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www.daniellemoga.com Book your free strategy call - https://calendly.com/daniellemoga/20min Create Your Ideal life - Assessment - https://bit.ly/CreateYourIdealAdvantage Are you feeling like your life is a little chaotic and out of order? Maybe you're a bit overwhelmed and struggling on a decision for your business, career or life. Let's get you off the struggle bus and on the road to a new path forward. When you need to create change, you first have to take a long hard look in the mirror and come to terms with your current reality. Is your business failing, are you unhappy in your career, are you overwhelmed by life and the day to day grind? All of that's ok, it happens, but let's figure out how to get you to a better place. Life is full of seasons, and whatever you are experiencing right now, remember…this too shall pass. But, let's get to work to figure out where you are now in your business, career, and life and set up a strategy to design your personal success story; living and loving a life that you can be proud of. If you want a better tomorrow, then stay tuned. Today we start at the beginning and figure out where you are to help you define a new way forward to Create your Ideal Advantage in your business, career, and life. I'm Danielle Moga, success coach, consultant, and business strategist helping high achievers, just like you reach your full potential and optimize your results. Not long ago, I was on the hamster wheel of life, and each day seemed like a rinse and repeat of the day before. After a few strong messages from the Universe, I decided to create a new life that allows me to help others and creates the flexibility to live the life I want. This podcast, Let's get Mogavated, is designed to give you simple, actionable strategies to help you do the same. If you're ambitious and want to be empowered with tips, tricks, and solutions to create your success story, then you, my friend, are in the right place. Let's create order out of chaos to move you toward the success you deserve. Let's get started! Hi There! And thank you for joining me today. Today we are going to talk about the first step in the Ideal Advantage framework: Identify Your Current Reality Understanding and owning your current reality sets high achievers apart from the competition because awareness breeds change. When you understand where you are and that the current reality is not serving you, it opens the opportunity for transformation. Clarity is the first step of clearing the path for a new foundation in the architecture and design of your future. Gaining clarity will lift the weight off your shoulders, clear your mind, and ignite your energy. I just had the great opportunity to work with a company based out of Atlanta, and this framework helped to set the stage for the next chapter in their business. We had large post-it notes all over the wall, talking about everything from core values, innovative solutions, upcoming projects, and strategic plans to grow their business. Whether I'm working with an individual wanting to improve their life or career or a large business, the steps are all the same because you first have to understand your current state, where you want to go, then bridge the gap to get you there. Today I want to talk about a tool I use to help you get focused on the primary dimensions of your life because if you're out of whack (technical term) in your life, it's going to be very difficult to excel in other areas. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daniellemoga/message

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" overlay_color="" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding_top="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" padding_right=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" center_content="no" last="no" min_height="" hover_type="none" link=""][fusion_text] Watch the live interview below [/fusion_text][fusion_youtube id="https://youtu.be/kTE7MhFGjWI " alignment="center" width="" height="" autoplay="false" api_params="&rel=0" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]   Transcription (was completed by automated process. Please ignore any speech-to-text errors) Hi, I'm Beatty Carmichael, and welcome back to the Get Sellers Calling You Real Estate podcast. And I'm just really excited about today's call because I get to interview another wonderful set of agents with an amazing story, and who are actually clients of ours. Tom and Nancy Cleppe from Franklin, Tennessee. And I'm just really excited about today's call because I was able to speak with Tom and Nancy earlier. They have a really neat business and story. And I really wanted you guys to hear it. So, Tom and Nancy, how are you guys doing?   [00:00:39] Hi, Beatty, how are you? I am very blessed. We're lucky. Blessed as well.   [00:00:46] Well, very good. Very good. And I want to talk about those blessings in a moment. So they'll be great. Just also, a quick reminder for those who are listening and watching, watching, this is an Internet call. So if there are any type of Internet interruptions, just please part in this part in those four for that. So tell me, Nancy, I'd love just real quickly, just a little story about your real estate career. I know you're in the Franklin area, but maybe how long have you been selling just anything about you guys? Just the introduction of who you guys are.   [00:01:23] Nancy looks at me like I should start right away then. So so Nancy had been in business, in real estate business before I was eight years before I got involved in it. And she said to me, one day, you should get into real estate. This is before we were married, actually. And I said, no, I don't want to work weekends. We can build our business. We don't have to work weekends. So three weeks later, I was enrolled in a class and what, six months or less later, I had my license and we started a team. And so that's eight years ago. 70 years ago, no.   [00:01:57] Ok. So I got to ask your question. Do you work weekends?   [00:02:00] No. Rarely, I should say no. Obviously we if if necessary, we do.   [00:02:07] Ok, cool. Well, it's out now. Let me ask you just Horton comes quantifying purposes like how many transactions a year do you guys do?   [00:02:17] This is consistency we like. We do. I want to say that we do 50 units a year, but it's anywhere from 30 to 60 units.   [00:02:25] Ok. So 30 to 50, maybe 60 on a good year. And rarely work weekends. So I'm out. So the typical client that I talk to works 50, 60 hours a week, works week as you ask them. Hey, what's that? How is your weekend? They kind of with this blank stare or astonished voice pause in the voices, they say. What's a weekend? Right. So how did you how do you guys build your business where it's rarely on the weekends? I mean, how do you make that happen?   [00:02:57] Why you've got to be purposeful. You know, the first thing is you've got a time block and you've got to use your week well so that your week will fall together and follow. It's in the, you know, Monday to Friday business hours. And one of the ways we do that, we put God first, we put family second, and then our real estate business is third. And it seems like doing that, things just kind of fall into place. You know, we work hard during the week. We try to get it all done and we schedule as much as we can during the office hours. And obviously, we have clients that can always meet during office hours, and that's when we fall back to, you know, weekends or evenings to accommodate them. And it's pretty rare.   [00:03:36] You know, I love to explore that just a little bit, because as you're talking, Nancy, my mind went back to two or three other agents I've interviewed, and they all had the same pattern. And I think this is a pattern that's really worked to pull out in terms of setting the parameters. Okay. I'd like one of my clients, he or he does two to three times the volume. You guys do personal production. He does it differently side. I don't want to make that comparison, but what he does is he works. At the time I was asking him this question about thirty five hours a week. Yeah. No, seriously. And and I asked him how in the world did you do that? He said, well I structure. He said, I choose not to work Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and I choose not to work on the evenings unless I just have to. And I'm willing to give up business by me too. But he says when you put those parameters in place, you just fit your business around it. And I think a lot of agents never put those parameters in place. Yeah, sounds like you got some monster over there.   [00:04:51] Well, we have construction going on as well.   [00:04:55] Oh, okay. I love it going on. I thought that was maybe the door. We we're having a fun discussion about the dogs before their call, so. Great. So tell me a little bit. So 30 to 50 transactions a year. You don't work weekends. You set parameters. Tell me a little bit more about your business practice. And most importantly, how do you keep the business going? I don't have I want to kind of go and go towards what is it that you're doing that keeps your business? Because I know a lot of folks who would love to have 30 transactions a year and they're working 50, 60 hours a week just trying to get there. But what have you guys found to be the pattern that works for you that keeps you guys going? Does that is that a fair question to ask?   [00:05:42] Yeah. You know, when Nancy and I got into business or when I got into Nancy's business, she was kind of coasting for the lack of a better term and how she was doing your business. It was kind of coming to her by your relationships. And then I come in and it's like I have a sales and marketing background. It's like, wait a minute, we can be doing this, this and this to bring customers into us. We can do this business to set ourselves up so that there's stuff out there that's working without us kind of dealing in. I have it. I keep saying I'm the luckiest guy in the world because when it comes to contracts and negotiations and closings in one, Nancy's the structured one. She keeps all of that in line. I refer to myself as the guy out front bringing people in and the guy after the close of the sale then keeps in touch with them so that we give referrals and repeat business from that. So Nancy takes care of all the middle. And I take you to the beginning in the end.   [00:06:31] If you're a single agent, that would be a single agent with my capacity. That would be difficult.   [00:06:38] I totally get it. So. So you're more behind the scenes, Nancy and Tom, you're more in front of the scenes, is that right?   [00:06:46] Until it's time to switch. I'm in front of the scenes up front and then, like, we'll go to a listing appointment, get a listing and they never see me again. It's up close.   [00:06:54] Ever from there. I handle the listing and getting up and running and handle all the contract negotiations to get it to close. Okay, cool. Yeah. We don't need assistance to help us with those things, but I think the core of our business has always been it comes from our relationships with people.   [00:07:12] Talk to me about that. Yeah.   [00:07:14] Well, you know, I had a business before Tom joined me and we do a lot of referral business. I think our first several years together, our business was solely on referral business and then friends and family, you know, they trusted some of us and they want their friends to, you know, experience the same trust that they have with us. So whether they use us for a transaction or not, they feel comfortable referring their friends to us.   [00:07:40] So how big of a group are we talking about with this? Your relationships?   [00:07:46] Wow. There's fourteen hundred people in our in our database and we consider two hundred of them close. You haven't referred broken down and advocate a being. See, depending on if their client if they're just friends with referrals and if they're local.   [00:08:04] Ok. And then what? What do you guys take to nurture that? I'm assuming you do something. Is that correct?   [00:08:10] Yeah, we do. We don't do enough. It seems like sometimes. And there's other people that say we do too much. So like events, we're always doing client events to keep people safe. To get as many touches at once makes a lot of sense to us. And of course, everybody appreciates a good party kind of deal. We also do community outreach stuff where we're giving away. We have like an ice cream sundae. We're well into. This is a Sunday where we'll we'll give away ice cream at the local custard store and everybody we publicize it than anybody who comes in, gets to sample the ice cream, obviously, and then we get to shake hands with people that are not necessarily in our database or weren't at that point. And, you know, we're making fundraisers, fundraisers and the local fire department.   [00:08:58] And we've also raised money for a couple other organizations by giving away things and asking just asking people to donate when they can't. Like, we gave out pumpkins last year and pumpkin patch, we gave a pumpkin to everybody that they donated or not. But then we had a little jar set up for donations and those people died.   [00:09:17] So tell me how. Because one of the things that we talk about, especially like with a geographic area to do fundraising events or some sort of civic community event where you get the people into the same a common spot, you're the the civic champion, so to speak, of that cause, and then you get a chance to meet them. Help me guide me through, if you would. Let's take one of these fundraisers that you do. What's the process? How do you if you just come and give me a short synopsis of the process and most importantly, how it's structured so that you interact with the people if you're interacting at all. Does that make sense?   [00:09:58] It was probably our biggest.   [00:09:59] So I guess, you know, maybe when I was a kid, a delinquent and I might have had I had a lot of parties. Right. And it was just a matter of putting ourselves out there. You just create the event and invite people to come in. Those people that came had a good time and those people that didn't come heard about it kind of deal. And so the next time they had one, they wanted to come. And we just kind of promote it that way. The idea is, is we put the event out there and make sure that everybody knows about it, at least four different touches. And if they show great, if they don't, they kind of miss the event when they come, then we try to have as much set up prior to the event so that the day of the event, we're not running around cutting watermelons for everybody. There's somebody either the watermelon is cut or somebody else is doing it. And the more that we have in place for that than we heard the term wants to Elm's buds. That's exactly what it means. But we're just shaking hands. We're walking around laughing with everybody and be who we are socially. And that's really where people then kind of engage in that in in some events, depending on the person and depending on on the drive, we'll say something like, you know why you're here. Can you tell us a little bit, you know, who do you know that might be interested in?   [00:11:11] Might you rarely ever say, who do you know, say something about who might have had the good fortune of having a Beatty that might be interested in in getting a bigger house or what? You know, just got a promotion that's looking into getting a bigger house or something along those lines to start that conversation with Nancy. And I don't have trouble starting conversation. It's a matter of is the event just a celebration or is the event a lead generation event?   [00:11:40] Interesting. Do you all do any follow up after an event like a thank you know for coming or anything like that?   [00:11:46] Yeah, absolutely. Everybody gets a handwritten thank you card. I think last year we made sure handwritten thank you cards went out. They get at least an email. Thank you. And then we got a lot of follow up calls as well. Well, a cool thank you for coming or sorry we missed you.   [00:12:02] I'm sorry we missed you guys are just as important. So we send all of those emails out as well. Man, you missed a good party. Here's what you missed. Kind of deal. And we'll send pictures and that kind of stuff so that they're interested in coming either the next time or or at least keeping involved in what's happening next.   [00:12:18] So these are these are just these are big, maybe not big, but they're fun party happy atmospheric events. And then a lot of follow up to continue touching afterwards. Right. I like that. Have you found anything that's kind of anything that you can share besides what you just shared, that if you go back and say these are really, you know, like the top two or three most important things you've learned and doing these things that make it successful.   [00:12:49] I think advertising at a time or getting the word out ahead of time, it seems, when we get lazy, not lazy, but get busy and we don't get the word out as early as we need to. And and those extra follow up touches prior to the event is what seems to make the most successful. We're doing it and having it catered and, you know, doing all the things we need to do. But if we don't get the word out early, we don't have a good attendance.   [00:13:13] So what? So what's the timeline? How far out do you start contacting in invitations and then talk to me about when you start to actually make the personal contacts to make that personally.   [00:13:25] So the save the date goes out about six weeks in advance. And then I think just as the Sarah question, she's not with us. She's our assistant. But they get text about once a week after that, OK? They get an email that tells what the event's actually about and kind of what they can expect. And then just some reminders for hours, BP.   [00:13:46] And there's a handful. The truth is, is that you're not going to get everybody. You can't call everybody then obviously on the list kind of deal. So you call a couple of key people and make sure that they're coming. Check the RSVP fees, try to get as much RSVP so that you can plan accordingly. Obviously, the earlier the better. And then just create from there, know create the list that you're going to call it is. And then when you make those phone calls to them, you know, are you making sure that you're going to make it? And do me a favor, bring somebody along with you. It's like I can bring somebody in your life. I got you on the phone, of course. You know, so and so. It tends to be good in that sense with our neighbors to come as well.   [00:14:23] We are fortunate enough to live on a farm. And so we don't have next door neighbors what we do, but they're pretty far away. So we like the community to know that we're that we would like to do a lot of fundraising for community community, that we support the churches here. All of the churches have ice cream socials in the summer. And we try to get as many of those as we can, but we get to know the neighbors that way. And then when we have an advance, we'll even put a sign up, a big sign in the yard that says everyone's welcome. So it's not just our client and it's client people that, you know, we love and want to do business with. Right.   [00:14:59] So there are key key for that question. I mean, I'm on the phone every day. I get in the office about seven o'clock. I do a script practicing beforehand. I prepare for my day. And at eight o'clock I'm on the phone and I'm on the phone until noon every day. Whether I'm doing a follow up was how it ended or I'm doing lead generation, calling the people in our database. And there's the it's it's the relationship building. I wish I could say I was better at it.   [00:15:24] Some of the times I get we just switched over a new system in in I'm not making as many context as I'd like to be making because I'm trying to like fill the system in as I go kind of deal and make it good that sense. But for the most part, it's just keeping in touch with them, whether you're sending them a thank you card or thinking of your card or inviting them to an event or sending them birthday cards, we've got to force the birthday process. I mean, you get into an email, you you get a phone call, you get a text messages, and often you'll just get a card as well. So, well, I say often cards take a lot of time and so do the phone calls. So you got to kind of balance your mind on what you're doing with.   [00:16:03] Well, if you were to put an end, I must say, I mean, like these 30 to 50 selves a year that you guys do, are most of those coming from your personal contacts referred to or directs? Is there a way? I don't know if this is a fair question, because I know when you're just doing all these relationship things, it's hard to measure and quantify. One is more important than another. But is there a way that you guys have mentally quantified in your mind, which are the most important things that you're doing in terms of these ReachOut events and which are just kind of supporting things?   [00:16:41] Is that a fair question? It's a great question. And, you know, I'm I would say that we're just not measuring enough to know it.   [00:16:49] I think that. I think the phone calling is actually the most important, because that's something that we can do consistently every day.   [00:16:58] Now, of course, you can't you don't talk to everybody every day, but the events are kind of a couple of times a year event. And so we're touching them. We're trying to do them four times a year. So we're touching them during that time. And I think a personal one on one phone call probably goes the furthest in getting us, you know, repeat business and referrals business.   [00:17:17] I can up my game a little bit here recently in regards to the phone calls, it's like I'm setting up appointments nowadays, which I didn't do in the past because I was so focused on business kind of deal. I'm setting appointments just to have coffee with people in in trying to set up so my afternoons are filled with going and have coffee. No, no, remember. I don't drink coffee. So it's just a matter, it's just a matter of getting in front of these people. In the conversation they bring up real estate, which is really, really enlightening, kind of really cool that they bring it up, you know. So how's business with the man making it into it? You know, by the way, you know you know anybody that just recently had a kid or maybe a job promotion or those kind of questions come up then. And then the other thing is, is that we're tapping back into. So it's Nancy and I have been involved in motorcycle's in fact, that's where we met, was at a motorcycle store alone. And and so Harley Davidson, that's my that's my life for 30 years was motorcycle. So we're going back to those people and creating events around specifically around motorcycle enthusiasts and then doing stuff that is, you know, I guess dovetailing if there's another event going in, we're definitely going to be there and we're definitely going to be a figure in the event. And then we're definitely going to be promoting. It doesn't I don't ever want to make it sound like we're promoting real estate business. We're simply promoting Tom and Nancy and and then talking about business. And it's a different, different mindset than what I've always said or then what I have had. It became a grind in the past. It was how much business can you do, how much business, which business can you do and not doing not even been greatly successful. And then going back to just how what kind of person do I want to be?   [00:18:59] We know that's the basics and real estate. I was interviewing a another friend of mine who's actually here in town and he's been selling real estate twenty five years broker. And the cool thing about him is I was asking him, I said, now, what type of marketing do you do? I've never done any marketing. I said, never done any advertising. Now he's I've never spent any money and marketing for business and said, so what do you do? He says, I'm I'm just cause I I'll call people and say, hey, how's it going? Let's get together. And that's it. I said, that's it. You know, is this what you guys are doing? And what's interesting is, is he has never had a time when he never hit his goals financially because he you know, his just like you guys. God, first family second, business third. And he grows his business to the point that he accomplishes his business goals. So he has time with his family. But it's it's always it's only about Tony furious about a relationship. And that's what you guys are doing. That's what's so beautiful.   [00:20:10] There's lots of room for improvement.   [00:20:12] Yes. Now I get that. I want to shift just a little bit. Have you done. Have you tried things in the past that were an absolute failure? Let me see if I can phrase this the right way. I don't want to say that was an absolute failure in turn someone off from doing that, but maybe it was a failure for you. And you know why. In other words, most things out there work for somebody if they're in business. Hopefully they work for somebody. And the question is, have you tried some things that didn't work that you learned from? And is there something you can share with our listeners as to why it didn't work for you, that maybe if someone has similar, similar or a similar situation as you guys, that maybe you can help them understand what works, what doesn't? I don't know if that's a fair question.   [00:21:03] Now that we have had anything that has just totally failed, we have some things that have been more successful than others. And one thing that happens with us and our agents are like this, but we don't consistently use everything that we have available to use, either from lack of time or lack of money. But there was a couple of years when we farm to market, farm to neighborhood, and we were successful with that. Well, that kind of went away because we got involved in other types of marketing things. And it wasn't that it wasn't successful. We just haven't done it in the last couple years. So we could go back to that. But then we probably have to give someone else, because just the lack of time probably makes sense.   [00:21:45] The other aspect, it would be like open houses. I mean, you can farm the market indefinitely, build the relationships that are indefinitely build. Unfortunately, we don't live in a neighborhood, so we can't farm our own neighborhood, which to me lends credibility a little bit a little bit different way. And then you can grow out from there. If you're moving into a neat or you're working a neighborhood, you're gonna do you gotta find out about the neighborhood. You got to get in a frenzy to make events that happened in there. And it's always kind of out there.   [00:22:12] So that would be reason for a decision not to put that much effort into it. And yet there's lots of reasons to put it into it. Another thing would be something that we have been unsuccessful at following through with the same with the farming is on open houses. You have an open house and you've got people that are coming in. And all you have to do is set up one appointment at every open house to get a buyer or seller. It's like done. We should be doing that. And at the same sense, you know, it's a weekend job. Right.   [00:22:46] And then you have to follow the system not wanting to work weekends.   [00:22:50] Look, system, I think that ideally, you know, if I was to lay out my open house on Tuesday, had put arrows out and start the marketing on it on Friday, I'd put Gob's to somewhere around 20 different signs out.   [00:23:03] And then on Saturday or Sunday, I have open houses.   [00:23:06] There would be two hours long. And, you know, make an event out of that and making sure that we've got up systems to that. And we just don't do that.   [00:23:15] And that's why open houses are such a great way for new agents to start their business because they have time.   [00:23:22] You know, I've always said, what do we have more time or more money to invest in into a certain marketing thing that we're gonna do for that time period in our business.   [00:23:33] And if you don't have any money and you knew you don't have a clients, open houses are definitely the best way to go. We actually have more money than we have time. Right. That's the place to be either right now. Well, I always feel like we have more money and we have we definitely have more money than we have time.   [00:23:52] I totally get it. Well, you know, I think it goes back to the parameters that you guys mentioned in terms of, you know, you set the parameters and you operate within it and open houses violates the parameter if we don't work on weekends. Right. So now, hey, speaking of those parameters, I want to go back if I if we can. So you have a hierarchy, God, family business. Talk a little bit more about that. I want to talk a little bit about just that whole balance and those parameters. I don't have a specific question yet, but can you maybe maybe give me some your thoughts and what you do and how firm those parameters are? Just gonna craft what's going on with you on that.   [00:24:41] Well, this business.   [00:24:44] Can lead you astray easily if you let it. You know, you can get so wrapped up in in making money or pleasing the clients and you can take your eyes off what's really important, which is pleasing God and saying yes to a client isn't always the best thing for them or you. And so I think if you go back to kind of the old bracelets we used to wear, what would Jesus do?   [00:25:10] You know, sometimes you have to say no.   [00:25:12] For whatever reason in kinds don't like to be told no and usually all is business. In that situation. But that's something that, you know, is important to us. We go to a listening appointment. We we talk before we go. And, you know, is this a house that we want to live? And, you know, what are the criterion which we're willing to take this? You know, we're not ruling to compromise our values. We're not willing to be dishonest. We're not willing to just be at the beck and call of our clients knowing that that's not best for them or us. We're not going to serve them well if.   [00:25:51] You know, we're at their beck and call 24/7. That makes sense. We're not here.   [00:25:57] I mean, that's it. So Nancy and I just come from a place of of knowing faith and hope is clearly there for us. So. So we know that there's a that there's a higher power, that what happens to be Jesus Christ as we know and love them. And if she shows up for us, you showed up for us in the past and he's shown up for Stanely.   [00:26:15] And whether we're whether we're saying a prayer before we go into a listening appointment or we're saying a prayer at the listening appointment or or we're just making sure that when we start our day, they were grounded in in in in the word or in, you know, meditative state where we know that, you know, we're covered.   [00:26:35] All right. Hey, let's talk and let me talk on that, because different people bring their relationship with Christ into their business in different ways. When you do your real estate business and you're in interacting with clients, do you do anything that I'll call it just overtly Christian? Let me say this makes sense. When we were looking to buy our house and we were putting the offer, writing out the offer on it, you know, my realtor who's a Christian, said, well, let's pray over this. And we prayed. OK. Do you guys do anything like that with your clients at all?   [00:27:11] Absolutely. We don't want to go in talking about, you know, being Christian, because sometimes people can oversell and under deliver. And I think we'd rather over deliver and undersell. So we try to let that show up in who we are and not what we say. After most listing appointments, Tom just very casually says, is it OK if we say a prayer? He says it just like that. And have we heard anybody say no? No, I don't think we have.   [00:27:40] We've picked up cues along the way. I mean, you know, they've got a cross hanging above their bed or something. I mean, it's it's you pick up cues along the way. But I don't know about you, but I have been turned off by plenty of people that profess to be Christians. And they're the first ones to start like pushing and shoving and lying and cheating, you know, like man men. So so we don't go in there with, you know, a Christian tone. We go in there with a humble tone and then go from there. Like I said, like Nancy just said, the opportunity presents itself to say prayer. Is it OK? It's always a question.   [00:28:15] And how did how did the clients respond to that?   [00:28:18] I mean, I think the majority I can't remember anybody that's actually said no. Most people are very excited. You know, they realized then that these are probably some pretty sincere people that want to pray for us and really are concerned about what goes on with this transaction, whether we lost our house or not, and whether we sell our house or not. You know, it's they're getting a feeling for us through prayer and our actions that we're the type of people that are going to have their back. Even if it doesn't turn out to be a sale.   [00:28:51] I love it. And what other ways? I'd love to find out if you don't mind sharing just a little bit more, maybe your relationship with Christ and how you feel. It's kind of impacted what you do in real estate. Can you share something on that?   [00:29:07] I'm a I'm a recovering Catholic, and what I mean by that is, you know, we went to church as a as a family firm because all the least you could do.   [00:29:20] I just remember Mom saying something felt the least you could do is give God an hour or a week in there. And I went through catechism, confirmation and communion and all of the sacraments. Catholic. And and when I and when I separated from that and I and I needed some stability, I knew that I could go back to the Catholic Church and get that. And yet when I needed a personal relationship, I didn't have that. And I'm also a recovering alcoholic and still in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. I found Jesus. He showed up differently for me than he did for many other people. But I just developed a personal relationship at that point. So that's just kind of my baseline. So if I've got that personal relationship as a result of my connection, the things that I do, and I don't mean the overt things that I do for other people in regards to my communication, my prayers in the morning, my meditation, my gratitude throughout the day. I've got reminders that proper by my full and that's as a sign for gratitude. And. And those are the things that keep me connected to the spirit, keep me connected to Jesus and go from there. Nancy, similar know, we write we read the Bible and we go to Bible study and we help out at church and we do mission work and we do this. But we don't do that to earn glory or to earn favor. We do that because that's servant.   [00:30:41] Right. Talk to me. This is really interesting. You mention relationship. A lot of times, you know, people think about Christian as a religion. What religion are you? I'm Christian. Things that sort in your life. You use the word relationship a couple of times. What does that mean to you? And why are you using that in this context?   [00:31:04] Help me understand that.   [00:31:07] Wow. Guess because he saved me. Tell me more. I mean, so, you know, my life is is not been a smooth sailing. They say the road to paradise is not it's not smooth. And in mine has been hellish. I mean, I've had a.   [00:31:27] Whether it was.   [00:31:31] Childhood diseases that I was able to to work through or that Jesus pulled me through or whether it was an illness that removed me.   [00:31:39] I was a I had a corporate profile job and I'm moving up in it and I get disabled and I'm not able to go there. And I think it's what what I what I do. That's going to make it better and then make it to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and in and pulled from the need to satisfy others so that I can get that paycheck or that notoriety or whatnot. And then I'd like to say that, you know, that recovery at that point was perfect for me, no drugs and alcohol. But the truth is, is that I found Internet addiction, Internet pornography addiction, and I needed to work the steps on that. And as a result of that, unfortunately, I lost my first marriage. And in the way that that was kind of hammered on me, it can have a real negative connotation in society. And with my former wife and and in you know, I had my faith at that point. And so I look back.   [00:32:44] And I know he is with me, and that's in a can't, whether it's Nancy and I or whether it's another close friend or somebody that I work with. I know what teamwork is. And it's not because of what I do. It's because of what we do. And I can't. And I have a relationship with Christ the same way. It's not because of what I do and that just because of what he does, it's what we do together. Next, the relationship.   [00:33:07] That's really neat. In terms of that relationship and trying to I've got kind of pictured in my mind's eye what I want to ask and then trying to formulate it into a question. So someone's listening to this call. They're going through challenges and they pray. They've gone to church. None of that really is not clicking. It just doesn't seem to be, quote unquote, working. They they check off the little list. What is different between what you did and going to church and doing catechism and those things? And this thing you call a relationship. Help me. Help me understand. All right. That person that may be listening. What's the difference between relationship and these things that we call, you know, doing the Christian thing? Is that.   [00:34:10] Yeah. Well, first of all, it's not a checklist. You can't check the list and say, I went to church and I read my Bible and I prayed. So why isn't my life happier or better, whatever it is they're looking for? I mean, that's not how you have a relationship with another person. You don't check off the boxes while I called so-and-so today and I met them for lunch.   [00:34:31] So, you know, we should be really tight now. You know, you have to think of it that way. A relationship is a one on one ongoing experience with another person. And that person has Jesus and he. Is better than to your friends, because he he's always there and he forgives so quickly and so easily. I think a lot of people come to faith when they're that they've hit bottom. And he's standing there waiting. You know, he wants to help you up and pull you up and. I don't know really how to tell people to.   [00:35:10] You get to that place where they're surrendering everything to him. But that really is the only answer. You know, you're probably going to do it. Meaning surrender everything to him. You can do it now or you can do it later. Most people like to go through a lot of pain before they do it.   [00:35:28] Like, do they just.   [00:35:29] Well, they don't like it, but they do it. So if you can do that, you know, sometime in your life. If you're tired of going through the pain or maybe you're not in a lot of pain now, you will be, you know, it's coming. That is something that being a believer or being Christian doesn't mean that you're not going to have troubles. It means that God's going to get you through those. And the sooner you learn that, I think the happier that you'll be just having that solid foundation to turn back to as opposed to what do I do now? And that trying to help yourself.   [00:36:05] It just doesn't work.   [00:36:08] I think the relationship with Christ for me is developed in in two primary ways. And the first one is in nature. I can't look around me and think that there isn't something greater creating this. I mean, we're in the change of seasons right now. The colors of the leaves will be changing colors and then we'll go into winter and then. Oh, my heavens. Spring comes and you're like, well, of course, he's going to put spring after after winter because it's just and, you know, I say he put it there because I believe it was created by him. And so I can just watch around me. It doesn't mean I like all of the seasons. Frankly, I don't even like spring. But it sure does bring out beauty, you know. And and I appreciate that. And the other thing. So in nature, I see that what I've seen in people as well to the relationship I have, you know, this. This is been a twenty five year road for me to get to this point. And that's not twenty five years old, that's twenty five years. When I met Christ in that in that relationship way in like my sister turned me on to a book, The Time for Joy, which is in scrap pages nowadays. But I still read it. Not every day as much as I used to, but I read it. I read it this morning again. And it's just that meditation. And then, you know, eight or ten years ago, another friend gave me a book by Derek.   [00:37:27] It's kind of my Bible leader book. Think of the rings. Dear friends. Thank you. And then, of course, I got a recovery Bible from somebody else. And I got I got in business. I was handed a journal, you know, and said how you can put God first. That's for writing about it when you go to bed and be grateful and in in recovery in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, they they encouraged prayer and meditation. They encourage a relationship with God. And, you know, so and so all of the friends that I met in that sense and every Thursday night for the past eight years have been in a men's men's meeting which started out at a church. Now we've been through several different churches and it's clearly Christian driven. We just call ourselves the protocols at this point. And there's just a topic where men from thirty six years old at 84 years old are getting together and talking and in that crisis shows up. And in that the relationships built I mean, we cry together, we laugh together. We in in there's not a meeting that goes by that you don't know that there's a presence of God.   [00:38:35] So. That's really neat. I love what you're saying, Nancy. You know, someday you're going go through tough times. And I was thinking I just had one of our podcasts, actually, Elk LP coming out before this one, but I've already recorded it. By the time we're doing this interview and is talking about the Israelites going through the wilderness, you know, coming out of Egypt. And it seems like they always put themselves into a position. God takes them to a position of dry point. OK. Where there is no water and and they always wait till they're about dying of thirst. They start complaining to God and God shows up with their answer vote.   [00:39:19] What hit me reading it is God would have given them the answer. They just ask God to light early before they got to that point for inspiration.   [00:39:26] Does that make sense? Yeah.   [00:39:29] I think sometimes we we wait until it's unbearable and that's when we we, you know, seek the Lord and crown the Lord. And yet Jesus said I came that you might have life abundantly right now and always have to do is this kind of saken right now.   [00:39:47] Let me ask you a question on that, because you guys have gone through a lot of struggles. I know. And if you were look at your life now. I know there still probably struggles. And if you look at your life 10 or 15 years ago or 20 years ago or maybe a little bit further back when your relationship wasn't with the Lord, wasn't his strong. And I'm I'm just looking at the life with a relationship with the Lord now versus where the relationship was a lot less. Are the struggles significantly different? In other words, now that you have a great relationship with the Lord, is the struggle or a stronger relation is a struggle a lot less in terms of things hitting you than it was earlier? Or is the struggle level about the same? Does that make sense?   [00:40:38] Yeah. It's about the same struggles.   [00:40:40] Both the same. What is the response to the struggle? OK. The joy in the struggle helped me. Now the struggles are about the same now with a relationship being more mature vs. not really pursuing it. What's the difference?   [00:40:56] You know, sometimes when something disaster is happens, your first responders response is to panic and, you know, despair and, you know, having this guy here that just says to me, you know, we need to start Perrow right now. And God's not going to leave us now. He hasn't so far. And it's just really a matter of a couple of minutes. You can take a few deep breaths. You can say a prayer and come back to he's going to get us through this. Whereas I think years ago, you know, you rely on your own, like, what can I do to get through this? And sometimes you can. I mean, sometimes it's up to you to do the next right thing, but often it's not in our hands. The things that are really hurting us and bothering us are totally out of our control. And that's what you come to realize in a close relationship with God is that he's in control. And hearing our prayers is the most important thing we can do now. We don't need to try to fix it. You know, either we can't or it's completely out of our hands.   [00:42:01] There's. So you've got to think so.   [00:42:06] There has to be a physiology shift and that can be like breath work, breath work to me has always been extremely important because like breathing happens without me thinking about it. And yet, when I think about breath work, to me it's a connection with with everything else. I mean, I exhale carbon dioxide and the trees inhale it through the trees. Exhale oxygen. And I inhale that. And so there's there's a definite connection there with that stuff. So it's in it's a conscious I'm breathing and I'm kind of counting or I'm doing feeling the chest rising and lower. So there's a physiology that happens with it. And then there's also an anchoring opportunity.   [00:42:41] So for me, I have an inker that when things don't get to it, I can I can just anchor and it'll pull me back into those thoughts of when I was blessed with feelings of blessings or feelings of abundance or whatnot. And just anchoring it added recognize that. That's good. So there's a physiology that starts and then there's that the you know, it's all about mindset, 99 nine mindset. It's got to be 90 percent of it all. And if we're talking about God and we're talking about gratitude and we're talking about abundance in in the proverbial fan gets hit with life, you know, we can go with talking about the proverbial fan and the stuff that's flying or we can talk about the good things. They're in the office. There's a saying that your thoughts eavesdrop, get your thoughts, eavesdrop on your words. And so if you're gonna be talking about the things that are not favorable, then you're that's where you're gonna be hanging on. And that's what you're going to find support in. If you're thinking about things that are, you know what I want I want to use the word good. But that's way too general. Things that are of abundant, things that are of joy, things that are of Christ, things that are of life, things that are of relationship. Then it's soon certain to go in that way in Christians.   [00:44:01] You know, I love the mindset. When you mentioned that my mind went back to Roman, say, with Paul, has the mind set on the flash is death. But the mind set on the spirit is life and peace. And where we set our mind is the outcome we get. Right. And. And I not long ago, we were going through some challenges. And my son is very wise in the spirit and we're talking about these different things. And he said, Dad, the battle is won in the spirit before it's won in the natural. And you know, that's so true. And, you know, God is a god of patterns. And he has a pattern. And he keeps repeating that pattern in one pattern that you guys have seen in your life. I've seen in mine. And that is that. God takes care of you. God takes care of you, as you say, can follow him, in fact. I would probably suggest without knowing the inner workings of your business, that if you were to look back over the life of your business. That all the big wins and and transactions and revenues that covered all your expenses probably were things that God brought to you, that you didn't really work.   [00:45:22] Yeah. Yeah, I would almost guarantee it. Yeah.   [00:45:25] It's a it's a pattern. And because of that pattern, we can live in joy in the midst of the struggles that come our way because we always are in struggles. The question is, do we try to reline ourselves to solve them or rely on the Lord? And the pattern with the Lord is he always handles it for those who love him and who follow him. So that's kind of the big takeaway I'm getting with you guys. Yes. Well, this has been really neat. I've enjoyed this. Is there anything else? As we start to wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to share business spiritually? A combination or anything else that. Before we wrap up the call.   [00:46:20] Thomas reading his notes. No, I'm not. There a tax in place? There's two things that come to mind.   [00:46:28] First of all. In watching videos and in watching and reading other people's real estate businesses and do this, do that, do this, that I've put other people on pedestals and in like that envy, maybe envy is is a word that might fit it as well. But I want to be like them or how come I can't do that or what's happening. And when Nancy and I sit here like this, I don't ever want to be thought of as the guy that has the answers because we struggle day in and day out. But we've got the answer of relying on our greater than ourselves. And we know that if we just get up in the morning and put our best foot forward, that the answers come in as long as our house is in order as we stand in the rooms. And so it's it's their struggle and there's pain and there's loss and there's reward in. Life is clearly way more abundant now than it was before. So. So don't do what I did and yet do what I did. But don't think of Nancy NYes any better or worse than we're just on the same path in the same. Going in the same direction and doing things have a little different speed than you are because everybody is is on the path.   [00:47:52] The other thought is, is.   [00:47:54] Some of the things just kind of along those same lines. Some of the things that were said here by what you've read and what Nancy and I have come up with in the moment, and as we said a prayer before we started this, I think this is a good podcast. And I'm looking forward to listening to those two people because they get some good stuff to say.   [00:48:14] Well, y'all are definitely just an amazing couple. Anything from you announcing that, trying to put you on the spot or anything, that song line before we wrap it up?   [00:48:23] Now, I just you know, for me, the most important thing is to have Tom as the leader of our family. And he continues to do that. He leads our company and he leads our family. And that's important to me. I hope to retire someday sooner than he does.   [00:48:38] And it's just nice to know that the person leading our company and leading our lives is a man of God.   [00:48:46] Absolutely. There is another passage that says no. Why be submissive to your husbands as crisis, as the churches, to the Christ husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church. And the picture that I got was this. You know, in the in the Christ center form of marriage, the husband is the covering of the family. And it's the husband's responsibility to take care of the family. Right. Ultimately, and as the bride of Christ, all of us make up the bride of Christ. He is our husband. And we can trust him to cover us. And trust him to provide for us. And it hit me as I as I was reading through this in the spirit, just kind of spoke this to me. At least I believe it was the spirit that said, you can trust me to Beatty, I'm your husband. And you don't have to worry about all of these decisions just to, you know, follow the leading I give you and leave it all up to me. And it's just really freeing. So it's wonderful to have a man of God is your husband to to just follow and lead your family. So. I really appreciate that.   [00:50:00] Thank you. Thanks. All right. Well, as we wrap this up, if you do like this podcast, be sure to subscribe to it and you'll get a lot more. Be sure to like us on iTunes and YouTube and learn more about us and how to grow your business and how to grow spiritually if you want. At our Web site, get cellar's calling you Acom. Thanks, everyone. You'll have a great day.   [00:50:23] Thank you. Thanks.   P063

In this episode, Christian Haynes '20 interviews Che Anderson '11 about his work supporting public art, and how his Holy Cross experience inspired him to make his mark on the City of Worcester. Recorded November 20, 2019 --- Transcript Ché: If at 23, 24, 25 you find something that's really keeping you up at night, and that's making you wake up early in the morning, go pursue that. There's no right or wrong way to do life, we're all just figuring it out. Maura: Welcome to Mission-Driven, where we speak with alumni who are leveraging their Holy Cross education to make a meaningful difference in the world around them. I'm your host, Maura Sweeney, from the class of 2007, director of Alumni Career Development at Holy Cross. I'm delighted to welcome you to today's show. Maura: In this episode we hear from Ché Anderson from the class of 2011. A New York native, Ché now claims Worcester as home. After making his mark on campus as a co-founder of the Brother to Brother Committee, Ché continues to make a positive impact on the Worcester community as an alumnus. Currently working as deputy cultural development officer for the City of Worcester, Ché was one of the organizers of the POW! WOW! Worcester Mural Festival. First debuting in 2016, POW! WOW! Worcester is an annual week-long festival that has already curated over 130 pieces of public art. For this great work, Ché was named to Worcester Business Journal's 40 Under 40 list in 2018. Maura: Christian Haynes, from the class of 2020, speaks with Ché about how this work came to be. Starting with his childhood in New York City, they speak about the many people and moments that have shaped Ché as a professional and as a leader. Filled with inspiring takeaways, their conversation showcases the power of putting the Holy Cross mission into action in the community. Christian: I'm here with my man, Ché Anderson. Ché: Hello there. Christian: So let's go ahead, it's your boy Christian, you already know what it is. So I'm talking about... I got to bring myself into this. Ché: I hear you, I hear you. Christian: First question, is it Ché or Shae? I know you have people that have known you for about 10, 20 years that still call you Shae. Ché: Yes, they do, my name is Ché Anderson, hard Ch with the accent over the E. I was named after Ernesto Ché Guevara, and oddly I got that name because my grandmother, rest her soul, was a Black Panther and she was a Black Panther from Harlem. And she raised my father strictly in that environment, and so having his first born son, he wanted to give me a name that, from the way I hear it, was powerful but that said, I would cause a little bit of trouble. And initially he wanted to name me Huey after Huey Newton. Ché: And my mother was just like, "No, I don't want that name". So they landed on Ché, because it was unique, and because they both thought that he was a really interesting and powerful figure. And so you could imagine growing up, now 30 years and people going, "Well either you have a lot to live up to", or, "Do you know what he was about or what he did?". And it's like, "yes", I've read every biography and autobiography I can of that person. Christian: That's wow. Did you feel that type of environment, that Black Panther type in your environment growing up, in your household growing up? Ché: I think that... It's funny, my mom was a correction officer, and worked on Rikers Island in New York. Which, for those that don't know, it's an interesting facility, to say the least. Ché: And I think that my mother always, drove home how important it was to be aware of myself and all my situations. Not only what it meant to walk a street, but what it means to walk the street as a black male, and how that can be perceived by different people. And so some of that was in the ideologies and philosophies of those in the Black Panther party, some of those are just growing up as a black person in New York City, and some of that is from my grandmother coming from South Carolina. So I think that, when you have family, all that legacy comes with you in the way that you're raised or brought up, or the different lessons you're taught. Christian: That's a lot. Ché: It is, it's heavy. Christian: It is heavy. I think that's the right word to use. Do you ever ask your mother why correctional officer was like... Ché: Yeah, apparently my mom was trying to figure it out, I think like most people are in life, in their early twenties and I think she knew that there were some really interesting opportunities and good pertinent opportunities in civil service. And for her, she had actually a friend who was taking the exam to be an officer, and so she said, "You know what, good pension, good paying job if I have a family", and she was recently married, "This could be a great fallback for the family". And then lo and behold, nine months into her tenure, that's when she found out she was pregnant with me. And she did it for 22 years, and went again from Rikers, which is one of the most notorious prisons in our country to working at Manhattan Courts, which is a little more relaxed. Ché: But my mom is the toughest person I know. She's a soldier, she's a warrior, but also somehow like the most loving person ever know. Christian: How close were you and your grandmother, from your mother’s side? Ché: Very, My dad actually wasn't really around much growing up. So my mom's side is who I really knew well. And so my grandmother was the one that kind of took care of me while mom was at work, and so she got to hear a lot of my first words, and first things like that. And my grandmother, it's odd, for work, she would actually clean houses, and so I spent a lot of my Saturday and Sunday mornings going with her to affluent people's houses and sitting on couches watching cartoons. Ché: And so it was an interesting dichotomy, growing up in the Amsterdam Projects where I grew up, which public housing, and then going to these affluent Central Park West houses and seeing what it's like to have a doorman, what it's like to have people who are throwing words like sommelier around, and not having any idea what that meant. And having fancy dogs, and having big flat screen TVs before we had that, when we still had the TV with the knob on it. Which was... but again, all that frames kind of who you are as you go up, right? So because of that I think I always felt comfortable everywhere. Because I was able to experience that at an early age, and around all kinds of people. Because I was able to see all sorts of people from, again, the penurious that were struggling, trying to figure it out, to the princely, that were running around throwing thousands of dollars at their kids, or their nieces and nephews. Christian: That's pretty tough, I thought we had a similar background. My mom was cleaning... she was a home attendant, taking care of the elderly. Coming from the Projects, even going to these houses in Bushwick at the time. They weren't the best houses, but they were still houses. And I guess you could say it's similar, from coming from the Projects not really having nothing, to seeing these fish tanks, these bigger TVs, these rooms that, more than one bedroom, more than two bedrooms. These people have a lot more than me, it's not a lot, but it's a lot more than me. And just spending time with my mother like that, I guess that made me more comfortable being in different spaces, like you say. Christian: But I remember the first time I learned about you, hear about you, learn about you, because in class I was into stats, psych stats, and I was on the website, Holy Cross website in a see 40 under 40. So what stood out to me was that title, and it was a black man. So I got to figure out what this is, and I realized he was a Holy Cross alum. I was like, the first person I had- Marcellis. I know you know this man. Ché: Big shout to Marcellis Perkins too. Christian: Of course, he got some questions for you too. I was like, "Who is this man?", He was like, "Yeah, Ché Anderson, yada yada, alumni 2011". And we actually going to meet up pretty soon, I'll come through if you want, and then that was the first time I met up with you at Crossroads. I'm like, "Yeah, he seemed like a cool dude, talk fast". Ché: I do talk fast, sorry about that. Christian: No, you're good, yeah yeah yeah yeah... no but you talk real fast. I was like, "Yeah, he seem like a cool dude", I remember the first time you mentioned... That was the first time you mentioned to me that you had connects with the Pawtucket Red Sox, and then there was a big thing at the time that they were coming from... Ché: From Pawtucket to Worcester. Christian: Yeah to Worcester, I think they made it here right? Ché: Yeah, they are opening day is April, 2021. Christian: Yeah so, baseball was a big thing for me, still is. So I was like, "Yeah, I got to say connect to this man right here". Christian: But I know you got a lot of work with art and street art, so just going back to your childhood or teenage years, whatever, do you remember your first time experiencing that or seeing it and admiring it. Whether it was street art, art, any type of art form? Ché: Yeah, so my mom, when she did have days off, we had to go somewhere, every time. I think that part of her raising me was that she wanted me to experience everything that she couldn't. And that literally meant everything. Some Saturdays we would just go for a walk and we'd walk Central Park and walk down Fifth Avenue and just window shop, but it was cool to just see all the different things people were getting, and FAO Schwarz, which was down on 59th and then Fifth Avenue, the toy store from Big with the big piano and we'd go in there, and I'd inevitably convinced her to get me like a Ninja Turtle or something. But I had to see it, it was this big experience and we'd go to the American Museum of Natural History, or we go to the Guggenheim. And often I was way too young to really comprehend it, but my mom tried to make sure I saw everything. And I think that that... Those are some of my earliest memories experiencing art. And I remember walking through parts of Harlem, or parts of Brooklyn, or lower Manhattan, and you see graffiti and places but you're kind of fed this narrative that that's bad, that's desolate areas, you don't want that.   And oddly, it probably wasn't until seven or so years ago that I had this experience, and it's actually what led me on this path that I thought was really interesting. I was in Worcester, Post grad, living in a city I was sort of familiar with, but I didn't get off the Hill as much as I probably should have while I was a student. And the artist Banksy, from London, one of the most prominent public artists living today in modern history was doing a residency in New York City.   And my friends were running around taking pictures and posting them on Instagram, and I needed a new cool profile pic so I ran down to New York and I was blown away by how many people were traveling to New York City to catch a glimpse of this artwork. I came from Massachusetts, people were coming from Connecticut, and from Jersey, and growing up in New York, and you get this, quite often you stayed in your borough.   If you didn't have to travel to see family or a close friend that lives somewhere else. If you were from Manhattan, you stayed in Manhattan. If you were from Harlem, which is part of Manhattan, but you stayed in Harlem and that was it. And so people were coming from Staten Island taking the ferry to look at this artwork and I said, "This is awesome, where else is this happening?"   And eventually I started researching, and I learned about Wynwood, and more about what's happening in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia has this mural arts program that's been changing the city since the 1970's and I was like, "Hey, Worcester could do this, we have the wall space for sure, but we have a creative community, we've always kind of been an alternative community, let's see where it goes". And that was kind of it from there, it took off.   But it's one of those things where it's... I tell people, "You grew up in New York City and you don't really appreciate growing up in New York City until you leave New York City".   You know what I mean? You don't realize how many things you have at your fingertips, and how alive the city is, and how active it is, until you're at a city that closes down at midnight and you're just like, "What's going on?" Christian: I'd say 10 o'clock. Ché: Or until you're at a place and you're like, "Aw man, I can't sleep and I'm starving", but there's no bodega. Or you're like, "Aw man, I really want a Uber or taxi", and it's like, "No, there are none in the area right now, it's too late". And so it's not lost on me that what really made me appreciate being a New Yorker was not living in New York, and having to sort of figure out where to find the pockets that made me feel like I was home. Christian: I would've thought that you done a lot of research about graffiti, especially in the 80's in New York. Ché: Oh yeah, of course, at this point I have, but growing up, no. And I tell people this all the time, I think that people see 40 under 40, I got this award for this public art project that I'm always taking pictures with murals and I'm doing talks, and stuff about murals... That's all in the last 10 years. I didn't study that, I'm not classically trained in any of that. There are people that'll bring up famous artists to me, from different movements, and I'm just like, "Nope, no idea what you're talking about". But it goes to a point of, people have their belief of a right way to do something, and that you have to be the biggest scholar and that. You don't, like you can just be passionate about something, you could really like something and find your niche in that world.   And that's what it is for me. I appreciate the culture, I respect it, I've learned my history on it. So I'm not just someone that's a culture vulture that came in and was like, "I'm going to do this thing". No, I've sat with graffiti writers, I've had to hold some graffiti writers names close to the vest because no one needs to know that. But the fact of the matter is that as a person who appreciates neo-contemporary art, which is just the really fancy way of saying street art or graffiti, I was able to come humbly to a table and have a seat at it now, and have just open conversation.   And so this is a person who... I want it to be a lawyer, I was a poli- sci major, I interned with the Manhattan DA for seven years, that was it for me. And so to go from that, to this sort of hobby that's become a big part of my now job and everything else, I think is a testament to the fact that if at 23, 24, 25 you find something that's really keeping you up at night, and that's making you wake up early in the morning, go pursue that. There's no right or wrong way to do life, we're all just figuring it out. Christian: Yeah. You mentioned neo... What is it? Ché: Oh, neo-contemporary art. It's a recently used, made up term, to allow people to contextualize what street art is. Street art has this sort of trivial, kind of fun sound to it, but if I talk to you about Renaissance art, you're like, "Oh wow, that's Renaissance art". Or if I mention modern art you're, "Oh my God, that's modern".   So people started calling street art neo-contemporary, new-age contemporary art, because you're now having people that have taken artwork and put it outside to make it public, and now they're taking that same aesthetic and bring it back inside some museums, and galleries, and spaces like that. So it's just a newly coined term to make it sound more official. Christian: Sounds like... So I'm going to dance class right now, and it sounds like, what they deal with B-boy and B-girl, and turn it into break dance, it's a commercialize it. Do you think it's the same? Ché: It's similar, I think that there are... the sad reality of it is that there are certain cultural norms that different people experience, and to make the masses feel comfortable with it, it becomes a different thing.   It's like when you talk about hip hop versus rap, there's none of this. But for some people, it's like, "Well, hip hop is a bit more nuanced, and safe, and rap is grungy and dirty and raw", and I tell people when it comes to street art and graffiti and such, I don't see a difference.   I think that they are synonyms, it's semantics. Both are generally painted with spray paint, outdoor. The difference is that one tends to be formalized and legal, and one's illegal. But if I paint a beautiful portrait of Dr. King on a wall, but I do it illegally, but it's gorgeous. It's perfect rendering, is that graffiti or is that street art? If I pay you $2,000 to paint your name on my wall, is that graffiti or street...   We get too deep into the weeds of it. Sometimes you got to just appreciate it. Again, I've seen some of the most beautiful art I've seen, bar none, gallery, museums included, online included. I've seen some gorgeous things people do with letters. And you think about typography in general, and how lettering, and hand lettering, and hand scripting, and hand styling has grown right from the clothes you wear, and the person who chose that font, to the way you type. There's a certain nuance to that.   And I've seen some of the best done publicly, by just graffiti writers. But that's just me. Christian: I think you did mention this, but do you make art yourself? Any type of art? Singing doesn't count cause you say you can't sing. Ché: Ow man, I can sing, just not well is what I'm saying. I don't do visual art.   But here's a fun fact that most people don't know about me. I write poetry. I have since I was younger. I don't perform it, I don't really share it, but I do. I've always done that, it's been what I turned to when I'm really stressed out or something, I write down a poem about something. And it's one of the main reasons why when I was on campus, and we had this organization called the Brother to Brother committee, we did this poem Black Man Rising, and we did it. A big part of doing that was that... it was like my outlet to actually perform some semblance of poetry. So no, I don't draw or anything. Christian: But you mentioned the Brother to Brother committee. Ché: Yeah. Christian: Turn into the Male Involvement Coalition, which I am the co-chair of. And we just performed Black Man Rising in The Griot. Did you hear about that? Ché: I did not hear about this particular, no I didn't. Christian: I do have a video I'll show you after. Ché: I need that, I need to see it. Christian: And we did perform it in my sophomore year at BSU fashion show at Mechanics Hall. Ché: Do you kick it off? Christian: Yeah. Ché: Are you the, "Look at yourself again. Alright... alright... You're not a Black Man Falling, You're a Black Man Rising, by James H. Chapman. Christian: We switched it up, it was dedicated to Rob Jones. Ché: Okay. All right, I hear you. Christian: It was a cool experience, and I just found out that you were the founding members of Brother to Brother committee. So talk to me about that and how it was back then. Ché: So when I was a sophomore, there was a conference members of the camps were invited to, and it was called the CHAS conference, the coalition for higher achievement and success... consortium for higher achievement success. And they had one that was specific to black and brown males. And so a group of us attended it, and were so uplifted at Skidmore by the people we're hearing from.   I believe at Skidmore, by the people we were hearing from and hearing new initiatives at other colleges and campuses, when we came back to campus, we ended up just meeting a bunch of times and discussing some of the issues that were affecting people in our communities. As we were talking about doing things inevitably, we hit a point where we started doing events but we weren't a recognized student organization. We were just a bunch of students doing these things that having talks, having dialogues, facilitating conversations and we were just dynamic. You had students that wanted to be architects, that wanted to be lawyers or wanted to be doctors that were athletes, that were thespians. So we realized we kind of had something and said, "Okay, we could formalize this in RSO." There was Jeff Harris, who was class of 2012 went to high school with me and there were these two things we did in high school.   One was a daily affirmation and the other one was Black Men Rising that Jeff performed. So he introduced that to the campus and that became our calling card for this group. Then Antonio Willis-Berry, he was 2013, there was this Shawn whose last name is escaping me, but he was class of 2013, Jose Paz, who was class of 2012. We just had this group. Then there was a gentleman named Tyrone Billingsly who was kind of the elder statesman of our group along with Eric Collazo. The two of them didn't want a role officially. They were happy being like ex-official members but just guiding us because they'd been here longer. So when we finally got recognized, I was a senior advisor and Jeff was one of the co-chairs and we sort of just became this network of men on this campus that just wanted to talk about issues that impacted or afflicted us or just talk about uplifting things that were happening in the community, talk about music, eat some good food.   It really was his brotherhood that got developed. It's funny because initially, the way I became the Brother To Brother Committee is it started out as a Black and Brown Coalition, which sounded militant for some people, which we were cool with. But we said, "You know what? If indeed, we want to open this up, there's an opportunity," and we realized, You know what? There were folks on campus who weren't Black or Brown that were extreme allies, that were on the front lines for all these conversations and so we shouldn't exclude them like that. They're our brothers in arms. To be honest, there were women on campus who were willing to pick up arms, so to speak, and stand on those front lines and protest and argue with us in the same way. So there was this sort of overarching brotherhood, sisterhood, familial aspect of it.   But it all started with this group of brothers. So that was kind of that. What was crazy is, in the very first year as a recognized student organization, we have this picture that I love of ... there were five of us and we held seven awards from the SGA award ceremony, three for the organization and four for individual members of the organization. I was like, "This has to be a record for a first-year organization." It felt great to sort of have to prove why we belonged and then show like with our work that we were here just to make the campus a community, like a true community, which is wild.   Honestly, I remember the first time you told me about ... first of all I heard about the Men Involvement, the MIC. I was just like, "That sounds familiar. What happened to the BBC in it?" I think Rob Jones was just like, "Oh yeah. It kind of became this other group." I remember meeting you and Marcellis and some other brothers and I was like, "I couldn't have hoped for anything better." Part of it, it makes you sad. You're like, "Wow, they have some of the same conversations we had almost a decade ago." You wonder if that's sort of just the nature of being on a campus, having new students and you're always onboarding new people. But to see that there were people here who were dedicated and you know what I mean? It makes me happy to like sit across from you and be like, "Oh man, this is me 10 years ago." Christian: I appreciate that. I really do. I think that's the reason why we ended up calling it MIC because they were people who didn't identify as being Black or Brown, but who had the same struggles that we have as males and that's why we're open to any male. Our meetings are open to anybody. There are a lot of people who want to help us, who feel like even if they don't agree with some of the things that we believe in, they want us to know that. I think that results into a great dialogue, great conversations and us doing things on campus to made the campus better, so yeah. Ché: So Black Man Rising was super controversial the first time we did it. Christian: Why? Ché: Because effectively, you had this group of ... and our first group that did Black Men Rising were Jeff Harris, 2012, who played basketball, Freddie Santana, who's Puerto Rican, from New York, my year, 2011. Mudiaga Ohimor, who my year as well. Mud was 250, 6' 8". He was a big dude. Jonathan St. Firmin who was another New York guy who we know. Jonathan is probably like 5' 9" and if he's taller than 5' 9" and he's listening, I'm sorry Jonathan, but about 5' 9" to me, probably like 150, like a smaller dude and then myself. So you had this interesting range of gentlemen. Some were quieter, some were bigger, into parties. Some were athletes, some weren't, but you had this sort of force of effectively militant looking men talking about the powers of a Black man on a predominantly White campus.   So people were like, "You know what? This may not be the best thing for us, where we come off as too aggressive." We were just like, "Us? Aggressive? We're going to do it anyway. We're going to do it anyway." So we did. There were people inside our group, there were people inside the administration who were kind of like, "You know, this could not go the right way." We said, "There's something to speaking your truth that's important. This is what we experience and maybe we have a dialogue around that afterwards." But we did it and we got a standing ovation and organizations around Worcester asked us to come off campus and perform it, because it was something that was unique at the time for this group that you may not always see together kind of speaking truth to power, if you will. So yeah man, it was something. Christian: I feel that, no, I definitely feel that. I remember first being introduced to it ... My first year as the MIC freshman and sophomore year it was, I'll say, very slow. Not a lot of people attended. But like myself personally, I didn't feel as if it was that important. I wasn't into this, who I am now, into this like Black man power, being a Black man, especially on this campus. I wasn't really into that. I was just trying to go through school, get my degree, all that stuff, whatever. But then I really talked to Marcellis and other people, they introduced me to that. Like the importance of being a Black man. Christian: I know even coming from New York, the only thing I had to worry about was the police, because there wasn't a lot of White people that I really had to worry about. I came from a really mixed culture, like everybody from every ... It's New York. You know what I'm saying? You see everybody. But just being on campus was a different vibe and I didn't get that notion until sophomore year. Towards the end of sophomore year, that's when I would ... actually, towards the end of sophomore year, second semester after we did Black Man Rising I saw the power that we had. I saw the audience that we had, the support that we had. It opened my eyes and it was just like, "Damn. We do got power." Ché: You do. Christian: When you talk about it being controversial now, it will make me do it even more. I think freshman year and sophomore year, beginning of sophomore year I was like, "Hey, it was controversial. Let me not ... " Ché: It takes time to, I think, part of the collegiate experience, particularly if you're a student of color or someone whose English wasn't their first language or something to that effect there's the natural onboarding, right? You're 18, 17, 19 years old trying to figure out what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Trying to make it to 8:30 classes when everyone knows they suck. Christian: Mine was actually pretty good. Ché: Well lucky you, I guess, but you have that experience and then it's how do you socialize? How do you meet people? How do you make friends? How do you figure out who you are? Who are you, right? Whose are you? How do you look? How do you dress? What do you comfortable in? There was a guy when I was at Holy Cross named Tom, everyone called him Pajama Pants Tom. Pajama Pants Tom literally wore pajama pants to everything. He worked at Kimball. He wore them to class. Pajama Pants Tom had a 4.0 and took six classes every semester from the time he was a first-year student. He audited classes because he just wanted to learn more. I think he got a Fulbright, went abroad, came back with long hair. Looked just like Jesus. It was amazing. Pajamas Pants Tom was one of the smartest people I ever met.   But if you looked at him and saw this kid walking into class in the winter in pajama pants and flip flops, you're like, "What's wrong with this person?" but he was comfortable with himself early on and so that didn't matter. So I think that some get there earlier but there's that dynamic of just like, "I'm just trying to get these A's and go on." But also real quick, I just have to shout out Shawn Johnson because I realized his last name was Johnson, as well as Matt Harper and Darien and Jose Paz and Jeremiah Gonzalez.   Darien Henry was actually our freshmen apprentice, our first year student who was part of the group. The reason why I had to shout them out the same way that Eric and Tyrone was, because when I say it was a brotherhood, like I meant that, right? Like Lance Williams, like there are people who I don't see all the time, but if ever something happened, if every one of them had a big thing, Tony Zelayandia, that's family. It really is. So from the time that we were 20, 21, 19 years old to now, I'm 30 it is intriguing to me to think I'm on campus and we started this thing here and now people are going to be class 2023 they're on campus and people are still joining this thing. Man, that's something. Christian: Yeah, we definitely got it. We got freshmen really into it. It's just the legacy that you have and you see it grow and grow and it's just amazing. I'm glad to be a part of that legacy. MIC... Brother to Brother... It's a brotherhood that's kind of... so I notice... so I read that your mother played a big part in you going to Holy Cross, right? Ché: Yeah. Man. Christian: I feel like the question is asked a lot, what made you go to Holy Cross? What made you stay at Holy Cross? Ché: That's a good question. When I was deciding where I wanted to go, being the first in my, I think, semi-extended family to go to college, my mom, who was like, "I have to do everything right with her firstborn," hit a point where she said, "You know. You need to go to Harvard." I was just like, "You're right. I should go to Harvard." So we looked at schools, mainly looked at Ivy league schools, but I was going to a Jesuit high school in Harlem, New York. Big shout out to Rice High School. Christian: Wait, what's the name of it? Ché: Rice High School. Christian: Right. I feel like I know people from there but it's not there anymore. Ché: Kemba Walker- Christian: Right. Okay. He's not there anymore. Ché: ... plays for the Boston Celtics went to Rice High School. But no, my high school is not there anymore, which is sad. It's sad. The bodega across street's still there. Christian: It's still there. Ché: Rice not there. But I was looking at a lot of Ivy league schools. My mom, wanted me to look at Morehouse because she thought there was something special about being, again, around other men who look like me and maybe had similar struggles or similar situations. Actually, a brother who was at Rice High School said, "You know what I think what would be a great institution for him? College of the Holy Cross." My mom looked into it, saw similarities to my high school. Thankfully, it wasn't an all boys school, all men's college. I did that for four years in high school, but she said, "I think this would be a great space for you. It's not too big. Great academics." At that time I felt that I was an athlete, so she was like, "Maybe you can do something around sports." I did not. I did not while I was here. Christian: We're going to talk about that too. Ché: No. But after talking about it, it actually was my second choice. After all the looking at colleges, I thought I wanted to go to Columbia. For me, I was like, "That's where I'm going, it's 20 blocks from where I grew up. One of my best friends in the world was going there." It was perfect. My mom said, "You need to leave New York." It actually is one of the best decisions she's ever sort of made for me. At the time I was angry, but her thing was so much of my family is in New York and stayed in New York and I needed to see something else. I had to see another part of the world. Oddly enough, it was only four hours away, but I said, "Okay. We'll see Holy Cross. Then if I don't like it, I guess I'll transfer." During my first semester here, I actually was uncomfortable.   I just it was too far and all my friends were back in New York and I was trying to acclimate to the new environment and Worcester wasn't New York City. I remember calling her and saying, "Ma, I need to go back home. I got to transfer to Columbia." She said, "Nope." She said, "Nope. I'm not helping you with any of the tuition, so you do that if you want to." Christian: You're paying for it. Ché: Right and I was just like, "Nope. I'm broke." I think for her it was, "You know what? You got to see this through and at the end of the day, if you don't like it, come back to New York." I find it to be intriguing that now it's been 13 years since I first got to Worcester and I still live here. Now I'm one of the biggest Cheerleaders in the city. But that's because of my mom kind of making me get here and honestly because of the campus, over time, making me fall in love with it. There was a person here before Rob named Boyd Servio-Mariano, Dr. Boyd Servio-Mariano. He's a doctor now, so I got to say that. Doc, which is what I call him, he spotted me as a first year student. There was a competition, a dance contest, during ALANA Student Weekend. Oh yeah, I used to boogie. I used to get down. So I got up on stage and won this dance contest. Christian: You won. Ché: Yeah. Yes I did. Christian: What was the competition? Ché: It was just they played music and you've got the freestyle to it and they played like an old Chris Brown song. It was Run It or something. I won and that was Friday night. Then Saturday night they did a trivia contest for Explore Asia. There was a group called Asia, which was for Asian students or Asian-American students. Christian: It's still here. Ché: So they had an Asian trivia contest and I went up against a kid, Chris Bondoc who actually went to my first high school before I transferred high schools. He's an Asian-American student. We had a trivia contest and I won. Point for me, take that Chris, all these years later. But Doc grabbed me and was just kind of like, "If you come here, you got to come find me." I was like, "All right, older guy. That's strange." Then I do come to campus, I realized because he went to my high school and at the time again, I was a young person with a lot of energy and didn't know all the best places to put it, so I was just running around and going crazy.   He grabbed me up and said, "Hey, you should come to this multicultural peer education group." I was just like, "No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not. I'm sorry." Then the MPEs, received tickets to the Boston Celtics game in Worcester. I said, "Oh, I need tickets to this game." He goes, "Only way to get tickets is if you come to a few meetings." I was just like, "Ah. You got me." Christian: He got you. Ché: So I came to the meetings and I loved it and I loved what they were talking about and I was all for it. then I went to the Celtics game and that was it. I'd inadvertently found myself a mentor. We literally had a conversation this past weekend. That's my guy. But he's another person who worked in the Office of Multicultural Education and picked me up and helped mold me into a productive person. That's what helped keep me at Holy Cross that he introduced me to guys like Tyrone Billingsly and Eric Collazo and other brothers on campus that were doing great things. He kind of forced me into, or some organizations that led to me getting on the BSU board and knowing the infrastructure to help found the Brother To Brother Committee.   He got me involved off campus and working with local junior high schools and high schools and talking to young people off campus and understanding what nonprofits role in developing a city were or an interfacing with a college. He kept me on the right kept me in shape when I stepped out of line, like a big brother would. So really, I think that he's a big part of that. I had somebody to look out for me because honestly, we all have on campus who knows kind of what happens, right? Like do I just spiral out and kind of not go on to do some things I've done. I don't know. So I think that's what kept me. My mom got me here, to be honest and then I had a mentor, I had a big brother who made sure I finished out strong. Christian: You kind of answered my next question. Who you we went to when anything went well or went wrong. Ché: I had some upperclassmen, like I said, Tyrone. I got Lawrence Dickson who play basketball. He's a cool dude. I saw him at the game the other night. Eric Collazo who was my RA my first year, rocky start, but then I was dancing at his wedding. When I say the brotherhood is strong, I mean that. So I think those are the people I turn to. And then there are people younger than me too, right? Like Jeff who wants a high school with me was a guy I roomed with my junior year when he was a sophomore. We had a quad. My first year roommate was my roommate every single year. That's still one of my best friends. If anyone could ever marry him, which, tough order, I'll be his best man. That's that.   Big shout out to Stefan. But I feel like I had this network also and I have to give her a huge shout out. Brianna Turner, who was my year at Holy cross. Licensed Social Worker, dynamic woman. They used to call us the velvet glove and the iron fist because Bri could make something out of nothing. She was just dynamic and got things done. We were the two co-chairs or the leads, I guess, because NPS didn't have co-chairs. So she was very task-oriented, goal-oriented, task master, bullet point list and I was the velvet glove. Like I'm going to make the sound beautiful and like sell it to the masses. It worked well because we both knew our strengths.   She was another person who those days where I was like, "I don't feel like doing this," would pick me up by my collar and be like, "Nah, come on. We got stuff to do. Let's get after it. So I learned a lot about project management as a student here because of Bri. I don't think Bri would even consider that or acknowledge that or call it project management. But she was someone who got me to understand, task management. I took that with sort of the personality that I had and I'm like, that's what helped me become a project manager for the City. Christian: That's fire. So I will have to say my person is Rob Jones. Shout out to Rob Jones. Ché: Big shout out to Rob Jones. Christian: He put me into MIC, put me on to a MIC and kind of like forced me into MIC, in a way. Ché: I see a trend. That was the trend. Christian: I think we all need those people to go to even just to talk to. I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this, but did you ever feel uncomfortable because of how you looked, or who you ... Christian: ... feel uncomfortable because of how you looked or who you were on campus? Ché: Yeah, I- Christian: Or even, so sorry to cut you off, have you ever felt the impostor syndrome? Ché: Oh, I still feel imposter syndrome now. Yeah. To answer the first part, your question, I am a lot of things. There are a lot of words to describe me, right. But for me, I'm an African American male from New York City, right. I love hip hop and rap music. I love ridiculous movies. I love sports. Some of that is considered stereotypical, right. Expected of me as a six foot three male who looks like me. And I think I struggled with that at first when I got to campus, right. I started listening to a lot more Bruce Springsteen, and Def Leppard, and Poison, and Mötley Crüe, and country music, which I never listened to growing up, but I was like all right, Dixie Chicks is going to be it because I want it to fit in to what a Holy Cross student was, right. I stopped wearing the stuff that I was wearing and started switching up and going, all right. I could wear some khakis and boat shoes. Christian: Right what you're wearing now. Ché: Yeah, but I wear this for work. Don't come at me like that, all right.   Don't do me like that. I have to go in a closet, all right. But honestly, right, I was just like this is what's expected of a Holy Cross student. And I went through that for a year of just why am I wearing these cardigans all the time? Honestly, right. Because that I thought that was ... And then it took me a minute to get comfortable in myself to be like you know what? If you didn't hear the new Gucci Mane album, that's your fault. You're missing out, right. I'm not the one ruined and things. And yeah, I mean I dress like this for work, but in all seriousness, I think that getting back into whatever I felt was appropriate for me and whatever culture I represented, it took a minute, but I got there. And I think that as far as imposter syndrome, I think that was part of it, right. I was trying to acclimate and blend in because I wanted to feel like I was a part of something, not realizing I was already a part of something.   And even now I find myself in some rooms, or on some boards, or on some committees and I walk in and I'm just like I can't believe I'm here. And I think that almost everyone feels. I know famous, well-paid, well-off people that I've got a chance to meet who will confide that they feel like they don't belong in some of the rooms they get, or they feel like they shouldn't have won the awards compared to some of their peers. And I think that's just natural. You know what I mean? I think when you do something extraordinary, quite often you don't expect to do something extraordinary. It happens and you fall into it, and you're like oh my God, here's this thing. And a lot of that is just a team around you. I have a team around me of friends, and coworkers, and confidence, mentors and mentees that will lift me up when I need it. And like, "You did some dope, you did a TED talk. That's great. Enjoy that."   And the ones that will deflate my ego sometimes. They're just like, "You're acting out. Relax. All right, let's not forget the way you dress for work," like you did to me. So I think that's all important to your makeup. A lot of people will say look at your five closest friends and that'll tell you who you are. And I think that that's a really simplistic way to look at it, but the people that you surround yourself with, the people that you spend most of your voluntary time with, that tells you a lot about who you are and who you can be. They're the ones that define some of your limitations, however you may see them, because they're going to limit you or they're going to push you to whatever's next. And so I'm lucky to have some people that I consider good friends or just kind of friends that I can call on and say, "Here's this crazy opportunity." They'll be like, "Go get it. Go after it. And if you don't get it, at least now you know how to do this thing that can maybe get the next opportunity to you." Christian: Told you I was going to get back to that athletic dream that you had, because honestly, all jokes aside, I had the same goal. I was trying to walk on to the baseball team. It didn't work out. I think that was probably the toughest thing I ever had to face all my life. I mean I went from a real high to a real low, and it was just like I was doing things that I probably would've never done before. I felt like I was trying to find myself again because before that happened I was a baseball player. After that, I didn't know who I was or what I was. I was really trying to find myself. I feel like you probably went through the same thing. Ché: Similar. I think that that I was always a nerd first. You know what I mean? I was always an academic, but I love sports and I was okay at them, and so it's funny, I got here. That did not work out, obviously, walking on or anything. And then played club basketball, intramurals. We won intramurals four years, twice in the A league, twice in the B league, a big shot, but we lost the championship. Anthony DiMichele, who's a football player, they beat us. And if I don't mention it, he was going to mention it, or make a comment or something when they posted it, so I just got to put it out there. But I never stopped playing. The school is getting a new field house, right. And that's fine. But back before they destroyed the last field house, my name was on the back board up until two years ago, right. Because we did a dunk contest and I dunked and put my name up with a sticker. That is like the best part of any legacy I got sports-wise on campus, and that was cool. That was cool that it still stayed there. But I think, back to your point, at some point you have to rebrand, just figure out what your thing is, right. It's like if you're a person that threw amazing parties in college, and then you look back and you're like wow, I'm 53 and I still throw these crazy house parties. Not saying that's not fine. If that's your thing, cool. Shout out to all my 53-year-olds throwing parties. But that just wouldn't be what I want to be known for, right. I'd hope that I had accomplished something in my life. And I think that a big part of the growth of your experience through your time on a campus is understanding that you can be dynamic. You don't have to be ... In high school you kind of fall into well, I am an athlete. I'm a great student. I'm the captain of the chess team. You have that thing that defines you. Ché: And I feel like as you grow, you want to be a utility person, you want to be dynamic. You want people to go, "Oh yeah, Christian. I know him from this thing," in one room and then another room go, "Oh right, but he's also really great at this thing." I think that you can be many things to many people, and that's something that it took me a while to learn, but once I did, that was it. I want it to be the Renaissance of all Renaissance. Christian: So I got a lot more questions. So all right, after your Holy Cross years. Oh wait, so a question. What are the untold stories of Holy Cross from your end? Ché: The untold stories of Holy Cross. Christian: Yeah, spilling the beans out here. Ché: There's a trillion untold stories of Holy Cross. Christian: We just need one. Ché: All right. One thing that happened on campus one year was we were talking about the experiences that students of color have on predominant white institutions campus. And we thought about some of the HBCUs and how they have yard shows, right. Stomp shows and such. And so we threw one. So when I was a senior, we figured out ways to finagle some money. Christian: On campus? Ché: On campus. And some of the administrators had contacts because they're a part of historically black Greek letter organizations. And we rented a stage. And right in the Kimball Quad, right down the stairs, the same way they do battle of the bands, we took that stage, we brought out four step teams. We had the Rhythm Nation Steppers also perform. We had people cooking out, right. They were cooking burgers, catfish, fried fish, like they did back down South. People were doing sides and soul food. We have food from the local places. Addie. Do you know Addie? Addie wasn't around at the time, this place called Sweet Teas, but yeah, same kind of feel, right. We even got some food from up at Home Style, right. And we got a microphone, and we had a DJ, and the DJ was playing hip hop, urban music the whole time. And then when there was time for show time, they did their step show, and we had a ball. And then we throw after party afterwards up at Hogan.   And for me it was amazing because for that six-hour period we got to feel like the campus was ours, right. And I think that that, for me, was a beautiful thing because the students came from BC, and from BU, and Becker, and Clark. I mean it was packed, not just Holy Cross students, because other people wanted to see what it'd be like if they also, at their traditionally none necessarily super diverse campus, can come and see just what a mass of us would look like, and what a party for all of us looked like. And it was something. And so I'd say that it was something I wish would've continued after we were gone because I think it is a good reminder of what can happen.   Similar to when Holy Cross played Howard, and Howard brought the band, and the dancers, and everyone up. And then four of us ended up going down to Howard the next weekend to visit. Class one Friday wasn't important that weekend. But we went down to Howard and we got to go to their homecoming, and there were so much love from Howard. They brought us on the field. We got to do the swag surf with everybody, because it was just oh, look at these three students of color who are extending themselves beyond Worcester to come down here to this area. And so that love was something that literally inspired us to bring it back and have this yard show step show. So there's some stuff that doesn't make it through kind of the storytelling pass down components of what we're doing, but is something that one of the things I hang my hat on this campus. Christian: You definitely should. Ché: I was excited. Christian: But transitioning into after college. So MCPHS. Got it. Boom. University. Right. Assistant director of engagement or student affairs? Ché: Student activities, student engagement. Christian: Okay. And initially wanted to get into law and government, but ended up there. Ché: At a college. Christian: Right. If you want to talk about that, you can. Ché: Yeah. Christian: Yeah, go ahead. Ché: Yeah. So I was prelaw, poli-sci. I got to my senior year and realized I don't think I want to be a lawyer anymore. And after my mom stopped crying, she was like, "What are you going to do?" Christian: I mean hold on. Not that there aren't any lawyers coming out of Holy Cross. Did she expect that? Ché: Oh yeah. No, for her, that was it. Christian: Interesting. Ché: My son, the lawyer was how a lot of conversations started. That was a thing. Christian: So Thanksgiving was- Ché: It was awkward. It was awkward, yeah. I only got one serving of mac and cheese, so you know how that goes. But she effectively was just like, "What are you going to do?" And I said, "For the first time in my life, I really don't know, but I do know I'm not moving home. I'm going to figure it out." And I start applying to jobs and looking for opportunities. And one of the former VPs here was Jackie Peterson, who's amazing. She recommended that I apply for the position at MCPHS. And I was staying on campus. I was working at [OME 00:49:20] for the summer, and they paid me a small stipend and then I got to live on campus, so I got a place to stay. And I interviewed for this position that was totally above my punching weight. You know what I mean? I was like I'm not going to get this. And Dean Peterson sends a recommendation and it got me the interview.   And again to that earlier point, right, sometimes you just need that foot in the door to make it happen, and I must've crushed the interview because they pulled me in and said, "Hey, we think you'd be great for this position." Right. First person ever in this position, I get to build and develop a program based on some other things they've been doing, and I said, "Let's do it." And I spent two years there working with students, working for students, engaging with people. The highlight of my time there is I got inducted into Phi Lambda Sigma, which is a pharmacy fraternity, not a pharmacist, but in this pharmacy frat, so shout out to all my brothers and sisters from Phi. Christian: I tried to hold it in. Ché: No, that's cool. That's cool. I got a pin and everything. It's official. But you know what? While there I had a supervisor who was a Dean of students, effectively the de facto leader of campus, named Shuli Xi, and he was so into the idea of me being a statesman. He would always say that to me. Don't be a politician, be a statesman. You want to be a person of and for the people and with the people, not just someone looking to get elected. And because of that, he brought me into his government affairs meeting. He made sure that when there was a consortium of the colleges that, I guess, I served on the student activities one, but also went to some of the student affairs ones in general with people who were in positions way above my own.   When I told him I wanted to join a committee at the chamber of commerce, he said, "Fine, and we'll give you the time off you need when you got to go to those meetings." When I told them I want it to be a Rotarian, and at the time I was one of the youngest Rotarians in the city, part of the Worcester Rotary Club, he said, "Great, we'd love to have MCPHS represented there." And so he supported sort of the dynamism of me going I don't know what I want to do, but I want to do everything and see what's going on. And he was cool with that. Even down to when I went and told him I was leaving to go work for the city, for the government, he wasn't like, "Oh my God," he was just like, "I'm sorry to lose you. But yeah, that's the next step of your life." He looked out for me as a person, which I appreciated so much. And my time there was great. I know a lot of pharmacists now and optometrists. Getting my glasses is super easy. If ever I need acupuncture, I get a discount.   That's sweet. But it was a great step in transitioning from 22 to 24 because I learned how to be in charge of something, right. Student activities was mine. The budget, I managed the Student Government Association, I developed a campus activities board and managed them. And so I learned project management, I learned people management. It was great, and it was a perfect transferable thing for kind of the next step in my career. So it was a kind of unique path. But again, it goes back to there's no right way to do anything. You kind of figure it out as you go. Christian: So I wanted to ask you what do you think has a big impact on a community? Let's say for yourself as an individual working at a desk, law and government. That's my view. Law and government. Or working with the community as you do now? Ché: So the answer I'm going to give you is a cop out answer, I'm going to let you know that, but there's a reason why. And so it is a reason why. Neither one of them, quite honestly, is more important than the other one. I think that they both, and as cliché as it sounds, are both equal for different reasons, right. I think that if you're a person that is solely behind a desk, and let's say you solely work on legal matters, on policy, on development of strategies, that is how you input change. That's how you impact things to a point that they're standardized, right. I can be a great leader and I can say, "You know what? As long as I'm in office, this is going to be the thing," but as soon as I'm out of office, if someone else just comes in and goes, "I don't believe in that," that's done. There's no policy there. There's nothing kind of on paper. There's no legal ramification of it. It only impacts a very small population or people at a certain time.   I think that when it comes to community development, community impact, you want something that has longevity, right. Every parent wants for their kid to not have to struggle the same way they did. I think that that should work as far as generations of constituents and community. I don't want the next you, or me, or whoever to have to fight the same fights I fought. Then what did I do for that time I was around? But I think that you want to be authentic to the place you are, and that there's a component that has to come from the community, right. Holy Cross' whole mission ... I just always say men and women for others. And then it was a shift to men, and women for and with others. And that shift is important, it's imperative, right. It's not about doing things for people, it's about doing things with people, bringing them along, having a conversation, knowing when it's time to lead and when it's time to follow.   And so I think that you got to work with the community to see what the community wants, right. Because you could have a great idea and the community could be like, "We don't care about this right now," right. "We have this other more dire thing." And so you have to know what the thing is before you can implement policy, or structure, or an infrastructure around it. But if you just have people that are, let's say, marching in the street, and fighting the man, and having ideas, but no-one flipped that switch to implement policy, well then you just have angry people, and another population of angry people who are mad that this population's angry, and they are just butting heads and not getting anything. If you just have people sitting in a room being bureaucrats, then nothing actually permeates to the community because you have no idea what the community wants. You're just doing whatever you saw online, or on TV and you think you're doing the best thing, but the two of you come together, that's how change actually happens. That's how real, positive, sustainable change happens.   So I'm a person that hates sitting behind my desk, to be honest. I'm not a fan of it. I'm a person that wants to be around people. And you have those days where you're like I've had nine meetings in a row. I haven't eaten. I've been just taking information in. But if I don't have time to go sit down and write that stuff up, and write those notes, and get it out to other departments to make things happen, or follow up with community partners because I didn't really understand something they said, but I want to do more with it, I'm missing the boat. So I know I just kind of said both, and that's not the answer you want, but I do think that both are equally important. Christian: Yeah, I kind of expect that coming from you. Ché: I mean, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Christian: Yeah. And you did mention the mission statement. Holy Cross mission statement. I feel like you have that before you even got to Holy Cross. Is that true? Ché: Oh yeah. That's the way I was raised. My mom said two things to me every day from the time that I was probably 3 or 4 going off to school, to the time that I was 18. My mother always said, "Hey, listen. Treat everyone the way you want to be treated," which is just basic. But to this day, she still, "Treat everyone the way you want to be treated, and be a leader, not a follower." To the point that when I was 10, she'd say, "Be a leader," and I'd say, "Not a follower. Leave me alone," but I think that for her there was something about making my own decision, and being able to decipher what's right from what's wrong.   And also whether I'm walking into any building, whether it's the person that's the concierge, or the person picking up trash, or the maintenance person, or the CEO of a company, you treat everybody with respect, and you show love to everyone. And I take that even beyond that, right. Whether I'm walking in City Hall and I'm talking to the mayor, or the grounds crew, or a person who might be homeless in front of City Hall, I say, "What's up?" I show love. I don't always have things to help, but I'm always going to give you respect as a human being.   And I think that that's something my mother instilled in me and then it moved on through all my schooling, and the Holy Cross sort of just drove it home a bit. But that's just the way that I was raised. Christian: So you got this mission statement Holy Cross, but then you got your own from back home: be a leader, not a follower. And so was the other one? Ché: Treat everyone the way you want to be treated. Christian: Treat everyone the way you want to be treated. I kind of struggle on that. There was one where treat everyone the way you think they should be treated. Ché: Yep. That one, I think, gets problematic. Christian: Yeah. Ché: I think no one wants me treated poorly, right? Christian: Right. Ché: So the idea is that you reciprocate that. I think treat everyone the way you think they should be treated gets into some real interesting things with some of your own biases or implicit biases or unrecognized issues you may have with some things. I think it's well-intended, but I think that it can lead to some interesting situations. Christian: And the one I never agreed with was treat everybody the same. Ché: Nope, same. I think though, whenever you talk about things like DEI, right, diversity, equity, inclusion, there's a reason that it's equity and not equality, right? There's an image people always paint of if you have three kids looking over a fence and they're different heights and you give them the same size box, that's equality. Everyone has the same stuff. That doesn't help all the kids, right? You want equity. You want the really short kid to have a taller box because then they can all see the game. And I think that in certain pockets of our communities, you're starting to see that. It needs to permeate more, but that equity is important. And that doesn't mean that you give everyone a dollar, right? The millionaire doesn't necessarily need that dollar, but that person that's struggling maybe needs $5 or $10 to make it out. And that's obviously me oversimplifying it, but I think that that's part of that being someone for and with others, you know what I mean? Christian: Yeah. Ché: It's the width to understand what the need is, and then it's the for that if you have more, you got to help out. And I don't mean to get all socialist here. That's not what I'm trying to do, but I'm being honest. Christian: Yeah, for real, bro. Ché: You know what I mean? You have to be realistic and then understanding what the needs are of people, if we're going to truly help and benefit people. Christian: Yeah. So I guess with the combination, if you have a combination with what your mother taught you and what Holy Cross taught you, have you ever came up with a mission statement that drives you to do the work you do now? Ché: The honest truth is that I have a statement that that drives me. It has a swear in it. You can figure out which word that is, that that is the one. I have two things that matter to me that drive everything I do. The first is I want to impact my community. And so that's whatever I have, right: time, talent, treasure, anything. I want to make sure that when all is said and done, whenever my last moment is here, that people said he cared and he did good by us, whatever that community can mean. And that can be my hyperlocal community, that can be my global community, whatever the case is.   The other is do cool stuff. And I think that for me, there's something special about doing projects that people think are interesting and fun. Not that there aren't things that are just that ... like making the microchip is important, and for some people that's super interesting. For the other people it's all right, whatever. But for me, I want to do stuff that people are like, "Aw man, that was awesome. That was an experience. That was a moment." Because creating moments is difficult in life and you hope to have and share a bunch with other people. So if I can combine the two and I can do things that are going to impact and change my community for the better and make sure that stuff is cool, that's what both allows me to rest but also keeps me up at night. You know what I mean? Christian: Yeah, I got you. Ché: Like thinking of how to do it, but then sleeping happy when I make it happen. Christian: Yeah, definitely feel that. What was your favorite project so far? Ché: One of them's a selfish answer, and one's not. I'm going to give you two quick ones. This year as part of the public art project POW! WOW! that I helped bring to Worcester, we were able to paint murals and do workshops and activations with youth in a public housing area of the city of Worcester. And we also painted on the abutting schools and did workshops in the abutting schools to this area. And so we got to work with a population that doesn't necessarily see academic development the same way, that doesn't feel it the same way, that may not even know it's happening, with kids that quite often feel overlooked. And I know, because I was one of those kids growing up.   And so to go over there and have these young people feel a new appreciation for the arts and feel like celebrities are coming around their neighborhood to paint, and getting tutorials from people that have worked with Dis

Here are my guesses for October 2020. Whether I'm right or wrong, it's still fun. If you like my show, please follow me on Twitter @TheAdamOBaseba1. If you really like it, you can support me on Patreon at Adamo Baseball Podcast. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/adam-magnusson/support

Yeah man. Life is a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes we have to deal with the bad for us to appreciate what we have. Some people will never get it, no matter what happens, good or bad. That's why no matter what, I stay humble. Whether I'm having the time of my life or deep in a crisis. That's why music is so important. It lifts you up when you're down. Lifts you up even higher when you're feeling great. So let this upbeat mix keep you feeling upbeat and smiling. Let's go!!! 00:00 - Bazarro intro 01:35 - I'm A Murderer - Arcangel & De La Ghetto ft. Mexicano 05:42 - Adictiva - Daddy Yankee ft. Anuel AA 09:08 - El Que Se Enamora Pierde - De La Ghetto ft. Darell 11:49 - Guaya - Wisin Y Yandel 15:27 - Oh Daddy - Natti Natasha 18:22 - Medusa - Tempo 20:44 - Bazarro Mic Break 21:50 - De Bichote - Almighty 25:59 - Pom Pom - Yandel 28:51 - Dile A El - Don Omar 32:01 - Me Enamore De Ti - Flex 35:13 - El Arte - Chyno Nyno 38:45 - Veo Veo - Wisin & Yandel 43:03 - Bazarro Mic Break 44:15 - Manicomio - Cosculluela 47:37 - Ya Lo Se - Natti Natasha 50:52 - Temes - Nengo Flow 54:43 - Por La Paz - Chyno Nyno ft. De La Ghetto 58:42 - Predica - Don Omar ft. Miri Ben-Ari 62:13 - Bazarro Mic Break 63:27 - Finish

Yeah man. Life is a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes we have to deal with the bad for us to appreciate what we have. Some people will never get it, no matter what happens, good or bad. That's why no matter what, I stay humble. Whether I'm having the time of my life or deep in a crisis. That's why music is so important. It lifts you up when you're down. Lifts you up even higher when you're feeling great. So let this upbeat mix keep you feeling upbeat and smiling. Let's go!!! 00:00 - Bazarro intro 01:35 - I'm A Murderer - Arcangel & De La Ghetto ft. Mexicano 05:42 - Adictiva - Daddy Yankee ft. Anuel AA 09:08 - El Que Se Enamora Pierde - De La Ghetto ft. Darell 11:49 - Guaya - Wisin Y Yandel 15:27 - Oh Daddy - Natti Natasha 18:22 - Medusa - Tempo 20:44 - Bazarro Mic Break 21:50 - De Bichote - Almighty 25:59 - Pom Pom - Yandel 28:51 - Dile A El - Don Omar 32:01 - Me Enamore De Ti - Flex 35:13 - El Arte - Chyno Nyno 38:45 - Veo Veo - Wisin & Yandel 43:03 - Bazarro Mic Break 44:15 - Manicomio - Cosculluela 47:37 - Ya Lo Se - Natti Natasha 50:52 - Temes - Nengo Flow 54:43 - Por La Paz - Chyno Nyno ft. De La Ghetto 58:42 - Predica - Don Omar ft. Miri Ben-Ari 62:13 - Bazarro Mic Break 63:27 - Finish

There's something about the cello. Whether I'm rocking out to a mash-up of pop tunes played by piano/cello duo The Piano Guys or listening in awe of Sheku Kanneh-Mason's emotional performance of Elgar's cello concerto, I truly love listening to the cello play just about anything. In today's episode, we'll learn a bit about the anatomy of the cello, what it means to play a solo, and listen to two very famous pieces of cello music. Be sure to also download this episode's listening calendar for a chance to hear cello tunes from all sorts of different genres.

Don’t try to avoid doing your duty, and don’t stand with those who plot evil, for the king can do whatever he wants. Ecclesiastes 8:3 NLTIf I'm being honest, lately I've recognized an area in my life that needs improving. Whether I'm home or away traveling, this issue finds a way into my psyche and when it sets in, it has been difficult to avoid.The issues? French fries!I really enjoy eating them, a lot, but I know I had been savoring them too much and it was starting to catch up to me. All that starch had me lethargic and large. I was avoiding my standard eating habits and it put in me in a dangerous position.We receive our assignment, and at that moment we are operating in free will. God will not force us to do anything. So should we avoid it, the consequences are on us to carry. At some point, a shift may occur and we accept our assignment. We go forth, and we accomplish what we've been tasked with, we confront what was once a hurdle. And with that, that's when we're able to acknowledge God, how He positioned us to do something, to edify the Kingdom.That's where we have to keep it precise with ourselves and others. If it's not for God, we'll lose our way and avoid our duty.Things commonly avoided today (and in the Bible) include:TruthConfrontationSocial IllsResponsibilityAvoidance is a coping mechanism used spiritually, though it's a non-spiritual response. For example, walking in your purpose can be intimidating if you're not ready to serve. Yet, if you get caught up with how it affects you and not how it may impact a person or the world, then the purpose becomes trapped in your human isolation and not Godly expansion.Read the full devotion at https://devotableapp.com/daily-devotion-ecclesiastes-8-3-dont-avoid-our-assignment/

Voted the best sport in The Universe (by me), in this episode I'm talking about my favourite sport and one of my favourite ever activities to partake in. Whether I'm watching it or playing it, I just LOVE football! :)

Lately, I've been thinking quite a bit about life. I've been engaged in some deep introspection and self-inspection, which I think is healthy for everyone to do on a regular basis. In this case, I was forced into this exercise of self-examination, and into a state of extreme humbleness and ego dissolution when I failed to complete a recent event. See, during the Train to Hunt National Championships in Colorado, I came down with an extremely high heart rate, dizziness, extreme fatigue, and an inability to simply put one foot in front of the other. This was likely a combination of pushing myself too hard lately (in both work and travel), along with mild jet lag from having just returned from Europe, the 9700 foot altitude of the race that I hadn't had a chance to prepare for, and a cluster of other emotional factors (feeling guilty about being away from my kids again, missing my wife, feeling too distant from my company Kion) that basically left me dropping out of the race, and lying in my hotel room bed for about twelve hours, barely able to sleep, staring at the ceiling, and thinking generally about life. This is what I posted on Instagram about it. A post shared by (@bengreenfieldfitness) on Jul 15, 2019 at 9:16pm PDT As I lay there with a journal, a bottle of water, and a plate of kiwi fruit (about all I could find that was healthy to eat in the local area), I had some interesting thoughts that I think you may find valuable for your own life, and give you deeper insight into where I'm coming from, and where I plan to go in the future. Now one thing that you need to understand is that I'm a fan of personality tests. It's something that we are actually very big on at : everyone takes an and my personal Enneagram score puts me in a very, very high category of a what's called a and an . That is a pretty dang dangerous one-two combo (or I suppose in this case, a one-three combo) because, as you can imagine, this causes me to expect a lot of myself in every task that I attempt to perform while simultaneously taking on a lot of tasks all at once. That's an exhausting combination that in many people can lead to burnout, into spinning too many plates at once, and into trying to do everything that you're doing (which is often too many things) perfectly. This means that you do everything with near-perfect precision but have zero time left over for relaxation, for hobbies, for family, or for self-care, or... ...perfection becomes impossible to sustain, projects begin to decline in quality, and all those plates you're spinning crash to the ground, then eventually you crash to the ground too. In addition, the Achiever personality type on the Enneagram dictates that one who fits that profile tends to try to be who others expect them to be, or at least who they think that others expect them to be. As a matter of fact, the direct quote from the Enneagram is that... ..."in the headlong rush to achieve whatever they believe will make them that more valuable, Achievers can become so alienated from themselves that they no longer know what they truly want or what their real feelings are. Thus, the deeper problem is that their search for a way to be of value increasingly takes them further away from their own essential self with its core of real value. Step-by-step, their own inner core - their heart's desire - is left behind until they no longer recognize it." Now that problem, combined with the perfectionist mentality, can create a person who tries very, very hard to seek the approval of others, to be perfect, to try to be someone they're not and to neglect what makes them truly happy. And frankly, I feel like I've begun to slip into that scenario myself. That's not to say it's wrongto want to achieve excellence in things. Nor is it to say it's wrongto want to achieve great things in life and create a lasting impact. Indeed, when steered in the right direction in a state of true authenticity and also a state that enables one to accept the fact that they cannot be perfect, one can go on to achieve great things as an Achiever and a Perfectionist. But in my case what I've done to myself is this: I've built constant 24/7 pressure to do many things all at once - to be fit as a fiddle for my next event, to be a CEO of a massively expanding supplements company, to complete a huge book, to be on an airplane nearly every week to give a speech, to juggle podcast appearances, podcast production, article writing, article editing, to maintain attempts to write fiction and make music simultaneously, to coach ten different executives and CEOs and athletes who rely on me for advice, and to try to fit in time with family and spiritual growth in the process. For example, take the constant pressure I place on myself to be on the "pointy-edge" of fitness. In the past, I have told others (I think in partial error) that in order to drive you to be motivated to be fit, you must always be signed up for something that slightly scares you, pushes you to the cliff edge of fear, or challenges you while pushing you far outside your comfort zone—and while this can be healthy, in some cases it can backfire. In my case this means, that I'm finding myself no longer able to travel and spend time with my family without waking up an hour early to crush the gym, to sit in a movie without feeling like I should be out training, to enjoy life without simply thinking about whether or not I'll be ready to represent on the starting line of a race, and to do just about anything without the thought at the back of my mind that I need to be that perfect person who inspires others to greatness and must be able to perform at the drop of a hat. It's been that way for a long time. Whether I'm competing in tennis tournaments, bodybuilding, water polo, volleyball, cycling, triathlons, obstacle course races or anything else, there's never really been a time since I was thirteen years old that I haven't had some type of event I was preparing for, or that I haven't worn the mask of an athlete, a competitor, a gladiator, or a warrior. In addition to feeling the pressure to be fit for the next event, I often also feel that I need to project the perfect person to the world: the perfect skin with no crow's eyes and no suspicion from anyone that anything I'm doing in the anti-aging department isn't working, the perfect six-pack abs, rippling muscles, extreme fitness and everything that I've grown to define myself as... ...because I'm under the impression that that's who the world expects me to be. To dig myself even deeper into that while all my bios, and all the information about me you can find on the internet, or when I'm getting up on stage to speak, are not focused on whether I'm smart or intelligent or witty or studious or any of those things that I try to try to maintain and pride myself on, but instead: what sets this guy apart is that he's the Ironman triathlete, the masochistic globetrotting adventurer, and the man who's able to handle any physical obstacle. I truly feel like that has dug me into this hole of needing to be that person—that hard-charging, high-achieving CEO with the chiseled chin who can handle anything life throws at them and simultaneously kick your ass in a 10K, triathlon, the gym, or anywhere else. Well, let me tell you something: that's exhausting to constantly be that person, and I often feel like I'm a failure if I'm notachieving. I feel like I'm a failure if I'm just lying around reading a work of fiction or watching a movie with my children. In that scenario, I feel as though I'm somehow shorting myself and not being that person who I'm called to be. And sure there's somewisdom to that: there's somewisdom to the idea that you don't want to laze around and spend your time unwisely; but at the same time that mentality can be taken to the extreme, and it can very much affect those around you because they sense that what you'd rather be doing is figuring out a way to make yourself even more perfect and go out and achieve even more. But what's interesting is when I wrote my entire last year—a book that dictated everything I hold dear in life, the mark I want to make upon the world, what will be written on my tombstone, and much more—frankly, being an extreme athlete wasn't really a big part of that book. Sure, I did include the fact that I think it's important that I occasionally go out and engage in challenging adventures like climbing a mountain or swimming in an icy cold river or doing something that makes me a little bit physically uncomfortable—and I think that's fine. However, I think that my life has become skewed much too far in that direction, and the other elements of my Lifebook that I dictated that I hold dear—such as being in a community and forming close friends and building quality relationships and spending more time with my children and immersing myself in nature and building my spiritual self—have been allowed to fall by the wayside because there simply isn't enough time to do all that and also push my body to the absolute limits with exercise, travel, and work. It's a vicious cycle, isn't it? Race, achieve, project the perfect person, post that person to Instagram, rinse, wash, repeat.  But when I stop and ask myself: what do I really want? What do I really want?And even more importantly, what would God want of me? Well, in this stage of my life, after a deep amount of introspection the past couple days, I can especially tell you that, in addition to simply spending more time with my children, with my wife, and forming deep, meaningful relationships with other people, I want the following... ...I want to be more present in my local community: I want to know my neighbor's names, I want to attend events in my local community, and I don't want to feel like I have to hop on a plane or go to a conference or go to a mastermind or go to a meet-up in order to be with my friends. Instead, I want to build ties and roots in my local community... ...furthermore, I want to be able to help people without feeling rushed. I want to be able to find out about, for example, an opportunity to go play my guitar at a nursing home or go volunteer at a park cleanup, or go help out at my church, or go do other things that involve helping others—and not look at my calendar and think "Well crap, I can't do that because I've stretched myself too thin, I'm busy and I'm in some other state, some other country, or some other nation far from my home." I'm not saying that I don't want to still travel the world and help people and use the platform that God has given me in that way to affect global change in people's lives when it comes to their health and fitness and longevity and spirituality and happiness—but again, there's an imbalance. I have almost no ties in my local community... ...I want to spend more time in nature, but not time in nature as a workout or time in nature being crushed in a race. I just want to be able to go out and learn more of plants, of plant medicine, of hunting, of tracking, of trekking, of building with my hands, of spending time in sunshine and fresh air and water because I want to and not because I'm there to run intervals or to post an Instagram story about how good I am at wild edible identification. Instead, I want to be able to enjoy nature for the simple sake of nature... ...I want to participate in sports without the feeling that everything has to be a workout. I want to play tennis like I did when I was a kid for hours, where I was just hitting balls and having fun with my friends. I want to be able to swim and hike and even lift weights and go to the gym, which I love to do, but without the pressure of it needing to be an absolute sufferfest because I have some event I'm supposed to be in peak physical fitness for... ...I want to care for my spirit and build my spiritual muscles in the same way I've built my physical body. I want to wake up in the morning and know that I have the time to pray and to meditate, to grow more deeply in my relationship to God, to memorize Scriptures, and even to fast. I've said this before, but there are many times when I want to fast and I want to to take care of my body in that way (almost as a religious practice), but can't because, yet again, I must dump calories down the hatch to be ready for the next workout and to get me fueled for the next hardcore masochistic event... ...I want to have the freedom, flexibility, and time to be able to devote focused, deep work and excellence into building my company Kion, and not feel as though it's a rushed afterthought because there are so many other items on my plate or because I feel like my company expects me to be out working out or buffeting my body so I can go be the big, perfect frontman face of the company. I want to build a company that will change the world, and me running around in the forest with my shirt off throwing spears at shit isn't really a sustainable, scalable way to make that happen, no matter how many likes it gets on social media to drive traffic to a product... ...and finally, I want to do what I know truly makes me happy and has made me happy since I was a child. I want to write and play more music and I want to write and read more fiction. Both of those things are elements that I draw a great deal of happiness out of, and that might sound selfish, but I want to create music that makes people happy. I want to write books that tell the hero's journey and inspire people. And I don't want every piece of content I create to be about the next injectable anti-aging molecule or pill you can pop or biohacked workout, but instead perhaps just a nice story about a princess, an elf, and a dragon that makes children smile. So when I close my eyes and I see myself five years from now, I've achieved that balance. I have friends and relationships and local community and volunteering and time with my family. I have a deep relationship with every plant in my backyard and the acreage around my house and I actually know the names of all our Nigerian dwarf goats and I help my wife with planting the garden and tending to the fruit trees. I'm still enjoying physically challenging events, and I'm still a healthy human specimen, but not in the way I've been doing it—not as a hardcore athlete, but instead as someone who enjoys physical culture because it makes them feel good, not because they have the pressure to perform. I want to transition from being an athlete to being a mentor, a teacher, and a well-rounded person who enjoys and has time for other aspects of life. I'm telling you all this so that you can simply know my position, so that you can know where I'm coming from, and so that as you see me evolve over the next several months and years, you can realize that I still have a deep desire to explore the depths of performance and fitness and health and longevity and biohacking and beyond, but in a balanced manner that doesn't turn me into a person who is simply sitting on a plane, lonely and banging out yet another article on biceps and abs while I travel to a conference to speak to a group of people and foster the relationships I've built afar because I don't have any back home. I simply can't take the pressure of being that perfect person any longer, and I realized that the pressure that I've placed upon myself to climb Mount Everest every day is not truly making me happy. I don't want to be that alpha male with the yin dominance and huge bank account, but with tired eyes and a wife and children who resent him. I don't want to be full of sadness or regret on my deathbed because in the end I really just made a lot of money and did some hard things but never actually built a lasting, meaningful legacy, changed people's souls, made my family happy, or took time myself to smell the roses and savor life.   So I'm in a transitional phase. Yes there are certain obligations that I have committed to this year such as competing in some obstacle course races and doing some physically challenging events; but after that, I really truly want to focus more on simply enjoying life with far less of the extreme pressure and on building a platform of balanced health, longevity, adventure, joy, and fulfillment in life for myself and for others. And that's why I've created this article for you: so that you can understand where I'm coming from and perhaps so that you can learn a few things about yourself in the process. So I thank you for reading all this. I hope it's given you a little bit of perspective on who I am and where I'm coming from and where I plan to go. Feel free to leave any of your own questions, comments, feedback, wisdom and insight below. 

Red, there's so many things that are colored with this brilliant multitudinous hue. Whether I'm making any sense in that last sentence or not, the truth is that Red happens to be this week's theme for Sing Song Saturday. Let it inspire your search for what to sing on week 20. Does it mean anything to you? Do you immediately think of a song you know when you read...RED? Let's hear it! Call in to AM Radio on @anchor.fm to sing a song for Saturday! You don't have to be in tempo, you don't have to be on key... You just have to sing! #singsongsaturday #anchorapp #callin "www.anchor.fm/abemartinez" --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/abeplus/support

I took up swimming to get my body in shape, and only later discovered that it would also exercise my mind. I struggle with anxiety and depression, and exercise is known to lift moods by releasing endorphins in the body. Whether I'm ruminating over an issue in my family, puzzling through a conundrum with work, or worrying about the past, a swim almost always helps.

Daniel DiPiazza is the founder of Alpha Mentorship, an immersive training and investment platform for the next generation of entrepreneurs, creators and leaders. He also is the best-selling author of the book Rich20Something. Since we met and became friends in 2015, I’ve watched Daniel undergo a massive transformation — not just in his business but in his consciousness. Daniel is currently on a world-wide speaking tour, developing the material for his new book, Wielding Power. In our conversation, we talk about some of the ideas in that book.   THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: This podcast would not exist without support from our sponsors. I ONLY partner with companies whose products or services I personally use and believe in. Please check them out and support them if possible:   Four Sigmatic is a superfood company that uses functional mushrooms and herbs in their easy-to-drink blends. I’ve been using their supplements for years — long before they became a sponsor of this podcast. My favorite blends are the Adaptogen Blend and Mushroom Coffee with Cordyceps. Get 15% off your Four Sigmatic purchase by going to foursigmatic.com/tgp. Or, use discount code ‘TGP’ at checkout.   Audible is how I consume most of my books these days. As a new parent, I could never read as much as I do without it. Whether I'm driving, cooking, or rocking baby to sleep, Audible gives me the ability to feed my mind good stuff while I go about my day. Get a free audiobook plus two free "Audible Originals" when you sign up for a free 30-day trial here.

Jonathan Fields is the creator of the world’s first “purpose archetypes” which he calls Sparketypes™. This framework has been used by tens-of-thousands of individuals, as well as companies and institutions to discover purpose and amplify performance. Jonathan is also an award-winning author, serial entrepreneur, and innovator in the field of human potential. He's founded a number of game-changing wellness companies and has led workshops around the world on everything from yoga and mindfulness to conscious entrepreneurship and innovation.  This is Jonathan’s second appearance on the podcast and we dive even deeper into doing meaningful work. We talk about the Sparketype framework he designed for helping you discover the work you’re here to do.   See the show notes for this episode here: https://thinkgrowprosper.com/blog/jonathan-fields   THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: This podcast would not exist without support from our sponsors. I ONLY partner with companies whose products or services I personally use and believe in. Please check out these special offers: Four Sigmatic is a superfood company that uses functional mushrooms and herbs in their easy-to-drink blends. I’ve been using their supplements for years — long before they became a sponsor of this podcast. Get 15% off your Four Sigmatic purchase by going to foursigmatic.com/tgp. Or, use discount code ‘TGP’ at checkout.   Audible is how I consume most of my books these days. As a new parent, I could never read as much as I do without it. Whether I'm driving, cooking, or rocking baby to sleep, Audible gives me the ability to feed my mind good stuff while I go about my day. Get a free audiobook plus two free "Audible Originals" when you sign up for a free 30-day trial here.

In this rebroadcast of one of my most popular episodes, I explore overthinking (and its close cousin, anxiety) from an evolutionary perspective then offer some practical strategies you can apply immediately to help you overcome repetitive, obsessive, non-productive thoughts. See the show notes for this episode here: https://thinkgrowprosper.com/blog/-how-to-stop-overthinking   THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS: This podcast would not exist without support from our sponsors. I ONLY partner with companies whose products or services I personally use and believe in. Please check out these special offers:   Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 courses. They are extending a free 2-month trial offer to listeners of the Think Grow Podcast. You can take advantage of this offer by visiting skillshare.com/THINKGROW.   Audible is how I consume most books these days. As a new parent, I could never read as much as I do without it. Whether I'm driving, cooking, or rocking baby to sleep, Audible gives me the ability to feed my mind good stuff while I go about my day. Get a free audiobook plus two free "Audible Originals" when you sign up for a free 30-day trial here.    

Jenn Sauer - avid traveller, experience maker, insatiable learner, massage therapist and accidental entrepreneur.Personal Mission: Do good things and make a big impact.Whether I'm helping someone with health issues through massage therapy or reaching out into the community to help those that are less fortunate than myself, I want to make a positive, lasting impact. I've explored cultures all over the world. I've lived in a camper, a car and on a cruise ship.I've never turned down an adventure or challenge. And, I've never been a business owner.Until 3 years ago.Company Mission: Connecting mind, body and community.Working at spa after spa, I was burnt out and unsure how to get out of the rut. That's when a space rental turned into The Pushy Goat, a unique, holistic spa.The ups and downs of building the business and it's day-to-day responsibilities were daunting, yet exciting.Turning it into an opportunity to not only help my clients, but to impact thecommunity, gave me the drive to push through the frustrations.Everyday I have the opportunity to affect change, no matter how small, in the minds and bodies of my clients and community.I am Jenn Sauer - business owner. World changer.Dream Life is Real Lifehttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/dream-life-is-real-life/

Joining us today is John Sterling. John's been in a number of markets and was previously with Keller Williams and most recently was in San Francisco California and is currently in Colorado. John's background is fairly extensive in real estate. John is known for his work in Europe and London as well as working with multiple team leaders and market centers and helping them attract agents. John talks at length about his challenges in real estate and really not really getting EXP at first. John I'll give you his insight in terms of why he ultimately moved from Keller Williams to EXP and he hasn't regretted it and never looked back. Learn More about eXp Realty - Click here to watch a quick 7 Minute Intro Video. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly. Why EXP is growing fast Why Successful independent brokerages partnering with EXP Keep your Brand, grow your income with EXP Big benefits of being at EXP Earning publicly held stock. EXP listed on Nasdaq EXP innovating and game changing technology made simple   Stay tuned for Part 2   Transcription Kevin: Welcome back to another episode of the EXP explained podcast. I'm joined today by special guest John Sterling. John's been in a number of markets. He was previously with Keller Williams and most recently was in San Francisco California and is currently in Colorado. John's background is fairly extensive in real estate. He and I met years and years ago when I was a team leader at Keller Williams and he was doing some leadership expansion and attraction of agents. Certainly if you're listening to this and you're from Keller Williams you're more than likely will know John from his work in Europe and London as well as working with multiple team leaders and market centers and helping them attract agents. John talks at length in my interview about his challenges in real estate and really not really getting EXP at first. So if you're a little bit skeptical and you want to hear from somebody who was right there where you were dug into it didn't pay attention to the rumors and misinformation in the market and did quite a bit of due diligence over about 15 months. John I'll give you his insight in terms of why he ultimately moved from Keller Williams to EXP and he hasn't regretted it and never looked back. Stay tuned for my interview with John Sterling. Kevin: Welcome to the show John. John: Hey thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Kevin: I'm looking forward to it. We are reunited again and I'm sure we'll get into a lot of that on the conversation today but before we do for people listen to the podcast that maybe you aren't familiar with your background and history and real estate and all that you've done. What did you take a couple minutes and just give a little bit of your highlights in terms of some of the stuff you've done. Because I've known you a long time and I know you've accomplished a lot. John: Oh well thank you. Yeah I'll keep it short and sweet. So I started my real estate career in Chicago back in 2002 it was with a traditional firm then they had a great training program. So I got up and running very quickly. There were some changes there so I went off and started my own brokerage after about two years and then eventually merged that with Keller Williams back in 2004. My time at Keller Williams was mostly spent opening up new offices and markets where we didn't have them. And most of that work was before the financial crash and after the crash I was the guy who would go fix these struggling offices. So it involved a lot of moving. So I got to go all over the US and then even opened up our London office. So I was in the UK for two years. Packed my flat on Brexit vote day and came back to the U.S. and had been engaged in real estate and just sales in San Francisco and Denver ever since. Kevin: Fantastic. And you're very modest. I mean I first ran into you I probably was about two thousand five or six when I was in St. Lewis with Keller Williams And you were part of the group that was essentially acquiring market centers and expanding and you guys were rocking and rolling and obviously lots changed for everybody after the market shifted. I was excited and it was a long very detailed due diligence process before you moved over to EXP you and I had conversations over I don't know probably 15 months or so. And I think for people listening because the whole genesis for this podcast is to allow people you know it doesn't have to just be a Keller Williams but people that run their real estate business like a business and are seeing all of these agents like you were changing brokerages and coming over to EXP. I remember like you like everybody else had healthy skepticism. You wanted to understand it you were from the outside you were part of a gigantic franchise system and there was a lot of misinformation and noise out there in the marketplace. What is it that you learned that really caused you to start to shift your mindset and say I need to dig into this further. John: That's a good question. As you mentioned you know it was a long process for me it wasn't an overnight type of thing and I'd been paying attention to EXP for a long time. In fact I remember when Glenn the CEO was with Keller Williams back in the late 2000s and he left the start yet. And it was you know I just thought it was an interesting move and I was doing some unique things in the business but didn't really give it much thought. I was happy. Keller Williams still think they're an amazing organization. So I don't have any you know any issues with Keller Williams. It seemed like a better opportunity and fit for the future that I want to create and kind of where the business is headed so the things that got my attention over the past few months and ultimately led me to making the move is that you know I had ignored EXP for a long time as you mentioned a lot of people do this. And the people I've talked to who are in the process of joining you know people who are my friends who never would have given it a second glance if it wasn't me calling. You know it was or someone else. The gist of it was there is a lot like you said misinformation or half truth is I'd like to explain it which is understandable. You know it's like EXP has come out of nowhere. I have never seen growth like this in the real estate business and I was with Katie when I early days when it was growing like crazy. But even they didn't see growth. This is great. So there's just a lot of fear from the incumbents that they're going to get squashed because if he keeps up this pace then they're going to have some serious problems. Kevin: So it is interesting I want to touch on one point because that is something that you know you hear the comments of well they can't keep up growth at this pace or I can't believe they're growing that fast or there's no way they could be growing that fast. And I'm going to touch on something in the franchise system you know there's very well Gene Frederic knows it well I know well we'll come out of the same franchise system when somebody goes to expand a franchise system, this is for listeners to understand and why EXP can sand grow so much quicker. I'm going to contrast the two let's say that John and I are in the franchise system and we decide we're going to open up an office in Palo Alto California and we get a conversation going with a great great huge player hugely influential big producer and the producer says hey John and Kevin I'm ready to join. I want to do something with you. How do we get started in Palo Alto. And that starts the clock in the process right. And they have to go through the approval process and there's a whole bunch of steps involved in the point that I'm making here is from that conversation assuming you get some sort of a green light go I'm willing to do it. There are steps like getting an investor getting it approved getting the franchise awarded in the net net on it is on average it's 14 to 18 months before mega agent key influencer walks in the door of an office or can announce that they're part of that Palo Alto location hypothetically. Now when John and Kevin have a conversation with that same agent in Palo Alto. And assuming they're excited about the EXP and they due to due diligence. We're having them change brokerages in as fast as 10 days. I mean you listen to Brent Gove's interview. He made the decision in 10 days or less with one hundred and fifty million dollar team. It's unheard of. In the franchise systems. Now the follow on to that is when like we had in San Diego we had Daniel beer Carl Wessel and Mary Maloney and all of the others joined in it like a really short 10 day period EXP because they're influential has tons and tons of agents joined after it. So for somebody and I want to get your perspective on this from the outside we you're seeing these mega numbers of agents right. You know a thousand plus fifteen hundred plus agents a month and you are. In the franchise mindset or a bricks and mortar mindset where you're used to being in a physical location. Many many people. And this is why I think that they talk about this. Not being sustainable. Look at it and go. There's no way they're going that fast. We never did. We can't. How can they. And I think that that's the driver is John and I can go out and have hundreds if not thousands of conversations as well as every other agent that EXP. And if somebody says go. It's like when you say go it wasn't very long before you were alive and over at EXP. You actually were waiting for some things. To occur in your business world. But from the process where you're like OK good. I'm ready to go. It was fairly quick. It wasn't like the franchise world. John: Yes. All of that's true. Interestingly enough probably the most fascinating part to me is the large number of independent brokerages so they're not affiliated with any franchise or big regional company. You know he could be one person or a few dozen agents. You know it's typically the size of these things of those types of organizations that are going to need EXP. That was eye opener for me too because it's a fairly common thing in our business for people to get a little experience and then decide they'd like to be their own boss. They want to be their own broker so they leave the company that they started with they got some training or whatever else they're no longer working under someone else's brand they start their own. So it happens all the time. So the fascinating part is how many people have gone through that process achieve their independence so they have their own business with their own branding and their boss their names above the door. I can tell everyone in our neighborhood that they own the company and they're still coming to EXP. So they are profitable businesses that are doing well. They're helping businesses that are growing. Everybody's happy. And even with all that they're still choosing to partner with EXP. So they just see that there is more value with EXP you know from a small item I'd have to pay every year through their split the system was just good for agents at any level. But it's the big winners are the ones who were showing up with teams which are essentially you know they could be standalone brokerages but these big agent teams are like you mentioned they're moving very fast. Then you have the small brokerages who are looking for some more leverage because if you're a brokerage that has 20 or 30 agents you're probably still selling right. It's probably not making enough from the agents splits in order to support yourself. You're probably still selling yourself. So that's just a lot of work. Like you have to manage all these people and you have to do your own business well with the EXP you get to leverage a lot of the stuff that's already built in for very low costs. You can send your agents the training or bird virtual campus any time you are reading online. You can then go hire more people because you don't have to babysit them all day like there's no 30 or 40 training events we have every week. I don't think you can just sit down in front of the computer and say OK here are the training you need to go to go to these and come to me with questions. It's much more leverage and just a much better way to scale. So that was an interesting thing that I discovered just as I paid attention to all the people who kept showing up. Kevin: So absolutely and one of the things just to echo what you're saying and this is happening all the time in fact there's one by the time this goes live that's in the Dallas Fort Worth metro. They have ninety five agents. They're an independent and you know the model is almost this hybrid model which we're seeing pop up more and more where the broker/rainmaker is a weather pick your flavor. Right. Zillow preferred or premier whatever the program is and they feed their agents. And so the lead gen side they've got wired right they might be spending one hundred thousand dollars a month in this case. And what was interesting is she was so excited about EXP. Her biggest concern is I don't know if this is going to translate throughout my key people right? My leaders within my office and then the agents downstream. And what was interesting is Gene and the leaders were in town meeting with this Rainmaker and the key people and he called me yesterday afternoon and his conversation is "I only stayed half a day because they all get it. I met with a handful of people". I talked to him again this morning and he said we're done all ninety five or come and they're just basically working on the onboarding process with ninety five agents making sure everybody's applications and the revenue share piece is set up correctly. That is the wave of the future. I mean I've talked with people within the company they're talking to 25 agents smaller brokers and the driver for that. And if you think about the NRA numbers 55% of the agents aren't independents right. It's the biggest piece. We spent a lot of time talking about franchise systems. They're more in franchise system likes to tout that they're number one but you had the agents that are at independence. It's way bigger than they are. And so when you look at the opportunity this is the next big wave that's occurring. And you talk to these broker owners I'm talking to some in the United States in the southeast U.S. And the number one thing they say is they love being producers. They love mentoring and training agents. They love the Legion and helping people in the case of this this gal in the Dallas Fort Worth area. She'll be on the podcast shortly but what she's going to tell you is I don't like being a broker. I'd rather be brokered by EXP get out of compliance get all the systems and all of the things in place and just go do what we do well the brokerage stuff is not sexy. The brokerage stuff is not fun. The compliance stuff nobody enjoys. Previous to EXP it's been the necessity right. You didn't have somebody that said hey keep your brand keep your look and feel. Go do what you do well and then we'll take over all the other stuff. John: So it really is the best of all worlds. And I think that's really I mean just spending years and years.... I mean all again all over the US and even in Europe. One of the hardest things to overcome when you're having conversations with people about joining your company is it's really just ego. They like that their name is above the door. They like to tell everyone in their world that they own the company and the fact that that's happening at EXP is very telling. We've overcome that objection. You know people are like oh it's like well I could still on my company. It's just kind of you know using some of the EXP stuff too which is great. I mean this is it's a huge advantage for us just because it's you know the more or people show up the more examples we have to point to and say See we told you everything worked just fine except you're you're growing faster and you have fewer headaches. Kevin: Yeah. You know and part of what you did John is you talk to over the course of when you talked about turning around market centers and moving around there was a long period of time where I consider you a non team leader Team Leader. In other words you were having conversations with hundreds if not thousands of agents but virtually on the phone at conferences. So you've got a pretty good basically a take on mindset of agents. You personally were responsible for many many agents that went into Keller Williams When you look at this. John: You wanna know my number? Kevin: Yeah What is your number? I was going to ask you next. John: I had my office lady look it up before I left Keller Williams. I directly recruited sponsors like brought to the company just me but named me as the reason they were with Keller Williams one hundred and sixty two before I left. And there were many many more of those that like top of a hundred sixty two that I recruited on behalf of other people because that was my job right. So it was really just a hundred sixty two that I found on my own. And then as you know it's like hundreds or like you said I don't know how we'd be able to tabulate that but we'll just say north of a thousand. Kevin: You've got a great take on this you know so enjoining EXP and you know coming from a franchise system. If I'm an agent. Whether I'm a rainmaker on individual age a mega agent and I'm an expansion agent that's thinking about this. What are the two or three things that you think that. You learned about it that if you were on the phone with these people going forward you would say you really have a couple of options you could go to a franchise system or you go to EXP. And here are the big benefits of being at the EXP. John: Yep that's a good question. So if I had to put it in bullet form first the money has to work right. You know it's a Financial decision this is a business like we're in business to make money. So we do other things too. There could be a bigger purpose for our you know working in real estate but like the math has to work. So the. That was a good thing for me because you look at EXP everybody is on an 80 20 split the 20 percent caps at sixteen thousand dollars a year no matter where you are compared to my San Francisco office with Keller Williams where I was paying fifty thousand dollars she here is a cap. I mean that alone by you know in two hundred eighty dollars a month in an office these you know it's just a huge expense to be there now. Sounds like you don't have to do to any deals the same let's go to cap but still like I can have that same environments like comparable stuff or even better tools and only pay sixteen thousand here. So that seemed like a much better deal to me. So that was part of that. There's you know a small transaction fee after the after the sixteen thousand but it's nothing substantial nothing to worry about. In addition to that there are certain ways you can earn a publicly traded stock. So it's not privately held. There's not a king of EXP it's all up it's on the Nasdaq. It's a publicly traded company. So for longtime I guess it's a good side note just as far as this goes that EXP was traded on the OTC exchange. So it's just another stock exchange out there. But the trick with that is that it's there's not as much liquidity because it's not like you know we'll call Big Boy exchanges. So really it's like you got to be a publicly traded company you want to be on one of the big exchanges in the US. That's the New York Stock Exchange with the Nasdaq. I go to the two that are reputable and that's where you want to be. So earlier this year another sort of catalyst to me opening up the conversation to joining. Was when EXP was Listed as what they call it. You get up listed to the Nasdaq. So they went off the OTC. Exchange and onto the Nasdaq. You don't get to do that just by choice. I mean you have to be performing well and behaving well and. Know. The analysts and everybody else has to be compliance people the FCC everybody has to. Agree that everything is legit. So I like that. I like that there is some third [arty accountability to everything that we do. Versus you know it's like we have it we have a board of directors into the people on the board of directors are agents that real estate people so they're not just the financial types and the bean counters that you would find them on a traditional board of directors. So when the board of directors of stock analysts and all those people get involved. You know there's some accountability. Versus when you have a company controlled by essentially one person. There's not. Any real accountability I have no piece of ownership and that's I'm contrasting with where I came from. And it's more of a dictatorial sort of environments. So. You know being able to earn stock being able to purchase stock at a discount. I mean. The portion of my commission checks can go toward purchasing. This publicly traded stock and I get it at a 20 percent discount. So basically every deal that I do I'm getting a 20 percent gift from the EXP. It's like I mean you know it's like if you invest in stocks like 8 to 10% consider pretty great. So if I'm getting an instant 20% regardless of how the stock performs feels like likely going to continue to grow then that's good news for me. So those were the big financial components. Oh and then I almost forgot the getting into technology which I'll come back to in a second but the Web sites that we get I mean these are some of the best lead generation sites you can get for your business. We work with Konversion. You don't know them check them out. I think last time I looked to their retail prices were a thousand dollars to set up and then 500 a month just for the system and then you have to pay ads and everything on top of that. But at EXP that's all included in the 50 dollar month technology fee. So it's a 500 a month I'm paying 50 a month. So you don't like anything else about the EXP or you don't care about revenue share and you'll care about the training you care about the virtual world. If you don't want to do your own business whatever you could make an argument that it's just the Web site by itself basically pay for your affiliate vision with the EXP if you want to do any of the rest like you're going to stumble across other great thing that you expected. I'd like that by itself is a good enough argument to make the move so. So that was the money piece as far as the technology goes so we'll continue that thread just for a little background there. I've been involved with tech startups as both an adviser like a formal advisor and an investor for years. In fact I looked it up the first one that I did was back in 2007 was a property portal that was competing with like Zillow to really realtor dot com didn't make it as far as those guys did just it was funding and leadership and whatever else. But you learn a lot through that process. A lot of people understand kind of the dynamics. So I'm very comfortable vetting technology and more importantly not just the technology it's the teams working on the technology real estate in general as an industry as a late adopter for most technology things even today. So for example there's a zip code valuation thing that's clogging my Facebook timeline right now with people asking their clients you send me your zip code I'll give you a valuation. Well that technology has been around for about 10 years now for many years. I was a customer of the company that developed first just as a real time market valuation estimates are now 10 years later everyone's acting like it's some revolutionary thing. You know.. Give me break... it you know if it's fancy tech that's going to disrupt the industry and that's the fancy tech then there's not much concern for me that like that's what I'm competing with. So going back to the teams that worked with technologies I mean the technology itself is great. It's like there's the wonderful stuff I get to use. Everything works fine. I have to worry about it like of course the EXP is going to continue to expand those offerings of course are going to develop their own proprietary stuff. So right now we're just growing so fast that you know the priority it seems to be like we need to be sure our basic system scale. So the people that are joining to get deals done right. Like we'll worry about dressing it up later. But really the team behind the technology is the most important piece for me not just in real estate but like everywhere because technologies involving at such a rapid pace that we're going to have to pivot we're going to have to make changes we're going to have to make decisions that are going to alter the sort of trajectory of the technology that's being used and developed. And it's like I have the full faith in the team the technology team at EXP to get that done. Again it's like we're not a real estate company pretending to be a tech company right. It's like technology's been built in from the very beginning. Right. So it's like yes real estate sales is our focus but it's not a sort of copycat thing after the fact. Thinking hey we need to get on this tech train. I'd like to know I've been tech focused from the beginning. That's where the team's focus has been and so with the company's focus has been that's been our game from the very beginning. You know I trust the team to be able to make the right decisions and keep us ahead of the curve and those sorts of things. Kevin: A lot of people know this because I've mentioned it before. You know I was one of the first sites up on real geeks when Jeff Manson rolled that stuff out and S. Lewis from my team. So you know you and I are fairly tech savvy and we do this and that was a huge draw for me as well. I also find the whole post your social media and give me your zip code I'll give you a report. This just shows that the average agent who's wowed by that doesn't realize that as a member of the National Association of Realtors they have an RPR account and that functionality is built in there too. So everybody has this not just the EXP agents everybody has it. So it's fun for some of us to understand technology to kind of smile at that but you know a lot of agents are not as tech savvy and certainly when they look at the suite if you look at the you know the platform for conversion you look at the enterprise application all of the back office stuff the workplace platform and the collaborative tools. You don't have to be super tech savvy to plug into EXP. And then again that's another misnomer that you know this is for you know super tech savvy agents. We have plenty of agents come through the onboarding process hit the ground running and they're like very commonly saying Wow I had no idea I could use all these tools and you know raise my hand get answers that super easy if you could use an iPhone you can use everything we have. So it's not that big of a deal. Sorry. Or Android. For those people out there.. You know I'm not overly concerned with today's hottest apps on stuff. Right? It's like it's just not really that much of a concern for me. My clients choose me because of our relationship not because of my fancy shiny tools like shiny things are going to change my relationship. It's like Sure it might make it easier for me to keep up with all my clients. Like give me some leverage but it's really about me and the value I provide to my clients. It's like that's you know that's not going to go away. So that was the answer to the technology.

A personal solo episode about losing the joy for my writing and a breakthrough I recently experienced healing issues around creativity, self-esteem, and perfectionism. MENTIONED ON THE SHOW Akimbo Seth Godin's Podcast Leaders' Call to Adventure Lori Ference podcast Silent All These Years Tori Amos HOST LINKS - SLADE ROBERSON Slade's Books & Courses Get an intuitive reading with Slade Automatic Intuition BECOME A PATRON https://www.patreon.com/shiftyourspirits Edit your pledge on Patreon TRANSCRIPT There are a lot of you listening to this who I personally really wanted to tell this story to. Like, not as an episode but just in my life. It's actually easier just to make it a podcast episode and tell the story at once. I've texted a few people. I've called a few people over the last week. I've called Seth and made him listen to me talk about it for an hour and a half. And then I went to text my friend Jeff last night to catch him up on what had been going on with me and I thought, 'Oh god, this is just all too much for texting.' For some reason, it feels more self-indulgent to keep calling people individually and gushing about my creative breakthroughs and my angst and all that kind of stuff. It just seems to be more appropriate to actually do a personal podcast episode which you can fast forward or choose not to listen to. For those of you who are choosing to listen to this, you're my friends too and you have expressed interest in my personal episodes and me sharing things from my personal life. Actual issues that I'm dealing with. It humanizes the whole thing, right? And it reminds you that I am not a guru sitting up here with a bunch of wisdom about this stuff. I am someone who is playing with all these tools and all this language, and observing, and trying to share a part of my process as a way of motivating you and bringing you along with me. So this all goes back to all that solar eclipse madness we had in 2017. At the time that I'm recording this, it is towards the end of August 2018, if you're listening from the future and you need some time context there. But back to the big eclipse in 2017, at the end of the summer. It was about a year ago, and the bookends for all the eclipse stuff that was going on last year was about the sign of Leo, and the opposite sign of Leo, which is Aquarius. There was this thematic dynamic and there were sort of two questions that the eclipses were bringing up for you. And the fact that I am a Leo and Jeff, incidentally, who I wanted to tell this story to, is Leo as well. And so, one of the reasons why I felt so exhausted in trying to catch him up on this in text messages, we've been having this conversation for well over a year about both of us, and how we've been going through this. Not to mention all the clients and people I do readings for, where we've had conversations about this. So this is just my personal experience with all this stuff. But for all of us, there was a theme. There IS a theme with the solar eclipses that we've been through and all this retrograde stuff with an eclipse is kind of like, 'Oh, by the way, here's a bonus lesson for you. Just to make sure you got that all worked out. The Leo is really asking us: How are you a star? What's your light? What do you have to give the world? The Aquarius is about: Who's receiving that light? Who's observing it? Who can see it? Who is impacted by it? I didn't make this up, by the way. I heard something Seth Godin talking about it on his podcast Akimbo. I'll try to find the exact episode and link to it. But if you want to check out Akimbo, I think it was one of the first three episodes that he did for that whole podcast. But he had an episode about Making Things for the Weirdos. So this is the thing I didn't make up. For the edge, not the middle. The idea of what makes something super popular, what makes something mainstream. Things were not created for the mainstream. They aren't created for the middle. If you create something that's gonna appeal to everyone, you're going to re-invent the colour beige. You're going to reconstitute oatmeal. The way in which things become popular and mainstream is that they are picked up by the weirdos. By the fringes. By the tastemakers and the hipsters and the people who are on the edge. The Lantern-bearers who are out in the woods guiding the lost back to the light. Back to civilization. It's found on the edge in the margins. And so, people who are early adopter of things that end up being very popular and cool are very proud of themselves for discovering something, and appreciate something that is new and difficult and hard to categorize and that not everyone gets. If you've ever had those friends who always want to be the one who finds the new band before anyone else and who always wants to listen to something that everyone else finds off-putting or reads something that's really difficult. It's part of their ego-pride that they are able to go places the rest of us can't go. Or go there FIRST. They discover things and then they pass it to us. The way that that life cycle works for things that become popular, that are loved by a lot of people, they start with the weirdos. So if you're trying to make something cool, according to Seth Godin's concept or theory, you start out by making things for the weirdos. Go for the fringe! Be weird, because that's where it gets picked up and that's where you're going to create something original. With that in mind, it's been on my mind and it's a theme that plays into this episode and this personal story. So I have two author friends, Kim and Brandon. Brandon and I talk about a lot more than on the show because he's a science-fiction author. He does a lot of research on the topics that we're interested in. You know, the ascension of humanity, psychic information from the collective, ancient civilizations. He works a lot of this stuff into his books, and so he ends up coming up on the show sometimes because our conversations overlap. Kim is someone who also listens to this show. Incidentally, it's really kind of cool because I went to this writer's conference. It was called the Best-Seller Summit, I think, two years ago, in Nashville. I first gravitated, the very first night, to Brandon and before I left there, I had met Kim and discovered that she was another one of these people that I'd gone on to college with, but didn't know while I was AT college. Susan Hyatt's one of those people as well. I feel like they're special because we were just destined to find each other at some point. It's interesting that those are the two people that I brought away from that experience. Usually when I go to any conference, I pick up one major soul family member at least. And that's one of the things that I look forward to whenever I travel. Especially if it's work-related or has a project at its centre. Kim and Brandon, incidentally, I was telling people about my idea for this podcast as a content marketing strategy at that conference. And I was talking about this basic concept for it. And it's interesting that the two people that I connected with and became friends with there, are also very much listeners of this show. Like, they genuinely listen to this show the way all of you do, who are fans of this content, this topic. So that's how we met. And I have an ongoing relationship with both of them. Brandon is very much a sort-of coach to me and someone that I look up to and admire for his productivity and his work ethic. Kim is my, I call her my Author Therapist. She's the person who talks me off the ledge and who I call when I really need to be vulnerable about being a fiction author. Listen, guys. Fiction authors - we are a neurotic bunch of cats, okay? We are tortured. And I know that sounds really ridiculous to say, but you just have to assume that I'm telling you about some part of my life that you don't see as much as this part. There's this other place where I'm this angsty artist and I'm not the only one. We're all that way for some reason. Anyway. We do require a lot of emotional support and it's a little bit crazy because we get really, really worked up and really sometimes depressed and neurotic and all kinds of negative energy that we have to work through. And dealing with things that are entirely imaginary. So if you were to be a fly on the wall listening to us talk, and you weren't an author, I always think, 'Gawd, people would think we are NUTS!' But anyway. There you have it. It's a little bit of a curse and a calling. We do not feel that it's necessarily something that we chose. We feel that it's something that we have to do. It was ordained by the creative life force and intelligence in the Universe. So it's a struggle. Something that really happened for me this year that came to a head was, you may have seen me before posting word counts on my projects as I'm working on them. I do NaNoWriMo sometimes in November every year - National Novel Writing Month. That's something that we do is we post our word counts daily to motivate each other or to hold ourselves accountable. It's something that author friends, especially on social media, do in a lot of groups and communities. My friend Brandon was posting about how he was raising his word counts. Brandon has been on a trajectory for a couple of years of producing a lot of work really quickly. He's writing serialized science fiction and releasing a lot of books per year. There's an entire community of authors who work this way, and he's trying to learn some of those skills and apply them to increase his own productivity. So he's posting about how he's getting higher and higher in his daily word counts. I remember a point at which he posted something about being up to 5,000 words a day. And I was comparing myself to that on a day when I literally had a word count on my novel of like, 400 words. It took me like an hour and a half to produce those 400 words. And just to give you an idea, I usually write for a two hour session, and I like to get somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 words. So my fiction goal per day really is a lowball 1,000 words a day. So here's Brandon, writing about 5,000 words a day, which of course he's comparing himself to people who are writing 10, and 12,000. But I compared myself to that and I just really got down in the dumps about it. And felt like I was just crawling towards my goals and got really in my head about it. First red flag here is comparing yourself to others, right? I love the quote, 'Comparison is the thief of joy.' I think that is mostly attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. It's one of my mantras. At this time, unfortunately, wasn't enough to get me out of this ditch that I got into with my writing over the course of the last year or so. So I was telling my other author friend, Kim, about this. I was talking about, 'Ohmygod, Brandon's doing so great. I'm so happy for him. But I am comparing myself to him and feeling like, just such a loser.' I was telling her, 'I'm just slowing down more and more. I'm barely getting 500 words of fiction written per day...' Kim's listening to me and she's such a wonderful, sweet soul. She holds space so well for these hair-pulling sessions of mine. And she just asked me a really simple question. She said, 'Well, what about your non-fiction?' I was stumped for a moment. And I thought, 'Ohmygod, I don't even COUNT non-fiction anymore.' I've been writing non-fiction professionally every day for over a decade. For like, 13 years or something like that, if we get really technical. I do email-readings, notes for phone readings, channelling, automatic writing sessions for the readings that I do, I do posts in my Automatic Intuition community. I answer email questions. I answer questions on Quora and Facebook. I write scripts for guided meditations. I write scripts for these podcasts. I write show notes before the shows as an outline, and then I write show notes after the shows to create the blog posts and the metadata for this podcast. I write the introductions segments pretty much word for word, the way that I perform them. The outros and the channelled messages, the Oracle segment. I write blog posts. I've written thousands of blog posts at this point. I don't even really know exactly how big my archive is. I write email newsletters. I've been doing that for, you know, 15 years. I write transcripts sometimes. Tutorials. I write classes on the various topics that I speak about. Intuition, connecting with your guides, the Money Shift, all that kinds of stuff. I wrote a workbook for my mentoring clients, for the Automatic Intuition professional community and that's basically like a textbook. Every day I write morning pages. And then sometimes I write afternoon morning pages. But they're not morning pages anymore. They're associative writing exercises. They're brainstorming. So as I'm going, all of that stuff flashed through my head when she asked, 'What about your non-fiction? What's your word count for that?' And I thought, 'Ohmygod, I can't even put a number on that.' But as we were conversing, I just sort of grabbing handfuls of those things in my mind and I was thinking, 'Wow. Yeah. I write 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,000 words a day sometimes. There's probably very few days of the week where I don't at least write 1,000 or 2. Whether I'm working on my novels or not. So it was so crazy. I was like, 'Hold on a minute! THAT’S ALL THE WRITING I’M NOT COUNTING. I'm not counting it! I'm not giving myself credit for it. I don't write it down. I don't log it. I don't track it. I don't beat myself up about it. I also don't lift myself up with it. Or give myself any credit for it whatsoever. That's really messed up, y'all! That's crazy that I'm doing that. I'm sitting here almost in tears because I wrote a piddly 400 words on my novel, and completely discounting the other 5, 6, 7,000 words that I wrote that day. And I'm walking around telling myself, 'I'm not prolific. I'm not productive. I'm such a loser. I'm crawling. I produce hardly any work. I'm only working 2 hours a day.' NONE of that is accurate. It's such a loud ego-programmed radio station and I've got it on full blast. And I've become so accustomed to it that I'm not even aware that it's playing. And it was like, when Kim asked me that question, 'Well, what's the word count for all your non-fiction?' It was like somebody just pulled the plug on the radio and it was completely quiet. I realized, 'Holy shit. How is it that I'm doing that to myself?' Maybe we all need to write down everything we do in a day and post it so that other people can give us feedback about it. Because here's the truth you guys - we are terrible judges of our own worth! We're terrible at valuing ourselves and what we accomplish and what we do and what we contribute to other people. What we put out there and what we're good at. Awful. Take us off the panel. We are not allowed to judge ourselves. We're just completely incapable of doing it. We really do need feedback. Constructive compassionate feedback from other people, to even get anywhere close to accurate. And all Kim did was ask me a really good question. You know? Just a really compassionate, logical, obvious question from where she was standing. That's all it took. So I'm kind of thinking, 'If this is ringing any bells for you, maybe you need to do an exercise where you literally just make a huge list of everything that you do in a day. Everything you do. Oprah also got in my head during this whole scenario. It was back when A Wrinkle in Time came out. She was on Van Jones with the creator and director of that movie, and they were being interviewed. She said something about how she believes that there is the purpose that you choose for yourself in life, and then there is the purpose that life chooses for you. I started thinking about that and contemplating that. And I thought, Okay, well maybe my Life Purpose that life has chosen FOR me is what I do for you guys. What you're listening to right now. All the stuff that I do on my 'non-fiction' side. That's kind of the purpose that was given to me. I feel DRAFTED into being a professional intuitive and talking about all this stuff. It was just supposed to be a writing project and it's turned into being a teacher and a speaker, and a counsellor and all the stuff that you know me for, right? And so I thought, Well maybe the purpose that I choose for myself is being a fiction author, being a novelist. That's something that I've wanted to do since I was a really little kid, right? I mean, I never ever ever have strayed from that compass point, from that North Star. And then I flashed back on an interview that I did with Lori Ference last year. And I believe it was on Lori Ference's show, not on my show. I was being interviewed for a Leaders' Call to Adventure and she referred to me as 'Prolific'. She used that word. And I was like, 'What??' I was really embarrassed. I was like, you know, in my mind making cutting motions to her. Like, 'No! Don't say that. I'm not prolific. Don't say that to me.' So when all that stuff came tumbling out with Kim's question, 'What's your word count for your non-fiction?' I thought, 'Oh! Okay. That's what Lori was talking about! That's what she was looking at. That's what made her thinking of the word 'Prolific'. And I was like, 'No. You can't... Please don't put that word on me. I don't deserve that word. Stephen King is prolific.' I thought of the word 'prolific' as being what you produce on the finish end of things that everyone can see and buy on Amazon and that you're super famous for. And that's the only thing I would count as prolific. Again, the only thing that I'd give you credit for if you use that word. Another thing that comes up for me, especially last year, right after the eclipse was What Would Tori Do? So Tori Amos exists for me as a kind of creative archetype. Like she's like a patron saint to me of creativity and how she got there is, one of the things those of us who are obsessed with Tori and love her, one of the things we love about her is that she invites us into this private interior creative landscape with an entire cosmology and a language of her own archetypes and symbols, to the point where it's super, amazingly immersed in her kind of crazy in a way. And we love it. It has absolutely no relationship whatsoever to anything that's going on in popular music, necessarily. Sometimes some of her songs stray over and become... You know, there have been a few, but that's not her audience. Her audience is the super passionate group of people who feel really personally connected to her and invited into her diaries. This is someone who also knew what she wanted to be and who she wanted to be from childhood. She was a prodigy pianist at the age of two or something insane like that. Went to a music conservatory and was playing professionally and recording by the time she was 11 years old. Everyone knew that Tori would always be a musician in a major big way. She spent a lot of her early life, her teen years and her early 20s trying to figure out what that looked like for her. Her story, her trajectory as an artist is the reason why she operates as an archetype in my kind of worldview and why I compare myself to her as a source of inspiration is because, you know, she got kicked out of classical musical school pretty much and rejected from that classical world because she was too much of a freak and an artist. And then when she tried to kind of do the LA music scene, get a record deal, get a big label behind you, and make you a star, kind of thing, she got really chewed up by that part of the industry. They put her in this ridiculous sort of styling and tried to sort of give her a sound that was heavy metalish, because that was like what was going on in the late 80s and she ended up looking like a ridiculous extra in a white snake video. And she did this album under the name, 'Y Kant Tori Read' and it was a joke. It was an absolute flop and it was just a huge disaster. She experienced a personal trauma in her life. She was raped around that time and she just dropped everything and just fled and went away. As the story goes, she rented a piano, and just quietly on your own, in her own headspace, wrote the song 'Silent All These Years'. That was a moment of just claiming like... And if you listen to the song, it IS that message of just sort of letting everything go and tuning everything out and realizing that you have been suppressing your own voice. And just allowing your own voice to come through, right? It's just a basic throat chakra anthem of self-expression and claiming your voice. For women in particular and women in music, it represented a game changer. Because like Seth Godin said, when Tori just went and created her weird little music that was straight from her heart, we all devoured it and loved it and attached to it. There wasn't a place for her in the music industry, so she created a new one. We, the fans, created a new space for these sort of 90s era women singer/songwriters. And there's so many artists that came after her that had that kind of intimacy, especially in their lyrics and their personal themes and all that, and would owe a debt of gratitude for her and would own it in a second that she was an influence. That's how I got into thinking last year when the solar eclipse thing was going on. Long story short, I was writing a book last year that was a sequel to a book that I've already written. And I'd gotten so in my head with everyone telling me: 'You have to write a sequel.' 'You have to write in serials.' 'You can't mark it, writing a whole bunch of individual books.' 'You've got to write one thing and then write book two and three and four and five before you move on to something else or you're never gonna make any money. You'll never build and audience.' 'People won't be interested in standalone books if you keep writing them.' 'People won't be interested in books that have children as main characters.' Of course, along came Stranger Things and reminded us that that's bullshit. Some of the other things that I was putting on myself was this idea that I had to write in a certain voice that was a little bit more palatable, that I tried to make myself fit into a genre more neatly so it would be easier to market. And I really just backed myself into a corner, yet I felt like I didn't have anywhere else to go. And so I was working on this book ALL last year, asking myself the question, 'Okay, this is my light. Who am I shining it for?' And thinking, 'Well, I'm shining it for these people who bought that other book so I've got to be beholden to them somehow and write a sequel.' And I got to the point where I worked for 11 months on this book and I was nowhere near finished with it. And it wasn't even a long book. I mean, I was like, 150 pages into this book that I felt was going to take me another two years to write. And I was slowing down in my word counts. They were dropping from 1,000 words a day down to 500 and 400 and 300. And then I was losing my seven days a week momentum and dropping down to five days a week. And then finding reasons for it to only maybe three. And then at the time I called Kim in a panic, I was writing twice a week and that two hour session was getting eaten up and turned into an hour. And I was writing 300 words and OH SHIT, I'm never going to finish this book and I hate it. And the reason why I can't write it is because it's not connected to my heart. So I just, you know... Prolific? That's not prolific. So all of that really made me start to wonder - Where else am I not giving myself credit? In my Automatic Intuition mentoring program, and in that community, one pattern that I notice in all of us, is that we focus on the one technique we can’t do, at the expense of owning the techniques that produce tons of information for us. We all do this! I can't see auras! I can't see auras! Meanwhile, you can do mediumship and bring through someone's relative that's crossed over. Who cares if you can't read auras! You're a medium. That's amazing. But we all do this! To make this episode about YOU as well as me, I want you to ask, where in your life are you doing this? Where are you discounting your own success? Your own productivity? Your own creativity? Where are you suppressing it and just sweeping it under the rug and acting like you suck when you don't! I do a fitness class that's very similar to cross-fit. It's called circuit breaker. We do it on Saturday mornings and recently, we were doing this workout in honour of what we call the Fallen Five in Chattanooga. A few years ago, we had a domestic terrorism event in Chattanooga where a young guy went and shot up a naval recruiting centre and killed five people here in Chattanooga Tennessee where I live. Which is really surreal if you've lived in one of the cities that's been the focus on the news of one of these terrorism events. One of these school shootings. All that kind of madness. It's almost like it's taking place somewhere else because you're watching it on tv and it doesn't even feel like it could be here. That's a whole other story for another time. But anyway, we do a workout to honour those guys every year on the anniversary of when they were killed. If you know anything about cross-fit and the cross-fit community, a lot of the workouts of the day for cross-fit are made and named after and in honour of people who have been killed in the line of duty, like active service people in the military, fire fighters, police officers. They often have these workouts created for them. So my trainer, Lisa Blevins, wanted to make this workout for the Fallen Five the official circuit... Not, well, it is the official circuit breaker, but she wanted to get it accepted or adopted as the workout of the day for the cross-fit community at large to honour these people. So we're outside. We're doing this workout. It's really rough. It's grueling, and of course, one of the reasons why you associate these things with those who aren't there anymore is because we CAN do these workouts. We're here and alive and physically able to do them. So that's... what you're thinking as you're suffering through the process and thinking, Ohmygod. What have I gotten myself into? But you do it because you can. And because you're alive and you have a body that works. So there's a group of us that, we're outside. We're trying to huddle up under a little bit of shade that's out there where we work out. And we're complaining. Huffing and puffing through the whole thing. I think there were 5 rounds in the workout and I got halfway through the 4th going into the 5th. Somewhere. I don't know. It was like, 4 out of 5. But I didn't finish. I knew I wasn't remotely going to finish. There were a bunch of us that didn't. We literally couldn't complete it. We were kind of complaining and bitching and moaning. To my credit, I always tell people, is part of the way that I process my pain when I'm working out, and it depends on who I'm hanging out with. So me and a couple of my friends who do tend to complain a little bit more. We happen to all be in our 40s by the way. We're out there. We're doing this workout talking about how much we suck because we didn't finish. It was like an hour and a half of tire-flipping in the sun and running 500 metres every time the whistle blows and all this kind of stuff. And it hit me as we were talking, I said, 'You know, look around. What's crazy is there are literally only 24 people here today. Out of all the thousands of people within driving distance of this class, in our city, in our surrounding community … We are the ones here doing it. Us. Just us. No one else.' So you know what? Even 80% of a kick ass work out like that is pretty amazing. We’re in a ridiculously small percentile. I don't even know how many 0.0s you have to go to to get to us. But there we were, in that moment, talking about how much we sucked, when we were just a tiny handful of people who had accomplished something that no one else had. So it's a Shift in Perspective, right? Shift your spirits. The skew, the thing we get wrong, it's always about Self-worth. You look at all the little things and the things you take for granted. You may do something that feels mundane to you, that looks like a super power from the outside to someone who can't do it, or doesn't know how, or doesn't have the aptitude for it. I always think about people who cook. I think people who can cook are creative geniuses. And they're like, 'Dude, calm down. It's a bowl of pasta.' So I want you to go over your day. Maybe it was yesterday. Pull back to 30,000 feet, and then start to zoom back in slowly, and really jot everything down. And track everything down from the moment you got up until you went to bed. Really notice - What are you really accomplishing every day? What are you not giving yourself credit for? The thief of joy - Comparison. Comparisonitis, you might hear this called. When I started jotting down notes, actually a few months ago, for this episode, because I had a series of interviews I wanted to do and I knew at some point I wanted to do this solo episode about all this stuff. We're doing all this astrological madness this summer and thought, 'Oh yeah, this'll be a good time to talk about all the eclipses, and how they were all hitting me and what I was suffering through and angsting about.' So a couple of months ago, I'm writing notes for the show, pretty much everything that I've just talked to you about. I still didn't feel particularly prolific. I had the title of the show, Prolific AF, because that was the word Lori awarded me, and it represented something that I felt I didn't deserve. And honestly, as I was preparing to do this episode, I still didn't remotely feel like I earned that word, or could own it. Last week I had an energy clearing. It was a really good session. There were a lot of breakthroughs for me about the self-worth issue that I was experiencing around my writing. And it was like the block in my writing was this glue that was holding me to something that wasn't working. And it was making it really impossible for me to put it down. Maybe I just needed to give myself some kind of permission through someone else. But like with Kim asking me, 'How many words are you not counting that you deserve credit for?' Amanda asked me, 'If you had three months to live, is this the book that you would keep writing for those three months?' I immediately thought, 'Oh HELL NO. Absolutely not.' She said, 'Well, do you know what the book that you would write is?' And I immediately knew what it was. I immediately knew. It's something that I've had on my radar, in my creative pot simmering away in the background, in the moment she asked me that. And I thought, Okay, I've got three months to leave behind something that really matters. Something that I really want to write. And I knew exactly what it was. It was weird. It's a weird story. And there are so many reasons why I kept it on the back-burner. Because everything in marketing and publishing said: Don't write this book. But I gotta tell you about the numbers on the project. So the book I was struggling to write all last year, I worked on for 11 months and I got about 50,000 words done on that book. 11 months to do 50,000. Last week, in five days, I wrote 25,000 words. So if you break that down, the project that wasn't working probably took me six months to do 25,000 words. And I just did that in five days. FIVE DAYS. That's like 90, 100 pages if it's easier for you to conceptualize. More significantly, you know what it is? It's that 5,000 word goal that Brandon was posting about that I compared myself to and felt like I was so completely incapable of accomplishing. I was recently reunited with my best friend from the last 30 years. Alex. Alex is one of my greatest creative mentors, truly. I collaborated with him so much and I learned so much about the way he works that I've applied to the way that I work. And the way I identify myself as a creative person come from a lot of the strengths that I borrowed from him and gleaned over the course of our friendship. And I was texting him about this whole phenomenon last week, after I'd written all these words. After they were just spilling out of me. Like I can't write them fast enough. I said, 'I think I’m having my Silent All These Years Moment.' I think that book that I was writing this past year was my awful 'Y Kant Tori Read'. It was me in a bad bustier with heavy metal hair, trying to be something that I'm not. So to re-answer those questions: What’s my light? For whom am I shining it? I don't know. You guys are going to have to tell me if I'm shining it for you. Because I'm just going to shine it. And it's going to be a little weird. And it's unlike anything else that I've ever written, and I'm SO freaking excited about it. And I can see how the feelings and the application of what's different for me now could allow me to produce a whole lot of weird little books. And maybe we'll just say, 'Eff it. Let's make a new genre just for me.' Maybe it'll never fit and I'll stop trying to make them fit. And it'll just be another book by Slade. In the same way that people love Tori Amos. You know, download her album the minute it drops. We don't even have to hear it. It's more Tori - we want another dose. Making things for the weirdos. So I'm writing a book for the weirdos! Because I AM a weirdo. And I feel very passionately connected to this project and I just finally gave myself permission to work on it. And it's crazy how much easier it is to do the thing you've been telling yourself you're not supposed to do. What am I doing differently? You know what? I’m not counting words for fiction anymore — I don’t count them for non-fiction. There's too many of them. It's too much work. It’s too hard to do. It’s too time-consuming. It takes too long to check that spreadsheet and evaluate that. I'm just not doing that anymore. Why would I do it for this one writing project when I don't do it for any of my other writing projects, which are all very relaxed and very successful and you guys experience them every week. You experience at least one little bit of my writing ability and maybe you get it in three or four different formats. If you follow me online, you get some more. So I'm spouting it out over here. So I'm just folding the fiction in along with that and not treating it as something different. Why would I make it different? It only makes it not work. All I was doing was breaking it. The whole point of the word count thing is to be motivating. And it was DE-motivating me. So why would I do that to myself? I’m just writing the project. I'm just getting it done. Same as I do with ALL the others. Yesterday, I wrote for 5 hours straight and I was actually bummed that I had to stop. Today, it’s killing me that I had to really stop to record this episode. I had to make myself. I had to set a timer - not to make myself write. To make myself STOP writing. So today, you know what? But today, I really do FEEL prolific as fuck.

Let's talk taking inspired action! My new motto for my life and business is this: how easy can this be?   Whether I'm prepping my celery juice (I'm obsessed) or creating and selling something for my business, I want it to be as easy as possible. This means getting into alignment, aka feeling good, and trusting my intuition to lead me to the right next steps.   Taking inspired action is just that. Listening to your intuition about what next steps you could take and immediately acting on them to #makeithappen.   Inspired action is a huge component when manifesting for business in particular. This episode dives in to how I used inspired action to get 50 sales in just 24 hours! Talk about easy passive income.   This episode first appeared as a live video within the Money Making Maven Facebook group! Click here to join today and get access to live videos and podcast recordings. lizwhite.co/join   Workshops Mentioned: Insta 10k: How I went from 3k to 10k on Insta in 8 months. Painlessly Paid: Stop the struggle-bus, get paid before you ever do the work.   Upcoming Events: Money Making Maven Desert Magic Retreat. Join me and your new BFFs September 21-24 in Joshua Tree for an all-inclusive retreat. Unleash your Money Making Magic so you can make a bigger impact, more money, and a life you're obsessed with. Learn more here: lizwhite.co/joshuatree   Follow me on Insta @lizwhite.co for more money, mindset, and magic vibes.

"We dared," laughed Powerwolf keyboard player Falk Schlegel on the band's decision to put a ballad, 'Where the Wild Wolves Have Gone', on their upcoming album The Sacrament of Sin. "It's our seventh album and we have always loved the ballads of Bon Jovi and Scorpions or whatever and on the previous albums we never thought we could do a ballad and this time the idea came up with the verse and the chorus and we thought why not? On a previous record we had a bonus CD and we covered other bands and I was playing the piano and we recognized then that the piano fits perfectly to Attila's voice so we dared to try it and experience new things and to be honest I love this song. Whether I'm playing it or listening to it I get goosebumps all over my body so it's also going to be a live song I would say. We never expected to play a ballad in our live set before but I think we can do that (laughs). We've been around for fifteen years now so we're allowed (laughs)."Tune in to the audio to hear more about The Sacrament of Sin, including the meaning behind the title and artwork as well as the special edition release which features an album of Powerwolf classics covered by international artists such as Epica, Eluvetie, and Amaranthe, plus Falk also divulges how much influence Powerwolf had over the song selection and execution on that album, plus more on the dark images and themes explored on their albums, his take on religion, plus a possible Australia tour.The Sacrament of Sin is released July 20

Whether I'm white - or whether i'm right Whether I'm a nazi or skin-head in flight I've got to be me - i've got to be me What else can we be - if not jack-booted crazy ------- We're misunderstood - hated like termites in wood you don't like us - & wish we'd disappear for good we've got to be free - shouting all over tv we've got so much screed - to scream till we're freed -------- Doesn't matter if we have no brains We could care less if we're all insane we have to preen - & we have to be mean we have to be obscene - or we'll all get gangrene -------- whether we're right - or whether we're wrong just give us some hits from our nazi bong we'll march through the streets - with our Hitlerite tweets @ least we don't wear those fucking white sheets! -------- We'll give those salutes - with our right hand raised  We'll look so menacing - we won't even get tazed we've got to be free - can't we all just agree our nazi pagentry won't harm any citizenry -------- One final thought - so that no one really frets We'll never march with those nazi goose-steps we just want to be free - to behave incredibly badly  it's just what we do - so we'll leave it at that, sadly -------- now we take leave - till next we visit your street But rest assured - orderly as a visiting navy fleet we've got to be believed - we've got to be received we'll clean up our act - when all we want is achieved -------- So off we go - to put on more big shows we hope you see - that we're all fine fellows so, if you give us a break - please, for heaven's sake we're not the klu klux klan - so just give us a fair shake  

In this episode, we delve into lifelong learning – the key to growing your superpowers, whether you’re interested in taking the next step in your career or feeding your side hustle. We gathered expert tips and advice on how to keep learning and how to decide what new skills will most benefit you. We also get the scoop on how to get the most out of learning conferences and what it takes to earn a certification from Microsoft.   Listen to this episode for a chance to win a free three-month subscription to LinkedIn Learning! One lucky Windows Insider will be selected to access the entire LinkedIn Learning library of 10,000 courses. To enter, tweet about the new talents and knowledge you’ve gained through LinkedIn Learning, and we’ll randomly select one entrant to win. So, let us know on Twitter how you’ve used LinkedIn Learning to up your game. Then, tag your Tweet with #alwaysbelearning and #windowsinsider to be entered into the drawing. Entries must be received by Wednesday, April 18.   Episode transcript JASON HOWARD:  Welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast.  You're listening to Episode 13.  I'm your host, Jason Howard. Today, we're talking lifelong learning, that is, how to continue growing your superpowers, whether you're interested in taking the next step in your career, feeding your side hustle, or an amazing new hobby.  Plus, we'll share our Windows Insiders can access exclusive free courses on LinkedIn Learning.  Our first guest is "the" ultimate lifelong learner.  She took a break from her busy job at LinkedIn to share pro tips for acquiring at least three new skills every year.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  I'm Savannah Barry, and I am a marketing manager at LinkedIn, and I work primarily on LinkedIn Learning.  JASON HOWARD:  Awesome.  Welcome to the studio.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Thank you.  Thank you for having me.  JASON HOWARD:  So, we've heard from our colleagues at LinkedIn that you are "the" ultimate lifelong learner and are really savvy in terms of being able to work on new skills to grow your career.  Would you mind sharing with everybody your method for doing this?   SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah, totally.  So, I'm just a curious person in general.  If there is a problem that I come across, I'm very eager to learn how to fix it.  I have a hard time, like, just kind of stepping back and saying, "Like, okay, like, someone else handle this problem."  Which I think has driven me to be naturally a very curious learner, and kind of have a desire to learn a lot. So when I first joined, I actually joined the Lynda.com team prior to LinkedIn acquiring Lynda.com, and I worked on our enterprise marketing team there.  And a great example about what I did there was we needed some e-mails to be coded, and we had to basically rely on an engineering team to build them.  And I was, like, "This is not efficient, I cannot get stuff done in the timely manner that I would like it to be."  So I basically taught myself how to code e-mails, which I had no idea how to do.  But I had a need.  I had a problem I needed to overcome, I had some campaigns I wanted to ship, and yeah, I spent months after work learning HTML, taking courses on Lynda, LinkedIn Learning, reading books -- just like basically picking my fiancée's brain, like, "Please teach me how to do this."  And at the end of the day, you know, I think it, in general, has made me a better marketer.  That's a great example of just like one very tactical thing I did. But I reserve an hour out of my week, every single week, to learn.  Truly, I have a calendar invite on Friday, it actually will be after this podcast, where I will basically just reserve at least an hour just to sit down and read something that's like relatable to my career, watch an online course, listen to a podcast -- really, anything that can kind of help me achieve my goals, which I think that has been on my calendar as long as I can remember, so that's kind of how I can carve out time. JASON HOWARD:  Well, it sounds like you have a bit of a system -- almost like you've planned out time to go and learn new things.  Can you describe some of the, like, the mindset and the process you have behind that?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah.  I think just knowing that you need to make the time, like, kind of just clearing things out of your brain, off of your desk.  I actually go to like a different place.  I'll go to a coffee shop, I'll go to a different room in my house, just kind of find a place where I feel a little bit inspired, just to really sit down and focus on the task at hand.  So, for example, right now, I'm learning UX design.  So I got a bunch of books.  And this all stemmed because I was using an app and I was, like, getting really frustrated at it.  And I was, like, "Why am I getting so frustrated at this app?"  And there's such a psychology behind how we, like, interact with things.  And I was very keen to understand.  So that is currently what I'm doing.  And I have a book in my car that I will be diving into when I get done here, and probably go into a coffee shop or something and read.  JASON HOWARD:  So one of the things that I was kind of told on the side is that you have a vision board, right?  And you list personal and professional skills -- SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yes.  JASON HOWARD:  -- that you want to learn.  What prompted that?  Where did that come from?  I don't have a whiteboard at home, so -- I mean, you know, you might inspire me to go out to Staples or something and go get a whiteboard this afternoon.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yes.  I personally think that everyone needs vision boards.  I try to make my family and friends make vision boards with me.  It hasn't really caught on with them as much as it's caught on with me.  (Laughter.) But this year, I actually did it on a whiteboard, and I like drew out what I wanted to do.  So I draw, like, pictures and goals and just what I want my year to look like.  And that always consists of three professional and three personal things I want to learn.  So where did it start?  I think I was like in college and one of my psychology classes, like, talking about vision boards or something -- I don't know.  I don't even remember where -- exactly where it started, but I've been doing it since I was in college.  I used to make my roommates in college do it with me and cut out pictures from magazines and glue them on paper.  We'd go get the hot pink, big poster boards -- JASON HOWARD:  Oh, goodness, yeah.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  -- and like glue stuff on there.  Yeah, I did that.  JASON HOWARD:  It's almost like a high school collage. SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah.  But then when I joined LinkedIn, we have these things called "in days" where we have basically one day out of a month where we focus on doing something outside of your job.  So every January, it's like a vision "in day."  So they actually encourage you to make mood boards.  Like, okay, perfect.  (Laughter.) So started doing it at work and now I work at home, so now I have a little bit of a different vision board area, but yeah, it's truly pictures, words, things that just inspire me and kind of keep me motivated throughout the day, throughout the year, and just a way to kind of keep myself accountable for the goals I set early on in the year and just really make sure that those are staying top of mind for me throughout the day.  JASON HOWARD:  Was this something that you did individually?  Did your team come together and you kind of like group -- encouraged each other?  Like, what was that process like?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah, it was a little bit individual, but I definitely tried to source feedback from, like, my manager, my peers, like, here's kind of what I'm doing, do you have any ideas on, like, professional goals that I should maybe focus on for next year?  This year, one of my learning goals is SEO and SEM, which I haven't really gotten my feet wet with yet, but my manager was basically, like, "Hey, here's something that would be pretty interesting I think for you to learn."  And so that's another thing that I'll be focusing on.  JASON HOWARD:  I'm assuming SEO being search engine optimization?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.  JASON HOWARD:  Okay.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Thank you for clarifying.  (Laughter.) JASON HOWARD:  No, hey, I mean, you know, this is my Microsoft, we use acronyms like they're going out of style.  (Laughter.) So can you tell me a little bit about, like, your decision-making process?  You said in this circumstance, you know, your manager, you know, you sought some feedback to help you guide down that path, right?  And, obviously, there's things that you come up with on your own that you want to learn.  So how do you decide what's going to be the best use of your time?  Because, I mean, that's kind of the limiting or deciding factor here is you have to make the time to do it, so where does that decision process come from? SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah, you know, I really try to focus on things that I think will help me become the professional that I want to be, and really the person that I want to be.  I think about, "Where do I want to be in five years, and like, what skills will help me get there?"  So I do a lot of research.  I read a lot of blogs, I do a lot of peer research, asking around, like, people who are in jobs that maybe I aspire to be in, like, what are some skills that they think helped shape their career, take them to the next level?  And I usually start with a pretty long list.  I'll, like, throughout the year, I'll have, like, a running Word doc and I'll just put stuff in there, and then I can reevaluate and say, "Okay, here are the things that actually feel tactical for the year."  The UX one was definitely not on my list, it just like -- my, like, obsession with, like, how I'm interacting with things, I was, like, I need to.  This is a learning thing that I need to do, and I do think it'll make me a better marketer at the end of the day.  So that was an off-the-cuff add to the list.  JASON HOWARD:  Wait, so when you look at the concept of lifelong learning, on the surface, it seems like this great goal, everybody should be doing it, but given, you know, we mentioned time a minute ago, some of the listeners are going to sit back and say, "Hey, you know what?  I'm crazy busy, I have laundry to do, I've got work, I've got kids, I've got family, I've got to feed the dog."  Right?  You know, I had to get up at 6:00 in the morning, it feels like I don't get to sit down until 10:00, 11:00 at night.  And it was never my time for me to invest in myself. So how do you stay motivated to make that time?  How do you drive yourself to make sure that you put it on the list of things that you absolutely have to do?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Totally.  I think that everyone is very busy, and I think that's, like, in general, a big blocker to learning for people.  I've just found ways that it organically works in my life.  So I listen to podcasts a lot.  I'll find relevant podcasts that are aligned to something that I'm currently learning.  And maybe that week I can only listen to a podcast while I'm walking my dog.  Like, that's all I can do.  And that's okay.  Every action you take and every step that you take I think is part of your learning journey, and not everyone has an hour a week to carve out for learning, and that's okay.  If it's bi-weekly, if it's once a month doing two hours a day, I think that, in general, if you need your support of your friends and family and managers, like, it's fun to make it a little bit more of a collaborative experience.  Like, "Hey, guys, I want to make time for learning, you guys should, too."  And I think that also helps create a little bit more accountability, and also maybe frees up some time for you, if everyone around you knows that it's a priority.  JASON HOWARD:  So how has learning helped you professionally?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Well, in general, I think -- I've gotten a couple promotions within my role just specifically because I've been able to go above and beyond of what my normal job consists of.  I think it -- in general, it's made me a great cross-functional partner.  I mean, a lot of the work that I do in marketing, and I'm sure a lot of other marketers out there, is very cross-functional.  You're working with a ton of different people, a ton of different teams, and I think my desire to understand HTML, desire to understand SQL, desire to, like, understand some of these things that maybe I'm not using a ton, but other people are, has really helped me to be a more empathetic partner, to be a more constructive feedback-giver, it's just really helped me a lot in, like, developing really strong relationships. So I feel really lucky that I actually work on a learning product, it's kind of crazy, it's truly the perfect job, I love it.  But, yeah, I think it's just that curiosity and that desire to always want to be doing more and really just -- that curious mind.  And I think it has helped me in my career, and it's allowed me to start doing like more of a different marketing role.  And I was, like, "Ooh!  This marketing role looks interesting."  And so I started learning and developing and asking people who did that job, like, "What does your day-to-day look like?"  And I was able to move into that role with not having the total skillset that I needed to have, but I think my managers felt confident that I knew what I was doing, and I could handle it.  And if I couldn't handle it, I would learn how to do it.  (Laughter.)  JASON HOWARD:  So one important question that I want other ask you is:  How do you inspire somebody else to learn?  Through the conversation that we've had, it seems a big piece of it is you have to have some of this natural desire, right?  If you're not the curious type, it sounds like it could be much more difficult to kind of get personally inspired.  It's almost like you need to look externally for some of that motivation.  You mentioned mentoring.  That's one of the things that's really important here at Microsoft is the concept of having a mentor, finding somebody who's in a space, hopefully outside of what you're doing, because at least within this company, there's a lot of leaning on your team, leaning on your peers, like partner teams, and you kind of naturally build up some of that learning along the way as you work with other people, but having somebody outside of the circle of which you normally focus on, they can give you a much different perspective.  You know, obviously, this is a bit work focused, but they can give you a much different perspective than the way that you are accustomed to looking at things.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  I 100 percent agree.  I think something that's been really valuable for me is having those mentors who can help me look at what is outside of my narrow range of focus.  And as a mentor, that's something that I strive to do, too, is say, "Hey, like, what do you want to do?  What do you want to learn?  What do you want to be, you know, five year -- two years, next month?  What do you want to be doing day to day?"  And if that doesn't align with what you're doing now, then how can we really set you up for success to be where you want to be?  What are those skills you need to learn to get that promotion?  What are those skills you need to make a horizontal move?  And I think learning can be tied to your professional goals.  And I think so often we lose sight of what those goals are.  I mean, everyone is busy.  Work is crazy, personal lives are crazy, your kids are running all over the house.  Like, things are crazy.  But I think if you keep in mind those goals and talk to someone, find someone in a different organization or different company, reach out to someone on LinkedIn and just say, "Hey, I like what you're doing."  I find myself reaching out to a lot of people on LinkedIn to just say, "Hey, I saw this blog post, would love to know how you went from this job to this job.  Do you have five minutes?"  I just had coffee last night with a friend who reached out to me because he wanted to learn more about what I'm doing professionally.  Like, he wants to make a career change.  And he's, like, "Hey, tell me about some of the skills you acquired to be able to do that.  Help me out.”  So I think just learning on other people and keeping true to your goals and keeping true to who you are, that's really what motivates me.  JASON HOWARD:  Do you have any suggestions on getting people started?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yeah, I mean, it depends on what you're trying to learn.  I rely on our LinkedIn Learning, like our own product a lot when I'm thing to learn more of, like, the technical skills that I want for my professional career.  An example, we have instructional designers on our team who basically build out this learning path, and it basically takes you through nine hours of learning, which is a lot, and not everyone has that -- like, it's a collection of courses that it shows you and tells you, "Hey, here's what to expect.  Here's what you're going to be learning."  You can kind of see the courses that you're going to be taking.  And you can say, "Okay, this is a very easy way for me to get started."  I mean, that's what I started doing for UX, I'm deciding to read this book in parallel.  That's what I'll be doing for SEO.  We have a learning path on LinkedIn learning that I'll be using.  That's what I did for HTML, it's what I did for SQL. So I think there's people who have done a lot of the legwork for you, and I think just finding a resource that aligns with what you're trying to achieve.  So figure out that skill.  What are some of the most in-demand skills?  What's going to take you to that next level?  And then find out where you can learn it.  Learning paths are a really, really great, easy way to absorb information, and it's a lot of information.  When I first looked at it, I was like, "Okay, ten hours, wow.  Okay."  But when you actually think about it, that's the whole learning journey right there, that's it all.  Right there, in front of your face, you can look at it on your phone, I listen to just the audio sometimes if it's like more of a soft skill.  There's lots of ways to really engage with learning.  JASON HOWARD:  Well, before we wrap up here.  Any final words of advice or life tidbits or any other awesome vision board things you want to share with the listeners?  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Oh, gosh.  Life tidbits?  I mean, I would just always stay curious, always ask questions, and just keep learning, and have fun while doing it.  I just urge everyone to stay curious.  JASON HOWARD:  Awesome.  Thanks, Savannah.  Thank you so much for your time today. SAVANNAH BARRY:  Thank you.  JASON HOWARD:  Appreciate you being here.  Hopefully, the listeners have enjoyed this as much as I have.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Yes, me too.  Thank you.  JASON HOWARD:  Cheers.  SAVANNAH BARRY:  Bye.  JASON HOWARD:  For tech professionals, keeping up with the latest knowledge is everything.  Have you ever wanted to know if becoming a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert would be worthwhile?  What about how to tackle the amazing and sometimes overwhelming options to learn at Microsoft Ignite?  We talk shop with our next guest, Aaron Buckley, a Windows Insider and IT pro at the company Alex and Ani based in Rhode Island.  Good morning, Aaron, welcome to the Windows Insider Podcast. AARON BUCKLEY:  Good morning.  JASON HOWARD:  So, tell us about your career as an IT pro. AARON BUCKLEY:  Yeah, sure.  I got my start in IT working at my college help desk.  That evolved into my actual career path.  Even though I was not studying IT in academia.  And so now at my current company, Alex and Ani, I kind of jokingly refer to myself as an "army of one," particularly with client management and devices.  I am running our Intune mobile device management, I am also architecting and governing System Center Configuration Manager, and I am in charge of leading the charge for Windows 10.  We're upgrading from a bunch of 7 and 8.1 machines.  JASON HOWARD:  That is definitely an interesting career path.  I've got to tell you, you said that you didn't go study IT in college.  I'm actually in that same boat, right?  It's something that I haven't talked about on any of the podcasts before, but I was fortunate enough to go to university, and my degree is in economics.  Right?  And here I am working at -- AARON BUCKLEY:  Economics?  JASON HOWARD:  Yeah.  And here I am working at Microsoft, right?  Trust me, I did not see that one coming.  AARON BUCKLEY:  I might be able to beat you in terms of relevance.  My degree -- I got a double bachelor's degree in psychology and in political science.  (Laughter.) JASON HOWARD:  All right.  AARON BUCKLEY:  So I'm not sure how I got to IT. JASON HOWARD:  You took a left turn at Missoula, man.  AARON BUCKLEY:  It's a passion.  (Laughter.)  Yeah.  I should say, you know, while I had my interest in academia, I've always been an enthusiast for technology.  And so I actually consider myself really, really lucky that as my career, I'm doing what I love.  And I know that that's kind of aspirational for a lot of people.  I somehow achieved this, I'm really proud.  JASON HOWARD:  So I have had the pleasure of speaking with you before.  We actually met at Ignite last year at the Windows Insider booth.  We had several Insider roundtables, met you there, learned a little bit about you there and obviously, you know, happy to have you back and actually get to talk to you on a more one-to-one type basis here. Through some of that conversation, you know, found out that you're a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert.  Side note for our audience.  You may be asking yourself, "What is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert, or MCSE?"  These are folks who have achieved a Microsoft certification that validates they have the skills needed in a particular area -- for example, app development or cloud infrastructure.  Aaron, can you tell us why tackling the certification was important for your career? AARON BUCKLEY:  That's a good question because I've got to tell you, some of these exams, I think they were actually tougher than writing some of my 25- or 30-page term papers.  (Laughter.) For the first couple years of my post-college, entry-level workforce, I was at the help desk level.  And through just demonstrating my technical competency, I got to be a level-three help desk, or escalation technician.  But it was really at the point where -- I remember the conversation.  I went to my boss and I didn't throw it down, but I handed him my certification saying that, "Wow, yeah, I really am an MCSE."  And it was actually a couple weeks after that that I got my first post-help-desk promotion.  And at that point I joined my company's system engineering team.  And that stuck out to me because I wouldn't tell people that you have to have a certification in order to jump to higher levels in your technical career path, but it was a milestone and a marker that I was able to hand my leadership, and they were able to say, "Wow, you not only have you demonstrated to us that you know this information, but you somehow convinced Microsoft that you know that technology."  (Laughter.) And so that, I think, was really important.  That was fundamental.  I'm going to admit that I definitely failed my last MCSE exam three times before I finally nailed it on the fourth attempt.  And let me tell you, when I walked outside having finally passed my certification, I screamed at the sky I was so happy.  (Laughter.)  I mean it when I say that I think these MCSEs gave me more of a challenge that some of my college courses and final exams.  You guys are not messing around. JASON HOWARD:  So, no doubt, you've obviously gained a lot through this process personally, and of course it's impacted you professionally.  So kind of on a broader scale, for others out there who may be considering something like this, what is some of the extra value you see in getting this type of certification?  How would you apply it more broadly?  AARON BUCKLEY:  Jumping to college for a second, a lot of times people emphasize at the point of going through, like, structured college courses is to really build up someone's critical thinking skills and the way that they approach problems.  I would apply that same sort of ethos to the certification process.  I think that the way that I approach confounds now in my system or broadly in IT is strengthened by some of the problem-solving processes I picked up through the certification process.  Not just the particulars of my certification path, like, "Oh, of course, that's where you go in the SCCM console for that."  But also just advancing my core understanding of basic troubleshooting steps.  Like there's an awareness of knowledge that you get going through these certification processes that I think really just levels up someone's engineering perspective, or their troubleshooting perspective. I'm trying to think of the right way to describe this.  It's almost like a refining of the way that I approach problem-solving.  Does that make sense?  JASON HOWARD:  Yeah, absolutely.  If I'm interpreting some of what you said correctly, it's -- part of it is learning the actual materials that you're reading through, right?  Some of it's going to be new stuff, you'll pick it up along the way, you'll get a chance to, you know, take a preview build and go tinker around and see how it works and see how it functions.  But on top of actually covering just the specific materials, it's changing the way you think about what you do already and you've found some ways to kind of tweak and enhance and gives you new products in just some of your day-to-day type activities.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Absolutely.  And I think that's something that Microsoft in the certification process does really well, and I think it's part of Microsoft's intent.  As you're going through these certifications, they're updated constantly, like, I think yearly.  Like, the questions you're asked, the technologies you're asked about.  And I can definitely say that the actual certification and testing process has made available to me the various ways that I can solve particular problems.  Like, for example, there have been a couple of times where, after going through my Windows 8 MCSA, I realized that there were so many things I was doing wrong, or just not doing the best way with even just customizing a Windows image.  And then I take some of that that I've learned and I'm, you know, using PowerShell to strip out -- sorry Microsoft -- the default Modern applications that are in your corporate image.  Maybe my users don't need Candy Crush pre-installed. But even then, like, a recent example would be a problem that I have at my company is that we have a bunch of iOS devices that I have governed through SCCM and Intune, sort of your hybrid solution.  And we've run into some issues because iOS devices, we have no way to govern updates for them, and that's important because my company has a number of line-of-business apps that are made for certain versions of IOS.  Testing might not be fully complete for updating that app to the next version of iOS.  Well, I mean, it turns out that I learned in some of my recent certifications that testing that Intune standalone, Intune based in the Azure portal does have these iOS update policies.  So now that has directly informed me for the next six months or so that I have some architectural changes I'm going to be making to my device management and governance structure.  And that's something that I probably wouldn't have known right off the bat unless it was being made available to me through this process.  Just one example.  JASON HOWARD:  That's awesome.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Really helpful, actually.  (Laughter.)  JASON HOWARD:  So I'm going to shift gears on you a little bit here.  On top of just certifications and things of that nature, obviously Microsoft has many events throughout the year.  Right?  We have Build, we have Ignite.  I mentioned at the beginning of the show, you know, I actually had met you I person last year at Ignite.  What do you think about these types of events?  For somebody who hasn't been to Ignite before, say they're presented with the opportunity this year, right?  Do you have any, like, extra tips for them to try to get the most out of the experience?  AARON BUCKLEY:  I have been privileged enough, and really it is a privilege to have been able to attend two Microsoft Ignite conferences.  Certainly, I'm really hoping my company would send me for a third time this year.  And that is because of how much I've learned.  Ignite isn't a vacation, it's definitely a working trip.  And my first trip to Ignite, I would look around and see everyone, you know, sitting on couches on their computers.  And I'm, like, "What are you guys doing?  There are so many trainings to do, and there's this event!"  (Laughter.)  No, no, no, they had the right idea, I understand why they are taking things they're learning from these hands-on opportunities and starting right away in their environments.  I would recommend that people go through the actual schedule, it's up a month or so before the actual conference.  Go through, pick out a good five or six knowledge areas that you are executing against in your company.  Pick those areas and go through and add them all to your scheduler.  I understand that at the end of that process, you are going to probably be triple or quadruple booked at probably every time slot available, but what I've found is that instead of trying to really structure my itinerary to Ignite, layer it all on and pretend you're Hermione Granger with the Time Turner and that you're going to attend them all because I've found that, you know, Microsoft does all of us a really great service by recording all these workshops.  You're going to be able to attend one per time slot, you know, in person.  Go to the one that you think that if you had the opportunity, you would like to talk to the people hosting those particular workshops.  The other ones, if they're just technical deep dives or maybe introducing new technology, keep it on your schedule, but definitely be sure to go back on your own time after the crunch of the conference week is over, look through all those videos and actually catch up. Thank you, Microsoft, for providing this as a service.  If you can't attend Ignite, I find that a lot of those videos also find their way to the Microsoft Mechanics site, also Microsoft Virtual Academy.  And so all of that is available to you.  I would also recommend that even if you've layered up your schedule, it can feel intimidating.  Your phone's buzzing a lot with alerts for all these workshops and such.  Be sure to actually allow yourself some down time, because it's not going to be helpful to you to be sitting through five straight hours of workshops and then you sit down at the end of the day, and you're trying to remember this massive information dump that you sat through.  No, it's okay to actually skip a session here or there, some are on repeat later on in the week.  I mean, it probably sounds a little cliché, but take care of yourself.  Give yourself time to sit down at lunch, absorb the morning, and prepare yourself for the next round of workshops later on in the day. That's something that I did not do my first year, and I came back thinking that I somehow needed to, in a panic, restructure all of the systems in my company.  There was this crazy anxiety that came from feeling so -- again, I said this word like three times, but so "empowered" by the experience at Ignite. That's some quick survival advice I'd give.  Oh, and there's coffee everywhere, drink all the coffee.  (Laughter.)  JASON HOWARD:  I don't drink coffee, but Mountain Dew, especially Diet Mountain Dew, is my best friend.  Caffeine is a wonderful thing.  (Laughter.)  So kind of on a personal level for a moment, for you as an individual, what drives you to keep learning?  AARON BUCKLEY:  I'm constantly refining my processes.  And as I gained more information, primarily from Ignite and these training videos, I am all the time sort of revising, refining, solving for efficiency, solving for capability -- all these things.  And I've found maybe a little too much of a technologist at this point, but I found that that perspective has been informing me in the broader and broader aspects of my life including, you know, going to the gym and working out and a more healthy lifestyle.  Even my personal finances and such. I've almost found that I'm taking this systems perspective and applying it to so many components of my life. I can't really help laugh at it sometimes, you know?  In a good way.  JASON HOWARD:  Almost like the challenge of it is, in and of itself, a solid reward that keeps motivating you.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Oh, without question.  I guess when I was growing up, I always had this fear of being stuck in a redundant, boring -- I've got to invoke, like, Office Space here, that sort of job situation.  And so working in IT where -- I mean, depending on where you work, every day is a whole, bright, new crisis to solve.  That's something I get a lot of personal and professional fulfillment out of.  JASON HOWARD:  Yeah, I have to say, obviously being a different person, I take some of that same challenge, and that's part of what keeps me interested in my job is each day that I log into Twitter and I talk to some Insiders, see what they have to say, did they like the newest build?  What kind of crazy stuff did somebody find?  And unless it's a broad, widespread issue, every day that I log in, I either learn something new, I meet somebody new.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Definitely.  JASON HOWARD:  I have the chance to learn something about Microsoft technology that I never knew because it's not something I had ever touched before.  I'm going to be writing a blog post here pretty soon on the topic of legacy filter drivers, and you know, some bugs that we worked through.  And it was before this bug came up, I honestly had never heard of it.  I had interacted with them before, right, as an end user, but it was one of those things that it was just part of the operating system, part of the software I was using, and at the same time, you don't know what you don't know. Until I was faced with the need to learn it, I didn't know it was something that I needed to go and learn about.  And now that I know more about it, it's fascinating.  And I'm, like, "Oh, my goodness, there is a lot surrounding this."  And it's amazing how -- without getting too deep into the technology side of it -- one little change can have some really big outcomes, whether those changes are expected, and sometimes unexpected.  But the learning aspect of it is one of the key factors for me that keeps me really excited about my job because every time I get asked a question about something that I don't know about, it means that I have to go learn something.  AARON BUCKLEY:  It's a whole new rabbit hole.  (Laughter.)  JASON HOWARD:  Yeah.  What's something you, individually, are learning right now? AARON BUCKLEY:  So, cars.  I come from a working-class family.  I have a couple uncles, a cousin, a grandfather who are all car mechanics.  And so I'm a computer engineer, I eventually got so aggravated -- not on my current car, I love my car -- but an older car.  The "check engine" light was constantly always on.  And that is horrible for a computer technician.  It's, like, "Oh, my God, there's an error message.  There's an error code.  I must fix."  Instead of putting black electrical tape or something over the "check engine" light, I sort of started the conversations with my family of, "Okay, I need to replace this thing, Uncle.  I don't want you to do it, this is my car, I'm used to fixing machines, I am informed by my passion for computers and fixing those machines." So it's really funny.  I then -- sort of applying that same ethos to learning how to fix my own car.  I can replace my tire, I even replaced my own brakes a couple weeks ago.  Kind of proud of that.  JASON HOWARD:  Well, Aaron, it has been a pleasure chatting with you.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Thank you so much for having me.  JASON HOWARD:  Take care.  Cheers, man.  AARON BUCKLEY:  Cheers. JASON HOWARD:  By now, we hope you're inspired to grab lifelong learning by the horns and maybe even make a vision board or tackle a Microsoft certification.  Our final guests are going to share a few more tips, and some exclusive resources available to Windows Insiders.  Here's Thomas Trombley, senior program manager here at Microsoft.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  You may have heard that Microsoft purchased LinkedIn, which purchased Lynda.com a few years ago.  Now, LinkedIn Learning combines all the great content of Lynda.com -- that's more than 10,000 courses spanning business to tech skills and creative skills, with the personalization powered by LinkedIn.  Here's a pro tip:  Windows Insiders get access to free LinkedIn Learning courses, and we'll let you know how to access those at the end of this podcast.  We'll also have a surprise giveaway.  Stay tuned for how to enter.  JASON HOWARD:  Thomas is here with our second guest, Doug Winnie.  DOUG WINNIE:  My name is Doug Winnie, I'm the chief evangelist and head of community for LinkedIn Learning.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Some of our listeners may not know that LinkedIn is now in the Microsoft family. DOUG WINNIE:  Uh-huh.  (Affirmative.) THOMAS TROMBLEY:  What do you find most exciting about LinkedIn now being part of Microsoft?  DOUG WINNIE:  It's interesting because the culture of the whole LinkedIn experience is still very much LinkedIn. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  But now we have the benefit of everything we have from Microsoft.  So I go to work, I go to a LinkedIn building, I'm able to exchange and do everything, just what we always did, so I don't feel that anything has changed, and everything's been going wonderfully. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Now, what is LinkedIn Learning versus the LinkedIn social network and platform that most people are familiar with?  And how do the two sort of play off one another? DOUG WINNIE:  So your LinkedIn profile is essentially the front door for all your skills, your background, your experience, volunteer opportunities.  But LinkedIn Learning is able to tie in the skills that you currently have, job opportunities that you're looking to get, and can connect all the learning content that we have to the skills that you want to achieve a change in your career or to apply for another position.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  Or to look at areas that you want to improve, to maybe do a career shift, or to maybe do a side hustle. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  We're going to talk more on side hustling in a moment.  DOUG WINNIE:  Awesome, okay.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Online learning isn't just for students anymore, but people of all stages in their careers.  It just seems to have exploded in popularity.  Can you talk about some of the trends that you're seeing in technology and in the job market that are driving this wave of lifelong learning, especially through platforms like LinkedIn Learning? DOUG WINNIE:  We have this model that we talk about inside of LinkedIn called The Four Squares.  The Four Squares involve major steps that you're taking over your evolution in your position.  You first start off as, like, the eager beaver.  I'm ready, this is my first job, I'm really excited, and I'm going to nail it, okay?  And then you get to this point where it's like -- not quite sure, maybe I bit off more than I can chew.  But then you start doing one thing.  You do one task, you get a little bit of confidence going into that.  And you're, like, "I got this, I can do this."   Then you start doing meatier and larger projects, and you get to the mastery part.  Each one of these four squares represents a step on the journey that you're taking in your career.  Could be a career, could be a job, but it could also be something you're doing outside of your job like a side hustle or some sort of volunteer activity.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right. DOUG WINNIE:  What's important, though, is as you're navigating from square to square, you need to find a new way to engage with your learning because you might have technical skills that you need to get from, say, eager beaver to, "Oh, my God, I'm not going to be able to do this."  To focusing not just on what you're doing, but how you're doing it.  To talk more about the interpersonal.  You might have some life situations that are coming into the workplace, things like that that are not the technical tactical things, but they help you kind of get through roadblocks or hurdles that you need to overcome in order to get your job done.  What happens, though, is when you look at all these four squares, people think that they are in one of these squares at one time.  In reality, you actually are in all four at the same time.  Whether I'm in my career, I'm in my job, whether I'm a parent or a new parent, you know?  My baby's born, this is awesome!  And then you're, like, "I'm responsible for a child."  You know, this is hard.  All these different things exist at the same time.  So if you look at it from that perspective, there's this constant cycle of needing to learn as you're going through this process.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Kind of somewhat of a segue to this four-square approach, or this thought process, it kind of feels like a pendulum going back and forth.  DOUG WINNIE:  Uh-huh.  (Affirmative.).  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  And, eventually, you find your path as the pendulum kind of narrows towards the center.  But I recently read a book by Angela Duckworth called Grit, I don't know if you've ever read it.  She shares stories about people striving to succeed, building perseverance and resilience into what she calls, well, "grit."  Doug, do you find it difficult or tough for folks to stick to classes on LinkedIn Learning, given how busy life can be?  Like, how do people have the grit to really see their learning through? DOUG WINNIE:  Everyone has a different approach to what they need to learn.  So sometimes we'll have people that want to tackle a really long learning path, which is a sequence of courses that we've created that might map to a certification, like the Associate Android Developer Certification, which we recently partnered with Google on.  Then we also have PMP certifications and other things that, you know, are very long-tail approaches.  But sometimes you need to just have that one thing that you need to get you through what you're troubled with today.  And it's funny you talked about the grit.  We just launched a course with Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant on Option B.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Oh, yeah.  DOUG WINNIE:  Around resilience at work.  We just launched that this month.  And the nuggets that are inside of that, that if you just can watch one thing just to help you through a setback or a hurdle that you're having and to renew the positivity that's inside of you that you know is there, that's just being kind of -- THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  Right.  Exactly.  DOUG WINNIE:  -- pushed down, that can then propel you forward and then be able to go back onto your journey.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  And I think that offers some of the value proposition around online learning.  Like, there's this explosion of online learning opportunities that can kind of give you that "oomph" you need.  And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how LinkedIn Learning's offerings different from, say, your competitors at, like, Treehouse, you've got Code Academy, there's Udemy, and the like.  DOUG WINNIE:  I'd say the flexibility.  So just like I mentioned, if you want to go through a long path, you can do that.  If you want to just take one course to get you through a skill that you're trying to work on, or just that one video.  The mobile applications that we have integration with LinkedIn, I mean, all of these things combined make it flexible for what you want to get out of it.  A lot of times when I talk to someone that's really struggling with, "What do I need to know?  What do I need to learn?"  Sometimes, they focus on the skills, they focus on the technology.  "I need to do this, so I, therefore, need to know C#, I need to do all these programming languages and tactical things." THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  And I say, "Lead with your feelings.  What do you want the emotional outcomes to be of what you're doing?"  And look at that as another way to approach your learning.  Because the skills we have on LinkedIn and how you can build your profile is able to accommodate those more emotional social aspects of how you do your work, that creates a really unique way of building your learning journey on LinkedIn Learning as opposed to our competitors.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  That's really compelling.  I feel like you need to teach a course on just preparing to learn or an equivalent.  DOUG WINNIE:  Getting into the mindset of your emotional learning journey.  Yes!  (Laughter.)  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  I think a lot of professionals these days can identify with having a side hustle, as you mentioned earlier, or wanting to make a big shift in their careers.  Could you share with us a story about a LinkedIn learning participant you know or heard about that successfully fed their side hustle? DOUG WINNIE:  There's one person, Sebastian Bleak, I read about his story recently.  And he recently had basically lost everything.  Lost his job, lost his home, everything, was basically living out of his car.  And what turned into a career for him started off as just something very small, a little nugget.  A friend of him said, "Just learn one thing, one thing every day.  It doesn't matter how small, doesn't matter how insignificant you think that it might be.  Just one thing." So in his car, he was basically going through the library learning things like around illustration, graphic design, and through just chipping away at it one day at a time, he was able to get a job at an awesome graphic design company in LA, and he's now an instructor with us, actually, covering T-shirt design. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  That's amazing.  DOUG WINNIE:  But the thing is, if you think about it as just one little chip that you can do to this giant statue that you're trying to create, okay?  It can be overwhelming when you think about the vast amount of things you have to learn.  But if you just do it from a very agile approach and thinking about it as just, "What am I doing today to get there?"  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  I think that's something that's compelling about his story. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  I feel like all too often we get so focused in our day to day -- like, I personally have a to-do list that's a mile long and I sat there and mapped it out in Excel and it said one day to complete all those tasks would take 25 hours per day.  (Laughter.) DOUG WINNIE:  I have, you know, we talked about this before the show.  I've got some tattoos.  And I have one on my arm.  My husband, he always tells me, "Stop planning.  Stop planning everything.  You always are planning everything, why aren't you actually doing the things that you plan?"  So I actually have that on my arm as a constant reminder to say it's not just about planning and creating to-do lists, it's about checking them off and having that sense of accomplishment at the end.  That's part of education, part of learning as well.  Don't get overwhelmed by the sheer vastness of what you have to learn.  What did I learn today?  And take pride in the fact that you learned that.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Yeah, I remember my mom would always say life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.  DOUG WINNIE:  Yes, that sounds familiar.  Sage advice.  (Laughter.)  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Tell me a little bit about how Windows Insiders can access LinkedIn Learning for free.  DOUG WINNIE:  So, we've got some opportunities for the Windows Insiders to take courses on LinkedIn Learning.  And Insiders can stay tuned for the next Windows Insider newsletter to arrive in their e-mail.  And that will include codes to select free courses.  And what we've done is every single month, we have courses from business, technology, and creative libraries, and we recently launched it so that people that are getting the German, French, Spanish, and Japanese editions of the newsletter get localized videos for those languages.  The other thing is tying in with why we're all here in Redmond this week.  We have about 16 courses for our Microsoft MVPs that cover technology from all kinds of different topics -- business, creative, and technology -- and we're unlocking those courses along with the traditional four that we do every single month.  So, that's great to see how we're taking the strength of the Microsoft leadership community and our community leaders and showing how they are able to give and provide their expertise on LinkedIn Learning.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  So there also is going to be a Twitter contest that we're running.  And for -- THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Ooh!  DOUG WINNIE:  Ooh!  For those that are listening, we're doing a three-month subscription giveaway for LinkedIn Learning.  So if you win this, then you'll get access to LinkedIn Learning plus other LinkedIn career premium benefits to help you with your job hunt, you're looking at salary information or other aspects to basically boost your game on LinkedIn.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  So what we ask you to do is tweet all the new talents and knowledge that you've gained through LinkedIn Learning and we'll randomly select someone to win.  So to enter, you need to let us know on Twitter how you've used LinkedIn Learning, then tag your tweet with #AlwaysBeLearning and #WindowsInsider, and then we'll enter you into the drawing.  And if you want more information about the contest instructions and rules, you can see that on the Windows Insider website.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Let's talk a little bit more about how these folks could get started.  Do you have any tips for folks who want to get started with LinkedIn Learning, like, for anyone who might be feeling excited, but may be overwhelmed by having so much knowledge at their fingertips?  It can be a little daunting when you see the catalogue. DOUG WINNIE:  It is.  One of the things that's unique is when you go to LinkedIn for the first time, you can identify key skills that you're looking to learn.  Based on that, it will then create and curate a selection of courses based on those.  You can then go in and modify.  You can add one, you can remove one.  That will continue to kind of shape the recommended courses that are there. The other idea is to look for a career or look for a job that you are looking to achieve and if you can do that, you can see on LinkedIn all the skills that are required to get that, and you can compare yourself to see, like, all right, how do I match up to that particular job?  Then take those skills and feed them into LinkedIn Learning so you can build a list of courses there.  The last one is to go through our learning paths.  They look daunting at first, but if you look at them from one step at a time, just like I said, one day learning one thing, you will get through and build the statue by chipping away at it one day at a time.  There all kinds of learning paths based on business, creative, and technology careers and topics that are then segmented down into specific job roles or if you're a new manager or if you're entering into an executive or leadership position, there are all kinds of courses that we curate in learning paths to help you down that path.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Let's talk about your own learning path.  We've talked about learn one thing every day, your arm says, "Stop planning."  You know, what are you learning these days?  Any secret things you're -- or hobbies or learnings that you're working on right now?  DOUG WINNIE:  So when we talk about side hustles, for me, it's not necessarily a side hustle, it's just something that I love to do.  I love teaching.  And I've got my job at LinkedIn, which I love, but I really enjoy being in front of people and teaching and giving back all the skills that I have amassed in my career.  So I've got 20 courses on LinkedIn around learning how to code and product management, I was a product manager for many, many years prior to coming to LinkedIn.  But I wanted to make that different for me, so I became a teacher.  So I'm a part-time AP computer science teacher at a local high school in the Bay Area.  The experience and the energy I get from that, but also the different challenges of looking at how do I approach a classroom is a learning opportunity for me.  And what's been fascinating is taking my product management skills where I look at things as agile, I put together roadmaps and I am constantly doing feedback from people on an engineering team or a design team and bringing that to the classroom.  Using a lot of the things that are on LinkedIn to help me with gathering data, to put together data visualization and to create a compelling story as to how the students in my class have ownership of the classroom and how I teach has been wonderful.  It's been fascinating because they feel, and they do, have ownership of how I teach.  What do I change?  Do I do more of this?  Do I do less of this?  Do I ditch my lecture notes and do slides instead?  And they're able to add and have ownership as to how they want to learn. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  It sounds more collaborative.  Like, they have a stake in the game in some way and in that, there's a vested interest. DOUG WINNIE:  And they know that I'm accountable to them.  When you think about a lot of teachers and a lot of classrooms sometimes that's not necessarily the case -- at least it was when I was a kid, where it was, you know, "I'm gonna teach this way, this is how it's going to happen."  But when you take skills from other careers or other tracks and are able to kind of blend them together, that's where you're able to unlock about how you can change the way that you approach your career, and hopefully be a ripple effect to other people.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  That's inspiring.  I happen to know that you're a teacher. DOUG WINNIE:  Okay.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  I didn't know you were teaching high school kids part time.  I don't know how you can do that.  DOUG WINNIE:  I'm also a part-time varsity lacrosse coach as well, so -- THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Okay, now I'm feeling lazy.   DOUG WINNIE:  No, no, no. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  All right, well, I discovered yesterday that you have a huge presence.  You're almost somewhat of an Internet teacher celebrity of sorts as a programming and technology-focused teacher.  DOUG WINNIE:  Okay. THOMAS TROMBLEY:  I saw you have a Computer Science Principles lab on C# with 100,000 views.  You have the Android App Development Quick Start, which I think you mentioned earlier, and that's got 300,000 views.  Programming Basics, half a million people -- Programming Basics, half a million views.  I even saw one on Windows Phone 8 development.  (Laughter.)  Which actually brought me over to Microsoft a little over five years ago.  As a PM, I'm also looking forward to taking your Product Management Foundations course, it's been added to my list.  But what really got you interested in teaching technology?  DOUG WINNIE:  When I was a product manager at Adobe, which if you go to my LinkedIn profile, you'll see very clearly listed there.  I managed a lot of the developer interactive products that we had.  And I'm the kind of product manager that approaches everything with compassion for the user, understanding the problems that they're having, and good compassion for the struggles that they are experiencing with their products.  I can approach that by improving the products, but I can also approach that by helping people learn how to use the products and the technologies that are there.  So when I was a PM on the side, I did a series on programming and scripting with Adobe products.  And it was just something I liked to do, I wanted to help.  I wanted to share what I knew with other people.  So I did that, and it was a big success.  And it led to a couple books, it led to some other teaching opportunities at places like San Francisco State and other places.  But I found that doing that gave me a new perspective in terms of how I could help people in a virtual way, because I always saw it as kind of a classroom thing where I had to be physically with them.  Because of the power of the Internet and video and being able to connect with all these different people, gave me an audience that I never thought that I had.  When I left Adobe and went to Lynda, I've now had even more people that I was able to really talk to.  And with LinkedIn, we have over half a billion members on LinkedIn.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Monstrous.  DOUG WINNIE:  When we think about the power that everyone individually has to write articles, to write short-form posts, or even with your phone, just record a video right with the LinkedIn app on your phone and just immediately put it up there to talk about something that you're going through today or a quick tip about how you were able to solve a problem yourself.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Right.  DOUG WINNIE:  You can immediately learn and teach at the same time on LinkedIn.  That got me really excited.  So I joined the content management team, trying to find awesome people to help add more of their experience onto the platform, and then eventually I wanted to connect all these communities together, which led me to my job today.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  That's a tremendous amount of value under that big umbrella that you described.  DOUG WINNIE:  It's overwhelming sometimes.  But on the same note, I feel lucky to be able to have this opportunity.  THOMAS TROMBLEY:  Doug Winnie, it's been really inspiring to speak with you today.  There's a sign that sits outside my office that says, "The only place that learning comes before knowing is in the dictionary."  And I feel like newly inspired to jump back on my own educational program.  And I hope some of our listeners do as well.  Thank you for your time today.  DOUG WINNIE:  Thank you.  It's been wonderful being here and I'm thankful that I can be the drop to create the ripple effect.  JASON HOWARD:  Thanks for listening to this episode of the Windows Insider Podcast.  Get the podcast automatically every month by subscribing on your favorite podcast app.  Until next time, Insiders.  NARRATION:  The Windows Insider Podcast is produced by Microsoft Production Studios and the Windows Insider team, which includes Tyler Ahn -- that's me -- Michelle Paison, and Ande Harwood, and Kristie Wang.  Visit us on the Web at insider.windows.com.  Follow @windowsinsider on Instagram and Twitter.  Support for the Windows Insider Podcast comes from Microsoft, empowering every person and every org on the planet to achieve more.  Please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast wherever you get your podcasts.  Moral support and inspiration come from Ninja Cat, reminding us to have fun and pursue our passions.  Thanks, as always, to our program's co-founders, Dona Sarkar and Jeremiah Marble. Join us next month for another fascinating discussion from the perspectives of Windows Insiders. 

Flying with children is a challenge for any parent, but there are ways to make long-haul flights with kids into a more enjoyable experience. I've been traveling with children since 2002 when my son was still a baby. Read on to hear our advice for flying with children and more. TIPS: FLYING WITH CHILDREN In this episode of Epic Education Radio, I talk about flying with children and how to make it the best travel day possible. Our experience flying with children started soon after my son was born in Tokyo in 2002. I had produced the first grandchild, and my parents lived in Atlanta Georgia. There was no way I was going to keep them away from their grandson! Long-Haul Flights with Kids Flights between Tokyo and Atlanta took around 14 hours...and that's if it was a direct flight! We often had layovers, which were cheaper, so you can imagine that it was a very, very long day flying with a baby. My daughter was born in 2006, so then we were flying with two children. Tokyo was home until 2013, and with each year came more flights with kids: to the United States, to Thailand, to Bali, and to Mexico. We learned a lot about flying with children during that time, and then we left for long-term travel in 2013. Lots of long-haul flights with kids since then. Below are a few tips from my big "flying with children" post, in audio form, with a little commentary below. [toc] Before You Fly: Flying with Children One of the most important tips for flying with toddlers and other young kids is to make travel day a special day. Build excitement. This may mean giving special toys, snacks or other items that aren't part of the normal routine. If flying with teens or tweens, then skip the toys and offer up new books on their Kindles or new games/apps for devices. Practice Travel Day: Long-haul Flights with Kids Prepare your kids for a long travel day. Help them understand what's going to happen and the importance of your family working as a team to get to your destination. If you're new to flying with children, then it may be worthwhile to practice travel day. Do some role play. Pretend to be the security officer or the immigration official. Model how they are to act and react in these situations. Family Flight Times: Flying with Children Many family travelers advise trying to schedule flights during a child's normal sleeping hours. This is good advice, but there are times when we choose to do something different. When we're on long-haul flights that cross numerous time zones, the time of arrival is more important to us than the departure time. For us, we prefer to arrive in the late afternoon at our destination. That way we can be drop off our stuff in our accommodation and then still have a few hours in the sun before bedtime. I think getting some sun helps reset our circadian rhythms faster, and it's worked well for us so far. Packing for Long-Haul Flights with Kids Our most important packing tip for long-haul-flights with children is to pack one set of clothes for every member of the family. That includes you. Lots of things can happen when flying with children so make sure that if something messy happens, you have something to change into. Believe me, I know. I also mention that we feel it's best to pack completely the day before your flight and check the weight of your luggage before you go. A small, portable luggage scale can save stress and hundreds of dollars over the course of its use. When you add tags to your luggage, always remember to add more than your home address and home phone number. If you're traveling, then you aren't at home, right. Add your email address, twitter or skype handle, etc. At the Airport: Flying with Children Tips Are you ready for our top advice for flying with children? Here it is: get to the airport early. Really early. Flying with children is a time-consuming process anyway, but many stressful moments are avoided if you simply arrive at the airport three hours early. Or even earlier.  Since you've arrived early, now you have time to let the kids lead you through the airport to the gate. This is a great way to teach some real-life skills. Show them your gate number and how to navigate the airport signage.  Then let them take you to the gate. If they go off track, steer them in the right direction, of course, but you have time.  On the Plane: Long-Haul Flights with Kids We think it's important to secure your seats and get airplane blankets and pillows right away.This goes double for long-haul flights with kids. Any extra warmth and cushion should be welcomed.  Make sure your go-to bag with the essentials (including Kindles, games, tissue and spare clothes) are all within reach and not in the overhead compartment. You may need them when there is turbulence or when the plan is taking off or landing.  Set your watch to the time of your destination. This helps get your mind in the time zone where you'll arrive. If your kids don't have a watch, buy them a cheap one for travel days, and set it for the destination as well.  Finally, when on a long-haul flight with children, we highly suggest sleeping when the kids are sleeping. That way, you'll be less groggy when they wake mid-flight for a trip to the toilet.  After You Land: Long-Haul Flights With Kids Our final tips for flying with children are pretty straightforward: drink lots of water and have your accommodation booked ahead of time.  Everyone will be sleepy and dehydrated after a long-haul family flight. Drink up, and get to your accommodation quick. Drop off your stuff and go run around and tire the kids out for their first night's sleep in your destination. Any Other Long-Haul Flight Tips? These are just a few of the tips I mention in our big post, but these are the tips I talk about in this episode. There are many others. What's your best tip for flying with children? LINKS & RESOURCES The full post on flying with children (all 30 tips) I follow almost all of Craig Mod's flying advice here. Whether I'm flying with children or not (and yes, that includes a face mask). Buy a portable luggage scale before flying with children Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. This means, at no extra cost to you,  we might receive a small commission if you make a purchase or book using those links. My opinions are my own and I only recommend places/services that I believe will genuinely help you when flying with children and long-haul flights with kids!!   Full-on family travel fundamentals. Epic Education Radio is interviews, stories, and advice for people who decide to make travel a priority in their family's life...and for those who want to. Tune in each week to hear stories and advice from new traveling families, and hear how they've handled various family travel-related issues like education, socialization, working, budgeting, accommodation, road-parenting, safety, technology and more. We talk gear, websites, apps and other resources for traveling & nomadic families, and answer questions from those who would like to do something similar.

As a documentary filmmaker and a video producer, I have interviewed hundreds of people over the last 10 years. Whether I'm interviewing a rockstar, a business owner, a stand up comedian, or a social activist, the process is pretty much the same. So I thought I'd share with you 10 Tips for Documentary Interviews. Hosted by: Timothy Patrick Theme Music: Ryan Stuber For more Indie Film Grit, follow us on Twitter @indiefilmgrit

After hearing the Theories of Everything Part 1 and Part 2, everyone got suuuuuuper jealous that Hunter was getting Spiros all to himself. In the spirit of Mixed Mental Arts, Hunter decided to share Spiros with Dave Colan, Cate Fogarty, Andrew Hunter and Christopher Leon Price. Continuing off from the last conversation, Spiros unpacks how he thinks of truth in thinking about physical reality. Then, Dave Colan (after struggling to remember Sam Harris' name) brings up Sam's recent comments about Hunter on the Joe Rogan Experience. Sam's comments prove to be an excellent teaching opportunity because they reveal the sort of theories we form about other people based on limited and emotionally provocative evidence. The whole point that I (Hunter) was trying to clumsily make on Joe Rogan was that because of the Dunbar Number most humans are an abstraction. We have to stereotype. The question is what we stereotype around. Spending time at Oaks Christian, it was clear that the stereotype people had of scientists was formed around people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins was formed around people who insulted beliefs they did not understand. In fact, I came to realize that Jesus Christ was a better neuroscientist than Sam Harris which you can read about here. Now, Sam has proved my point. He has formed an opinion about me based on very limited evidence and his feeeeeeeeeelings about me. It's an amazing demonstration of #DescartesError and the #DunbarNumber. Is the model that Sam Harris laid out of Hunter Maats a good model of me? Well, I'll leave that for you to judge. But take a look at what he has said here. For regular listeners to Mixed Mental Arts, you'll see that while Sam's impression of me is perfectly understandable that it's a great example of what Spiros talks about with "truncate and renormalize." Sam has a truncated data set around who I am and that he has then renormalized around that very limited data. Can he justify his impression? Of course! He can point to that very limited amount of information and justify his impression. And yet, there's other data. There's over 200 episodes of Bryan and me interviewing hundreds of different scientists and then synthesizing those ideas together into a coherent worldview. Sam Harris has said I'm wrong about the "relevant biology." That's a huge problem. Whether I'm wrong or he is doesn't much matter. What matters is that the "relevant biology" has become so overcomplicated and atomized that either me (a Harvard biochemistry grad who has interviewed hundreds of scientists) or him (a neuroscience PhD) don't understand the "relevant biology." If we can't figure it out, then it's no wonder science can't win the public over. Science needs to figure out and present a coherent worldview in order to effectively win people over. The #MarchForScience is a nice show of support...but which science are these people in favor of? Is it rationalism or intuitionism? Is it the multi-level selection of David Sloan Wilson, Jon Haidt and Joe Henrich or the gene-centric model of Dawkins and Harris? And, more basically, what is science anyway? Because it's clear that Spiros, Jon Haidt and me are operating on a very different understanding of what science is than Sam Harris is. Sam Harris has painted a picture of religious people with statistics that is actually a terrible model of who they actually are. I'm an apatheist. I don't really care about God. I don't go to Church or Mosque. I care about practically improving people's lives using whatever tools are available. And that's why I'd moved on from Sam Harris and was focused on making Smart Go Pop but then Brentwood Boy got so emotional about the whole thing that he couldn't help saying Candyman five times. As Cate Fogarty points out in this article, I was just doing exactly what Joe Rogan did with Carlos Mencia. I was calling out someone who was hurting the community. Why does Joe defend Sam? Because Joe has feeeeeeeeeelings about Sam that cause him to value defending his friend over examining the evidence impartially. Sam Harris is Joe Rogan's sacred cow. And that's okay. That's the way humans work. All of us. You, me, New Atheists and old school Arabs. And if we want to have a better world, then we all have to stop pretending like we have it all figured out and start reflecting on the problems in our own culture and do the difficult work of self-reflection and calling out the Fundamentalists who have wrapped themselves in the flag of our cherished causes. As I've covered in earlier episodes, the challenge for people is to spot who is and who is not a Fundamentalist and to see who preaches our values but doesn't actually practice them. Joe Rogan's defense of Sam Harris will reveal before this community just how hard this is. Thank you, Sam Harris! You're the best. You beautifully proved my point and have created the social drama that will drive attention to the science. Don't believe me. Decide for yourself. That's what science is about. It's not about authority or Harvard or PhDs. It's about forming better Theories of Everything by breaking your old theories to make room for better and better ones. People do that all the time with TV shows. Look at Game of Thrones. People had theories about whether Jon Snow was dead. Then, they were confronted with the evidence of the next season. Many theories died and people moved on. You can't break your old theories unless you're exposed to the evidence and you can't be exposed to the evidence if the people who are the public faces of science don't tell you about it. That's why Mixed Mental Arts has branded an alternative to The Four Horsemen. We call it The Holy Trinity of Cultural Evolution. They present newer and much more powerful Theories of Everything. WE DO NOT WANT YOU TO BELIEVE US. That's not what science is about. It's not about human authority. It's about the evidence. So, examine it and draw your own conclusions and then let's hash them out and see if we can all evolve better Theories of Everything together. The internet is our intellectual thunderdome. Sam Harris just dragged his public persona into the arena when he said I was wrong about the "relevant biology." May the best ideas win. Two ideas enter. One idea leaves. Idea dying time is here. In other news, Spiros is now going to be taking any and all questions and answering them for you through Mixed Mental Arts. Send questions to @quantum_spiros! Also send him requests for more 80's cartoon theme songs in Greek. Love to all humanity - Toto

Tyler Jorgenson: Ladies and gentlemen I want to welcome everybody out to BizNinja Radio. We have a really cool guest today. We have James Lawrence the Iron Cowboy. James Lawrence: What's up? Tyler Jorgenson: James, so a lot of people, some people have heard about you because you've got a big following and some people haven't. James Lawrence: Most have not. Tyler Jorgenson: Not enough, I'll tell you what not enough people have heard of you. As I've gotten to know you a little bit recently when I mentioned it I say have you heard of the Iron Cowboy, people kind of look up and think and I'm like he did like fifty Iron man triathlons, and then everyone starts nodding like oh yeah I've heard of the guy. But even before you did that, I'm gonna ask you more about that in a second, you set some world records. What were some of those first big things that you did that kinda of started getting you publicity. James Lawrence: Can we hang on let me tell them what I'm doing then and then we can edit this out. Tyler Jorgenson: Okay. All right so what was the first thing that you did that got you some notoriety? James Lawrence: I think the first think I did was I did a four mile fun run and my wife told me I was pathetic and so that got me some notoriety and some laughs at Thanksgiving. Reality is that kind of kick started my journey and put me on a path that I would have never expected. In 2010 I broke a world record for the most half iron mans done in a single year and that was twenty two events in thirty weeks. Which was just for me personally it was just training grounds for what I really wanted to accomplish was thirty full official iron mans in one calendar year, and I did thirty events through eleven countries. I learned a lot about the sport, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about the tri community. The great news is I accomplished that and it was awesome but it left me with incredibly empty feeling of I can do more I wanna push myself, I wanna learn, I wanna grow, I wanna challenge myself. That ultimately led me to the fifty, the iron mans fifty days fifty states campaign and that happened in 2015. Tyler Jorgenson: Not necessarily a natural born you know freak of nature athlete your wife as you come out in a fun run and your second wind it didn't impress her. James Lawrence: To say the least. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so in order to keep her impressed or get her happy again and impressed by James, you know what I'm gonna start doing triathlons. James Lawrence: It was interesting, what she did was she signed me up for a marathon and she said you know what your performance was so pathetic in the fur miler I'm gonna make you do a marathon, so she did that. It to was an awful experience but those are the experiences where we grow the most [crosstalk 00:02:58] and possibly look inward for answers and you know I like to say that I wasn't gonna allow that moment to define me or defeat me because it was humiliating at best and so I did I looked inward and I found the sport of triathlon. You could say I jumped in with two feet and just found it, a new passion that I never knew existed. Tyler Jorgenson: You start to, you go fun run, marathon and then when was your first triathlon? James Lawrence: It would have been in 2005. Tyler Jorgenson: Out of curiosity were you decent as a competitive triathlete or were you more, you know when you're doing fifty fifty fifty that was more not competitive speeds right you're going for more completing it at that point right? Did you get to where you're pretty decent in terms of finishing speed? James Lawrence: Yeah absolutely. I've been doing this sport for a decade, realized I had some natural talent when I came to cycling. I had to teach myself to swim and I got pretty good at running as well and you put the three together and it's triathlon. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: I started to win races in my local area. I've gone to the half iron man world championships three times, I've completed in Kelona which is iron man world championships, I've won a few full iron distance triathlon events. I'm not the fasted on the block in every event but I love to mix it up I love to do that. Then I've kinda of, I enjoy the adventure now of it. I'm really really busy, I've got five kids and I do a lot of speaking and I do a lot of these adventure type races, so it just takes a certain sacrifice and commitment to be able to race at a high level for a really long time. I'm not willing to put in that work in order to do that, I'm more in the enjoyment phase of it. I did race for really competitively for a long time, it's just a different mental kind of grind, a different type of training, and I did that and I had a lot of success doing it and I really loved it. I loved the glory days of being fast, and I'm still fast, I'm still competitive in my age group and I still love to mix it up, I'm super competitive. But like we're gonna talk about it a little bit later I hope, but I'm doing some really fun adventures this year that I'm more excited about then ever, over trying to best the next guy in my age group. Tyler Jorgenson: I think what it sounds like you're saying is that it gets to a point where winning is fun and winning is great if that's your goal, but it sometimes, cliché in hand, the joy is in the journey right? James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: I love that you are doing a lot of cool adventures and you include your family a lot in a lot of this which is really neat. James Lawrence: Yeah a lot of people hear what I do and they just assume that dude is rich and single. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: And I'm not I've got five kids, you know we had five kids in six and a half years. Right now their ages eight to fourteen or eight to thirteen and it's just a crazy time, we're just busy but we do, we include them in a lot of that, we do, we encourage them to be active in whatever they like to do, I don't make them do triathlon. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: My oldest daughter does volleyball and I was at the tournament all afternoon today. My second daughter does gymnastics, my third daughter does basketball and my son does gymnastics, and my other girl just likes to float around like a fairy and a unicorn. Tyler Jorgenson: But they'll all find their path and their thing. James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: We're really similar with our four kids is whatever they want to do as long as their being active. James Lawrence: Right, yup. Tyler Jorgenson: Let's, I think we have to talk a little bit about the fifty fifty fifty because it's a ridiculous like feat. James Lawrence: Maybe we should tell people that possibly don't know what an iron man actually is. Tyler Jorgenson: That's a great way to do it and then we'll explain how you stack them together, so let's do that. James Lawrence: So an iron man distance triathlon any triathlon is swim bike run and an iron distance is the longest standard of the family. It's a two point four mile swim, followed by a hundred and twelve mile bike ride, and then once you get off your bike you run the standard marathon which is twenty six point two miles, so all of those put together it's a hundred and forty point six miles that you have to cover by yourself, your own grit and your own will. Tyler Jorgenson: How long does that typical take, maybe not the fasted guy but the competitive iron man athlete. James Lawrence: Yeah so your fasted guy does do it in about eight hours. That's your top tier professionals the peak of their career. Then you have a seventeen hour time limit. Your competitive men are gonna be coming anywhere in between nine and eleven hours, and then your competitive women anywhere between ten and twelve. The professional women are dipping into the low nine hours, which is awesome. As you evolve in the sport guys are like k I wanna finfish an iron man, okay I wanna break twelve hours, I wanna break eleven hours, I wanna break ten hours. Those are kinda your bench marks. Tyler Jorgenson: Some listeners maybe thinking, okay I did thirty minutes on the treadmill the other day. James Lawrence: Yup. Tyler Jorgenson: But their talking about moving consistently for eight to seventeen hours. James Lawrence: Yeah, exactly. Tyler Jorgenson: And so. James Lawrence: It's no joke it takes most athletes or individuals that have a desire to do a bucket list iron man, I mean it takes a good year possibly two years of prep. Tyler Jorgenson: They prep for it and then they go out and a lot of them like you said their first goal's just to finish that means close to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours of work. James Lawrence: Yeah, I think anybody's goal, like we run a coaching team and when I have an athlete that's doing an iron man for the first time I'm like dude let's make it to the start line healthy, that's always an accomplishment. Then, it's your first iron man and I tell all my athletes I say look you have one shot at your first iron man and your goal should not be to push an incredible pace, it shouldn't be to try set a land speed record, it's to go out there and be grateful that you get to do an iron man today and you should try to smile your way through the event and thank the volunteers and then have enough energy at the finish line to pump your fist and pound your chest and say that was a good amount of sacrifice and a lot of hard work and I just accomplished something really cool. Then once you do that then we break it down and we start breaking down the events and shooting for time goals and execution goals and things like that. Your first one should be an experience and like we alluded to earlier it truly is about the journey and getting to that start line and then enjoying that moment and that day. Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. You start, you know, you struggle in the fun run, you start getting into a little bit, you do thirty events in a year, which is already amazing, but you said it left you empty and so you went for, let's first talk about why you felt empty after setting a world record that's recognized by the Guinness Book, and then you did, what is the fifty fifty fifty? James Lawrence: I've always said I wanna find my mental and physical limits and then I wanna know what I'm gonna do when I reach that limit. Whether I'm gonna push through that and accomplish more or if I'm gonna you know say hang my hat that's good I've found my limit. You know with all of these we do a charitable aspect to it, a fundraising campaign and in 2010 and 12 we were building dams for Africa. I didn't hit the fundraising mark that I wanted to do and so there was an empty feeling about the charitable donations, there was an empty feeling about my physical and mental limits. I just had the sinking feeling that there was more, that I wasn't, I haven't reached my potential in fundraising and pushing myself myself to my satisfaction. It's interesting 'cause it was right near the end of the campaign in 2012 I had completed twenty seven of the thirty and I just looked over at my wife and I'm like I just asked her a question I was like I don't think this is it do you think this is it. Her answer was not right now, so I kinda bided my time but I knew there was more and I conceptualized the fifty fifty fifty which was fifty consecutive iron mans, fifty states so that would take us fifty days. Fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states. Tyler Jorgenson: Just to kind of do some math 1) you're talking about traveling the entire country, so there's travel time. You're talking about the average iron man taking, you know someone whose done what they're doing probably twelve to fourteen hours, I'm curious how long were those taking you? James Lawrence: Yeah it's interesting, I ended up having to average twelve to fourteen hours every single day for fifty consecutive days in order to keep pace, in order to give us enough time to get to the next state. There's so many, If I can humbly say this is one of the greatest endurance feats that no body knows about yet, just because there was the massive logistic component to it, there was the physical component to it, there was the mental component to it, there was the fundraising component to it, there was the family aspect to it. There was just so many things and people, it's interesting 'cause we wrote a book that I'm incredibly excited about because people know the story because they, well people think they know the story because they know oh yeah the iron cowboy fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states, but that is just the headliner, you know, because there's so much that went that took for us to accomplish that and the blood, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifice, the emotions, the stories the people we met along the way. What's really interesting, I love the way that we wrote the book is it's some what of an autobiography and a journey because we flashed back to my past and my journey on how I got to this point. It's actually really really cool because not only does it kinda paint the whole picture of what we went through on the fifty but it gives people an opportunity to get to know me and my family a little bit better and what it took and what makes us tick to be able to even conceptualize this and think that it was possible to go beyond what everybody said was impossible. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so, not only, so this is crazy right you achieved this thing that I think most people, I've watched your documentary, even a lot of your sponsors didn't think it was gonna happen. James Lawrence: Yeah. Tyler Jorgenson: You know, when it got started most of them were thinking hey this is great we like James we'll support him but really like is this, this isn't possible, is what I think they were down deep if they were honest with us all. There were some comments on that made. James Lawrence: You know, not even down deep they would think that, on the surface they told me that. They said dude we love you we've loved being involved in your whole journey, we're not gonna tell you how many we think you're gonna make but the number's not fifty, but we'll get behind what you're doing. It was really really cool for my journey to not only watch the sponsor but the forms and the message boards to watch that energy shift from you're a moron you can't do this, you're being reckless, to holy crap maybe he will, to becoming supporters and advocates for what I was doing. It just, it was a really humbling experience for me to go through that experience and be the center and watching that happen was a really neat experience. It was a really hard experience because we took a lot of shots for what we were doing and how we did it. I just have to realize that we made the best decisions that what we thought at that time and I stand by them a hundred percent 'cause the journey wouldn't be what it was without them. One of the biggest takeaways and things that I've learned is you can't, don't ever judge anybody 'cause we don't know their circumstances what it feels like to be them going through what they're going through in that moment. That was such an incredible lesson for me to be able to go through life and have experiences and look at people and go you know what I really don't know the full back story here, I don't know the emotion, I can't feel what he's feeling right now. So it's helped me not to be so quick to judge and criticize and to really appreciate and just have a better understanding of other people and what they're going through and what they're trying to accomplish. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, I was actually gonna move right into that question, kind of like how do you handle, like the haters right? The more popular they get, and it's just the bottom line the more you are, the more awareness and the more reach that you have the more influence you have by very nature of how humans work people start picking sides and at every age people deal with it at a different way. Like I first learned it in high shool, like okay when you start like excelling in certain things in high school people pick sides. It probably goes all the way to preschool, but the bottom line is it happens no matter what point of human but the bigger you get the bigger of a you know you have in your reach and your influence the stronger that polarity gets, especially when you start doing unique and big things right. When you started you already split up the community with haters likers and [inaudible 00:17:17] you guys made some judgment calls that further polarized that audience. James Lawrence: Yeah, and you know I love the way you just put it and how back it starts and the division and what not. I heard it put really brilliantly the other day and I'm gonna butcher it and I'll do the best I can. Basically it said, the way that I look at it is for every one hater, negative person that I get I have ninety nine others that are advocate supporter and I'm having an impact on them and everything. What this individual said was you have a hater that's amazing go get ten more because that means now you have nine hundred and ninety people that you're influencing for good, and once you have ten haters go get ten more, get as many haters as you can because for me the balance of haters to people that I'm having a positive impact on is such a favored in the positive side that the more haters and what not that I get I love it and thrive on that because that means that's the bigger, the other part of the equation is bigger and more successful, and I'm having the impact that I want. Every time I get a message or a comment or something that is negative or is someone attacking me I sit down for a send and it sucks and it hurts but then I realize that person's coming from a position of hatred and jealousy and then that means I'm also having a positive impact on the other side. It stings and it hurts and I hate it because I'm human and I have feelings and emotions but then once  I actually dissect it and realize the magnitude of the opposite side of that coin and like I take a deep breath and I'm like okay dig deeper, grind let's go get some more haters. Tyler Jorgenson: Absolutely, and yeah you know we sometimes use the term polarity which would imply that it's an equal balance but I think you're right I think that usually you have the people that are the fans are usually, frankly not as vocal. Sometimes they're just enjoying the moment right? The negative people just enjoy being loud. I got a weird email the other day that was basically just like hey I was on one of your websites and there was a popup ad I didn't like that, no need to respond I just wanted to let you know. I'm like awesome, I love that you don't even need to tell me, you don't even need to respond back, I'm sorry you didn't like the website experience, my website, just don't come to it anymore. James Lawrence: That's similar experience, I'll have someone that'll just attack me in some way and I'm like dude let me direct you to the unfollow button. That is a complete choice, you're choosing to follow me, I'm not begging you to follow me. You're a click away from me disappearing from your life. Tyler Jorgenson: That's it. That's it. James Lawrence: It's that easy. I'm not begging you. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, stand up just walk away from the computer. James Lawrence: Yeah it's easy. Tyler Jorgenson: The internet is not, yeah exactly, it's not part of your soul it's so funny. James Lawrence: I love it. Tyler Jorgenson: You hit the fifty fifty fifty and you have this book coming out what made you want to turn that story and put it into a book? What made you want to tell the story behind the story? What is it that people are, that you think what is the big take away that you want people to get when they read your book? James Lawrence: I think what's interesting and because of what I've accomplished now, people don't know the backstory they just go dudes a genetic freak, he's disappointed to do this, I can't do that, he's completely unrelatable. As soon as I finished the fifty they're like you need to go get genetically tested you're a freak. I was like okay let's go get tested. The results came back and it was staggeringly overwhelming, I'm white, Canadian and normal, I may be less than normal I don't know, but I started didn't have any type of advantage of any kind. My story really comes from a very like I didn't know how to swim even, I struggled through a four mile fun run that I got up off the couch to do, but people they don't see that side of the story. What I did is I stopped listening to what everybody else was saying and I was like no this is what I'm capable of and this is what I can do and I just blocked all that out and I went on my own journey, I created my own lane. I started to do me and my passion and people don't know the backstory you know to the extent that it is but we lost everything, like half of the Americans did and we were a struggling family. I had an opportunity to hit the reset button and so what I want people to get out of this is really it's totally cliché but wee really can do anything we want to. I believe I proved that, I went above and beyond what anybody said was possible, not because I was genetically gifted but because I went out and I did the work and I didn't expect anything to be handed to me. I went out and I grind and I worked harder than anybody else did in order to accomplish what I did and I created my own future. I hope my story gives the guy that's sitting on the couch, or the mom that's struggling that everybody has their own version of hard and that we have our, everybody, every moment of everyday is making decision and this is something that my mom said many many times when I was growing up and something I'm a huge advocate of is ten percent of life is what happens to us, and ninety percent is the choices and the decisions that we get to make with those things. Ten percent is just it is what it is, it's the crap that life dealt you but you know what we have a choice and a decision with everything that we do. You have to decide nobody's gonna make those decisions for you and no one's gonna do that work for you. You have to and you can go out and create your own future. So I share my journey, my backstory and I hope it gets people moving and engaged. One of the biggest reasons we wrote this was 'cause I started to get emails people saying hey you don't know me but I watched your journey and I just wanted to thank you, this is what I've been able to accomplish because you set that example. Trust me I don't think I'm perfect and I grind and I have challenges, and I struggle, and I fail, but I get back up. I wanted to write this book because not a lot of people know about the story and to me the story has impact both with women and with men. I'm middle America, I've got five kids, I live in a community, I go to church, I am middle America, I had a corporate job. So, my goal with this book is to hopefully impact someone to make a decision to do something different and find their passions again and start living life and creating your own path, but it takes work, conviction, belief, effort, all of those things. I hope my journey helps people to see that realize it and go do it. Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. I, that was one of the takeaways I really got from your documentary, from watching a lot of your interviews was that everyone has their own hard right. One of the stories that was really touching for me was how your last few races you had challenged your mom, how much of the last few races did she do with you? James Lawrence: Every single day we put on a five K asked the public to come out and join us and we donated all that money to charity to combat childhood obesity. So, I challenged my mom to come do the last five K of the last five races with me. Tyler Jorgenson: Now she, before that she was like super fit and could run marathons right? James Lawrence: No my mom has struggled with obesity her entire life and has never run further than a mile. It was incredibly challenging, in fact after every single five K she did she said that was the hardest thing that she'd ever done but then the following words that came out of her mouth always impressed me and she said can I do it again tomorrow. I think that's the attitude that I want people to have, I want you to go do something and I want you to challenge yourself, and then I want you to realize that you grew as an individual and you learned lessons and that you should desire to put yourself in challenging situations and embrace the struggle because that's how we learn and grow. When my mom said that was the hardest thing I've even done can I do it tomorrow I was like dude yes that's why I love you and that's where I got a lot of my grit and mental toughness from was because of that perspective and that drive. Tyler Jorgenson: That's awesome. You've got the book coming out we'll make sure when this gets posted on podcast we post the link, I believe it's ironcowboybook.com. James Lawrence: Yup. Tyler Jorgenson: Definitely checking that out and tell us about, I mean you're not stopping you're still doing even, you're doing amazing things. You talked about your seven big events this year, what's going on this year, and you're getting ready for one soon right? James Lawrence: Yeah, on Tuesday, yeah I'm super excited about this year and I didn't realize it when I started to plan it that it was gonna be turn out to be this kind of year, but it really has turned out to be an adventure year. On Tuesday, I'm hopping on a plane with my mountain bike and we're heading over to Africa, and we're gonna climb, we're gonna pedal the entire way from base camp to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at twenty thousand feet and be the first people to do a full assent peddling the whole way. Then a really cool, cool, awesome, fun dissent. That's gonna be in Africa, we leave in two days, we'll be on the mountain four six full days just an incredible fun time. We've got a film documentary crew coming with us. We've got, with some really cool stuff with our book launch that's happening is some of the bonus stuff we're gonna give, we're filming behind the scenes from all these adventures that we're doing this year and they're gonna be available when you pre order the book, so that's kinda cool. Then after I get home from Africa I've got about a month to prepare, I'm headed to Greece. I've been invited by the navy seals to run two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days stage race with some of the baddest A's on the planet. I'm most nervous about this race because I have no idea what the seals are gonna do with me but I'm all in. That's one of the things I talk about on stage, I talk about going all in and having an experience, so I'm excited to be challenged and to learn from the navy seals, two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days. Then I'm doing four of the hardest iron mans they're called extreme irons mans meaning extreme conditions. It's still the two point four swim, the one twelve bike and the twenty six point two run, but it's in freezing water fifty degrees or under and then it's through mountainous biking terrain and then the run is the equivalent of running from base camp to a high mountain peak, so twenty six miles of insane elevation gain. I'm doing four of them. One is in Scotland, one's in Switzerland, one's in Alaska and it finished with the famous Norsman in Norway. Tyler Jorgenson: Wow. James Lawrence: Those are kind of some of the really cool events and adventures that I get to do just my way of having fun and challenging myself on a different level. I'm really excited to go to these different countries, learn about the cultures, push myself physically, have a little bit of a different experience. There's gonna be some extreme elements involved. I have being cold and so it's a challenge for me to mentally jump into these cold water situations and then bike through these, I mean we're gonna be biking through the Swiss Alps during some crazy time. Like I said Greece is gonna nuts you have no idea what the navy seals are gonna do. Summiting twenty thousand feet I'm terrified there's gonna be no oxygen. So, just a wild, crazy, adventure year, I'm super pumped for it. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so let's talk on that first one a little bit with Kilimanjaro. The locals there have a saying there when you're assenting which is polle polle which is slowly slowly, which usually doesn't mean jump on a mountain bike and start peddling. You're kinda shucking that old adage that they teach people as you're climbing. How did you have to, not only personally prep but logistically prep to get you know to get them to allow you to do that? James Lawrence: It's a special circumstance that they're allowing us to do it and I feel honored that we get to. I believe that I get to see more of the mountain than I usually get to or if I was going to hike it or climb it because I get to climb up and come down and climb up and come back down not to the top but hitting certain elevations because you do you have to go slowly. One of the biggest killers on Mount Kilimanjaro is altitude sickness, people die from this. We believe we've put together really safe and intelligent plan in order for us to summit safely because we're on bikes. Even though we can travel faster on hiking the pitch is still so extreme that we're only gonna be going two to four mile an hour as we're climbing, because our goal is to pedal the entire way and not push or carry our mountain bikes we may have to spend forty five minutes or an hour on a specific section and continue to challenge and break the section down so that we can physically pedal the entire section, yeah find the right route or just technique. I'm gonna have to learn new techniques on the mountains in order to navigate certain potions of this. I'm not delusional that the challenge is gonna be extraordinary and that I'm gonna have to work extremely hard but there's that real fine balancing thing I gotta work super hard but there's not oxygen so how, you can't work really hard there's gonna be, we've put a lot of prep into trying to be efficient and really our bring our heart rate down. A lot of mind power comes into this, that's part of why I love these new challenges, you know beginning part of the show you talked about racing for speed and being competitive, I moved on to a different type of challenge where I still have to be mentally tough and the training is different, it's just I'm looking for these type of really fun adventures. Tyler Jorgenson: Well that gives me a little bit more piece of mind that you're gonna be not just sprinting up because I think sometimes there is a false confidence that comes with becoming really fit or really capable right, where now we're thinking that we're superhuman. Now you are superhuman compared to a guy like me. James Lawrence: Remember I'm totally normal. Tyler Jorgenson: But you've gotta find your limits right. That doesn't mean find them on like in the ambulance it means. James Lawrence: No, I've got five kids, four beautiful daughters, I have no intention of dying. I want adventure with full intentions of retuning home every time. We're very methodical with our game plans, with safety being first and foremost. Nobody wants to die on the mountain, nobody wants to die in these cold waters, they're very calculated. That's part of the reason that I've been able to be successful in what I do is because I do a lot of little things over a long period of time and I do them with intent in order to become successful. It's a matter of doing the basics really well and paying attention to the details to make you successful in order to accomplish your goals.  When people ask me what's the one thing you do and I say well let me break down the hundred things I do in order to accomplish this. Tyler Jorgenson: I think that's kinda of the big takeaway I'm getting really from everything right is not only, you know, you want to set goals, you want to go after things that challenge you but that doesn't mean you go without a parachute or without a safety net. You're methodical and you plan I think that's kinda of what you're saying is that people see the tip of the iceberg but they forget that there's the entire planning and logistics and coordinations and adjustments that have to be made on the fly to [crosstalk 00:33:35] to continue to push yourself and challenge yourself. James Lawrence: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because people contact me all the time and say Iron Cowboy I watched your journey and you inspired me and I have zero experience and I thought of this thing that I wanna do, I wanna do it in four months can you tell me some pointers on how to get ready for it? I'm like I will give you some pointers but I'm gonna be very blunt with you that it took me a decade to this point where I could try that and just the fifty was over two years in planning and preparation just for that fifty day event. I said I will help you get it and I want you, that's the reason I did it so people will set giant goals and think, but you've gotta have the appropriate time frame associated with that goal and you have to be able to be willing to sacrifice to do the work associated. A giant goal requires massive amounts of work, and dedication and sacrifice. So, yes set that big goal but dude it's not gonna happen four months from now. I appreciate that and I will go out of my way to help you achieve this goal that you want to do but let's get a five year game plan here. Tyler Jorgenson: Right, it's not Forrest Gump where you just run out one day and never stopped running right? James Lawrence: That's a movie for a reason and I get I look like Forrest Gump, but this beard, I didn't grow this in four months this has taken time. Tyler Jorgenson: That seems to be a lot of what your central message is, one you gotta push yourself, you gotta challenge yourself, you gotta find your limits but that doesn't mean you are without intent and are not doing it intelligently. You're mapping out your future but you're building your future with intent. James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: I think that that is something that we really need right now as a people of the human race because I think so many of us are living reactionary lives where we just wake up because the alarm clock said to wake up and we start reacting the entire day, we have no intent to build anything 'cause all we do is react to this to the stimuli around us. I think if we can recognize that they can take action and that they can make a choice to set a big goal and change their life, and I think what you are doing is helping people to be inspired to do that and I think it's remarkable. Ironcowboybook.com is where they can learn a lot about that and then where are you at on Facebook and stuff like that? James Lawrence: Yeah, real quick to we also we can help you achieve your goals we run an entire coaching platform and that's at teamironcowboy.com [inaudible 00:36:24] check that out we can help you achieve a lot of your racing goals, if you're just getting started or want to qualify for the world championship. My social media on Instagram is /ironcowboyjames and on Facebook it's /ironcowboy Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome, well thank you for coming out on the show and massive wishing of success and have fun, Africa's an amazing place I promise you will not come back the same, that's the goal isn't it. James Lawrence: That is the goal and it's always an honor to talk with you Tyler you're a complete stud. Tyler Jorgenson: Thanks man.

Tyler Jorgenson: Ladies and gentlemen I want to welcome everybody out to BizNinja Radio. We have a really cool guest today. We have James Lawrence the Iron Cowboy. James Lawrence: What's up? Tyler Jorgenson: James, so a lot of people, some people have heard about you because you've got a big following and some people haven't. James Lawrence: Most have not. Tyler Jorgenson: Not enough, I'll tell you what not enough people have heard of you. As I've gotten to know you a little bit recently when I mentioned it I say have you heard of the Iron Cowboy, people kind of look up and think and I'm like he did like fifty Iron man triathlons, and then everyone starts nodding like oh yeah I've heard of the guy. But even before you did that, I'm gonna ask you more about that in a second, you set some world records. What were some of those first big things that you did that kinda of started getting you publicity. James Lawrence: Can we hang on let me tell them what I'm doing then and then we can edit this out. Tyler Jorgenson: Okay. All right so what was the first thing that you did that got you some notoriety? James Lawrence: I think the first think I did was I did a four mile fun run and my wife told me I was pathetic and so that got me some notoriety and some laughs at Thanksgiving. Reality is that kind of kick started my journey and put me on a path that I would have never expected. In 2010 I broke a world record for the most half iron mans done in a single year and that was twenty two events in thirty weeks. Which was just for me personally it was just training grounds for what I really wanted to accomplish was thirty full official iron mans in one calendar year, and I did thirty events through eleven countries. I learned a lot about the sport, I learned a lot about myself, I learned a lot about the tri community. The great news is I accomplished that and it was awesome but it left me with incredibly empty feeling of I can do more I wanna push myself, I wanna learn, I wanna grow, I wanna challenge myself. That ultimately led me to the fifty, the iron mans fifty days fifty states campaign and that happened in 2015. Tyler Jorgenson: Not necessarily a natural born you know freak of nature athlete your wife as you come out in a fun run and your second wind it didn't impress her. James Lawrence: To say the least. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so in order to keep her impressed or get her happy again and impressed by James, you know what I'm gonna start doing triathlons. James Lawrence: It was interesting, what she did was she signed me up for a marathon and she said you know what your performance was so pathetic in the fur miler I'm gonna make you do a marathon, so she did that. It to was an awful experience but those are the experiences where we grow the most [crosstalk 00:02:58] and possibly look inward for answers and you know I like to say that I wasn't gonna allow that moment to define me or defeat me because it was humiliating at best and so I did I looked inward and I found the sport of triathlon. You could say I jumped in with two feet and just found it, a new passion that I never knew existed. Tyler Jorgenson: You start to, you go fun run, marathon and then when was your first triathlon? James Lawrence: It would have been in 2005. Tyler Jorgenson: Out of curiosity were you decent as a competitive triathlete or were you more, you know when you're doing fifty fifty fifty that was more not competitive speeds right you're going for more completing it at that point right? Did you get to where you're pretty decent in terms of finishing speed? James Lawrence: Yeah absolutely. I've been doing this sport for a decade, realized I had some natural talent when I came to cycling. I had to teach myself to swim and I got pretty good at running as well and you put the three together and it's triathlon. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: I started to win races in my local area. I've gone to the half iron man world championships three times, I've completed in Kelona which is iron man world championships, I've won a few full iron distance triathlon events. I'm not the fasted on the block in every event but I love to mix it up I love to do that. Then I've kinda of, I enjoy the adventure now of it. I'm really really busy, I've got five kids and I do a lot of speaking and I do a lot of these adventure type races, so it just takes a certain sacrifice and commitment to be able to race at a high level for a really long time. I'm not willing to put in that work in order to do that, I'm more in the enjoyment phase of it. I did race for really competitively for a long time, it's just a different mental kind of grind, a different type of training, and I did that and I had a lot of success doing it and I really loved it. I loved the glory days of being fast, and I'm still fast, I'm still competitive in my age group and I still love to mix it up, I'm super competitive. But like we're gonna talk about it a little bit later I hope, but I'm doing some really fun adventures this year that I'm more excited about then ever, over trying to best the next guy in my age group. Tyler Jorgenson: I think what it sounds like you're saying is that it gets to a point where winning is fun and winning is great if that's your goal, but it sometimes, cliché in hand, the joy is in the journey right? James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: I love that you are doing a lot of cool adventures and you include your family a lot in a lot of this which is really neat. James Lawrence: Yeah a lot of people hear what I do and they just assume that dude is rich and single. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: And I'm not I've got five kids, you know we had five kids in six and a half years. Right now their ages eight to fourteen or eight to thirteen and it's just a crazy time, we're just busy but we do, we include them in a lot of that, we do, we encourage them to be active in whatever they like to do, I don't make them do triathlon. Tyler Jorgenson: Right. James Lawrence: My oldest daughter does volleyball and I was at the tournament all afternoon today. My second daughter does gymnastics, my third daughter does basketball and my son does gymnastics, and my other girl just likes to float around like a fairy and a unicorn. Tyler Jorgenson: But they'll all find their path and their thing. James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: We're really similar with our four kids is whatever they want to do as long as their being active. James Lawrence: Right, yup. Tyler Jorgenson: Let's, I think we have to talk a little bit about the fifty fifty fifty because it's a ridiculous like feat. James Lawrence: Maybe we should tell people that possibly don't know what an iron man actually is. Tyler Jorgenson: That's a great way to do it and then we'll explain how you stack them together, so let's do that. James Lawrence: So an iron man distance triathlon any triathlon is swim bike run and an iron distance is the longest standard of the family. It's a two point four mile swim, followed by a hundred and twelve mile bike ride, and then once you get off your bike you run the standard marathon which is twenty six point two miles, so all of those put together it's a hundred and forty point six miles that you have to cover by yourself, your own grit and your own will. Tyler Jorgenson: How long does that typical take, maybe not the fasted guy but the competitive iron man athlete. James Lawrence: Yeah so your fasted guy does do it in about eight hours. That's your top tier professionals the peak of their career. Then you have a seventeen hour time limit. Your competitive men are gonna be coming anywhere in between nine and eleven hours, and then your competitive women anywhere between ten and twelve. The professional women are dipping into the low nine hours, which is awesome. As you evolve in the sport guys are like k I wanna finfish an iron man, okay I wanna break twelve hours, I wanna break eleven hours, I wanna break ten hours. Those are kinda your bench marks. Tyler Jorgenson: Some listeners maybe thinking, okay I did thirty minutes on the treadmill the other day. James Lawrence: Yup. Tyler Jorgenson: But their talking about moving consistently for eight to seventeen hours. James Lawrence: Yeah, exactly. Tyler Jorgenson: And so. James Lawrence: It's no joke it takes most athletes or individuals that have a desire to do a bucket list iron man, I mean it takes a good year possibly two years of prep. Tyler Jorgenson: They prep for it and then they go out and a lot of them like you said their first goal's just to finish that means close to fifteen, sixteen, seventeen hours of work. James Lawrence: Yeah, I think anybody's goal, like we run a coaching team and when I have an athlete that's doing an iron man for the first time I'm like dude let's make it to the start line healthy, that's always an accomplishment. Then, it's your first iron man and I tell all my athletes I say look you have one shot at your first iron man and your goal should not be to push an incredible pace, it shouldn't be to try set a land speed record, it's to go out there and be grateful that you get to do an iron man today and you should try to smile your way through the event and thank the volunteers and then have enough energy at the finish line to pump your fist and pound your chest and say that was a good amount of sacrifice and a lot of hard work and I just accomplished something really cool. Then once you do that then we break it down and we start breaking down the events and shooting for time goals and execution goals and things like that. Your first one should be an experience and like we alluded to earlier it truly is about the journey and getting to that start line and then enjoying that moment and that day. Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. You start, you know, you struggle in the fun run, you start getting into a little bit, you do thirty events in a year, which is already amazing, but you said it left you empty and so you went for, let's first talk about why you felt empty after setting a world record that's recognized by the Guinness Book, and then you did, what is the fifty fifty fifty? James Lawrence: I've always said I wanna find my mental and physical limits and then I wanna know what I'm gonna do when I reach that limit. Whether I'm gonna push through that and accomplish more or if I'm gonna you know say hang my hat that's good I've found my limit. You know with all of these we do a charitable aspect to it, a fundraising campaign and in 2010 and 12 we were building dams for Africa. I didn't hit the fundraising mark that I wanted to do and so there was an empty feeling about the charitable donations, there was an empty feeling about my physical and mental limits. I just had the sinking feeling that there was more, that I wasn't, I haven't reached my potential in fundraising and pushing myself myself to my satisfaction. It's interesting 'cause it was right near the end of the campaign in 2012 I had completed twenty seven of the thirty and I just looked over at my wife and I'm like I just asked her a question I was like I don't think this is it do you think this is it. Her answer was not right now, so I kinda bided my time but I knew there was more and I conceptualized the fifty fifty fifty which was fifty consecutive iron mans, fifty states so that would take us fifty days. Fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states. Tyler Jorgenson: Just to kind of do some math 1) you're talking about traveling the entire country, so there's travel time. You're talking about the average iron man taking, you know someone whose done what they're doing probably twelve to fourteen hours, I'm curious how long were those taking you? James Lawrence: Yeah it's interesting, I ended up having to average twelve to fourteen hours every single day for fifty consecutive days in order to keep pace, in order to give us enough time to get to the next state. There's so many, If I can humbly say this is one of the greatest endurance feats that no body knows about yet, just because there was the massive logistic component to it, there was the physical component to it, there was the mental component to it, there was the fundraising component to it, there was the family aspect to it. There was just so many things and people, it's interesting 'cause we wrote a book that I'm incredibly excited about because people know the story because they, well people think they know the story because they know oh yeah the iron cowboy fifty iron mans, fifty days, fifty states, but that is just the headliner, you know, because there's so much that went that took for us to accomplish that and the blood, the sweat, the tears, the sacrifice, the emotions, the stories the people we met along the way. What's really interesting, I love the way that we wrote the book is it's some what of an autobiography and a journey because we flashed back to my past and my journey on how I got to this point. It's actually really really cool because not only does it kinda paint the whole picture of what we went through on the fifty but it gives people an opportunity to get to know me and my family a little bit better and what it took and what makes us tick to be able to even conceptualize this and think that it was possible to go beyond what everybody said was impossible. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so, not only, so this is crazy right you achieved this thing that I think most people, I've watched your documentary, even a lot of your sponsors didn't think it was gonna happen. James Lawrence: Yeah. Tyler Jorgenson: You know, when it got started most of them were thinking hey this is great we like James we'll support him but really like is this, this isn't possible, is what I think they were down deep if they were honest with us all. There were some comments on that made. James Lawrence: You know, not even down deep they would think that, on the surface they told me that. They said dude we love you we've loved being involved in your whole journey, we're not gonna tell you how many we think you're gonna make but the number's not fifty, but we'll get behind what you're doing. It was really really cool for my journey to not only watch the sponsor but the forms and the message boards to watch that energy shift from you're a moron you can't do this, you're being reckless, to holy crap maybe he will, to becoming supporters and advocates for what I was doing. It just, it was a really humbling experience for me to go through that experience and be the center and watching that happen was a really neat experience. It was a really hard experience because we took a lot of shots for what we were doing and how we did it. I just have to realize that we made the best decisions that what we thought at that time and I stand by them a hundred percent 'cause the journey wouldn't be what it was without them. One of the biggest takeaways and things that I've learned is you can't, don't ever judge anybody 'cause we don't know their circumstances what it feels like to be them going through what they're going through in that moment. That was such an incredible lesson for me to be able to go through life and have experiences and look at people and go you know what I really don't know the full back story here, I don't know the emotion, I can't feel what he's feeling right now. So it's helped me not to be so quick to judge and criticize and to really appreciate and just have a better understanding of other people and what they're going through and what they're trying to accomplish. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, I think, I was actually gonna move right into that question, kind of like how do you handle, like the haters right? The more popular they get, and it's just the bottom line the more you are, the more awareness and the more reach that you have the more influence you have by very nature of how humans work people start picking sides and at every age people deal with it at a different way. Like I first learned it in high shool, like okay when you start like excelling in certain things in high school people pick sides. It probably goes all the way to preschool, but the bottom line is it happens no matter what point of human but the bigger you get the bigger of a you know you have in your reach and your influence the stronger that polarity gets, especially when you start doing unique and big things right. When you started you already split up the community with haters likers and [inaudible 00:17:17] you guys made some judgment calls that further polarized that audience. James Lawrence: Yeah, and you know I love the way you just put it and how back it starts and the division and what not. I heard it put really brilliantly the other day and I'm gonna butcher it and I'll do the best I can. Basically it said, the way that I look at it is for every one hater, negative person that I get I have ninety nine others that are advocate supporter and I'm having an impact on them and everything. What this individual said was you have a hater that's amazing go get ten more because that means now you have nine hundred and ninety people that you're influencing for good, and once you have ten haters go get ten more, get as many haters as you can because for me the balance of haters to people that I'm having a positive impact on is such a favored in the positive side that the more haters and what not that I get I love it and thrive on that because that means that's the bigger, the other part of the equation is bigger and more successful, and I'm having the impact that I want. Every time I get a message or a comment or something that is negative or is someone attacking me I sit down for a send and it sucks and it hurts but then I realize that person's coming from a position of hatred and jealousy and then that means I'm also having a positive impact on the other side. It stings and it hurts and I hate it because I'm human and I have feelings and emotions but then once  I actually dissect it and realize the magnitude of the opposite side of that coin and like I take a deep breath and I'm like okay dig deeper, grind let's go get some more haters. Tyler Jorgenson: Absolutely, and yeah you know we sometimes use the term polarity which would imply that it's an equal balance but I think you're right I think that usually you have the people that are the fans are usually, frankly not as vocal. Sometimes they're just enjoying the moment right? The negative people just enjoy being loud. I got a weird email the other day that was basically just like hey I was on one of your websites and there was a popup ad I didn't like that, no need to respond I just wanted to let you know. I'm like awesome, I love that you don't even need to tell me, you don't even need to respond back, I'm sorry you didn't like the website experience, my website, just don't come to it anymore. James Lawrence: That's similar experience, I'll have someone that'll just attack me in some way and I'm like dude let me direct you to the unfollow button. That is a complete choice, you're choosing to follow me, I'm not begging you to follow me. You're a click away from me disappearing from your life. Tyler Jorgenson: That's it. That's it. James Lawrence: It's that easy. I'm not begging you. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, stand up just walk away from the computer. James Lawrence: Yeah it's easy. Tyler Jorgenson: The internet is not, yeah exactly, it's not part of your soul it's so funny. James Lawrence: I love it. Tyler Jorgenson: You hit the fifty fifty fifty and you have this book coming out what made you want to turn that story and put it into a book? What made you want to tell the story behind the story? What is it that people are, that you think what is the big take away that you want people to get when they read your book? James Lawrence: I think what's interesting and because of what I've accomplished now, people don't know the backstory they just go dudes a genetic freak, he's disappointed to do this, I can't do that, he's completely unrelatable. As soon as I finished the fifty they're like you need to go get genetically tested you're a freak. I was like okay let's go get tested. The results came back and it was staggeringly overwhelming, I'm white, Canadian and normal, I may be less than normal I don't know, but I started didn't have any type of advantage of any kind. My story really comes from a very like I didn't know how to swim even, I struggled through a four mile fun run that I got up off the couch to do, but people they don't see that side of the story. What I did is I stopped listening to what everybody else was saying and I was like no this is what I'm capable of and this is what I can do and I just blocked all that out and I went on my own journey, I created my own lane. I started to do me and my passion and people don't know the backstory you know to the extent that it is but we lost everything, like half of the Americans did and we were a struggling family. I had an opportunity to hit the reset button and so what I want people to get out of this is really it's totally cliché but wee really can do anything we want to. I believe I proved that, I went above and beyond what anybody said was possible, not because I was genetically gifted but because I went out and I did the work and I didn't expect anything to be handed to me. I went out and I grind and I worked harder than anybody else did in order to accomplish what I did and I created my own future. I hope my story gives the guy that's sitting on the couch, or the mom that's struggling that everybody has their own version of hard and that we have our, everybody, every moment of everyday is making decision and this is something that my mom said many many times when I was growing up and something I'm a huge advocate of is ten percent of life is what happens to us, and ninety percent is the choices and the decisions that we get to make with those things. Ten percent is just it is what it is, it's the crap that life dealt you but you know what we have a choice and a decision with everything that we do. You have to decide nobody's gonna make those decisions for you and no one's gonna do that work for you. You have to and you can go out and create your own future. So I share my journey, my backstory and I hope it gets people moving and engaged. One of the biggest reasons we wrote this was 'cause I started to get emails people saying hey you don't know me but I watched your journey and I just wanted to thank you, this is what I've been able to accomplish because you set that example. Trust me I don't think I'm perfect and I grind and I have challenges, and I struggle, and I fail, but I get back up. I wanted to write this book because not a lot of people know about the story and to me the story has impact both with women and with men. I'm middle America, I've got five kids, I live in a community, I go to church, I am middle America, I had a corporate job. So, my goal with this book is to hopefully impact someone to make a decision to do something different and find their passions again and start living life and creating your own path, but it takes work, conviction, belief, effort, all of those things. I hope my journey helps people to see that realize it and go do it. Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome. I, that was one of the takeaways I really got from your documentary, from watching a lot of your interviews was that everyone has their own hard right. One of the stories that was really touching for me was how your last few races you had challenged your mom, how much of the last few races did she do with you? James Lawrence: Every single day we put on a five K asked the public to come out and join us and we donated all that money to charity to combat childhood obesity. So, I challenged my mom to come do the last five K of the last five races with me. Tyler Jorgenson: Now she, before that she was like super fit and could run marathons right? James Lawrence: No my mom has struggled with obesity her entire life and has never run further than a mile. It was incredibly challenging, in fact after every single five K she did she said that was the hardest thing that she'd ever done but then the following words that came out of her mouth always impressed me and she said can I do it again tomorrow. I think that's the attitude that I want people to have, I want you to go do something and I want you to challenge yourself, and then I want you to realize that you grew as an individual and you learned lessons and that you should desire to put yourself in challenging situations and embrace the struggle because that's how we learn and grow. When my mom said that was the hardest thing I've even done can I do it tomorrow I was like dude yes that's why I love you and that's where I got a lot of my grit and mental toughness from was because of that perspective and that drive. Tyler Jorgenson: That's awesome. You've got the book coming out we'll make sure when this gets posted on podcast we post the link, I believe it's ironcowboybook.com. James Lawrence: Yup. Tyler Jorgenson: Definitely checking that out and tell us about, I mean you're not stopping you're still doing even, you're doing amazing things. You talked about your seven big events this year, what's going on this year, and you're getting ready for one soon right? James Lawrence: Yeah, on Tuesday, yeah I'm super excited about this year and I didn't realize it when I started to plan it that it was gonna be turn out to be this kind of year, but it really has turned out to be an adventure year. On Tuesday, I'm hopping on a plane with my mountain bike and we're heading over to Africa, and we're gonna climb, we're gonna pedal the entire way from base camp to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro at twenty thousand feet and be the first people to do a full assent peddling the whole way. Then a really cool, cool, awesome, fun dissent. That's gonna be in Africa, we leave in two days, we'll be on the mountain four six full days just an incredible fun time. We've got a film documentary crew coming with us. We've got, with some really cool stuff with our book launch that's happening is some of the bonus stuff we're gonna give, we're filming behind the scenes from all these adventures that we're doing this year and they're gonna be available when you pre order the book, so that's kinda cool. Then after I get home from Africa I've got about a month to prepare, I'm headed to Greece. I've been invited by the navy seals to run two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days stage race with some of the baddest A's on the planet. I'm most nervous about this race because I have no idea what the seals are gonna do with me but I'm all in. That's one of the things I talk about on stage, I talk about going all in and having an experience, so I'm excited to be challenged and to learn from the navy seals, two hundred and thirty five miles, eight days. Then I'm doing four of the hardest iron mans they're called extreme irons mans meaning extreme conditions. It's still the two point four swim, the one twelve bike and the twenty six point two run, but it's in freezing water fifty degrees or under and then it's through mountainous biking terrain and then the run is the equivalent of running from base camp to a high mountain peak, so twenty six miles of insane elevation gain. I'm doing four of them. One is in Scotland, one's in Switzerland, one's in Alaska and it finished with the famous Norsman in Norway. Tyler Jorgenson: Wow. James Lawrence: Those are kind of some of the really cool events and adventures that I get to do just my way of having fun and challenging myself on a different level. I'm really excited to go to these different countries, learn about the cultures, push myself physically, have a little bit of a different experience. There's gonna be some extreme elements involved. I have being cold and so it's a challenge for me to mentally jump into these cold water situations and then bike through these, I mean we're gonna be biking through the Swiss Alps during some crazy time. Like I said Greece is gonna nuts you have no idea what the navy seals are gonna do. Summiting twenty thousand feet I'm terrified there's gonna be no oxygen. So, just a wild, crazy, adventure year, I'm super pumped for it. Tyler Jorgenson: Yeah, so let's talk on that first one a little bit with Kilimanjaro. The locals there have a saying there when you're assenting which is polle polle which is slowly slowly, which usually doesn't mean jump on a mountain bike and start peddling. You're kinda shucking that old adage that they teach people as you're climbing. How did you have to, not only personally prep but logistically prep to get you know to get them to allow you to do that? James Lawrence: It's a special circumstance that they're allowing us to do it and I feel honored that we get to. I believe that I get to see more of the mountain than I usually get to or if I was going to hike it or climb it because I get to climb up and come down and climb up and come back down not to the top but hitting certain elevations because you do you have to go slowly. One of the biggest killers on Mount Kilimanjaro is altitude sickness, people die from this. We believe we've put together really safe and intelligent plan in order for us to summit safely because we're on bikes. Even though we can travel faster on hiking the pitch is still so extreme that we're only gonna be going two to four mile an hour as we're climbing, because our goal is to pedal the entire way and not push or carry our mountain bikes we may have to spend forty five minutes or an hour on a specific section and continue to challenge and break the section down so that we can physically pedal the entire section, yeah find the right route or just technique. I'm gonna have to learn new techniques on the mountains in order to navigate certain potions of this. I'm not delusional that the challenge is gonna be extraordinary and that I'm gonna have to work extremely hard but there's that real fine balancing thing I gotta work super hard but there's not oxygen so how, you can't work really hard there's gonna be, we've put a lot of prep into trying to be efficient and really our bring our heart rate down. A lot of mind power comes into this, that's part of why I love these new challenges, you know beginning part of the show you talked about racing for speed and being competitive, I moved on to a different type of challenge where I still have to be mentally tough and the training is different, it's just I'm looking for these type of really fun adventures. Tyler Jorgenson: Well that gives me a little bit more piece of mind that you're gonna be not just sprinting up because I think sometimes there is a false confidence that comes with becoming really fit or really capable right, where now we're thinking that we're superhuman. Now you are superhuman compared to a guy like me. James Lawrence: Remember I'm totally normal. Tyler Jorgenson: But you've gotta find your limits right. That doesn't mean find them on like in the ambulance it means. James Lawrence: No, I've got five kids, four beautiful daughters, I have no intention of dying. I want adventure with full intentions of retuning home every time. We're very methodical with our game plans, with safety being first and foremost. Nobody wants to die on the mountain, nobody wants to die in these cold waters, they're very calculated. That's part of the reason that I've been able to be successful in what I do is because I do a lot of little things over a long period of time and I do them with intent in order to become successful. It's a matter of doing the basics really well and paying attention to the details to make you successful in order to accomplish your goals.  When people ask me what's the one thing you do and I say well let me break down the hundred things I do in order to accomplish this. Tyler Jorgenson: I think that's kinda of the big takeaway I'm getting really from everything right is not only, you know, you want to set goals, you want to go after things that challenge you but that doesn't mean you go without a parachute or without a safety net. You're methodical and you plan I think that's kinda of what you're saying is that people see the tip of the iceberg but they forget that there's the entire planning and logistics and coordinations and adjustments that have to be made on the fly to [crosstalk 00:33:35] to continue to push yourself and challenge yourself. James Lawrence: Yeah. I'm so glad you brought that up because people contact me all the time and say Iron Cowboy I watched your journey and you inspired me and I have zero experience and I thought of this thing that I wanna do, I wanna do it in four months can you tell me some pointers on how to get ready for it? I'm like I will give you some pointers but I'm gonna be very blunt with you that it took me a decade to this point where I could try that and just the fifty was over two years in planning and preparation just for that fifty day event. I said I will help you get it and I want you, that's the reason I did it so people will set giant goals and think, but you've gotta have the appropriate time frame associated with that goal and you have to be able to be willing to sacrifice to do the work associated. A giant goal requires massive amounts of work, and dedication and sacrifice. So, yes set that big goal but dude it's not gonna happen four months from now. I appreciate that and I will go out of my way to help you achieve this goal that you want to do but let's get a five year game plan here. Tyler Jorgenson: Right, it's not Forrest Gump where you just run out one day and never stopped running right? James Lawrence: That's a movie for a reason and I get I look like Forrest Gump, but this beard, I didn't grow this in four months this has taken time. Tyler Jorgenson: That seems to be a lot of what your central message is, one you gotta push yourself, you gotta challenge yourself, you gotta find your limits but that doesn't mean you are without intent and are not doing it intelligently. You're mapping out your future but you're building your future with intent. James Lawrence: Absolutely. Tyler Jorgenson: I think that that is something that we really need right now as a people of the human race because I think so many of us are living reactionary lives where we just wake up because the alarm clock said to wake up and we start reacting the entire day, we have no intent to build anything 'cause all we do is react to this to the stimuli around us. I think if we can recognize that they can take action and that they can make a choice to set a big goal and change their life, and I think what you are doing is helping people to be inspired to do that and I think it's remarkable. Ironcowboybook.com is where they can learn a lot about that and then where are you at on Facebook and stuff like that? James Lawrence: Yeah, real quick to we also we can help you achieve your goals we run an entire coaching platform and that's at teamironcowboy.com [inaudible 00:36:24] check that out we can help you achieve a lot of your racing goals, if you're just getting started or want to qualify for the world championship. My social media on Instagram is /ironcowboyjames and on Facebook it's /ironcowboy Tyler Jorgenson: Awesome, well thank you for coming out on the show and massive wishing of success and have fun, Africa's an amazing place I promise you will not come back the same, that's the goal isn't it. James Lawrence: That is the goal and it's always an honor to talk with you Tyler you're a complete stud. Tyler Jorgenson: Thanks man.

In this mini episode, I attempt to condense the over 50 year history of Ego the Living Planet into a bite size 10 minute nugget. Whether I'm successful or not is up to you. Tell us what you think in all the usual places. Email us at superpoweredfancast@gmail.com , follow us on Twitter @superpoweredfan and please rate and review us on Itunes. Thanks for listening.

Gender unfortunately matters in the workplace. Women, on average, earn less than men in virtually every single occupation. In 2014, female full-time workers in the United States made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent. That pay gap has barely budged in 10 years and, at the current rate, it won’t close for decades to come. Women also struggle to move out of middle management and break through the glass ceiling into the highest level of leadership.  This week on Find Your Dream Job, we discuss how women can win in the workplace. We explore the dynamics behind gender discrimination and discuss tactics woman can use to overcome systemic hurdles. We’re joined author and journalist Farai Chideya, who has written extensively about race and gender in the workplace. Her newest book, The Episodic Career, explores the future of employment, identity, and personal satisfaction. In this 33-minute episode you will learn: The myriad factors that drive down pay for women Why you should “be your own archivist” and document your accomplishments before leaving a job How to strategically “lean in” when negotiating for salary or other benefits Why the most valuable professional leads can come from people you don’t know well Why gender discrimination is about more than just pay This week’s guest: Farai Chideya (@Farai | LinkedIn)JournalistAuthor, The Episode Career: The Future of Work in AmericaNew York, N.Y. Listener question of the week:  How can I position myself as an industry leader or expert in my field? And how important is it to do this? Do you have a question you’d like us to answer on a future episode? Please send your questions to communitymanager@macslist.org.  Resources referenced on this week’s show: AllBusinessSchools.com | Winning at Work? A Look at Women in Business Today Farai Chideya MomsRising.org The Episode Career: The Future of Work in America Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology Women Don’t Ask: The High Cost of Avoiding Negotiation--and Positive Strategies for Change Land Your Dream Job in Portland (and Beyond) - 2016 Edition If you have a job-hunting or career development resource resource you’d like to share, please contact Ben Forstag, Mac’s List Managing Director at ben@macslist.org. Thank you for listening to Find Your Dream Job. If you like this show, please help us by rating and reviewing our podcast on iTunes. We appreciate your support! Opening and closing music for Find Your Dream Job provided by Freddy Trujillo, www.freddytrujillo.com. FULL TRANSCRIPT Mac Prichard: This is Find Your Dream Job, the podcast that helps you get hired at the career you want and make a difference in life. I'm Mac Prichard your host and publisher of Mac's List. Our show was brought to you by Mac's List and by our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. To learn more about the book and the updated edition that we published on February 1st, visit macslist.org/ebook. Gender matters in the workplace. Women on average earn less than men in virtually every single occupation. In 2014, for example, female full-time workers in the US made only $0.79 for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21%. That pay gap has barely budged in 10 years and at the current rate it won't close for decades to come. Women also struggle to move out of middle management and break through what's called the glass ceiling. Even though women hold more than half of the professional jobs in the United States they only make up 34% of middle managers, 14% of executive officers, and a mere 4% of CEOs. This week on Find Your Dream Job our topic is how women can win at work. I talk with author Farai Chideya about the factors that push down wages for women and how you can negotiate better with your boss. Ben Forstag has an infographic that gives you the facts about the gender gap and other problems women face in the workplace, and Cecilia Bianco answers a question about how you can position yourself as an industry leader. Ben, Cecilia, it's good to check in with you. Let's talk about this week's topic. What examples in your careers have you seen of gender discrimination. Cecilia Bianco: Not necessarily in my career, but I remember when I was in high school I had a friend whose mom was a news anchor and she had found out that her co-anchor was earning a lot more than her. It was a pretty big debacle and it ended in her leaving because she wasn't able to get the money she deserved from that company. It was in the media and it felt like a huge deal at the time. I don't think things have changed much since then, so it's a big topic for us today. Ben Forstag: Let me share a story from my wife's career. When she was out interviewing she happened to be visibly simple fact is they didn't want to hire someone who was going to take 3 to 9 months off to take care of a child, but those are pressures that many women face. Those are situations that many women see themselves in, and so finding ways to work around that is certainly key to helping women achieve equality in the workplace with men. Mac Prichard: A story that comes to mind for me is when I was in high school I had a job working at a restaurant at a hotel. I was in the morning shift with another person, a woman in her 30s. I was 17. It was a summer job for me and I enjoyed it, but she and I, I learned, made exactly the same amount of money, which to me was even, that kind of wage at 17 seemed extraordinary. It struck me for a lot of different reasons, but one was that for me it was a part-time job and I was saving for college and spending a lot of my income on things that teenagers buy. Music, fast food, putting gasoline in a car. For her, it was her whole income. I remember we didn't make a lot, just a little more than minimum wage, and she had to save for several months just to move from one apartment to another. That made a big impression on me. Ben, let's turn to the resource that you found for us this week. You're out there every week looking for blogs, podcasts, and books. What do you have for us? Ben Forstag: I want to start off this week with an infographic I found all about women in the business world. This comes from the website allbusinessschools.com and it entitled Winning at Work? A Look at Women in Business Today. I'll admit it's a little bit odd to talk about an infographic, which is decidedly a visual medium, on a podcast, which is a audio medium, but I'm going to try to do this anyway. I'm a big sucker for a good infographic. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah, and this one is particularly good. It's super in-depth and it makes what you're seeing easier to comprehend. Mac Prichard: I certainly love visuals too. If you ever visit us here at the Mac's List office you'll find an infographic on the refrigerator. Ben Forstag: What I really liked about this infographic was that it nicely frames both the accomplishment women have made in the business world as well as the lingering barriers they face. For example, in 1965 only 1.2% of graduates from the Harvard Business School were women. Want to take a guess of what that number's going to be in 2017? Cecilia Bianco: I hope that it's a lot higher, but ... Ben Forstag: You are right. It's going to be 41% female, which is still not on par with men but certainly a huge jump. This is representative of a general overall trend of women excelling in terms of higher education. Right now women have 60% of all the undergraduate degrees, 60% of all the graduate degrees, and 45% of all advanced business degrees, which is really exceptional. The infographic also includes information about the highest paid female executives and other benchmarks of success for women in the workplace. Of course we all know that women face a lot of professional challenges, and to be blunt the playing field is not equal at all. Across all levels of employment, as Mac mentioned earlier, women only make about $0.79 on the dollar compared to men. Things are slowly getting better, but there's a lot of room for improvement. One of the most shocking facts I found in this infographic was this, that at the current rate of progress, women won't achieve pay equity with men until 2058. Cecilia Bianco: Wow. That's way too long. Hopefully that doesn't play out in reality. Ben Forstag: Are you willing to wait, Cecilia? Cecilia Bianco: Not really, no. Mac Prichard: Not to be gloomy, but it is a gloomy number. When I got out of college, Cecilia, I remember going to an event and someone there had a button that said $0.63, and this was way back in 1980, 35 years ago now. I said, "What's that about?" She said, "That's what a woman makes compared to a man." I thought that number, "Oh, that can't last. That's going to go up." Here we are 35 years later. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah. We're crawling at this pace. Ben Forstag: It's bizarre because this is such a political issue that gets brought up over and over again, but we just don't see a whole lot of movement on it. The other shocking status in this infographic was that women are significantly underrepresented in the highest levels of executive management, as Mac brought up. The one stat I pulled out that I thought was crazy is that women are only 16.9% of board members at fortune 500 companies. That's just shocking. I mean, most of these companies at least 50% of their customers are women, but the folks running the organization are not, which is insane. If this is a topic you're interested in, and I think we all should be, I'd suggest you check out this infographic. It's "Winning at Work? A Look at Women in Business Today." I'll put the URL in our show notes. I also want to do a quick plug for an organization that I've a friend who works for that is doing a lot help close that pay gap and helping women in the workforce. The organization is called momsrising.org. One of the reasons that women face so many barriers in the workplace is because they have most of the burden of taking care of children. That means watching the children on a day-to-day basis from 9-to-5 when many people go to work. That means taking maternity leave for young children. That means taking time off when your child's sick, and frankly a lot of organizations don't offer paid sick leave, maternity leave, or any childcare benefits as part of an employment package. MomsRising works with local governments and state governments to try to implement mandatory paid sick days, mandatory maternity leave, issues like that. If, again, this is an issue that you find important and that you want to do something about, I certainly suggest you check out their website. It's momsrising.org. Mac Prichard: Thanks, Ben. Ben loves to do research, but he also welcomes your help. If you have an idea for him or suggestion, a favorite website, book, please write him. His email address is ben@macslist.org. Now let's turn to you, our listeners, and to Cecilia Bianco, our community manager. Cecilia, you're here with us every week to answer our listener's questions. What do you have for us this week? Cecilia Bianco: This week I had a reader tweet at me and ask, "How can I position myself as an industry leader expert in my field, and how important is it to do this?" When I think of industry leaders and experts, I think of people who have a strong and present voice in their field. Having a voice these days typically starts online through platforms we all have access to and can use, blogging, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and really any platform where your voice is going to reach many people. If you want to position yourself as an expert or leader, you want to get your voice out to as many people and groups as possible and find ways to prove your credibility. Writing's a good place to start since it's an easy way to share your thoughts, especially online, and build a following of people who agree with you. Speaking at professional or industry groups in your sector is another great way to prove credibility because 1, someone has endorsed you and your voice in order to book you to speak, and 2, you're growing your network through new people in the audience. Mac, you're seen as a community leader in our field, how do you think others can position themselves as experts or leaders? Mac Prichard: A strategy that could work for anybody is to be generous and share what you know. You've laid out specific strategies that people could follow to do that, Cecilia, whether it's sharing their ideas through blogs or social media posts, I think that would serve anybody well. I would just add in addition to being generous in sharing your expertise, be consistent. You don't have to publish on the hour every hour, but if you are going to commit to, say, doing a blog, commit to a schedule. It could be as little as once a week, or if you're going to run a social media account or post, say, to your LinkedIn page, find a schedule that works for you and then stick to it and people will come to expect to hear from you. They'll look forward to it as well. Ben Forstag: I'll just echo what Mac said. I think it's so important to help other people in your field. When you help others you really position yourself as a leader and as someone with integrity. I think if you can match subject matter expertise and integrity you can't lose. Cecilia Bianco: To answer the second part, as far as how important this is to be and industry leader, I think that really depends on what level you're at in your career. Obviously entry-level people can and should mimic the actions of leaders in their field, but it's unlikely at that stage that others are going to look to you as an expert or a leader. Once you're at a higher level, it's a little bit easier because you likely have years of experience that back up your opinions and your ideas. When you're just starting out I don't think it's a priority to be seen as an expert or a leader. It's more important to focus on getting that experience that you need. Once you're further along, making an effort to become an expert in your field can go a long way towards career stability and future success. Do you guys agree with that assessment? Ben Forstag: Absolutely. I think it's important that being an expert in your field, it's more than just style. Frankly, you see a lot of folks in the online world who, they produce a lot of content and a lot of style behind it but there's not much substance behind it. I think unless you really have mastery of your subject and you're new to the field, trying to position yourself as an expert is probably not going to work. You need to get a little bit of experience before you can really sell yourself as that expert. Cecilia Bianco: Right. I think that has to do a lot with proving your credibility before you try to be a leader in that field. Ben Forstag: Absolutely. Mac Prichard: I agree. One way to get that experience and then acquire that knowledge is buy curating content that others create. One of the biggest challenges that we all face is that we're overwhelmed by information. Somebody who sifts through what's out there in a particular field and presents the best ideas that they're seeing is doing a great service and building relationships and providing value and serving others along the way. Cecilia Bianco: Yeah, I definitely agree. Mac Prichard: Okay. Well, thank you Cecilia. If you have a question for us here at Mac's List, please email us at communitymanager@macslist.org. The segments by Ben and Cecilia are sponsored by the 2016 edition of our book, Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond. We're making the complete Mac's List guide even better. We've added new content and published the book on multiple e-reader platforms. Now that we've launched the revised version of the book on February 1st, for the first time you can read Land Your Dream Job in Portland and Beyond on your Kindle, your Nook, or your iPad. You can also order a paperback edition. Up until now you've only been able to find it as a .PDF, but whatever the format, our goal is the same: to give you the tools and tips you need to get meaningful work. To learn more visit macslist.org/ebook and sign up for our newsletter. We'll send you special publication updates, share exclusive book content, and provide you with great prices. Now let's turn to this week's guest expert. We're pleased to have with us Farai Chideya, who is an award-winning author, journalist, professor, and lecturer. She has a new book out. It's called The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption. I had the chance to read it over the weekend. I highly recommend it. Definitely add it to your Amazon wishlist. Farai currently teaches at New York University's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She also frequently appears on public radio and cable television. She's a graduate of Harvard University where she earned a BA. Farai, thanks for joining us. Farai Chideya: I'm really delighted. Mac Prichard: It's a pleasure to have you, particularly to talk about this week's topic, how women can win at work. I think when many listeners think about the subject, the first thing they go to is the pay gap. We talked about that earlier in the show. What are some of the factors, Farai, that drive down pay for women? Farai Chideya: One of the most prominent ones in our day and age is the life cycle of women versus men. Women are much more likely, even now, than men to be involved in hands-on care giving. Of course immediately we think about children and women leaving jobs or not going on a fast track at a career because they have to, and want to, spend time with their children. There's also elder care giving, there's any number of moments at which people of both genders are asked to step up and women are somewhat expected to step up. I think that there's certainly a lot to women wanting to be a part of care giving, but there's also a cultural expectation around it. There's also, unfortunately, not a lot of infrastructure when it comes to women being able to step out of the workforce and then step back in. That's one of the biggest problems is that when women take that time for care giving or for other reasons and try to reenter the workforce, they find it very difficult to get back in. Mac Prichard: Let's pause there for a moment, Farai. What advice do you have for women who are about to take that time away from the workforce and for those who want to get back into it? All of us here at Mac's List, we hear from a lot of job seekers. This is a common issue and people are looking for successful strategies that they can use to make that transition. What have you seen work? Farai Chideya: I definitely think networking is the biggest solution. The reality is that most people have some set of close network ties. That is not actually what is most likely to get you a job. It's the weaker ties of people who are on the outer edges of your circle who have very different life experiences, sometimes than you, and they're seeing you through a little bit more of a remote lens. They're not your best friend. Maybe they're that person you went to college with and you see at a reunion every now and then. It's really important to go to those people to expand your vision of what opportunities are available to you. Also, as long as there's a good base for the relationship, even people who are not deep personal friends of yours will give that much needed recommendation and say, "You should really hire Jane or you should really hire Keisha. This is someone who I can vouch for." That very specific, personal, "I'm vouching for this person," is the way to go and often is a way for women to reenter the workforce. There's also great job training programs available to some people, not everyone. In the book I profile people who have switched careers through federal job retraining programs, sometimes by teaching themselves, so self-taught computer programmers or people who teach themselves even something like scrapbooking, which now is a skill that you can market to other people. People hire professional scrapbookers to help them organize their memories. There's also sometimes a transition where you can work part-time in a new field while raising children or while care giving, and then work your way all the way into a full-time job. Mac Prichard: Okay. If you're getting ready to get back into the workforce, think about how networking can help you. I agree completely with your point about the value of weak ties. It's surprising how sometimes the most valuable leads and recommendations can come from people that you only know slightly. I'm also hearing you say look into job training programs that might be available through state or federal government. There might be opportunities there. Then think about reinvention about new careers or opportunities. Those are good strategies for people getting back into the workforce. What about people who are getting ready to leave to care for a parent or a child, a woman, what should she think about before she leaves with an eye towards that reentry, which might be months or even years later? Farai Chideya: First of all, there's an increasing tendency of people to do exit documentation when leaving a job. This is obviously leaving a job under friendly circumstances. Let's say that you're pregnant or you are taking time out for a family leave and you know that you're probably not going to come back for a while. Sit down and say, "I want to just document the work that I've done over the past year and the skill sets I have. I'd like us to produce a document that I can take with me." You have to be delicate about it. If you're not planning to leave the company permanently you can say, "I'd love you to put this in my personnel file." Also keep a copy for yourself because workplaces change. If you know that you're really not coming back, but you're on good terms with who you're working with, you just say, "Well, you know I know there's probably not going to be a job for me by the time I'm ready to work again, but I'd love you to write a permanent documentation and recommendation that I can take with me when I either come back to this company or go elsewhere." You have to basically be your own archivist. You have to document your own career, you have to have people sign off on things, and don't just go back to someone 5 years later and expect them to know what you did. Take care of that beforehand and take it with you. Mac Prichard: Yeah, that's a great idea. An even more tactical suggestion I've seen people follow is just getting something as simple as LinkedIn endorsements or recommendations from supervisors and co-workers before you leave a position. Whether you're moving onto a new organization or you're going to leave the workforce for a period. Let's talk about pay. You mentioned how the life cycle, how it influences wages for women, what about negotiating salary? What advice do you have for salary negotiations? Farai Chideya: Well, this is a huge hot issue right now because women have been told to lean in. Then women have been told you can't lean in, that's fiction. Really, you have to be strategic about how you lean in. There's a professor at Carnegie Mellon, Linda Babcock, and she wrote a book, Women Don't Ask, Negotiation and the Gender Divide. Basically, she has done all these studies that show that when women make a direct ask in a negotiation like, "I got this job offer from these other people. Can you raise my salary?" Companies react fairly badly to that for women only. Men are allowed to say, "This is my market value. I'm laying it on the table. What can you do for me?" Women are viewed as disloyal. It's a very gendered and emotionally fraught workplace culture around women and negotiation. You have to make a case as a woman for why your advancement or your higher pay or whatever is good for the company, good for everyone. Women are being asked to make a group argument, whereas men are allowed to make a bit more of a unilateral argument. Just understanding that allows you to frame things. Mac Prichard: Money matters a lot in negotiation about pay. What are some of the other measures of success that women should consider when going into those conversations? Farai Chideya: Certainly women and men should also consider, "How am I going to be evaluated?" Some companies unfortunately really look at productivity as just hours in the office. You may not be that great, but if you're there for 8 to 10 hours you are amazing. I co-authored a book previous to this about women in the technology industry and this one woman talked about how she was told by her boss that she was working "mommy hours." She worked the same number of hours as men, but because she was raising a child she wanted to start earlier in the day and leave earlier in the day. She was working just as hard doing just as much work, but she was working "mommy hours." She left the company. She was like, "I'll never succeed here if people don't recognize how hard I'm working." One of the things you need to ask is, based on my needs, what is my desired schedule and can my company accommodate that? If the company can accommodate it, you need to be very clear and say, "I'd like to come to work at 5:30 in the morning. I know most people won't be here. I'll do my heavy duty project work there. Then when people come in we'll do our collaborative work and I'm going to be gone by 3:30 in the afternoon and go home and be with my family." If you get a negative reaction to that, you have to think about it. I also don't want to pretend that it's just something that women with children need to think about because again there are many different factors. I have friends who are serious athletes well into their 40s and 50s, and they play in ... One of my friends actually is the reigning Golden Gloves champion, "senior champion," which just means that she's in her 40s. She's a female boxer. She's married. She has 2 kids. She's got a great, happy life, but boxing is important to her, and so she has a schedule where she can go and be this amazing national champion boxer. You may have any number of reasons for asking for a specific schedule, but scheduling is really important. Mac Prichard: Certainly that's an issue that comes up a lot when employers talk about millennials in the workforce wanting to have flexibility. I think your point here is an important one. It's all age groups and women and men that are increasingly look for that kind of flexibility. The glass ceiling is real. It exists in the workplace. What advice do you have for women who are seeking promotions and how they can move up? Farai Chideya: I do want to point out although we've been talking about the life cycle, which is how I framed things initially, that according to studies at least 12% of the pay differential between women and is due to "other factors," which basically means sexism. It's a polite way of saying sexism. When you control for everything, women still earn less. I definitely feel like when it comes to looking at the big picture of pay, time, advancement, you have to seek out people who you trust and then if they slip in that trust you have to remind them of the kind of social contract that holds you together. Like, "Well, I don't want to be annoying about this, but when Jason asked for so and so, he got such and such." There's a precedent for this, or if there isn't a precedent for something you're asking for in your workplace you can acknowledge that and say, "I know no one has ever done this before, but based on my record of productivity, blah, blah, blah." When you're talking about whether it's salary, scheduling, all of the other factors that are important, you have to really seek out people you trust, but also be willing to give them a little nudge if they're not acknowledging your skills. Mac Prichard: Right. Be clear about what you want and have a clear ask. Farai Chideya: Exactly. Mac Prichard: We need to start wrapping up, Farai. Tell us about what's coming up next for you. Farai Chideya: Well, I'm touring with this book The Episodic Career. I'm doing some dates in various parts of the country. For me, I just did a date in New York and it was at the Harvard Club of New York, and so one presumes a very educated crowd and a white collar crowd. Let me tell you, everybody there was focused on the anxieties of the modern workplace. Whether I'm talking to people who are more middle income, higher income, everyone is anxious right now. I'm really doing a lot of active listening as I get to enjoy going around the country and talking to people about this book. I'm really listening to what people have to say because there's a lot of anxiety and fear. One of the things I really want to stress to people is that we all deserve to lead good lives. Work should not be a constant fly in the ointment. If your work is a fly in the ointment, you really need to think expansively about what kind of work you want and how it fits in with your life and look towards those personal factors of satisfaction and being in a good, comfortable zone with the choices you've made. We all make choices. Not all of them are comfortable for us, but you have to at the end of the day say, "I made the choice that's right for me." It's about self evaluation. In the book I have a tool called the work-life matrix that really tries to integrate the personal with the work because at the end of the day it's not just about a pay check, it's not just about advancement. It's about what kind of life you get to lead. Mac Prichard: I was impressed by the number of tool and tactics that you had in your book. They're practical things that people can do to act on those choices. I encourage people to dig into it. Good, and I imagine the dates of your book tour are on your website. Farai Chideya: Yes. If you go to farai.com, F-A-R-A-I.com, you'll find both the dates of the book tour and some press that we've gotten and a few different excerpts of the book. There's a lot of material there and hopefully I'll be getting to a lot more cities over the course of the coming months. Mac Prichard: Good. I know people can also find you on Twitter. Your handle is @farai, F-A-R-A-I. We'll be sure to include that, the website, and the books you've mentioned in the show notes as well. Farai, thank you so much for joining us and it's been a pleasure having you on the show. Farai Chideya: I have been so delighted and I really think the work that you're doing is critically important. Thanks so much. Mac Prichard: We're back in the Mac's List studio. Cecilia, Ben, what are your thoughts after hearing Farai? Cecilia Bianco: I thought she had a bunch of really great information and tips for how to navigate your work life. I loved her point about being your own archivist because I think a lot of people forget to do that and then they regret it later on. That was an important takeaway for me. I just liked how she made work more about what type of life you want to lead and now just what type of job you want to be doing. I think that goes a long way towards your work life balance and your happiness overall. She had great tips. Mac Prichard: Good. What are your thoughts, Ben? Ben Forstag: My blood is still boiling over that mommy hours response that one of her clients got at an employer. That's just ridiculous. Obviously, I'm not a mother myself, but I am a father, and I understand the value and importance of getting home and spending time with your kids before they go to go bed. Any employer who doesn't recognize that, I can't think of anything nice to say about those kind of organizations. In terms of tactical advice what she gave, the most important thing is being clear with your ask and with your demands of an employer. Unfortunately you can't just expect employers to give you what you want or to respect the work-life balance, so you need to go in with targeted requests and say, "Here's the value I'm bringing to the organization and here's what I expect back in return." Hopefully you've got reasonable employer who will meet those requirements that you have. Mac Prichard: I think having a clear ask is just vital. I think I've made this point before on the show. There's an old lobbyist I know, or experienced lobbyist I should say, who says the definition of a failed meeting is when you get up from that appointment and there's no clear next steps. That happens because people don't have a clear ask. It's great advice. Thank you all for listening. We'll be back next week with more tools and tips you can use to find your dream job. If you like what you hear on the show, you can help us by leaving a review and a rating at iTunes. This increases our standing in the iTunes career chart and helps us reach more people and help more job seekers. We have 2 reviews we'd like to share with you this week. Ben, would you like to share one? Ben Forstag: Sure. This one comes from [boney girl 00:32:16] who writes, "This is really valuable stuff. It kind of smashed old assumptions and expectations and offered a totally new approach that is energizing and exciting. Thanks for the wake up kick in the butt." You're welcome. Glad you found value there. Mac Prichard: All right. I have a review from [red dirt girl 00:32:33] who writes, "I will be graduating with my Bachelor's degree in 1 year and this is giving me so many helpful tips and recommendations that I'm already putting to use." Thank you red dirt girl for sharing that and we hope that you'll take a moment and leave your own rating and review. In the meantime, thanks for listening.

Today's topic is EMV: An Overview with Some US Considerations. We are going to cover 3 main topics today. First, about half of our time will be spent on what is EMV and chip. This is by no means a detailed technical overview. It'll be a high-level discussion of what EMV is, where it came from, and we'll finish up with a bit of a discussion about where is EMV in the world and around the globe. Then we'll spend a bit of time on some discussions of EMV in the United States; how it might move into the States, and what factors are pushing it that the US might want to consider. Then lastly, we'll finish up with some thoughts about what EMV means to me, and I come at this from 2 points of view: Whether I'm an acquirer or an issuer of card transactions. EMV for Acquirers solution page

It all started when someone asked me the question: what songs would be on the soundtrack of your life?  When it comes to feelings, i certainly am not the most articulate person. That probably explains why I'm so obsessed with music, it's therapeutic as it helps me articulate how I feel.  Whether I'm up or down, I always find it's best to commiserate with that which I find closest to me, my songs.  I'm not sure you're aware but every Ru-Mix i put out tells a story, with a beginning, middle and end, and it's a snapshot of what is going through my head at that time. With my 31st birthday quickly approaching, and hitting a milestone of 100 mixes, I wanted to share my story, of the past 10 years of my life. So take the journey with me as I celebrate my upcoming birthday  and realize that I am "still getting younger."  I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Casey - Darren Hayes"let's rewrite this movie, make it end like we want it to…" Movie Star (Kid Gloves Remix) - Róisín Murphy "it's not so crazy thinkin' we could really have it all…" Kids (PSB Abstrakt Mix) - MGMT "control yourself, take only what you need from me…" Invisible Light (Boys Noize Remix) - Scissor Sisters "just open up your joy and let the sailors climb the walls" Mr. Brightside (Jacques Lu Con't Thin White Duke mix) - The Killers "open up my eagle eye…" I Feel Bonnie (Club Version) - Hot Chip "everything's nothing and nothing is ours…" Black & Gold - Sam Sparro "if vision is the only validation, then most of my life isn't real…" Better Than Today (Monarchy Through the Wormhole Mix) - Kylie "we just want tomorrow to be better than today…" Flashback (David Guetta Mix) - Calvin Harris "why can't i realize, i'm fighting for my life?…" Let It Will Be (Paper Faces Vocal Edit) - Madonna "i'm at the point of no return, just watch me burn…" With Every Hearbeat (Kleerup Mix) "just a little, little bit better… good enough to waste some time" Somebody to Love Me (Holy Ghost! Remix) - Mark Ronson feat. Boy George "i want somebody to be nice, see the boy i once was in my eyes…" Love Get Out of My Way (Tim Goldsworthy Mix) - Monarchy "it's too much, too much too soon…" Easy (Buffetlibre Mix) - Dragonette "so don't mistake it, for something that you're free to play with…" Still Getting Younger - Wynter Gordon "i'm not lonely, i just need you, fill this empty space again…" Song 4 Mutya Rutvij (Sunset Strippers Mix) - Groove Armada feat. Mutya Buena "don't panic panic, Rutvij, just look ahead now…" Happy Ending (Kleerup Mix) - Mika "no hope no love no glory, no happy ending… a little bit of LOVE."