way, how many of you guys have read Think and Grow Rich? Which is in the public domain by the way, so you guys can all publish and make Think and Grow Rich for Dentists, Think and Grow Rich for Surfers, Think and Grow Rich for whatever, it’s ready for you. But anyway, I kept hearing that so I went and bought the book and I was like, I’m so excited to read the book, and I put it next to my bed stand and it sat there for months and months and then years. And every time I’d go to an event, they’d be like, “Who read Think and Grow Rich?” I’d raise my hand, well I haven’t actually read it. I have it, someday I’ll read it. And one day I remember feeling guilty and I went on eBay and I typed Think and Grow Rich Cd’s and someone was selling the CD course of it. So I bought the CDs, go it in my car and for the next 3 weeks, I started “reading” Think and Grow Rich in my car. What’s interesting about this, the book Think and Grow Rich cost me $9.97 on Amazon. The CDs cost me $97 on eBay. So I literally paid ten times more money for the exact same thing packaged in a different way. Was there any difference between the book and the audio? It was literally word for word. Some dude read the book and then it became CDs and I spent ten times as much. This is the lesson for you guys. How many of you guys read the Dotcom Secrets book? How many of you guys read the Expert Secrets book? Why are you here then? Everything I know is in those books.  I got nothing else. Oh, because it’s packaged a different way. Does that make sense? I want you guys all to understand that what you have you can package in so many different ways, and because of the experience, how it’s being fulfilled, all those things, it shifts the value of it. This is way more valuable than a $10 book, this experience being here. So I’m going to shift over to audio now. This is a book that we republished, this is in the public domain, it’s called the Life Work of Farmer Burns. I had my father in law get a microphone out, he read it, we turned it into a CD and started selling, this is ten years ago, started selling this book on CD. So you can find a book, you can read it, you can have somebody else read it, find the book in public domain, find something like that, and make an audio book.  A very simple, easy way to do it. Number two is you can interview others. So this is a book, how many of you guys have read this book, by the way?  I know all our Two Comma Club X members, I sent you guys a copy of it. Everyone’s like, “This thing is bigger than the phone book.” It’s one of the best books ever. I remember when it first came out, David Frey, where’s David at? So David got it and he’s like, ‘This book’s amazing.” And he called up Vince James’ is the author, and he interviewed him for a whole bunch of stuff, and he made a whole audio course out of it, and Dave’s a genius, so I should just do what Dave did. So then I called him up and I said, “Hey can I interview you too?” and he’s like, “Sure.” So I interviewed the guy who wrote this book. The guy made, he was a 20 year old kid and made a hundred million dollars through direct mail selling supplements. So I called him on the phone and I interviewed him and he let me interview him for six hours. When it was done he was like, “You can have the rights to the audios, I have the rights too. We can do whatever we want with them.” I’m like, “Sweet.” So then like 2 years later I launched it and this actually became my very first ever Two Comma Club Funnel. I made a million dollars selling interviews of the interview I did with this guy who wrote the book. Is that amazing? So how many of you guys have ever read a book before? How many of you guys could call the author and be like, “Hey can I interview you?” And if someone’s like, “He’s too famous, he wrote all these big books. He’s never going to interview me.” I’m going to tell you the life of an author, if you guys really want to know how it works. They geek out on a topic, they spend their whole life writing this book and they’re so proud of it and they’re so excited. And then they tell their spouse or their family and friends and they’re like, “Okay. That’s weird.” And they’re like, “Oh, nobody cares.” And then there’s an audience who gets the book and they love it and read it and they’re like, “My people did read it.” right. And then somebody calls and they’re like, “Hey, that book was amazing. Can I interview you?” The person is like, “Yes, you can.” Just so you know. They want you to talk to them. They want to share this stuff. It does not happen enough. If you went to Amazon and find the top ten authors of books in your market, I guarantee you 9 out of 10 will get you on the phone that fast. Or you can actually, I don’t know if Jason Fladlien is here this year, but Jason gave me an idea that was brilliant. He was doing an offer and this kind of ties back to the story we’ll talk about here in a minute, but he was doing an offer where he was selling a funnel course and he was like, “I want to interview someone who did ecommerce funnels. Well, Trey Lewellen has got the highest grossing ecommerce funnel right now inside of Clickfunnels, I want to interview Trey.” So he calls up Trey and he’s like, “Hey, can I interview you?” and they’re friends. And Trey’s like, “Sure man, you can interview me.” And Jason’s like, “Well, I need to wire you some money first.” And Trey’s like, “No, don’t worry about it. I’ll do the interview.” And he’s like, “No, no, I need to wire you the money because otherwise there’s no value in this interview. And Trey’s like, ‘What” so Trey’s like, “Whatever.” So Jason wires him like $5000 and he does the interview and then when you see when Jason is selling his product, he does the stack and goes through the stack, “Number one, number two, number three….” He’s like, “Number three right here, do you see this right here? This is the guy, he’s the number one ecommerce seller in Clickfunnels. He had a funnel that did $20 million dollars in six weeks selling flashlights and I wired him $5000 to interview because I wanted to find out, he does interviews but I wanted to find out the real stuff, so I paid him $5000 to interview him. And that interview you guys could have.” All the sudden that bullet point in this stack slide went from, “Oh it’s an interview.” to “that’s worth $5000 now.” The value instantly shoots up. So interviewing people is huge. In fact, when I launched the 10x Secrets course I had my offer and it was good and I was like, “How do I make this sexier?” so the first thing I did is I interviewed a bunch of people. I interviewed this man right here, where’s Myron at? Everyone loves Myron. Anyway, I interviewed Myron, I wrote a bunch of people who I learned how to close from stage from. I interviewed all of them, plugged that into the course, increased the value of the course. So interviewing people is huge, for any product. I don’t think there’s a product I put out that I don’t interview people. I do it even if it’s my product. I’m like, “Who are the 10 other people I can interview who have done something similar?” because all those things increase the value of what it is I’m selling. And then the last audio one is compiling hard to find podcasts, and audios and things like that. If I told you guys, I’m like, ‘Hey, my favorite podcast is Mixergy, you guys should go listen to it.” How much value is in that? Not much, right. But if I was like, “There’s this one interview that Andrew did and in the interview he started talking to the guy and he literally, the guy showed three different websites that were the key to ‘blah, blah, blah’ and I listened to those things and found the websites. I never knew they existed. I started doing the thing, and that’s how we got Clickfunnels to whatever.” If I tell you that, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I want to hear that podcast.” I’m like, “Cool, when you sign up for my thing right now, I’m going to give you a link directly to that podcast so you can find it.” You curating stuff for people there’s value in that. YouTube videos, I’ve done it tons of times with opt ins where we’re like, “Opt in here to get a free video from Robert Kiyosaki teaching the number one tax strategy for middle aged Americans.” And I just found a video on YouTube of Robert Kiyosaki teaching the number one thing on whatever, and that’s what I give people when they opt in. So you curating stuff you think is cool, can be bundled into offers as well. Okay, so there’s the audio ones. Really quick, so audio books, interviewing other people and compiling hard to find audios is a big thing. The last one I’m going to go through really quickly is video. There is a program, how many of you guys here use Windows? How many of you guys use Macs? Holy cow. Okay, there’s a program. If you are using Windows you should be using Camtasia, if you’re using Mac, use Screen Flow. This tool has made me and probably most people more money than anything else on earth. It just records whatever is happening on your screen. So you make a presentation or slides, or literally the very first version of Funnel Hacks training, the one that got us from zero to ten thousand customers, I had a word document opened on the screen with my notes, on the right hand side, I had a little picture. I just clicked record on Screen Flow and I talked for an hour as I read through my outline. We did like $10 million plus dollars in sales, and that was what the product looked like. “But Russell, I have a professional video studio.” You don’t need one, just get a microphone, screen flow or camtasia, record your screen, have a presentation and just teach it. It’s super easy, it’s simple. It’s like the easiest thing in the world to do. Number two video thing, just get your iphone out. Literally you can just get your phone out and just make videos. Where is Rachel at? Is she in the room right now? We were on, did you finish the course, by the way? Can I talk about that? So Rachel, we were on this little cruise thing after the 10x event and she came up to me and she’s like, “I have an idea, it’s going to be a course called Selfie Secrets” Am I going to ruin this? “I’m going to record the whole thing on my iphone.” And then she the next day, recorded the entire course on her phone teaching the entire course, which is amazing. And it was all on her phone. Okay, so how many of you guys have a phone. You have everything you need. You guys should all buy her course when it goes live. And the last thing is you should throw a workshop, teaching people stuff. You don’t even have to speak, you can bring other speakers to teach for you. When I first got started, I didn’t have any product to sell. So the first thing I did, I threw a workshop. And it was really exciting to have a workshop, I was pumped about it, but I had nobody coming and so I emailed my tiny list at the time and said, “I’m doing a workshop, it’s $5000 a ticket.” And then the first day nobody bought, and the second day nobody bought. And the third day one guy bought. And at first I was like, “Yeah!’ and then I was like, “Oh crap, now I have to do a workshop and there’s only one person coming. This is awkward.” Then luckily 2 other people bought. So I had three people buy. I was like, “Okay, now we have a workshop with three people.” So I called everybody I knew, my friends, my family, everybody. I was like, “Okay, I’m doing a workshop, people paid to be here. You have to come and just sit in the audience and don’t tell them you didn’t pay, because I need this to look good on video or it’s going to be super embarrassing.” So we set it up, we had it all set, and it was like not like this, it was really bad. We literally had curtains, the windows behind me were too bright, so we got sheets from the bedrooms, and electrical taped sheets over the, it’s so bad. But we recorded and that became the very first course I ever sold, the videos from us at the holiday inn, with electrical tape over the sheets, literally behind me the entire video and it looked amazing. So throw a workshop, even if nobody comes to it, or just invite your friends. Do something at your house, bring people in, just record yourself teaching your thing, and you can bundle that really, really quickly. So for videos, we’ve got screen captures, iphones, and workshops. So here’s a quick recap of the nine ideas. Crowd sourcing books, compiling examples, public domain, audiobooks, interviewing, compile hard to find audios, screen captures, iphones, and workshops. Tons of easy ways to do that quickly. So what I want to do right now, is I want to actually, I’m trying to think if we should do this or not. I’m going to let you guys do this on your own, but in your paper that I handed out, I have this little section here for you guys to figure out, what are potential products I could bundle inside of my offer? This is something we do all the time. Every time we have a new product that comes out, I talked about this last year, we have bat meetings. We literally send out a bat signal to voxer to everyone on our marketing team, we all come on zoom, from wherever they’re at around the world, and they get in front of a whiteboard and we’re like, “What could we create from this product? We could put this in it, and this…” and just start dumping out as many ideas as we can. So now you guys have, let’s say I’m selling this product, “what else could we do?” “We could interview this guy, I could compile these things here, I could do this, I could make a video, I could do a workshop, we could do….” And all these things you can quickly create to turn this into an offer. Now really quick, I guarantee I know the number one thing going through some of your heads right now is, “Russell, that’s cool for all the coaches and the consultants and the info product people, but not for me. I’m different. I sell real stuff. I sell physical products.” Or, “I have a local business.” Or whatever your excuse is right now. I want to shatter these excuses because the biggest thing that’s going to keep you guys from having success over this week, is the thought of, “Oh, this doesn’t apply to me.” I’m excited, I think either tomorrow or the next day, we’re going to have Jaime Cross who’s going to be coming up here and speaking. Jaime is amazing because two years ago she came to Funnel Hacking Live, she was sitting in the audience, and she sells soap. And I was on the stage talking about webinars. I’m doing this huge thing about webinars and stories, this whole thing. And every other ecommerce person, I’m guessing, in the audience is like, “This is not for me because I sell physical products.” And Jaime said, “How could I make this work for me.” Twelve months later she’s on the stage getting a two comma club award. Twelve months later she’s onstage sharing her story with you. She took this concept of the webinar and made an ecommerce webinar. She took it and didn’t say, ‘This isn’t going to work for me.” But “How can I make this work for me?” And shifted some things and made it work for her and blew up her company. I’m so excited for her to tell her whole story. But I want you guys thinking the same thing. So I’m going to some examples right now. This is a product that I sell. This is a physical product called Viagon. How many of you guys have ever seen this before? The three people on my team. So back in the day when I launched 15 companies in a year, which is a horrible idea, don’t do that, one of them was this thing right here. I had a friend who had this company and he was getting in trouble and this little machine here, if you start getting a cold sore, as you as you feel it, how many of you guys get cold sores? You feel it tingle, you pull this out, if I can open it. This is a new one so the seal hasn’t been cut yet. Alright, then you peel the seal off. Alright so when you open this thing up, when you feel the cold sore coming on, come on. There we go. Alright you open it up and there’s these two little electroids, and you take and push the button, and let’s say you have a cold sore, you put it on your cold sore, and somehow, I don’t know how, some scientists figured out something. It’s actually patented and everything. It goes in and zaps the cold sore, destroys it, kicks it in the face and destroys it and the cold sore never shows up. Isn’t that awesome? How many of you guys want one of these right now? Really, I gotta get my funnel back up. So this is a physical product I sell, right. And you’re like, “Well Russell, I don’t sell information. This isn’t going to work for me.” But imagine if I did this, how do I turn this into an offer? This is a physical product, it does what it does. It’s just a thing. And the guy who I buy these from, he sells it to other people, so I’m not the only one. It’s a commodity. There’s like 30 other people who sell this same thing, only mine’s better. So for me, how do I compete over everyone else, when everyone’s got the exact same thing, it does the exact same thing. So I have to turn this from a commodity into an offer, because if it’s a commodity, I gotta be like, “He’s selling it for $150, I’m going to sell it for $130.” Then the next guy says, “I’ll sell it for $120.” “Crap. $110.” “$109” “$105” Boom, boom, boom, soon this thing is like $90.95 right, retail. That’s the problem when products are commodities. Or I could say, “Okay, this is amazing. This helps with cold sores, but what else could I do with cold sores? What else could I do? What else could I do?” I could go on Amazon and be like, “Cold sore cures and remedies.” And I guarantee there’s people on Amazon who have written books on how to do cold sores. I could message one and be like, “Hey man, you are the definitive expert on cold sores, can I interview you talking about all the tricks you know how to prevent cold sores from happening? I’m sure there’s stuff in your diet and exercise, right?” like, “Oh yes.’ So I get him on the phone and I interview him, now it’s like, “Okay, when you buy from anybody you get the same thing, but when you buy from me you get the cold sore inhibiter, plus you also get the interview with this dude over here who’s the number one highest stars on Amazon, writer of a cold sore book. You get his book as well, plus my interview where I actually interviewed him. And then number three, there are 7 supplements I’ve found that help get rid of cold sores. 7. There’s a whole bunch of people who claim the supplements, but there are actually 7 that work, and there’s two that work almost instantly. The second you feel a cold sore coming, you pop these two pills, gone instantly. And I wrote a report about those, because I want to make sure you get the right ones, if you get the wrong one, you get the right product but you get the wrong brand, you are screwed. So I’m going to show you the 7 supplements as well. So you get this first, plus you’re going to get the interview with the number one expert in the world, plus you’re going to get the 7 supplements, the actual brand names, where to buy them, how to get the discounts to all the 7 supplements. And the next thing you’re going to get is, blah, blah, blah.” I take a physical product and I’m bundling information around it to increase the value of the thing. So it doesn’t matter if you’re selling information or not, if you’re selling physical products, it’s the same thing. Information is the easiest way to bundle this. The problem though with infomercials, the only way they bundle is like, “If you call now, I’ll give you another one for free.” That’s what almost all ecommerce people do. It’s like, that’s good but its, “Now I got two of these things. So I have cold sores I can have one at my house and one at my office. That’s kind of weird.” But if I bundle with information products, it doesn’t increase the cost to you at all, but dramatically increases the value. Now when I’m competing with the 30 other people selling this, I can sell it for higher and people will still buy from me versus everybody else because my offer is better than theirs. Another good example of this is my friend Mr. Stephen Larsen. How many of you guys know Stephen? So this is a good example for any of you guys who are like, ‘I’m here Russell, but I don’t have a product yet.” So Stephen he has his own products, but he’s also an affiliate for Clickfunnels, he’s an affiliate for a bunch of other things. So we did the one funnel away launch, the 10x launch, a couple other things, he said, “Okay, Russell already created an amazing offer that he’s selling, but there’s a thousand other affiliates that are all selling this product as well. Everyone’s doing it, so how do I compete against this.” He said, “Okay, here’s Russell’s offer, how can I make my own offer to make it better?” People always ask me, “How can I make money as an affiliate, Russell?” The first thing you do is you don’t sell the product that they’re already selling. That’s like, “Buy Russell’s thing.” That’s like number one on your list, then it’s like, “Now I need to make my own offer.” How many of you guys bought the one funnel away challenge from somebody and then bought it again from Stephen later because you wanted his bonus? Okay how many of you guys have bought twice from Stephen because you wanted the new bonus the second time? There’s a lesson in this. So even if you don’t have a product yet, that’s okay. Find someone else with a product and then, “How can I now make an amazing offer? What could I bundle together to increase the value of this offer so people buy from me versus somebody else? Or if they did buy from somebody else, they’ll also buy from me because my offer is so valuable.” Alright, so this is kind of the exercise for you guys to start doing. Going through here and listing out all the different ideas you can have. So tonight, this weekend with that paper I handed out, start writing out these things, start putting them out there, and start putting as many as you can think of, and make it, the biggest problem you can have is you’re kind of putting in your potential products that are going to make an offer, is to be like, “Oh, that’s not going to work. That’s not going to work.” When you start it, be creative. When we first did this probably 12 years ago, we sat in front of a whiteboard and we were doing this and we were like, we were at a point where we needed a funnel to save us from everything. It was the bottom of everything. We were like, ‘We have to make the most irresistible offer ever or else we’re shutting the doors.” So we sat in front of a whiteboard and I’m like, ‘Okay, what can we give them? Okay, they can fly to my house and I will give them a massage and feed them food, and then we’re going to do this, and then we’re going to do this….” We made all this crazy stuff, we had it all on the whiteboard, and then we started saying, “What’s the offer actually going to be?” and we’re like, “Well, pretty sure my wife would be mad if I come to my house and had to give them massages. So let’s not do that one.” But it was there. And then it’s like, “Well, what if we did this and this…” It gave us the time to brainstorm and then from there we start pulling things over to actually make an amazing offer. Anytime I create a new funnel, new thing, I’m always looking at creating an offer, with as many potential things as possible, then think, “What can I actually create?” pull them into my little stack slide and it’s like, “Now I know what I need to create to increase the software.” Now, one thing I want to mention is well, the reason why I have a whole bunch of things as well is because there’s more than just one offer in every funnel. You guys understand that? So I need a lot of stuff that I can give away. So if you look at this right here, there’s an offer on my ad. I’m trying to get someone to click on something. So I’m like, “Click on this thing and I’m going to give you your free report.” There’s an offer happening there. Luckily that was one of my ideas that I already created, because I can now pull that down and it becomes this. Then they land on my landing page and I’m like, “I need their email address, I’m trading them. What am I going to have? Well I have something up here I’ve already created, potential products. I’m going to give them my interview with so and so.” “Give me your email address and I’ll give you an interview with so and so.” Boom there’s the next product. Then it’s like, “Now buy this product, I’m going to give you these 5 things.” Then my upsell is these three or four things. I think so many of us go into this thinking, “Okay, here’s the product I’m going to sell and I’m going to try and build a funnel around it.” And it’s like, no, no, no. Understand that it’s like, you’re looking at more of how do you serve your customers? What are all the things you could possibly give them to do that, and then you’re breaking down the different parts of the funnel. Okay, alright, come back to the hook, story, offer. So that was the offer section of this part.

We didn't meet our New Year's resolution of once a month in January, but we're here for February gosh darn it. So Stephen is back, this time with a new title! He's officially the third co host of the show! Stephen and Kayde will be interchangeable now! Stephen starts us off with government funded alien research and crazy shit fans will buy off of celebrities. Haley talks about expensive.... "delicacies." Maybe don't eat food while listening that that half. Follow us on instagram @OutrageouslyUnnecessary and follow us on Twitter @OUnnecessaryPod If you like the show please give us a rate and review on iTunes/Apple Podcasts!

In this edition of WMS, in association with ALS, Frankie has a Thursday off! So Stephen and Gareth take the reigns and look ahead to the top of the table clash at Fratton Park on Saturday. We also have the latest instalment of "A Pair of Balls" and a Portsmouth away guide from Tom Walsh. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What's going on everybody, hey I want to welcome you to another episode of learning from the experts and I am super stoked about this one today. I actually have an expert on here with me... So here's the deal. I know how frustrating it is as an entrepreneur to waste countless hours sifting through wanna-be experts who never actually helped me in the end. Then to learn years later that there was an expert who really could help me 100 times faster than learning on my own. I have created this podcast to save you time and money while taking you on a journey with me as I learned from an interview real experts who can actually help you grow your business. My name is Coulton Woods and you're listening to Learning From The Experts. Let's go ahead and get started. I want to introduce you to Marie Larson. I've known Marie for almost a year now. It's kind of crazy times flying. Marie Larson is a podcasting expert. She has her own agency. She knows the stuff. If you want to publish, if you need to get your name out there, if you need to blow up your podcast, this is the girl that you need to talk to you. And obviously she's related to Steve Larson, so you know she's a killer and she makes stuff happen for you. She was actually behind Steve's podcast, for quite a while from the beginning stages until it was just massive. And then he had all these other people that do more niche down stuff, anyway, but she was behind it and helped him blow up that podcast. So if you guys need your podcast blown up. She's the woman. So obviously Marie, my listeners don't really know who you are. So I'm going to tell us a little bit about yourself. How'd you get started in this? What's your story? What's up everyone. My name is Marie Larsen. Funny story, as Coulton was saying, I met him about a year ago at funnel hacking live and when I showed up to funnel hacking live this past year in 2018, I was like the poorest of poor kids, right? I had no money to my name. In fact, I left funnel hacking live with $78 to my name. With that being said, I also had a coaching program that was $22,000 that I had to pay off in a year. I had school to pay for and of course the day to day living circumstances as well, so I was pretty much in a pickle, and I had to figure out really quickly what I was supposed to be doing. Now my brother Steven, he's a Rockstar. If you guys have not heard of or know who Steve Larsen is, be sure to check him out. Kids a Rockstar. I'm not just saying that because I'm biased, but he really is super good at what he does. So Stephen reached out to me when I had gotten home from serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day saints. And when I got home, I wanted to be a dentist my whole life Coulton. Here's the funny thing. I wanted to be a dentist, really, really bad. But I got home and I realized that my mom had sat down and she pulled out a list. She was like, here are the people you're gonna have to talk to you. Here's the stuff that you're going to have to do. Here's the date you're going to go into a huge list of stuff. Right? And I freaked out and I looked at that list and I was like, holy crap. I have no desire to go through and actually do that and to go and do the same thing every single day for the rest of my life. Now I love my dentist, thank you to my dentist. But I realized it was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. As I was sitting there talking to my brother Steven and my dad, they looked at me and said, Marie, we don't want to tell you how to live your life, but you should look into business. And I was like, business? That's so stupid. Like, who does business that's so dumb. And they both kind of chuckled. Both my dad and Steven are pretty known within their industries. Anyway, I started studying it out and as Stephen was walking away one day, he was like, oh, by the way, while you were gone for those that past year and a half, there's this thing called clickfunnels that happened, and you should check it out. So I was like, all right man, whatever, if you want me to sell kitchenware, I guess I'll do that, you know, he was like, it's not kitchen where it's a software. And I was like whatever. Right. So I had started studying out business. I went to funnel hacking live. I had no money, coaching that I had to pay for essentially, really, really quickly with not a lot of money to my name and I promised myself that I would not pull out or go into debt over this at all. That was a big deal for me. So I really buckled down hard and started going into podcasts even more. Now I had done Stephen's podcast for a really, really long time and it was really fun. We had thought of ideas and strategies and things that we could do together and stuff like that. But it was just Kinda my side Gig, you know, a little hustle. It really wasn't helping me too much. It was helping me get by with groceries pretty much. That was exactly what I was doing. And I realized that I wanted to figure out how I can make more money off of this. I realized that there was a very profitable way to go about it. As I was doing this with Stephen, I realize that you can make a ton of money off of a podcast if you actually went about it the right way. But the biggest thing is that Stephen and I realized that as we were doing the podcast that he was getting a lot of face right, that people are starting to see him on Facebook, on Instagram, on twitter, on Spotify, on YouTube. And it was going all over the place. It was all over and his face was getting all over the place and people in his audience started to grow and it was slow and steady and it kept growing and it kept growing and we we're freaking out. I remember when we hit our first year, I don't know, I was like our first 20,000 downloads and we were freaking out. We're like, holy crap we did it. We're in the clear and now he's done hundreds of thousands of downloads for his stuff. But the first time that that happened, it was a big deal for us. So push come to shove, I realized that there was a lot that I could be doing with podcasting in order to grow these influencers in an authentic way where people can go through and find their value and use it within their own businesses. So finding out those, those influencers, those people who are just born to do that, they were there, they're crucial to find and there are a lot of them that don't know that they have this voice inside of them that is ready to explode out. But publishing consistently and really getting your voice out there a lot. So in a long sentence, Coulton, to answer your question like seven minutes ago, I started doing podcasting. I'm out of a mode of survival for sure. That's actually really interesting. Something that I've realized or noticed about entrepreneurs. First off, whenever we get into the corporate world or the nine to five, our soul just kind of gets eaten away. It just sucks the soul out of us. I was in the corporate world for a little bit and I remember every day I felt like I was dying more and more. That's just the way it is. So for us entrepreneurs, it's like we have a message or something that we have to take out to the world and we just have to get it out there. That's awesome that you're helping them get it out there as much as possible. One thing you said is Steve is everywhere now. How is that possible for Steve to be everywhere yet be working a job at click funnels? That was not just a nine to five job. He was working quite a bit there. How is it possible that he was even doing that? Steve’s not a normal kid. We'll just put that out there and if he listens to this, he'll just laugh at that, but I'm going to say Stephen was not working a nine to five. He was working nine to five by waking up at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, doing as much as he could beforehand due to his nine to five. Then come home with his family for an hour or two and then work until like 1:00 in the morning. And that was his grind. That was his hustle. So he was pretty much working to nine to five jobs, just not directly 9 to 5. Totally. I know Steven's, well obviously you work with them, that dude, he can work. He's the man. So it makes sense. So I wrote down a question, how do you get people's value out of them? How do you get their voice when you do a podcast? What's the most important part of doing a podcast? Like how do you, how do you make them so that they can be relatable? So people want to listen to them. People want to follow them. Is that something that we can talk about? I will tell you first things first guys do not be the individual that tries to get into podcasting or a YouTube, channel or a Facebook group or start building out something that does it for a month, see that there's not that many results and then give up. The key is being consistent. Steven, we didn't see a ton of results until probably this past six months or so with his podcast as it was like a year and a half of consistent publishing before it exploded to the point where Steven's doing super well. But that means, I mean as we were publishing for him two to three times a week, sometimes four. It just really depended. But the more that we could push out the content and overdeliver and show people that he wasn't going anywhere, that it wasn't just on a whim decision, that he was going to do it, that he was going to be consistent, that he was going to do it, and that people could know that if they wanted the information or content from him, that he was the person to go to. Right. That if they wanted information about funnels, he would be the one that they would go to first. For sure. Now a lot of people will get really upset because they'll get three episodes in and say, 30 downloads. That stinks. And I'll just kind of laugh and say, no, that's normal. That's incredible actually, and you get that. That's awesome. I'm so happy for you. If you are a nobody with no following or anything like that, then you probably have your mom and your sister listening to your podcast and that's it. Right? But you need to go through and really push out and over deliver a ton. A lot of people, as I said before, get really frustrated after a couple episodes, then they'll get to episode 13 or so. Don't give up. If you guys have ever heard Mark Stern or anyone like that within the funnel industry, he always raves about the rule of 30, right? And I have this rule that when you get to episode 30, that's when your downloads actually start to double down. And the reason for that being is that if you can go through and consistently published at least twice a week for and get up to 30 episodes, then people see that you're not going anywhere. And I'll give you an example. Um, economics, right? If you’re the type that’s into podcasts, on your podcasting app on iTunes or whatever, apple podcasts on your phone, and type in the word “economics”, there are going to be hundreds of different podcasts that show up there. So many that will show, but the first one you'll see is one called freakenomics. And then the other ones you'll see are one’s that's done two episodes, one that's done six episodes when that's done, maybe like 15. And then you'll see freakonomics, which has done hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of episodes. Now, from my perspective as a person who's jumping on and really does not know that much about economics, I will jump on and I will look and say, oh great. This one show called freakonomics has hundreds of episodes. This other one that's called economics for people who have no idea what economics even means, has two episodes on it. Which one am I going to listen to you more? Right? Which one am I actually going to listen to? I’ll listen to that one has hundreds and hundreds of episodes on it because I know that I will be creating a relationship with those speakers that I don't want to listen to someone that only has two episodes down. I'm not going to waste my time to go through and actually publish or listened to those two episodes as much unless I know the people. I'm not going to go through and establish a relationship with those individuals because they're not worth my time. Because I know that they're not going to be consistent with me, so why should I be consistent with them? So that's a huge thing that I see, especially within the podcasting industry that people give up so quick. If you look at Alex Charfen, Russell Brunson, Steve Larsen, you look at all these people who have hundreds and hundreds of episodes that are high quality, that are good, that have amazing content and value. Of course I'm going to go through and listen to their stuff. Of course those people I'm going to choose over, you know, some kid in his basement that has two episodes on his podcast. I'm not going to go establish a relationship with that person when I know that there is someone over here who is actually trying to provide content and value for me. Hopefully that makes sense. Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much for that. I think that totally makes sense. Lots of people, and I've noticed this too, they do start out, they get something going and then it's like I'm not really seeing any return on investment on it and then they give up. But what I think is so awesome about podcasting too is you do it once and it's out there and you don't have to re-record it all the time. Russell Brunson, Alex Charfen, those guys have hundreds of episodes and people can listen to them whenever they want. They're always there. I love that part about it. Also to add in there, is that Russell often says, and it's one of my big things, is that “stories sell, facts tell”. Right? When he says that, guys, if you go listen to any of the best podcasters out there, you know the top ten and you'll go through and you'll start looking through them and you'll listen to them and it was in the first little bit. You'll realize that they go through a pretty common structure, right? I was like that weird kid that really loved English and would rather write a 20 page paper then go through and take a test. Right. And so I really understand that structure is really, really important and so when I would go through it and research and figure out these podcasts, I was realizing that their structure was pretty common and similar and with that being said, what happened is that they will go through and they would establish two principles, right? On average they have at least two principles within a podcast or they hit one to two principals or topics and then after that then they have an average of two to three stories per topic. Right? And so each story is there to sell the topic more than just the topic itself. Right. And I'll give you an example of that as well. In my origin story, right? I was going through and telling you, well I wanted to be a dentist, but actually I realized I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life. There were so many of you that were probably like, man, I realized there was a time that I was trying to do something that I didn't want to do and Coulton himself even jumped on this podcast and said I was in corporate for a little bit and that killed me. There are so many people that are related to that and instantly because of that one topic, we all relate to it and our different aspects. Now, of course, our stories are not all the same, but the stories are relatable enough where it's going to sell even more. It's going to sell the topic more. This topic of, oh my gosh, I can't do nine to five. Yeah. There's this one time that Coulton did nine to five and it sucks. There's this time that Steven did nine to five and it sucked. There was this time that Maria did nine to five and it sucks, and it's like, well, by the time you build out all these cases for this one point, we're going to sell that way faster than if someone just said don't do Nine to five it sucks. Yeah. I guess there's no nine to five psych because Coulton has experienced it, Maria's experienced it, Steven has experienced so many of these people who have experiences with it. That's what's going to sell the actual topic, not just the topic itself. Man, that is awesome guys. That is gold right there. If you were listening to that, you need to go back and re-listen to it because that is gold right there. You'll notice a lot of interviews, even I started out asking about your story, like you were just saying, a lot of interviews are that way because that is how everybody starts relating to you. And then you keep listening. And then they want it. They're like, oh, I relate so well to this person. I'm going to have to keep listening. It's funny because Steve Talks about starting your podcast and how you have to have your origin story as your first podcast. So I did it on mine. Hopefully it was good, but that's totally what I did on mine. And just so I can help my listeners understand who I am and build a little bit of a credibility with them. That's cool you help people do that with podcasts as well. I've actually had a few podcasts just before this about changing customer's beliefs and I don’t know about you, but I think podcasts are such a great way for you to change the beliefs of your customers or to help them understand that maybe the beliefs that they currently have may not be meeting their needs completely. I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on that? Like, about helping people just kill it on their podcasts and blown them up that way? Yep. So as far as going on that, excuse me, sorry, Just so you guys know, Marie did like four or five interviews yesterday. So she's um, I'm kind of pushing her a little bit more today to give me one more interview. So she's has to throw in a cough drop real quick. I can't even imagine. Things that I've seen with customers and how a podcast can affect that guy's beliefs are a great way to do customer research and I know that sounds really funny, but what I love about podcasting is there are so many reasons, but you can go through and take that content and push it out like crazy, right? And repurpose it and take it and get transcriptions and then go through and build out blog posts and then we go on Facebook and Instagram posts and all these different things. Um, and then by going through your stats, if you have any sort of social media stats, you can see what's converting really well. I will tell you as well. Some little trick and tip that I use is that I go through and within the industries that I'm researching for, whether it's mine or for a client or something like that. Topics that are converting really well already. Go through and talk about those. Right? And so I'll go and I'll jump into other industries and I'll see what blog posts for them are converting really well. I'll go see what topics are converting really well, what podcasts are converting really well, which episodes are doing super, super well. As soon as you can figure that out and see what people are already looking for and go do podcast episodes about that, that's going to spike like crazy. That's going to help your downloads like crazy because people are already researched it for those. That's awesome that you do that for your customers. I'm sure that is huge. They probably just love you for that. Now you mentioned that it went to different platforms. Can I just ask a quick question? How many platforms do you usually push to for a podcast episode? Like how many can you even push to? I think it was for one of my clients in the past but we got him up to 27 different platforms. There was a lot that. I was using everything for it, from WordPress to Spotify to iHeart radio. Google play too, you name it, we had it on that platform. And so even now there are times where I'll go through and I'll hear someone say, yeah, there's this new platform coming out and it's called this or that. I'll be like, I can get that out, get a podcast on that platform right now, no matter what it is, I'm always trying to figure out how to get stuff onto platforms. And the reason for that being is that people are really, really concise and I guess consistent I should say with their social media platforms, right? Like I'm an Instagram and Facebook user or like I hate twitter, I hate LinkedIn, I like all those things, but I go through and I push Publish to them because it's not about what I like, it’s what my customers like. It's what people are going to listen to, you know, their desired platform. Right. So that being said, you need to make sure that you are publishing to as many different platforms as humanly possible. If you can go through and push them out to all these different platforms, you’ll boost up the seo to all of them. Right? Then all of a sudden you are going through it and you were creating opportunity for people to find you, to share your stuff, to comment on your stuff, to go through and really hype it up for you rather than you go through and publish to one place. Right. iTunes to this day is the number one podcasting platform, right, and it will be, but there are people who choose to listen on anchor and other people would choose to listen on Libsyn and other people will choose to listen on Spotify and so that being said, you have to have your stuff on all these different platforms. You can find customers that way. It will be your most loyal people, whatever it is, but they're not going to go try and find you. You have to provide the opportunity where they can find it easily. Right? Yeah, totally. Thank you so much for sharing that. I wanted to point that out because I don't think people realize the power that comes behind that and how you can click a button and all of these platforms instantly have your podcast or your episode, your content. I think that's so powerful. The whole thing with marketing and with a good business in general is that you make it as painless of a process as humanly possible. Right? Like you can't have it be this big thing where if you go through and you know, do this and this and then jumped through hoops this way or that way, people are gonna give up by the time you asked them to move their right finger. Right. And so they're not going to go jump through hoops to find your stuff. I myself have gone through the process of where I wanted to go and purchase something and just because it was a hard process I gave up and went and bought it somewhere else. And so I have to make my processes, my availability, as easy as possible for people so they can find me and that I'm easy to find and people can purchase from me easily. That is huge. That is so huge. Thank you so much Marie. I just want to say I've actually learned a lot from you myself, even with the podcast and stuff. I follow you on your Facebook group. I follow your podcast as well, which if you guys aren't following her, you should jump on and start listening to her. And I really wanted to get you on here because I wanted to help business owners, entrepreneurs, to know the power of podcasting and what it can do for them. And what's so cool is you take it like they can literally just record their voice, their episode, give it to you and you just make it happen and make it go everywhere. That's so cool. I like that. Sorry, did you have a comment on that? No, it's way fun. I love it. I love being able to get their stuff ang go through edit and make sure that it sounds good. And then add intro’s and outros and all these little things and then after that I want it to be on as many different platforms as we possibly can find that podcast can be on. Yeah. So she is the expert at this. She can tell you what you need to do with the best equipment, like the mic’s, everything. She knows where it's happening. So if you guys are looking at getting any kind of content out there, podcasting, I would 100% suggest you talk to Marie because she can make it happen for you. Mad respect for you and what I think is really cool too about you is you pushed through and made this happen. I love your story. I was there at funnel hacking live with you and I remember you going and signing up for the coaching program and you were like, I don't know how I'm gonna make this happen. Look at you now. This is awesome. I think that just goes to show what it can do for you if you push through and you make things happen. You don't give up. Not without a lot of temptation to give up, that's for sure. There were many times where I reached out to my brother Stephen or Steve or whatever people call him and I said, man, I think I'm done. Like I don't want to do this anymore. This is really hard. And he looked at me and said, well Marie, what else are you going to do? You know, like lean in and you know, if you weren't going to do this, what else would you do? And I said, I don't know. And he was like, you go back to a nine to five, that's what you do. And I was like, crap, you're right. Dang it, I'm not going to do that. And he's like, alright, well then lean in and make it work, Marie. And so I am a 22 year old college kid who has thousands of dollars of coaching under her belt. So cool. Not from school as well, but you know, I have learned so much in this last little bit. It's been life changing. Extremely hard, you know, I'm trying to balance everything from homework to client work and there comes moments where I'm like, shoot, I have a 20 page paper due tonight, or I have client work that's due tonight. Which one do I do? The client of course. But I have figured out little hacks to go through and do my homework. And if I get kicked out for this, I'm sorry, but pretty much what I do is that I'll go through and I'll take my microphone, my podcasting mic. I'll go through and read a few topics that I have to talk about in my paper and I'll go through and I'll record for 30 minutes straight and then I will get a transcription of it and then I will take that transcription and turn it in my paper. Something that takes people two and a half weeks to write. It takes me two and a half hours. So yeah, not probably the best thing, but you know, I'm just trying to be smart about it. No. Yeah. You know what's funny is I was actually telling my wife the other day, I was like, holy cow, I just did a 4,000 word podcast in like 30 minutes and that would have taken me forever in school. Right. I'm not the best writer. I hated writing. I was not an English guy. I was totally not good at that stuff, but I just did like a 4,500 word podcast that ended up turning into a transcription. I totally could have done that for like papers back in college. Oh yeah. I wish I would've known that hack back then, but that's so cool. I just, I am amazed at your story and I think it's super cool. I think back about my college days and not having any money. I had to figure out something to do and that's when I started my repair business. I don't know if you even knew that, but that got me through school. It's funny, like if you look through a lot of entreprenuers they find something they enjoy, they do it and then they become an expert in it and then they started selling their services in that area for being an expert and then they are just killing it. And then becoming an expert for the people. Yes, exactly. And defining the problem as well as you can. Yeah. Well, awesome Marie, that was awesome. Thank you so much for that. Are there any other, as Steve Larsen likes to say it, “truth nukes” that you want to drop for us today? Um, one last truth nuke, I will put out there for listeners, if you guys are looking to start a podcast, there are several things that you need to get started, one being a good graphic, right? And I can refer you to my graphic designer or to someone else that you might have. That's fine too. So that's really important. You need a hosting service, you're going to also need an intro and outro. Now there are podcasts out there that don't have intro’s and Outro’s and that's fine. However, on the ones that convert really well, I actually have a call to action placed within them, right? And so your intro should have steps that go through and explain who you are and, and kind of like your credibility stance on everything and then you should go through and make sure that you have established some sort of curiosity, some sort of question, right? As you have established a goal and said, hey, join me as I established a seven figure business or something like that. And people are gonna be like, Oh wow. Well, how's she going to do accomplish that? And people are wondering how is she going to do it, right? Literally to ask the question for them because people are going to jump on and they're going to say, who is this person? Why am I listening to them? Should I turn them off? Should I keep listening to them? That happens within the first couple of seconds? So if you answer all those questions for them, then they'll keep listening to you, right? Because they're intrigued on how the heck you're building or how you're going out and building out a business, how you're going about building it, you know, different aspects of your industry and then make sure as well in your outro that you go through and you ask people to rate and subscribe. And if you don't ask your people, they're not going to do it. So ask your people, rate and subscribe. And then the other thing is to have some sort of call to action. You want me to speak in your mastermind? Go to example.com. Do you want a free tee shirt? Go to examplecom. Do you have another question for the podcast? Go to the Facebook group. Did it end up right and go there and really make sure that you have places where you can direct people. If you're not directing your people then you just have a nice podcast, but if you can go and have a place where you're actually providing an opportunity for people to go somewhere, then you actually just might make some money off of it. So yeah, that's pretty awesome. Well, speaking to that, you guys, I'm going to have her on LearningFromTheExperts.com She will be one of the experts that will be listed there so you can go and kind of find out a little bit more about her services, but other than that Marie, where can people find you? What's the best place? Yeah. The best place to find me is probably my Facebook group, which is called profitable podcasting strategies for entrepreneurs. I know it's a mouthful, but definitely getting those SEO words in there but check me out there or Facebook in general or Instagram as well and I can shoot those over to you guys. I'm sure Coulton has a place to put all of that. Yeah. And that'd be awesome. And what's your podcast name again? Is it the Audio Expert? Entrepreneur? The audio entrepreneur? I mean the industry of Russell Brunson, everything is experts. So I just assumed it was the audio expert, you know what I mean? Yep. The audio entrepreneur. That's right. Awesome. Thank you so much Marie for being on here and look forward to people getting to know you a little bit more and just killing it with their podcast, through your service. So thank you so much for being on. Thank you so much Coulton. It was a real pleasure. I really appreciate it. Are you looking to jumpstart your business by learning or getting help from the real experts? Go to LearningFromTheExperts.com to find pre-approved experts that I've hand picked for you. Please don't forget to let me know how I'm doing by subscribing, rating, and leaving feedback.  

Stephen Weyman knows a lot about credit cards. --- In my opinion, credit cards should only be used in one way:  I think you should only buy something with a credit card if that money is sitting in your bank account right now. Credit cards are not for borrowing. Please don't use credit cards for borrowing. There are times in our lives when we need to borrow money. But credit cards are one of the worst tools for borrowing. The interest rate is way too high. So just promise me that if you ever really need money, right now, and you're thinking about borrowing it with a credit card, look at other options first. Maybe a loan or a line of credit with a lower rate. Just look at other options and only borrow with a credit card as a last resort. Credit cards are a tool for convenience and benefits. Now that you have agreed to only spend money you have in the bank, I can introduce you to Stephen Weyman and his new website called Credit Card Genius. There are so many options when it comes to getting a credit card. Before I talked to Stephen, I would have told you to never get a credit card with an annual fee. You know I hate fees. But what if the benefits you get when you use the card are much higher than the annual fee? Example: Before I owned a car I rented cars all the time. Many credit cards come with collision and damage coverage if you book the rental car with the card. If you don't have a card with collision and damage coverage, the rental company will charge you $30 per day. That's an extra $210 on a rental for just a week. So if you rent a car for a week, even once a year, maybe a $99 annual fee on a credit card isn't so bad. This is just one example of a credit card benefit. But there are so many that trying to remember them is making my brain hurt. That's where Stephen and Credit Card Genius can help. For over 7 years Stephen has been the mastermind behind the website HowToSaveMoney.ca. And while he included credit card reviews on HowToSaveMoney.ca, he realized the world of credit card selection was complex and needed its own space. So Stephen found all of the credit card options in Canada and put them on one site. Turns out there are more than 150 different options. He even built some cool features to help you find the credit card that works best for you. Stephen joined me in downtown Toronto for my first outdoor and underground mobile episode of The Personal Finance Show. (And a special shout out to Daniel Trezub from savewithdan.ca for making that cameo at the end.) NEXT EPISODE 17 - Jessica Moorhouse (Payments Race) Click here to book a FREE 15-minute personal finance consultation with Beau Humphreys, Personal Finance Coach Click here to become a patron of The Personal Finance Show via Patreon To register for my next available personal finance webinar click here.

Physician and Intensivist Steve Warrilow, Director of the Austin Hospital ICU, talks about everything from Physician Generalism to Surgical Super Specialisation. Stephen is a man that can communicate. Stephen Warrilow is in many respects my ideal Intensivist. Trained as a physician (aka Internal Medicine), a generalist by anyones standards, he specialised in ICU and was good enough to become the Director of the same unit that brought you Rinaldo Bellomo. He brings a calm, measured, intelligent voice to all he does. He makes people like me look bad. I sat down and chatted to Stephen at the CICM ASM and was hoping to find some sort of flaw, something that I could use against him, but no. I liked him even more after we talked. We did get stuck into some important stuff starting with Stephens own path from Physician Trainee to Intensive Care. He would know a little bit about it too as he not only ran the regional physicians training consortium for 7 years but he still examines for the Royal Australian College of Physicians. Having completed the RACP process himself he had to deal with the rather important fact that he doesn’t really like out-patient clinics. Hmmmm. So Stephen was one of those brave people that starts in an ICU even though, in his own words, he “couldn’t intubate, couldn’t do lines”. Stephen is in a great place to compare and contrast RACP and CICM training. At the CICM ASM Stephen was one of the leaders of the Consultant Only ICU Update Pre-Conference workshop which was about communication. So he was teaching the supposed experts how to do what they are supposedly experts at! That sounds a bit difficult. We get into paternalism, (The College also ran a Trainee Only Pre-conference event. Have a listen to Jellybean 62 Sarah Yong speaking about that and there is a soon to be released Jellybean with one of her co-co-ordinators, Naomi Diel.) Despite the physician back story we end up talking about surgical hyper specialisation and what it might mean. The Jellybean Podcast is about the stories in between the obvious stuff in Medicine, nursing and paramedicine. It's good to talk.

Stephen is the CEO of Predictive ROI and the host of the Onward Nation podcast. He is the author of three bestselling books including the recently released Profitable Podcasting. He is also a speaker, trainer, and his digital marketing insights have been featured in SUCCESS, Entrepreneur, The Washington Post, Forbes, Inc. Magazine, and other media. Hi everyone, this is Colin Sprake with MYM Your Business: The Brutal Truth. Today, I have a real special guest with me on board who I'm going to ask some really key questions, so make sure you have a pen and paper handy because when I go to ask these questions. I'm not asking them to be simple. I want these people that we bring on the show to give their expertise, but also to dive deep and also give the brutal truth of how they got to where they got to today, so you can get some really good nuggets of information. So as you listen to this, if you're in your car, jogging, what-have-you, make sure that you do take notes and relisten to the shows because I am all about implementation. Remember, knowledge is not power, knowledge is potential power, implementation is power. So welcome, let's get rocking and rolling. I have Stephen Woessner with me today, who runs a company called Predictive ROI. They really go out and make people's lives so much easier around podcasting. In fact, here at Make Your Mark, we use the services of Predictive ROI and Stephen and his team, to get our podcast to the next level. And of course, they have their own podcast called Onward Nation. It’s really, really awesome, and I want to welcome Stephen today. Stephen, give our listeners a little bit about who you are and what's got you to where you are today. Well, first of all, thank you very much for the wonderful invitation. I mean it's a joy, it's a privilege, it's an honor to be one of your guests, one of your esteemed guests and I just really, really appreciate it Colin, so thank you. You're so welcome. Oh my gosh. A little bit about me, you mentioned Predictive ROI already, Onward Nation, just some additional context. We have listeners in 113 countries, 20,000 email subscribers and we've had the good fortune of being able to interview some of the most amazing, top business owners in the country, to be able to learn how they think, act and achieve. And we've been doing it now for well over two and a half years. I think we've aired just shy of 600 episodes and it's just been a game changer for our business, but also just me personally, being able to hang out with really smart, amazing people like you Colin and others, and so that's just such a gift. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs. My grandfather immigrated here from Istanbul, Turkey in 1920. He couldn't speak the language, had $10 in his pocket, and after 6 years of being in the country, owned his own restaurant, went on to a career of 42 years in the restaurant business. I come from Kent, Ohio. Predictive ROI is my fifth business. Immediately after high school, I spent four years in the Air Force, then went through school and so forth. Entrepreneurship is in my DNA. It's part of my roots and so it's just such a privilege to be able to do what it is we do, every single day, and being able to serve amazing business owners like you and others. What a gift. Thank you Stephen, and it is really a gift. I mean, at the end of the day, for our listeners out there, I really wanted them to understand that entrepreneurship takes work. Most people think “I'm going to become an entrepreneur.” Even starting a multi-level marketing company or direct selling business, people think, "I'm going to become rich overnight." It take serious fricking work to be a really good business owner and as we grow and as I've grown in my own business, I started to realize there's been some things that I wish I'd known right in the beginning, Stephen. And this is what the challenging part for me is, is that I want our listeners to understand that there's certain things that I've learned. You as a great business owner in a long line of entrepreneurs, all the way from 1920, your granddad from Turkey, there's things we wish we'd learned 20 years ago. Maybe 30 years ago. So I want to get right into this today and ask you, if you would like to say, "Here's the most brutal thing I've learned, which I hope no one else who's listening to this ever does," maybe some people have done it already, which might be the challenge. But what would be your one piece of key information to say, "I wish I'd never done this and I wish I'd learnt this decades ago, because I know I'd be in a different place today." What would that one massive learning experience be for you Stephen? Yeah, I think it really revolves around mentorship and mentorship is a really big deal for me, and now I take it so much more seriously than I ever did. It's probably because I had several really colossal failures that cost me hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, both within Predictive ROI, as well as previous companies. And it isn't that I didn't have access to the right mentorship or that I didn't have the right opportunity to learn from some of the best of the best. For example, at Predictive here, early on in our business, Darren Hardy, former publisher of Success Magazine, but he was publisher of Success at the time, he was on our Board of Advisors for 12 months. I was in the trenches with him, in person, on phone calls, at events, and working with him just one-on-one in hotel rooms, trying to get stuff done for this event that we were planning at the time. And he gave me great mentorship and great advice, really tactical, and I didn't do any of it. I didn't execute. So when you were talking at the top of the show about how knowledge is not power, it's based on execution, I have felt that in my wallet to a very deep degree. So here's one of the best minds in marketing and leadership and time management and a litany of expertise and he's telling me what I need to do and I don't do it. Ultimately, it cost me a couple hundred thousand dollars. Really dumb. And so it's not that I didn't have the information available, it's that I didn't do what you are encouraging your audience to do and that is execute. So mentorship plus action is something I will always, from here on out, put those two ingredients together. I don't understand why people are like, "I don't want to spend money on mentorship. I don't want to invest in mentorship." You are fricking crazy, if you're listening to the show thinking that way, because mentorship to me is what you must invest in because people have had the experience already. You hear Stephen here who has bashed his head against the wall and said, "I didn't take action." One of the biggest gurus in this industry, Darren Hardy, you got advice from him, but didn't take that advice. I know you're going to really drill into this Stephen, but what would you do differently, in terms of going forward? I know you're going to say, "I would definitely implement," but what would you maybe have done differently around any of those relationships, your board of advisers and really around the mentorship. Implementation is one thing, anything else you would let our listeners know, that you would have done differently around the key mentors that you've had in your life and continue to have in your life? I think I can answer that in a couple of different ways, I'm happy to break it down as granular as you'd like to go and as transparent. I believe freely sharing, whether that's the good stuff or the bad stuff and we really learned with the bad stuff sometimes, and so to get even more specific about Darren. He and I started off our Board of Advisors relationship because I attended one of his events, the high performance forum, two and half days, there was just 23 of us in the room with him and that was exceptional. Then a couple months later, I was back in San Diego. He and I spent the entire day together, just he and I in a hotel suite, and we're just kind of mapping out the next level of the business and that was really, really great. And then we got together again a few months later and we shot a video together, where he interviewed me about some of the eight money draining mistakes and the eight money making opportunities, and then through all of that, we had monthly checkpoint calls, as well as email exchanges and that kind of stuff. It revolved around this event that we had scheduled for January of 2014, called Predictive ROI Live, where literally I guaranteed and rented, or I should say booked, 350 rooms at the Ritz-Carlton in Orlando, Florida. It's a 425 room hotel, so essentially, I booked the entire hotel for this event. 1,000 room nights, yeah, it was a 2 million dollar operating budget, 2 million dollars. And so I put it all on the line and I mean it was insane, the amount of risk and so forth. And Darren in a phone call says to me, "You have to be either the gutsiest person I've ever met or you might be insane." And so then the question, the mentorship question he continued to ask me every single time we were together, which was often. He was going to be a speaker at the event, along with Gary Vaynerchuk, along with Avinash Kaushik from Google, along with Don Yaeger and Scott McCain and myself, of course, and then several others. Darren would say to me, "Look, I get the fact that this is going to be a cool place and all of that. Why would anyone want to come to this event?" I'm like "What do you mean why would anybody want to come to this event? It's at the fricking Ritz-Carlton and Gary's going to be there, you're going to be there, Don, Scott, me, Avinash." He's like, "Oh for Pete's sake. Do you think that somebody is really going to spend $8,000 to come listen to me?" Meaning him, "Yak about stuff? Why would anybody come?" And I'm like, "I don't know." He's like, "Okay, well that's dumb. You have to get that figured out." And he asked me that question every single time that we were together and I could never answer it. When we opened it up for registration, out of 350 seats, Colin, we sold 3 seats. Wow. Pretty intimate meeting, right? Extremely intimate. Exactly, so we had to cancel it, and you know what? The Ritz-Carlton, when you cancel a 2 million dollar event, they go, "All of those hotel rooms that we had reserved, you still have to pay for those." So $200,000 out the door because I didn't answer the question that he always asked me. It wasn't his fault; he asked me every single time that we were together and I never answered the question. Stephen, that's what the fascinating part for me is, we have these mentors that ask us those key questions. For me, those key questions are really important. I'll never forget when I met with one of my mentors here in Vancouver, I actually met him across the border, he was just across the border in Ferndale, Washington. He met me in a beautiful restaurant out over the water and I got to the meeting around, maybe 15 minutes before he got there, so I got myself comfortable, got the table sorted out, was super excited for my mentorship meeting. His name's Randy and Randy walks in and he says, "Hey Colin, how's things going?" I said, "Randy, things are awesome," and the next question he said to me was, "Are you paying yourself what you want and are you having the time off that you want and are you spending your time with your family that you really, really want?" And I said, "Hell no, Randy." And he said, "Well, then things suck in your life. I want you to think about it," and he walked out of the restaurant. And I said, "Where are you going?" And he said, "You need an hour and a half to think about those three things because things aren't that fricking awesome. You think about it and phone me in an hour and a half's time and tell me what decision you're going to do differently to get those three things happening in your life and stop BSing yourself. Things aren't that awesome." I was like, "Wow." But that Stephen, that to me is mentorship. Mentorship is not meant to be love, and I hug you and you're awesome and you're beautiful and put up with all your BS. Mentorships are meant to be that size 14 shoe with a very pointy toe that fits into most places that people I enjoy. So for me, it's like sometimes, I always believe that if you were mentoring me or I was mentoring you, we will always love each other, but we don't always have to like each other. And that's what true mentorship is. When people get you really thinking about where you're going, what you're doing. So I'm a big fan of having great mentors in our lives as well, just like you are, and I have four personal mentors right now that are mentoring me in different areas. One is mentoring me in health and fitness and another one is mentoring me in systems and processes in the business, and the other one's mentoring me, sometimes just in mindset. So for me, as you've grown and continue to grow Predictive ROI and you continue to move forward, what would you say, in terms of mentorship, are your next steps in mentorship? What are you looking for? Where do you think your biggest weakness is right now in Predictive ROI and are you to bring a mentor in to assist you with that weakness? Boy, excellent question. Wow, and that just really cuts to the heart of it, doesn't it? I mean that's the key, being able to identify weaknesses and then being able to say, "Okay, who has done this really, really well and what can I learn from him or her," that can plug in this hole, gap, whatever metaphor you want to use. That's really using mentorship smartly. So the biggest weakness that we have right now in Predictive ROI, we have 17 people, we're adding probably 2 or 3 more by the end of this year. So let's call it 20 by the end of the year, but we're looking to add about maybe 15 to 18 people by the end of next year. So essentially, we're essentially doubling in the next 12 months, let's just call it that. And and so with that, we've spent a lot of time and effort and money investing in our culture. One of my mentors, his name is Colonel Bernard Banks and he recently retired from West Point, but he was in charge of the leadership curriculum at West Point for a number of years. What he said to me was, when I spent some time with him along with some others at West Point for a day last year about 18 months ago, he said to me, "You know what we do with our cadets here? We are responsible for hugging them," and this is the United States Military Academy, right? So when he says hug, I'm like, "What?" And he says, "We are responsible to hug and push our cadets. It's important for our cadets to know, that as their mentors, is that sometimes they need a hug. Not sit by the fire sing Kumbaya, but that we got you. That you're okay and you're in a safe place, and then it's our job to also put on that size-14 boot in this case and sometimes kick them in the rear when they need to be kicked. Hugged when they need to be loved and to know the difference between the two." I'm like, "Okay." So as we continue to grow, we need to look for those opportunities to keep our culture intact and making sure that we hug and push our teammates to continue to grow and develop and mentor each other and be great teammates. So that's a big challenge for us. We're aware of it and we just need to, using your word, execute. Okay, so what is the executable item here? What are you going to be doing that between now and the end of the year, maybe into next year, to maintain the culture. So what kind of mentorship would you be putting in place to make sure that you get to where you need to be? Excellent, and we just actually realigned our mentorship program, Tuesday, last week, my leadership team and I were in Boston, working specifically on this. First of all, the two most valuable words within Predictive ROI are team and mate. So every single teammate has a mentor assigned and every single teammate meets with his or her mentor, every single week for a mentorship session. So every single day at 8:45 central time, we all dial in and we spend virtual time with one another. We have seven, excuse me, seven different cities across the U.S. where we have full-time employees, and we're in every single time zone in the U.S. So because of that, we all dial in, virtually at 8:45 central time, we spend fifteen minutes with each other, so we can visually see one another. And then each week, each teammate meets with his or her mentor for an hour-long mentorship session. I then spend an hour long meeting with my business partner, Erik Jensen, and we spend mentorship both back and forth. He mentors me, I mentor him and then on Thursdays, we all spend two hours together, virtually, where we go through strengths, weaknesses, problems in the business, things that need to be addressed with clients and so forth. And then each year, because again, we're virtual, we do two meetups every year. One in La Crosse, Wisconsin and one in Disney World. So La Crosse Wisconsin is in August and then Disney World is in January, where we all physically get together and have a little bit of fun and tackle it. So every single day, in every single week, there is active mentorship going on and it's hug and push, every single session. Beautiful man, and so I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into that, because I love this stuff and I know our listeners out there probably thinking, "Wow, Stephen, a lot of time goes into building culture and spending time with mentorship sessions and what-have-you. Where do you find the hours to actually do your work, when you have this happening?" But the key thing for me is, I want our listeners to understand that if you don't put these things in place and the mentorship doesn't happen, then a lot of times, there's inefficiencies that creep in, poor culture, you get cancers in your business. You only have to have one person that's a cancer in your business to destroy your entire good team members as well. Just like cancer grows within the body, one cancer cell can make really great cells become cancerous as well. So, talk to that in terms of the investment of time into mentorship within your own team. How does that translate into dollars for your business, leading to your business being more, more successful? So our listeners out there realize, yes, you need to put the time in to get the rewards out and not just always be thinking if I don't see you sitting at your desk eight hours a day, then we're not making money, we're not being efficient. Let's talk to that a little bit, in terms of what do you see this investment of time and energy, how does it translate into growing your business and being more successful? Okay, the first layer, it's going to sound a little bit flippant. First of all, you ask a very, very good question, and I've been asked that same question before by other business owners. And so my initial response is, would anybody ever say, "Wow, Colin, you spend too much time being a dad." No one would ever walk up to a mom and say, "Man, you spend way too much time being a parent." And that's exactly how I look at mentorship. How can I possibly expect that we have a high-performing team, if I don't invest in them? With not only money and professional development and all of that, but my time. We constantly see reports and surveys and statistics that the fourth most valuable thing that employees want from you is compensation. The number one thing that your teammates want from you, above anything else, is your time, attention and love. And if you don't give that to them, then you're really creating a hunger in your business. So we all have seen numbers about retention and people leave bosses and how expensive it is to replace somebody. I am a firm believer that if you invest in your culture, not only will you fix the retention problem, but you'll add dollars to your bottom line, because you don't have to replace people. Your teammates will truly be teammates, they will back each other, they will work weekends, they will protect one another, they'll take bullets for each other, they'll defend each other, and that is a valuable thing. From an ROI perspective, I look at that as investing in the emotional bank account, because when I go to Louie on my team and I say, "Hey, you know what? Boy, we're really slammed on this project and we have to get this out and it looks like you might need to work the weekend in order to be able to get that done for our client." And Louie doesn't fight me on it, Louie says, "Game on, I'm full of joy. I'll get it done." And the only reason is because we've invested so much in the emotional bank account, and when I need to go to a teammate and say, "You know what? Your performance on that last project wasn't up to your standard. It wasn't to the client's standard, it wasn't up to my standard and I deserve your best, the client deserves your best. You know what? You deserve to do your best. So let's talk about that." And then the person on the other end says, "You know what? You're totally right. I'm going to fix that." And it's only because we've invested in culture and the hug and the push, that we're allowed to have those types of conversations without somebody getting defensive and argumentative or just leaving. So I think mentorship as a leader, is one of our most vital priorities in how we add value into our business and our team. Wow, that's great man. I look at it Stephen, from my side too. I mean, a couple of weeks back, one of the episodes, I really spoke about culture and what we've created here, even here at Make Your Mark, because I'm a big fan of creating an amazing culture as well and really spending time with the team and assisting the team to that next level. And I think a lot of people don't realize, for me even in my business, I give every team member, the day they join us as a full-time staff member, they get five weeks of paid leave a year. Wow. And people say to me, "You're crazy, Colin." No, I'm not crazy. I know that people need to recharge their batteries. If you don't recharge your cell phone, of course it doesn't do anything for you, it becomes dead and useless. Well, the same thing happens with your team. If you don't allow them to have time off and allow them to have fun while they're at the office, I mean, I have a cafe at my office that people can go into the cafe and take whatever they want out of the café. It's there for them to use because sometimes they run out of the house in the morning and they don't get breakfast. So great, they come to the office, there's cereal there and whatever they want. Any kind of food or health foods and health snacks as well, that they can then take advantage of, because that creates an amazing culture. So for those of you listening, just think about, what culture are you creating? Even if you're just a single solopreneur, as you start out and you start to hire people and get them on board, your culture is really important. Because then you have you staff retention. In fact, I'm a big believer, Stephen, you might laugh about this as well, people always talk about your customers only remember the experience with you and how you made them feel. Well, that's okay, I agree with that fully, but those two statements go into every area of your life. They go into your employees at your office, they need to remember the experience that day and how you made them feel at the office. When they go home, what are they talking around the dinner table about? Are they talking about how much they hate you as a boss or how much they hate the company and how much they're going to look for another job? Or are they sitting around the dinner table going, "You know what? I love my company, I love my boss," or not even boss, I don't like the word boss, "I love the team I work with." And you know what? I want people at that dinner table to go, "I want to come work for the company you work for," because then you know you've created a great culture. What would you say to that? I would give you a big Amen to that. That's 100%. And I think that the companies you have the good fortune of working with and mentoring and that are part of your group in this amazing community that you have built, I think many of them, if not all of them share that same sort of ideal or value system, if you will. Because it's that important. Look, you can choose to not do this, right? Speaking to your listeners in your audience. You can choose not to do it, that's okay, but I'm telling you it is an incontrovertible fact that Gallup studies this every single year, in nearly 70% of your employees are either disengaged or actively disengaged. Meaning that a large chunk of your employees are actually doing subterfuge every day. They're actually working against you. Your own team. And so not doing what Colin is recommending is silly because the companies that win are the ones who master what you just said, Colin. Wow man, thank you for that. On a previous episode, a couple of weeks back, we actually spoke about this in detail. If you want to learn more about it, go back to one of our previous episodes and there's a whole episode just on building amazing culture, and the key things we do here at Make Your Mark. So Stephen, thank you so much for be here today and being with me on this episode. As we leave today, I know mentorship is really important to you, but if there's another piece of advice that if I was sitting in front of you and let's say you were on stage, and there was a big audience, and it was like Stephen, you have one piece of advice to impart upon all of us, because after you've given that piece of advice, you will no longer be around to give this advice to us, what would that one piece of advice be, that you would say you'd be crazy not to do this. And I want it to be outside of mentorship. Just one real nugget that you'd be like, "My goodness, please people," in business, in life, whatever it is, I don't care what area of ... because remember, our personal life sucks, probably our business sucks too. So really, at the end of the day, what's that one piece of advice that you'd be like, "I'm burning in my seat as Colin says this," just give this piece of advice, because if going forward, I would just love to make sure that I don't make the same mistake or look at things differently. What would that one piece of advice be that you're like, "It's the most important piece of advice I've learnt in my entire life." Well okay, so let's think about something outside of mentorship. Let's think about business development, biz dev. I mean, if it's not on everybody's radar screen as a business owner, it really should be. Oftentimes, business owners don't pay attention to biz dev because it's not a burning pain point until you lose a client, you lose two clients, whatever. A big tax payment comes due and you don't have the funds and then it's like, "Oh, holy bananas, I need a new client or two," or whatever. And so my biggest piece of like non-mentorship advice would be to create a consistent biz dev program that focuses on your dream 50 prospects. And if you don't have a list of your dream 50 prospects, then that's the first place to start, identify a list of the dream 50 companies, the companies you would love to work for, and the person within that company who is your decision-maker -- the person who has the approval authority on whatever it is that you provide. Make the dream 50 list and then make it very detailed or granular with a person, first name, last name, email address, all of that, connect with that person on LinkedIn, and then devise your own, what we like to call, the Trojan horse strategy, which is essentially how are you going to connect with that person? Whether that be through a podcast interview, a blog interview, a video interview, a something. What are you going to be able to leverage to use as a way to open the door, to have a private conversation with that person? And then what are you going to do downstream from that thing, that interview, that interaction, that is going to demonstrate your smarts in a value-give way? Not like yak, yak, yak, I'm really, really smart, you should work with me. No. How are you going to add value to that person, maybe over the next 2 to 3 years? But if you don't have a biz dev program that is focused on your dream 50 and your competitors do, and they're also matching with culture and mentorship, that's going to be a problem. Absolutely agree with that. Wow, what a great nugget to end off with today, and for me, it's just been a great, powerful interview with you today because of course, you're extremely smart at what you've done and what you've created with all the different businesses over the years, and for our listenership out there, please, take these nuggets from your notes and go out and implement because there's some key little pieces in here to really get your business to the next level. So Stephen, it's been so great having you on this episode today and I really, really cherish the time that we've had and the knowledge that you've shared. Should people want to connect with you in some way or form, what's the best way to connect with you, to maybe even to learn a little bit more or just to understand more about what you do? What's the best way to connect with you, my friend? Well, thank you for that. If any of your listeners happen to be interested in learning a little bit more about what I just kind of chatted about, they can go to onwardnation.com/FreeChapter and that'll give them a free chapter out of my latest book. It became a number one new release on Amazon in 18 hours, it was awesome. It's called Profitable Podcasting. So that's just a free gift to your listeners. If anybody has any questions, concerns, please know I read and reply to every single email. You can find me at stephen@predictiveroi.com and I'm happy to freely share and answer any questions or concerns that somebody might have. So feel free to hit me up, email, LinkedIn, wherever, and I'm happy to reply. Wow, thank you so much my friend. It's been awesome having you on the show and remember, please make sure, listening is one thing, implementation is another thing, so Stephen thank you so much for being on. Thank you everybody for listening and look forward to being on another episode with you really, really soon. And Stephen, go out, be brilliant and you're making massive changes in this world and for those business owners listening, please go out and change the world as well, through the amazing businesses that we all run together. So once again, thanks a million Stephen for being on the show with me today. Thank you Colin, I am grateful for the invitation. It was so much fun to be here with you. Thank you, man. Ways to contact Stephen: Email: stephen@predictiveroi.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner Podcast: onwardnation.com Website: predictiveroi.com Free chapter of Stephen’s new book: onwardnation.com/FreeChapter

Session 20 Dr. Stephen Grupke is an attending Neurosurgeon at the University of Kentucky. In our episode today, he discusses the residency path to neurosurgery, what makes you a competitive applicant, his typical day, the types of patients and cases he serves, what he likes best and least about his subspecialty, and more. Stephen and I went to New York Medical College together. Currently, he is a neurosurgeon in an academic facility and a new faculty being an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky. [01:30] Choosing the Specialty Stephen knew he wanted to be a neurosurgeon when he was in graduate school. Being a chem major in undergrad, he was working in a lab in grad school. A neurosurgery resident at New York Medical College did a research under his belt and took Stephen under his wing doing experiments and showing him different amazing stuff and he was just taken by it right there. That was actually the first time he saw what it's like to be a neurosurgeon and it was something he would love to do. That was what sold him to be a doctor. [04:33] Traits that Lead to Being a Good Neurosurgeon Stamina is a major key in being a good neurosurgeon since taking out a brain tumor can take hours and hours and that can be very physically and mentally taxing. You can have long clinic with a lot of people and a lot of varied problems so you have to think every one of them through, giving genuine, concerted effort to every single person considering they have very different pathology. Emotionally, the level of acuity in what they see is profound, having several highs and lows in one day. You could see pretty horrible things like abused children coming in with brain traumas and people being diagnosed with brain tumors. Then you have to relay this information to the family. On the same note, you can bring somebody from the brink of death in the operation and give somebody function back with a simple spine surgery that enables them to live without pain. In short, there is a lot of emotional highs and lows and to just deal with that day in and day out is kind of tough. You just have to focus on the highs in between and move on to the next thing and do the best you can for every person that comes to your door. The longest case Stephen has been in was a brain tumor case as a resident that went fourteen hours. Although they've also had spine operations that ended up being broken up in a couple of days such as a long, complex scoliosis case in multiple levels. Besides Neurosurgery, other specialties that crept into his mind was Neurology, being cerebral and focused on the central nervous system and everything that entails. He likes having to think of esoteric pathology you need to figure out. Internal medicine is another specialty of interest for Stephen, as it shares a lot of things with Neurosurgery in terms of the complexity and diversity of the cases you see. There's a lot of detective work involved and you get to see a lot of different specialties. One of the things that led Stephen to Neurosurgery is knowing a lot of varied information in a lot of different specialties such as Endocrinology for pituitary tumors or traumatic brain injury cases. You have to be adept at critical care management as well as fluid and electrolyte maintenance. There is so much intermingling of other sub-specialties since the brain is ultimately involved in every other system of the body. [10:10] Types of Patients and Typical Day for an Academic Neurosurgeon As a neurosurgeon, Stephen sees all sorts of pathology. In his practice, he tries to focus on cerebral and vascular neurosurgery like cases of aneurysm, arteriovenous malformations, etc. But when you're on call, you have to be willing to take whatever is thrown at you and treat everybody from premature babies all the way up to the very elderly, people from all different socioeconomic classes and all kinds of pathology from taking out a tumor in the peripheral nerve and spine surgeries to open surgeries and endovascular surgery. Because of its variety, it keeps things interesting. Stephen's typical day would be getting into the office at 6 in the morning to give him a breathing room to go over some of the labs and images of the patients from the day before. He spends one day of clinic a week from 8am to 5pm, which consists of seeing new patients and operative followups. A couple of days in a week would be spent in the operating room treating patients. Another couple of days in a week would be spent in the endovascular suite doing things like diagnostic cerebral angiograms or treat aneurysm cases or angioplasty and stenting to treat coronary stenosis or treat arteriovenous malformations with glue embolization. As a resident, Stephen has done several hundred cases as part of an enriched curriculum that focuses essentially on endovascular treatment of cerebrovascular disease. Now, he's doing another year under the tutelage of a group of physicians at the University of Kentucky who also serve as his mentors so he can get a certification in cerebrovascular intervention. So Stephen does this for two days a week. Some specialties like interventional radiology and neurology are also doing these fellowships to become adept at this intervention. Stephen doesn't really see any turf war going on in his institution especially that one of his mentors is an interventional radiologist and is grooming him to be a partner in his practice. In general, however, he is seeing a little bit of turf war across industries that are trying to get in on it. Moreover, there is a move for interventional surgery to standardize fellowships to make sure that everybody that comes out from these other specialties that they're giving an essentially comparable product. [15:15] Taking Calls and Procedures As far as interventional call, Stephen takes one-third of the call which they do a week at a time. This is much less rigorous than primary neurosurgery calls. Things they would have to come in for would be endovascular treatment for aneurism or stroke. Thrombectomy for stroke has taken off since February 2015 when several studies released showed its efficacious intervention. As a result, it has opened the door for a lot of people that may not have been candidates in the past to have a mechanical thrombectomy. For that, they end up getting called in the middle of night. Being a comprehensive stroke center, they've always got somebody on call to do that. Generally, they don't get any call every single night by any stretch but primary neurosurgery calls would be every 6 or 7 nights which is totally manageable and doable. Considering he spends one day a week for clinic, only a small percentage of those patients are being brought to the operating room. Some people are keyed up to come in that have been sent to him from pain clinics and anesthesiologists to have interventional pain procedures done. These are people that have already been worked up and already know they're getting a surgery. But for ten people he sees for back pain, a common thing that primary care doctors send to them, one-tenth of them or less is something worth going to the operating room given that conservative management has been done first (ex. physical therapy, eat, rest, ice). In general, 20% of the people end up getting into surgery and the rest involves counseling in terms of pathology and management. For most cases, he tries to be conservative with. [18:56] Work-Life Balance Stephen doesn't think any neurosurgeon does since neurosurgeons have this workaholic stereotype he sees as true to some extent. He has a nasty habit of bringing work home with him. He has three small children and he's happy he gets to spend a lot of time with them. He his fortunate to have a program that emphasizes a good home-work balance since their chairman wants to make sure they are happy at work and a big part of that is making sure you have a good balance in life. Nevertheless, there are many nights spent on signing notes, reading upcoming cases, or writing papers at home. Still, he makes it a point to take time out of his day to do as much family time as he can. [20:52] Academic vs. Community Setting One of the biggest benefits Stephen sees being in an academic center is being surrounded by a great group of residents. He gets to play a part in teaching them and helping them to become the next generation of neurosurgeons and being able to walk them through the same steps his predecessors did for him so it's his way of paying back. Additionally, it puts him in the forefront of what's going on academically in neurosurgery which is a wide open field. There is so much that's not known about the brain and there's so much research going on and it's really exciting to be on the forefront of that and seeing that happen in real time. They get to a lot of these interventions before the community even gets to them being involved in the big multi-institutional research projects. They get to see a lot of unusual pathology being sent to them since only a big university that have resources and experts such as theirs that can deal with that. [23:00] Neurosurgery Residency and Matching The ACGME requires a certain number of these different categories of procedures under your belt while being a resident and you have to do so much time in the ICU and such. For Stephen, he graduated from medical school and spent the year doing an internship that is part general surgery subspecialty and part neurosurgery and neurology. (Today, they're now more focused on neurosurgery and neurointensive care.) Then Stephen had to go through six years of neurosurgery residency. As a junior resident, he did a lot more of the carrying the call pager, dealing with the ER, seeing new consults, helping staff clinics, and helping taking care of the patients on the floor and in-patients. As he went on, he spent more time in the operating room and spent more time doing academic stuff. He spent more time on the lab and molded his curriculum in a way he could enrich himself in certain subspecialties once he met his prereqs. As he got on towards the fifth to seventh year, he took on more of the administrative roles, working with scheduling of junior residents and juggling taking care of the operating rooms, being the chief on call, and helping junior residents on the floor and be the resource for the younger ones. Typically, it was a total of seven years of residency training for neurosurgery. Neurosurgery is basically competitive when it comes to matching and Stephen imagines it getting more and more competitive having met some really smart, capable, qualified folks over the last couple of years that unfortunately ended up in the scramble. It's relatively competitive since there are not that many spots and there's a lot of very smart, capable, and qualified applicants. Stephen thinks that despite the specialty being a very tough and rigorous lifestyle and residency, there are a lot of people that are up to meet that and take that as a challenge and want to face it head on. [28:00] What Makes a Competitive Applicant for Neurosurgery As somebody who has been a chief resident and as an attending who has been in the committee that goes over all of the applicants, Stephen sees that everybody that gets on his table has great boards scores and good grades but that's not what seals it for you but being able to show in the interview that you're a reasonable person. There are smart people that are capable of making a hostile work environment so you want a good esprit de corps and you want everybody to get along that makes life nice and that's what their resident group has. Having said that, their match system is difficult in that they interview applicants for a day, similar to speed dating. Stephen says one of the best ways to see if you would fit is to go to place you're interested in and do a sub-internship there whether a month of medical school or just a week. Go back for a second look after you've done your interview to spend some time with them. Any residency program can really put on a good face for a day so it's important to be able to see how everybody is on a day-to-day basis. What makes a good applicant for Stephen is them being able to trust that they're going to get along with you. [30:58] DOs, Subspecialties, Primary Care, and Other Specialties Unfortunately, Stephen doesn't know a lot of DO neurosurgeons probably because he has not just been out of the academic world for a long time and he went to an allopathic school as well as throughout residency. Although he knows there are some designated DO neurosurgery programs, but he doesn't know enough about them to comment on this. After seven years of residency training, subspecialties available include Pediatric Neurosurgery or Cerebrovascular Neurosurgery. Today, physicians can get CAST or Certificate of Advanced Surgical Training where they do an enriched program, meeting a certain amount of criteria, and do several cases to qualify for this. Then you get a certification that you've done something above and beyond, whether that be for spine, epilepsy, peripheral nerve, and a lot other subspecialties for neurosurgery that you can focus on. To be able to do this, Stephen suggests being in an academic center where you have other folks that can cover the rest of the subspecialties. such as functional neurosurgery like deep brain stimulation. While you want to subspecialize in something else, they have a good complement of attendings in their group. Stephen has a good relationship with primary care physicians in their area, them knowing that neurosurgeons are there to help. The important thing is for them to know that neurosurgeons are always available to help them with things, even the non-surgical stuff, such as back pain and neck pain which are sometimes better dealt with physical therapy or a physiatrist. It can be hard to make heads and tails of which one is surgical or which is not, and they're more than happy to go over that with a patient and let them understand what's going on. This makes people feel they're being carefully looked at or things are fully being explained to them. Other specialties neurosurgeons work the closest with include Oncology (for tumors in spinal cord and brain or peripheral nerves), Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (for brain pathology due to stroke), Hospitalists, Vascular Surgeons, Carotid Artery Pathology, Trauma Surgery, Endocrinolgoy (for Cushing's disease and pituitary tumors) Neurologists are their closest colleagues, sharing management on stroke patients and epilepsy. They end up being closely involved with a lot of different departments. [38:40] Special Opportunities Outside of Clinical Medicine You can take part in academics and research in the lab. You can take things from the bench off to the bedside since you have access to the patient base. Some neurosurgeons also end up doing stuff in the administrative side of things. Otherwise, many of them are clinically and academically busy between teaching, writing, and doing their clinical duties. Other than those, you can do pretty much anything according to Stephen. [40:12] The Best and Least Liked Part Stephen explains he would reassure himself that he'd still love what he's doing even after all the grind. A lot of times, things could get tough and it wears on you physically and mentally. But literally being able to take care of people in their darkest hour and be there and be involved in the most important part of a lot of people's lives is hugely fulfilling. The same goes academic-wise, it is very fulfilling in that you can do detective work while you get to teach the next generation of smart and eager neurosurgeons. He gets tired but he never felt that feeling of dragging yourself off to work and just to work for the paycheck. Stephen finds his professions as very fulfilling. When asked what he likes the least about being a neurosurgeon, Stephen says there could be bad days like having a streak of patients you're not able to help or you think you did a case by the book and did everything right but the patient gets a bad outcome so there's that feeling of hopelessness. You present that case in M&M and you still study and that if you had the chance to do it again, you'd probably have done it the same way but if it still turns out poorly, you think about it and it keeps you up at night. [43:46] What is M&M? M&M stands for Morbidity and Mortality. It is a conference where you and your colleagues are in a room and every time a patient has a problem or die or has a complication of some sort, their case is presented and is picked academically by other colleagues. This is done systematically to try to prevent errors in the future and see where in the care and management of the patient did something break down or how could have it done prevented and whether a change in protocol is needed in the future. Then you come up with a solution. It's stressful and it's rough on you if it's your case being presented. but it's important to make sure everybody is treated appropriately in the future, for accountability, and for teaching the residents. [45:30] The Future of Neurosurgery There is so much more that is not known about the brain or the central nervous system that leaves a lot opened and some exciting new things are going on such as neuromodulation  or deep brain stimulation for all sorts of different pathologies right now. It's commonplace for Parkinson's disease and tremors but there is a lot of potential utility for it in the future. There are also implantable devices help detect seizures and extinguish them before they become a problem. Stephen sees a lot of interesting technology on the horizon as well as new utility for old technology such as stimulators for spasticity and stroke and stem cells implanted for stroke, Parkinson's disease, and neurodegenerative diseases in general. This is another way they're going to be involved with their neurology colleagues as they come up with ways to potentially intervene and help patients that were once thought to just have progressive neurodegenerative disorders that have promising interventions such as treatments for traumatic brain and traumatic spine injury and neural computer interface for moving appendages. With a little fine-tuning, he doesn't see it being too off before it becomes something that you're able to use an artificial limb and perform complicated maneuvers. It's close to being a thing so we're in really exciting times. [48:00] Final Words of Wisdom If he had to do it all over again, Stephen would still have chosen the same residency as he had a great time making friends for a lifetime and had great teachers. The field of neurosurgery itself is still what he keeps by his bedside as something to read on. Even in lay media, it's what he picks up and what he's drawn to. So he definitely still has a fire for it and it's been great so far. If this is something you're considering but quite unsure, Stephen recommends to look in yourself and make sure it's something you want to do. And if it is, then you should do it. It's rewarding and interesting. There maybe some tendency for folks in the early medical school community to want to be a neurosurgeon but not necessarily do neurosurgery and that's a wrong attitude to have. TV may glamorize the specialty probably inappropriately more so than other surgical subspecialties which require just as much scholastic aptitude and manual dexterity. So look inside yourself and make sure this is what you want to do. Plan it out and keep a balance in your life. Go out and get some fresh air. Do some recreational activities you like. Spend time with your family. These are all important things to maintain even if you may be tired. It may take a little more effort than it did before when you're able to sleep in but once you embark on this path, try to keep a balance. Lastly, Stephen wishes every body good luck and that you've chosen a great field no matter what subspecialty of medicine you go into. Congratulations for getting this far! [51:28] My Last Thoughts Neurosurgery is one of those more rigorous paths to becoming an attending and still as an attending. But as Stephen has said, there are still a lot of demands and it's still very competitive to get into. If you're interested in neurosurgery, go reach out and find some programs and find some mentors. If you know somebody that would be a great guest for this podcast, let me know and shoot me an email at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. Links: Specialty Stories podcast session 03 interview with neurologist Dr. Allison Gray MedEd Media Network University of Kentucky New York Medical College ACGME

So Stephen is stoned to death and a great persecution breaks out against those who are following Jesus in Jerusalem. Only the Apostles and the men and women arrested by Saul remain in Jerusalem. The rest are scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. And here is the kicker..."they all become missionaries announcing the message of Jesus." What is this message? What God can turn a great persecution into a missional moment?