Unstoppable Mindset

Episode 422 – The Unstoppable Path to Joy After Grief with Chanoa Inez

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

A sudden loss changed everything. In this episode, I sit down with Chanoa Inez, whose life took an unexpected turn when a joyful trip overseas became the beginning of a long journey through grief, healing, and transformation. Chanoa shares how losing her partner while living abroad forced her to face deep emotional challenges and rebuild her life from the ground up. Along the way she developed a thriving copywriting career, explored the deeper roots of resilience and self-love, and eventually wrote her book Dream On to help others navigate upheaval and loss. As you listen, I believe you will hear how Chanoa discovered that joy, purpose, and even a dream life can emerge again when we learn to understand our stories, trust ourselves, and move forward with an unstoppable mindset.

Highlights:

· 00:10 — Why Michael created the Unstoppable Mindset podcast to show people they are more capable than they think.

· 10:39 — How graduating during the Great Recession led Chanoa to discover freelance writing and build her copywriting career.

· 17:07 — The life-changing moment when her boyfriend unexpectedly passed away while they were living in Montenegro.

· 25:00 — How starting and growing her copywriting business helped her rebuild stability after loss.

· 36:59 — Why Chanoa decided to write her book Dream On about rebuilding life after upheaval.

· 48:55 — How Chanoa defines joy as “energized happiness” and why reconnecting to it changes everything.

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About the Guest:

Chanoa Inez is a Los Angeles-based author, personal transformation advisor (for people) and a messaging strategist (for brands). She's passionate about helping people and businesses lean into who and what they really are so they can stand out and make a real impact. When it comes to people, she makes that happen through her programs in MAGNETIZE YOUR PERSONAL BRAND™. Chanoa helps her clients become more memorable to attract more (and better) opportunities by showing them how to lean into their true selves, position their personal brands, embrace visibility, elevate their verbal and nonverbal communication, and more.

In her work supporting startups and Fortune 500 corporations alike, Chanoa helps tech, fintech, and luxury companies develop memorable brand messaging and content that clarifies their place in the market, attracts their ideal clients, and helps them stand out in a sea of industry-speak and sameness; she’s a brand voice specialist too.

Years after a difficult, sudden loss, Chanoa Inez realized every area of her life was still touched by the immense grief from that fateful morning in Montenegro. So she set down a path for change marked by challenging hurdles but also awe and amazing opportunities. Steeped in gratitude for her life’s transformation, she couldn’t wait to share the techniques and perspectives that helped her achieve more and more happiness, health, and success.

In her book Dream On: How to create the new life of your dreams after upheaval or loss, Chanoa helps readers skip years of trial and error, delivering those learnings with the momentum of her craft as a copywriter. Readers are greeted with a set of meaningful paths designed to help them achieve the new lives of their dreams with far greater speed.

Ways to connect with Chanoa:

Website:

https://www.chanoainez.com/

LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chanoa/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/chanoainez/

About the Host:

Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.

Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Transcription Notes:

Episode 421 – How to Build an Unstoppable Business Without Burnout with Carlos Hidalgo

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when success, hustle, and constant work stop bringing fulfillment?

In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I talk with marketing strategist and entrepreneur Carlos Hidalgo about business growth, faith, burnout, and the hidden cost of hustle culture. Carlos shares his journey from corporate marketing leader to founder of Digital Exhaust, along with lessons from his book The UnAmerican Dream about work addiction, burnout, and redefining success. Their conversation explores why growth does not need to be complicated, why storytelling builds trust in business, and why boundaries matter more than work life balance. Carlos also opens up about faith, failure, relationships, and the power of honest conversations. You will hear practical insights on leadership, personal growth, community, and building a life that is both successful and meaningful.

Highlights:

· 06:04 – Carlos explains how his faith became a personal relationship.

· 17:32 – Why he left corporate work to start his own business.

· 25:40 – His approach to making business growth simple.

· 30:17 – How hustle culture often leads to burnout.

· 42:29 – Why boundaries matter more than work life balance.

· 54:33 – Why real community helps solve loneliness.

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Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

Carlos Hidalgo is the co-founder and CEO of Digital Exhaust, a growth partner that helps clients make growth simple. Carlos serves his clients as an advisor, consultant, and teacher to ensure they have meaningful engagement with their customers at every stage of the journey and are able to mature and create sustainable growth.

Carlos has 30 years of experience working with organizations of all sizes as an advisor, consultant, innovator, and growth expert. He is widely recognized for his expertise in demand generation, marketing, sales, and customer experience and for coaching executives in the areas of leadership and managing change. In addition to his work with his clients, Carlos has won numerous marketing awards and been named to several prestigious industry lists as a marketing leader.

Carlos is also the author of Driving Demand, which is ranked as a top 5 marketing book of all time by Book Authority, and The UnAmerican Dream, which was released in 2019. In addition to books, Carlos is a well-known international keynote and TEDx speaker.

You can follow Carlos on LinkedIn or on Twitter @cahidalgo

Ways to connect with Scott**:**

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosahidalgo/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CHidalgoJr
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/cahidalgo_
Twitter/X: https://x.com/cahidalgo

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.

Well, hi and welcome once again to an episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, our guest is Carlos Hidalgo. Carlos has many facets about him. He's a speaker. He deals with growth and growth management and with his company. He tries to make growth simple for the people who are his clients. I'm interested in learning about that, but he does other things as well. He is also involved with his wife and marriage counseling, which is a little bit different than the one I think I find a lot of people to do. So I think we got lots to talk about. So, Carlos, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Carlos Hidalgo 01:59

Thank you for having me. Michael, it's an absolute pleasure. Well, let's

Michael Hingson 02:03

start with the early Carlos, why don't you tell us about you growing up and all that sort of thing, and where you came from, where you're headed, or whatever.

Carlos Hidalgo 02:14

Sure, I was born one of six children. I was the youngest for about four years, and then my my parents had two more. So I am smack dab in the middle of middle six siblings. Was born in New Jersey, but call where I'm at now home, which is a little town in the Adirondack Mountains. And the reason I call it home, I started coming to camp here when I was five years old. Fell in love with the area, and then my father, in 1983 moved us up here when I was 12, and fell more in love with it. And that lasted for four years. And then my junior of high school, or right after my sophomore year, was told, Hey, we're we're moving I was 16, I was pretty pissed off at the prospect of leaving a place I loved, so I had engineered a plan to stay through my junior and senior high school, which in my mind, made perfect sense in my parents' mind, and for reasons now I understand, because I'm a parent, did not make so much sense, but I came back as often as I could, and then my wife and I moved here back full time in 2021 we also lived here in the 90s for two years, had our first son here so but grew up really charmed childhood was my dad was in advertising, so we got tickets to Great sporting events. We had horses that I took care of, along with some of my siblings, developed a love of the outdoors, which I still hold, which is one of the many benefits of living up here again. And so, yeah, pretty, pretty much, early childhood was, you know, be outside as much as I can run around school work wasn't my strong suit, but I muddled through and I

Michael Hingson 04:04

made it. Where in New Jersey were you born?

Carlos Hidalgo 04:07

Was born in a little town called Randolph in northern jersey. Spent most of our time in a place called blairis town. Their claim to fame as a prep school called Blair Academy, which I believe is still there. And then, I believe it was the original Friday the 13th was filmed. Part of it was filmed in Blairstown. Yeah, yeah. So I'm dating myself just a little bit.

Michael Hingson 04:32

Well, we lived in Westfield for six years, so kind of know, New Jersey, but yeah, while we were back there, my wife always wanted to move back to California. She's a native. I was born in Chicago. She wouldn't let me call myself a native, even though we moved to California when I was five. But yeah, it's okay.

Carlos Hidalgo 04:50

Sure, yeah, people get a little touchy about the term native or local and how it's defined, right?

Michael Hingson 04:55

Oh, yeah, it varies all around the country, but there's. Nothing. You can't say anything bad about Chicago. They have Garrett Popcorn there. If you've never had it, next time we go through O'Hare Airport, you should get some Garrett Popcorn.

Carlos Hidalgo 05:09

Okay, I will do that absolutely.

Michael Hingson 05:12

Take a memo. Get Garrett Popcorn. It's it's really good stuff. Well, so what did you do for college? Or did you?

Carlos Hidalgo 05:21

Yeah, I went to my first year, I went to a school called Word of Life Bible Institute. So it's a one year intensive program, study of the Bible actually here, not far from, literally eight miles down the road here, from where I live now. And at that point, it was really just an excuse to get back to the Adirondacks for a year, but I learned a whole lot. Met some incredible people, some of who I'm still very, very close with today. And then from there, I transferred to Cedarville University in Ohio. At the time I went there, we were about 2500 students. I think today they're closer to 7500 but I met my wife there, which was that, in and of itself, the three years of tuition that I paid as I transferred in, but study Business Communication, again, I wasn't a great student. What I realized is, if it was the things that I really loved to participate in, it was awesome. I had a really great time studying communication and language and how we speak. I was two years on the debate team, which was such a great education in and of itself. But everything else I didn't really love. I just the general ed stuff. I kind of thought, well, if I can skate by and, you know, get that, get the passing the credits. So that's really how I want about it. And the reality is, the way things are taught today, I'm a very visual and hands on learner, and so to sit in a classroom and try to take notes and go through theory and things like that just makes my brain hurt a little bit. So I but I but I finished. I got the degree and made some great friendships in the process.

Michael Hingson 07:04

Well and clearly, based on what you did for your first year, you have a Christian orientation, or definitely a god orientation as well.

Carlos Hidalgo 07:15

Yeah, that's that's really my operating system. Michael, I am a follower of Jesus Christ. I believe the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I base my life on it. I spend time in it each and every day. And so what's interesting in that regard is, yes, I went to the Bible Institute. So while I had a lot of head knowledge about the Bible and God and Jesus and all these things, it's really been in the last 10 years that I would say I had a deep, meaningful relationship with them, and that came as from a lot of experience in my life, a lot of dark, dark moments in my life that were self induced, unfortunately. But really, what it's done for me is it's just radicalized who I am, changed my heart. And so it's gone from a having a head knowledge of it to a real experience and an engagement with Christ through His Word and through prayer.

Michael Hingson 08:11

Yeah, head knowledge is is a fine thing as far as it goes, but there's nothing like personally experience coming closer to whatever it is, including dealing with believing in God and really recognizing what what God brings. And my last book that I wrote that was published last year, called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith very much deals with with a lot of that, the whole concept of the value and the power of personal knowledge, as opposed to just head knowledge. I talk about the World Trade Center a lot in that book, specifically in terms of what I learned and how I developed a mindset to be able to control fear, rather than letting it be the thing that overwhelmed me or overwhelms anyone and and I've had a couple people on this podcast who talk about it, and they say the same sort of thing that you did. It's not about knowledge that you sort of intellectually know. It's what you really know. So people, for example, in evacuating the World Trade Center, would look at signs, and they would follow those and a lot of people were able to do that, but that's still not knowing that is really relying on something else that you may or may not really have access to. So True Knowledge is the only way to go

Carlos Hidalgo 09:38

100% and I find that I gather that through experience, yeah. And so the example I use is, if you ask me about my wife, you know, do you know Suzanne? I would say, Oh, yeah. You know, blonde hair, blue eyes, about five, five. Funny, smart. I could tell you all the different facts, but there's a big difference when you sit and you get to experience being with her, seeing. Her, how she interacts with people, how she treats others, all of those things. Take that knowledge and actually make an experience an experience, yeah. And so that's been the difference for me, as it regard, in my relationship with Jesus Christ, yeah, well,

Michael Hingson 10:14

and Suzanne, so that's good.

Carlos Hidalgo 10:17

Well, so absolutely, 31 years and we're still going. There you go.

Michael Hingson 10:21

Well, keep going. That's that's cool. That's great to have that kind of a relationship. It's all too often we don't see a lot of that in marriage, and just people get married without knowing and that leads to all sorts of potential challenges. So it's good to really get to know someone

Carlos Hidalgo 10:41

absolutely, yeah, I'm still, still learning, still studying her and learning all I can, after 31

Michael Hingson 10:46

years, and she is too Yes, she is.

Carlos Hidalgo 10:49

She does a phenomenal job.

Michael Hingson 10:52

So what did you do after college?

Carlos Hidalgo 10:56

After college, I actually moved back up here, where I'm at now. Worked for two years for Word of Life, the same group that ran the Bible Institute. So then, actually, unbeknownst to me, i My heart was really at that point, I wanted to go into law enforcement. My father in law was an FBI agent for 30 years. I'd always been intrigued by law enforcement, so I thought going into and getting a job for a few years, cutting my teeth while I filled out a resume. So started working in the office of donor development or advancement, and that was the first time I really started to get any exposure to anything formal, marketing wise. In the meantime, applied to the FBI, never went anywhere. Ended up applying again, never went anywhere at that point. Then we moved to we left here after two years of marriage and having one child. We moved to Michigan for a brief time, and then we went back to down to from Michigan. We went to Dallas, where we lived for 13 years, and I worked while I was still trying to get into law enforcement. I kept getting marketing jobs and companies. So eventually I gave up the dream of law enforcement and just followed what's unfolding and had a pretty good career in two software companies as a director of marketing to cut my teeth and learn what global business was all about do a lot of travel, which helped me career wise wasn't so great home wise or parent wise when you're away from your kids, but it's been my career for 30 plus years. I've had a heck of a career doing it and very grateful for it, but I still still get intrigued at the whole concept of law enforcement, but I'm afraid I'm a little too old at this point to start down that path.

Michael Hingson 12:47

How come you kept not getting anywhere with it?

Carlos Hidalgo 12:51

Well, I did get to a point where the FBI I took a test when we lived in Dallas, and just they called after said I had scored well, which made me chuckle, thinking back to my college days of test taking, but and then they said, Hey, do you speak Spanish, which I do not, despite my name, which is very Spanish, Carlo. And they said, Okay, well, we'll keep your we'll keep your application on file. Let you know if anything changes. And that was the last I heard. So at that point, I just thought, okay, I can keep pushing this and trying. But again, as things started to unfold in the software world, the jobs that I had took care of my family. They provided well for us. They gave me opportunities to learn new things, try new things, opportunity to, like I said, international business, which I never done before. So at that point, I just thought, you know, I'm kind of seven, eight years into this thing. What does this look like going forward? And then are we going to have to just hit reset in all facets of our lives, financially, where our kids are settled, for me to go into law enforcement. So I abandoned it, and I'm okay with that. I think it would have been a phenomenal career. I would have loved it, like I said. I'm still intrigued by it, I still have great respect for it, but it just wasn't in the cards for me, and I'm okay with that. I think sometimes the way we grow is through the death of a dream.

Michael Hingson 14:21

Yeah, I know I've always been intrigued by law and law enforcement, and I know that they're never going to hire me, and now they won't, right, but, but they wouldn't hire me, but I took, actually, some courses in college dealing with police and other things like that, because I was, and still am fascinated by it, and I have a great respect for the law. And I I admire good lawyers who are knowledgeable, who really are in it to deal with the law. And you can tell those from the typical ambulance type chaser who manipulates, but, but. I really appreciate the law. I in my life have had the opportunity to be involved with some efforts of the National Federation of the Blind, where we've gone several times to Washington to meet with congressional types. And so I've met some interesting people, met Ted Kennedy, met Tip O'Neill when he was still speaker, Senator Saugus from Massachusetts and others, and found and through them, got to meet some people who were truly committed to what they were doing. They weren't in it for the power. They were in it to try to really help the country and help their individual constituencies in their states and so on. It's a lot of fun.

Carlos Hidalgo 15:47

Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure it was, I that's quite a roster of people you've been able to engage with, and I'm sure, no doubt, influence well.

Michael Hingson 15:57

And we were there to talk about legislation that we needed. But I'll never forget first time we went in and we met Paul Tsongas. We talked about what we wanted to talk about, and he said, Well, it's the end of the day. What are you guys doing now? And we said, well, we're just going to go back to the hotel. And he said, You got a few minutes talk to you about Massachusetts. Well, we ended up staying for two hours. It was a lot of fun.

Carlos Hidalgo 16:19

Wow, yeah, that is a lot of fun. I had an opportunity a number of years ago to do a tour of the West Wing, which was just phenomenal. So when you get, when you get those opportunities, I don't care what side of the aisle you may sit on or are partial to, the answer is yes, take it, because you learn a whole lot, and it's it gives you a whole new appreciation for our country.

Michael Hingson 16:40

Well, 20 years ago, I was invited to come back and meet George W Bush because a congressman I had met was fascinated by my story and the story of my guide dog, Roselle, and he arranged for us to meet George W and we went back. It was supposed to be a brief, like two minute just photo op. This ended up being like a 15 minute conversation, and then it was a lot of fun. And I hope that we inspired him some, and we made a difference. And, you know, that's always a good thing.

Carlos Hidalgo 17:13

Yeah, at the end of the day, right there people just like us. They are, I think the and I've heard that a lot about George W is his investment in people where he knew his you know, everybody in the staff that he knew their names, he knew about their families. So it doesn't surprise me that a two minute Meet and Greet was extended a little bit.

Michael Hingson 17:34

We kept the Italian Prime Minister waiting while we finished our conversation, as it turns out, that's fine,

Carlos Hidalgo 17:42

but it was good. There you go. There's your there, there's your the two truth and the lie icebreaker that they have. You do sometimes. There's, you can work that in,

Michael Hingson 17:49

I could work that in, yeah, that would be, yeah, I should do that. Well, it was, but it was, it was, it was very enjoyable to be able to do that. Well. So now, so when did you start your own company? That's been a little while, at least.

Carlos Hidalgo 18:04

Yeah, I started my first company that I started, I co founded with my brother. In 2005 I was working at the software company, and I just, I started to just have an edge of, you know, I should start something. I don't know what that looks like. And I remember one time just talking to my wife, and I said, I don't want to be 7580 years old. And think, what if, yeah, and my wife is very practical. And she said, Okay, so go for it, and if it doesn't work, just go get another job. And when she broke it down like that, I just thought, wow. Okay, she, I think she believes in me more than I do. So in 2005 I left the software company and we started a agency. And really, at that point for me, the Yes, I wanted to start my own company and see if I could do it. But the the big driving factor was my at that point, I we had four children, so we have four, and they were all pretty small, and I was traveling all over the country, and I didn't want to miss their childhood. And I remember coming home from trips and hearing conversations or seeing things that that I wasn't a part of, and I thought this, this isn't right. I need to be here. I need to be home. So I went to the software company, asked them what they thought they became my first client, and I did that for from 2005 to just early 2017 when I resigned my position as CEO there just to get my life back and kind of hit the reset button again, but this time, I meant it, so I left, and they're still going. But that was my first foray into entrepreneurship, and I just kept doing it since I started another consultancy, and now this is my third one, and also been part of about two to three other companies that. We launched, but never made it. So I enjoy the whole process. I love it, but, yeah, it's, I don't know. I mean, I will never say never, but the idea of not working for myself seems rather foreign to me.

Michael Hingson 20:16

So the first company you had for 12 years, what did that do?

Carlos Hidalgo 20:21

We were a mark. Marketing Yeah, we were a marketing services company. So we worked with business to business companies to help them in their demand generation, acquiring new customers and also customer growth. So that's really where a lot of my career has been sent, centered right, helping companies design them strategies, everything from content to technology to developing personas and putting together strategies on how to reach them when they're looking for something to buy that that client offers.

Michael Hingson 20:52

Okay, well, that makes sense and certainly a worthy thing to do. So, when did you form your current company, digital exhaust, which is a very clever name, you'll have to tell me about that.

Carlos Hidalgo 21:04

Oh yeah, there's a little bit of a story behind that. So I was working in 2022 early 2022 I had an offer to go be the Chief Revenue Officer of another agency, which I my wife and I talked about it, we prayed about it, and I had a really, really close friend of mine who was their chief strategy officer at the time, so the ability to work with him, stay in the industry and work with some really good clients, I jumped at, so I took that role over that role lasted eight months. I won't get into all those details of why? Never, never, really did get a clear answer. The answer I was given, not exactly. The numbers didn't the number. I'll just say the numbers proved otherwise. All that said that came to an end in 2023 I believe. Yeah, yeah, 2023 and so February, 23 so at that point, I was like, Okay, well, what do I do? I can try to go get a job, which I did. Nobody was really interested in, you know, early 50s, guy coming in. So, you know, did the interview thing. And then I just thought, Well, why don't, why don't I just bet on myself again and go for it. So at that point, the my friend who was the chief strategy officer, he had also left, so he and I started talking and thought, why don't we just do this together? You know, services he loves to implement, I love to sell. Let's just see if we can make a run at this. So here we are now. It'll be four years in or three years, I guess, in February or April of 26 and we're still alive to talk about it. And so that's how it came to be. It was really just, I've done this before. There's no security, no more security. I believe in working for somebody else than working for yourself. So bet on yourself and put out your shingle and see what you can make happen.

Michael Hingson 23:06

Where did the name digital exhaust come from? That's a clever name.

Carlos Hidalgo 23:10

Oh, thank you. We were, we were batting around so many different names, and we just had a thing, I think we had a running Google Sheet, like, let's just throw names up there. And then I was listening to a recording of a vendor that we had done work with in our early days, and he was talking about how you can track the digital movements of someone. And he said, You know, so basically, you know, they're leaving behind their digital exhaust. And he used the term twice. So I called my then partner, Tracy, and I said, Hey, what do you think about the name digital exhaust as a company? And he was like, Oh, I love it. So I said, Well, before we that, we have to call Dan and see if he would be okay. So I did some looking, you know, the whole trademark search, and when I told our partner about it. He said, Oh my word, I love it. He said, Never, never even thought that that could be a name, but if you guys want it, go for it. So we took it and it is, it's, it's, we think it's pretty unique, and it also describes a lot of what we do with customer data to get an understanding of how do you engage with them, where are they, and how are they going to interact with you and your brand? How so well. Again, he was right. I can look at your digital footprint or your digital behavior. I can see what sites you've visited, what web pages you visited, how much time you spend on a product piece, how much content you engage so I can look at all of that behind the scenes. Start to score that if you're an account that I want to go after, or if I'm a lead based sale, that gives me a lot of intelligence on what you're interested in. And then there's ways to kind of, from a insight perspective, determine where you are in that journey, whether it's your four. First time as a purchase, you're a current customer and you're interested in purchasing something else. So it gives us a lot of insight into that, so that I can message you or I also know when should sales place a phone call to you and start that conversation. So that's why we use the term digital exhaust, because, again, it's a lot of what we do and how we use our customer data.

Michael Hingson 25:20

Several years ago, I watched a 60 Minutes program, gosh, I don't know it's actually a number of years ago. And one of the segments there was a guy who was on he was a private detective, and what he said was, I can tell more about you than most anyone else can simply by looking at your trash. And in fact, I can't remember if it was Mike Wallace or not. Who was the interviewer, but they went on investigated some trash cans and and this guy could just tell you so much about your entire life just by looking at what was in the trash can. It was really pretty amazing and and I don't mean that in any way as a negative thing, but it's very clever that people have that insight. So I appreciate what you're saying about digital exhaust. It makes perfect sense.

Carlos Hidalgo 26:17

Well, good. I'm glad it does. It means we've hit the mark. I'm not I will say this. I'm not going to go through my customers trash, but I am not surprised that if you did how much you could learn about somebody, 100% but

Michael Hingson 26:30

you do look at their their digital footprint and so again, and it makes perfect sense that you can learn so much that can help you, help them grow. Yes, absolutely gives incredible insight. You talk about making growth simple, tell me more about what that means.

Carlos Hidalgo 26:51

Yeah, you know, I've been in the space a long time, and that really came a couple years ago. We started seeing different models that would come up different frameworks that would come out from different vendors. Started talking, you know, I talked to a lot of chief marketing officers in my role, and over and over, what we saw was just complexity of taking terms that everybody would know and applying a new term or creating a new term to replace the old term, because you wanted to stay edgy. And I finally had a CMO who said to me, this is all so complex. Is there any any organization out there, or any way to just make this simple? And I thought, Gee, I kind of been thinking the same thing, because I see all these talking heads out there on LinkedIn and at these conferences showing these overly complex, overly engineered models, and I'm like, You got to be a PhD to implement that thing. And again, I'm also a pretty simple guy. I don't think growth needs to be all that hard if you know your customer, what they need, when they need it, and why it's important to them. I'm going to be able to sell you quite a bit. I'm also going to be able to be a better marketing, better partner to you, because I'll be the first one to be able to tell you you don't need that, or you need that, but you shouldn't get it from us, and here's why. And so we just started saying, You know what? Let's create with our models. And we have models and we have frameworks, but we want them to be kind of what Apple is, right, really innovative, where you can use it. You don't necessarily have to have someone to guide you through it. And so let's just make it as simple as possible for our clients to grow their companies without these over engineered models, which mostly a lot of them are created to sell stuff. And while we want to sell stuff more, so we want to help customers be better at what they do. And so that's why we say is we want to help you make growth simple, cut through the clutter, get to what matters and move forward.

Michael Hingson 28:58

Yeah, which makes a lot of sense. By by any standard, how do you find storytelling comes into what you do and how you interact with customers?

Carlos Hidalgo 29:11

Yeah, it's really important in the beginning, right in the beginning stages. Anytime I'm engaging with you, if I'm a consumer and you're a brand, I want to your brand should tell a story about who you are, the value that the customer gets when they're going to interact with you, they're going to use your product, what you stand for. Can they trust you? Trust is huge. Right now. We live in a trust economy. I want to know that if you say something, I can you're going to stand behind it. So all of those things are come through in terms of story. Now, what I've always said is I think that story is important. But when it comes to now, especially in the world I live in business to business, once I get into maybe I want to purchase something for you or purchase your product. Now I. Moves from a story to a dialog because I started, I start need, needing to know, what are you interested in? What are your challenges? What are your needs, what are your pain points? And as you're telling me that I can respond more in a conversation, I can still use parts of the story, but now it's a two way dialog, even in a digital world. So if I can create that, that's fantastic, then you become my customer. And now I still want to keep telling you stories. I want to tell you a story about why you can trust us. I tell you a story about how I interact with you. I tell you a story about how I deliver service and how I help you onboard. So all that bleeds into what we call, you know, what I call the big customer experience, from brand engagement to what I'm buying to now that I become a customer, all of those are experiential factors that we have to consider.

Michael Hingson 30:49

Well, yeah, and I think that storytelling is a very significant part of selling and sales, because it's part of what really helps create the trust, because people can see through it, if you're just blowing smoke or playing games.

Carlos Hidalgo 31:05

Yes, they can absolutely. And you only get one shot if that's what you're gonna do only, yeah, once I realized that forget it, I'm not coming back, that brand loyalty is away real quick.

Michael Hingson 31:16

Yeah. So do you encounter in the interactions that you have with people with a lot of burnout or who are going that way.

Carlos Hidalgo 31:25

Oh yeah. It's, it's something that I went through in 2016 it's, it's a, I mean, the World Health Organization, whatever you think about them, they definitely have listed it as a illness or as a condition. So it's something that I've seen. It's something that I've written against quite a bit. I don't think we need to get there, but I also think it is part of the consequence, or the outcome of when we make work center of our universe, and we make work our God, when that's going to happen then, yeah, you're going to experience burnout. And I think burnout comes in different flavors, but I see a lot of people who are going through it, trying to work through it, trudge through it. I heard the term the other day, manage burnout. I don't know why you would want to manage burnout. I think you need to take steps to avoid burnout, to avoid it.

Michael Hingson 32:17

Yeah, why is it so many people face it, and are experiencing burnout is because they just deal with work, they don't relax, or what.

Carlos Hidalgo 32:27

Well, I think there's a lot, lot in that. I've done a lot of study, and that was the topic of some of the topic of my book that I released in 2019 the UN American dream is, I think we, especially in our Western culture, we have adopted this idea that the busier I am, the more important, the more valuable I am, and so and the reality is, none of us are well wired to go, go, go, go, go. Rest is actually a gift from the Lord. And you know, I think very few of us. But you know, think about the last time you talked to anybody. How are you? Oh, I'm so busy. We love to be busy. We love to have jam packed calendars, because it makes us feel good. The other part of it is when you think about workaholism, you know, that is an addiction. And the only time in my experience, we engage with or become addicted to something, it's when we're trying to avoid something else. And so think our workaholism, which leads to burnout, is right up there with our rising rates of anxiety, of depression, of loneliness, because we have bought a false narrative that if we go, go go, we jam pack our calendars, we work like and work like crazy until we hit some imaginary number or we can call it quits. That's what life is all about. And I just sit there and you know, my number one question to people who are running that race is, how's it working for you? You don't seem really happy right now, you don't seem fulfilled, and you're living on the promise of some day and some days, not a day in the week, right?

Michael Hingson 34:03

I People ask me, How are you all the time? And my response is something actually that I borrowed from somebody else. I just say, I'm lovely. Yeah, I get lots of reactions from that. It's kind of cute, but it's great. You know, I I agree with you, there is a there's a need and a time, and it's appropriate to not work all the time. Yes, we we don't ever take time even just to sit and think about what we did today. We don't take time at the end of the day to go in our own brains. How did this work out? How did that work out? Why didn't this work? Why did this work? What could I do to make it better and then listen for answers? It's like praying. So many people, when they pray to God, they pray to Jesus and so on. They spend all their time praying and saying what they want, never realizing God all. And he knows that, yeah, when are you going to start listening for answers and really listening? And that's, that's the challenge that I see so often people don't listen, and the answers are always there. They're in their inner the the inner voice that they can hear if they but practice well.

Carlos Hidalgo 35:17

And I think to part of that is you need to be still, right? And we see that in scripture where we're told be still and know that I am God, if I mean there, there. We have so much noise and so much input with our phones and constant, you know, interaction and constant noise. We don't give ourselves the ability to sit and think and process, to just to be still. And that is something that I would say, really, for me, over the last decade, has come into focus of I enjoy my downtime. I enjoy the silence that I it's one of the reasons when I run, I don't run with headphones. In my own little world, in my head, praying, thinking about things. There are times I'll drive in the car without the radio on, just in silence, and I tell people, then they look at me like, I have three heads. Yeah, I'm like, oh, it's I am so much better for it, because I'm no longer living life reactively. I'm able to live life in a way that brings me a lot of peace, a lot of joy, a lot of happiness. And when I work, I work really, really hard, but it's definitely not the center of my universe.

Michael Hingson 36:27

I know people think I'm crazy, but I can go days without looking well, not days. I'll go a day. I do it volitionally, but I can go quite a while without looking at text messages, and when I do, their message is there sometimes, but I know that I could actually go for a considerable length of time without needing to carry my phone around. Now, the only reason I do carry it around, I mean, clearly some phone calls can come in and so on, but I use other tools on it that you have access to in other ways. So I use it for those things. But the bottom line is, is that I don't need to have this phone with me to stay in touch with people all the time. So if I carry my phone more often than not, I will be in a hotel room listening to something on the phone and, sure, relaxing, rather than all the other things that one could do with it well.

Carlos Hidalgo 37:25

And the number of people that I talked to and research shows this that, you know, the last I saw was over 60% it's the first thing people do when they wake up is they reach over and look at their phone and I say, sit there and say, What is so important that you can't even wait 15 minutes from the time your eyes open. But we've become addicted. We've come addicted to the noise, to the constant, go, go, go. And then, you know, we have a friend of ours last year was just, I'm so busy. I'm so busy. Told my wife, over the next three months, I only have this one day I can do lunch. And then you start realizing, like, Well, really, that's, that's how you want to live your life over the next 90 days, you only have one day. Now, I didn't believe it when I heard that. I don't think they were trying to make excuse, and I don't think lying. I think in their heads, they really had this belief of, oh, I can. I've only got one day out of the next 90, but we've weed ourselves into believing that this is how we should be living life. Yeah, and it's not how I want to live life. I'll work hard, I'll put everything I've got into my clients and my business and things like that, but I don't want to be that strapped. I was that strapped one time, time wise and work wise, and it made me absolutely miserable. Mm, hmm.

Michael Hingson 38:45

I know when I wake up in the morning I do reach for my phone right at the beginning. One of the very first things that I do is reach for it to see what the temperature is outside, to see what the temperature is your house, to see whether I want to turn the heater on, you know, but I don't look at messages. I don't need to do that. I'll do it eventually, but, you know, I So, as I say, I use it for other tools, but I use the phone, because that's the tool that's available to me that gives me that information, and it'll help me decide, do I want to turn the heater on, or do I want to turn the air conditioner off? And that's what I do. And then I put the phone down, and I start visiting with the dog and the cat, and we have conversations which is, which is kind of fun,

Carlos Hidalgo 39:29

but yeah, you get to enjoy life.

Michael Hingson 39:32

I remember, remember the old technology town? Now it's old Blackberry. Oh yeah, the black and Research In Motion. There was one night when Research In Motion lost communications with all of the blackberries, and every BlackBerry went dead, I think, for about 12 hours. But I heard that even during the time when that occurred, people committed suicide because they had no way to look at their blackberries. And. Get information. And I always thought you're that dependent, that you can't cope for a while, especially at night without that information.

Carlos Hidalgo 40:09

Come on. Yeah, it's staggering. The number of, again, over 50% of people said that they would be panicked if they want an app without their phones and so and again, I used to, I used to live that way. So I understand it to a degree, but, well, I understand it. Yeah, I also tell people you don't have to live that way, because people i The people I know who live that way, don't seem very content or fulfilled, right, right? Which is really the issue, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely, because we only go, we only get one shot at this life, and I want to make the most of it.

Michael Hingson 40:43

Make growth simple.

Carlos Hidalgo 40:46

That's right, personal, personal and business wise, right?

Michael Hingson 40:49

Personal and business wise. So what is hustle culture?

Carlos Hidalgo 40:54

Well, hustle culture has been promoted by a lot of folks, a whole lot more well known that I am, you know, where Kevin O'Leary for Shark Tank, Shark Tank talks about, you got to be willing to work eight days a week, you know, and give everything you've got, you know. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, you know, go, go, go, go. And, you know, we just see it out there of this, you've got to be willing to go above and beyond. If you want to have success, if you want to make this money, you've got to just make sure you're willing to hustle at all costs, which to me, there's a place for that. As I said, when I'm working I hustle. I work hard. I get in a zone. I kind of block everything out and and there are some weeks where we require over and above it. You know, 16 or a week is is not something that has never been done. But the difference is, there's a couple of differences. Is I'm going to work hard because that's what I'm told to do. In Scripture, it says that with everything you do, do it with all your might and do it to the glory of glory of the Lord. So I'm going to do that. Plus work was one of the first things that God ever created. He told Adam in the garden, I want you to work now, what we also see is that it was cursed when man sinned, and it was part of the curse in the garden. But I do believe work is noble. I believe it's valuable, I believe it has so many things that can teach us. So I'm working. I'm hustling hard when I'm working, but this idea that I need to give everything I have to my business so that I'm successful. Well, what about our relationships? What about our own our last word, too, right? Our own physical health? What about my marriage? All of these things that require work yet, you know, you got a guy like Grant Cardone talking about 95 hour work weeks. That's insanity. Yeah, at what point, you know, so to me, I really believe, and I've had some people who've argued with me over this. If you want to know what the object of your affection is, show me where you're spending the most time and attention. And it's not time or attention, time and attention, right? I cannot. I cannot be, quote, unquote, working, but I can be with my wife, but my brain is working. My brain is thinking about my work, thinking about my business, thinking about my career. So what good is it to her if I'm there or not? Yeah, I'm not investing in that relationship, and that is just as much work as anything else. And I would I would say the rewards are better and the gratification that much deeper. So can work life balance actually be attained? I don't believe in work life balance. I believe in boundaries, and maybe I'm splitting hairs, but when I see that, over 70% of people say that work life balance is unachievable. It tells me it doesn't exist. It's also the only place in our lives where we talk we try to separate work from life. Nobody talks about finance life, business, kids life, business, marriage life, business. But we talk about work life balance. Now I understand we spend a lot of time at work in our modern day culture, but if I can decide that I'm going to put boundaries around the things that matter most to me, so like work, like my relationships, like my physical, mental and emotional health, my spiritual health, and that's how I've started to live life. Is instead of trying to balance everything, I'm going to set boundaries. So what does that look like? Well, the first thing I do in the morning is not check the phone. I get up, I pray. I have coffee with my wife. Sometimes we have really deep conversations. Sometimes we look just let the caffeine kick in and let it wake up, and then we set time in prayer. So every day, pretty much between 815 and 830 I'm at my desk ready to work, but I've put a boundary around that morning time, which allows me to start the time with with my Bible and with my wife from 830 To about 1230 I'm locked in. I am working. There's a boundary around there's a boundary. And then about 1230 to one, about two o'clock, that's my workout. Either go to the gym or I go for a run, come home, make my protein stuff, and then I'm back working again. And so and then when I'm done work, between 530 and six, I shut it down. Work is over, and now it's my personal life again, and whatever that looks like, and some of that is seasonal, because of where I live, in the summer, it'll get stay light till 930 and the winter, it gets dark by 430 there's quite a disparity. But because I have those boundaries, I know that I'm able to bring the best of myself to each of those areas of my life, and that is far easier than balance. And when one of those boundaries needs to move, I get to have a conversation. Hey, I've got a call tonight overseas. Or do we have anything? Are we good if I take this call at 730 at night? So I take the call at 730 at night, but I have that discussion, and it's it takes more effort to move a boundary, takes very little effort to get knocked off balance.

Michael Hingson 46:05

Yeah, and I think that makes perfect sense. I know for me, when Karen was here, we we enjoyed breakfast and we enjoyed dinner, and I think there's a lot of value in that. Now, I was always the earlier riser, but partly because I worked for companies that kind of required that. That is to say I worked, for example, when I lived in the east for California companies. So I ended up being there later. But when I worked in the West, calling the east, I had to be in work by six, because that's what I needed to do. But we agreed on that, and I hear exactly what you're saying. The fact of the matter is that you've got to really make some decisions, but if you're in a relationship, then you both have to agree and make the decisions together, which is what really should happen 100%

Carlos Hidalgo 46:58

and those boundaries will change. I mean my boundaries now that I'm an empty nester, you know, had I lived this way 15 years ago, would have looked far different because I still had children at home. And so the boundaries can shift and change. But to your point, you have to talk about that. And what I have come to believe is that if I'm making those decisions in regards to my business, my job, my career, and I'm not having the conversation with my significant other, then I'm not I'm not sacrificing anything. I'm just selfish. And yet, what we see is, Oh, you got to sacrifice for your business. I've said to couples before, if you and your wife believe and want to say, hey, we want to go build this thing and we want to go sell it so we know the next five years we're hardly going to see each other, and we're both on board with that, and this is what we want. Go in peace. I think you're nuts, but Go in peace, but still, you made the decision together. That's right, and that's the difference. And I find that a lot of people do not do that, and I also think it adds to the stress and the loneliness and the anxiety and the depression is because we're chasing something that is so fleeting, and no matter what Empire we may build professionally, we can't take it with us, right?

Michael Hingson 48:13

And that's something that I wish more people would truly realize. It would make for a much happier world.

Carlos Hidalgo 48:21

It would. But the unfortunate part is, until the pain and consequence of how you're living outweighs the fear of change, most likely you're never going to do anything different, right?

48:31

So tell me,

Carlos Hidalgo 48:32

oh, go ahead. No. Oh, okay, tell me about the

Michael Hingson 48:36

title of the book, the UN American Dream. Where did that come from? And why did you name the book that, why was that the title? And so on,

Carlos Hidalgo 48:42

yeah, and so in 2016 is when I informed the company that I had started with my brother 11 years earlier that I was stepping down. Didn't really know what that looked like. I literally just one day, through the help of a friend and God's good grace, decided that it was time for me to go. And so the way they wanted to handle it in end of the year, and I think this was like end of October ish, when I made that decision, they said, You know what, let's not announce anything. We don't want our clients to get spooked in q4 so let's wait until the turn of the the new year. So that was into 2017 so I made a post, and I published it in February, 2017 about why I was leaving the company, some of the things that I was learning along the way. And what surprised me was the phone calls and emails I got from colleagues who said, Hey, I just read your post. Can we talk? I'm kind of thinking about the same thing. I'm miserable. And it was one email in particular that still stands out, where he said, I'm miserable. I started to think like, wow, okay, this, this is not just me. My circumstances were different. But this seems to be a problem, so I started to just do some research on our obsession with work, the number of hours we work, this idea of balance and hustle culture. Really immersed myself in it, and I thought this isn't what Truslow Adams meant when he coined the term the American dream. We're killing ourselves for what like, for What's the objective here to just add another zero to my bank account. So as I started to do that research, I saw myself and a lot of that same story, and the mistakes I made and how I was, you know, I had put my business first all the things that we've talked about. And I thought, Man, this is really quite un American, really, because we say we're the land of the free and the home of the brave, but we're not free if we're slaves to our company or our jobs or our careers. So I thought, You know what? I think what we're doing to ourselves is un American, and we're chasing the UN American dream, and that's how I came up with the title,

Michael Hingson 51:05

who have been some of your greatest influencers?

Carlos Hidalgo 51:09

Wow, I have had a lot. Obviously, my parents have been huge influences in my life. My mom is a fierce prayer warrior, and so I fervently believe I would not be where I'm at today if it wasn't for her and her faithfulness and that and my dad is it has been in marketing and sales and advertising. So learned a lot from him, just in life, and then also in business. There's a gentleman who lives up the street who is kind of like a second dad to me, it's an interesting relationship, because his son is also my best friend, but gentleman by the name of Keith Vander wheel who is salt of the earth, wise, just a wise, wise man has loved me, has when needed, given me a swift kick in the rear end, and just really helped keep keep me focused, and been one of these guys that I can go to, and it's a little about almost 20 years older than I am, so he's one that has seen more and done more. So I'm thankful for that. And then I am very fortunate to have about three or four very, very dear, dear friends, close friends, I mentioned one, Keith's son, who spur me on to greater things, encourage me when necessary, rebuke me and help me. And then I would say, more than anything, my wife, I learned stuff from her each and every day, her steadfastness, Her Grace, her strength of character, she is absolutely the strongest person I know, and has been the biggest influence in my life.

Michael Hingson 52:45

I when I was in college, did radio, and I've always liked comedy. I've always liked trying to be a little bit flip and so on, yep. But I will tell you that my wife constantly amazed me. She was pretty much a lot more straight faced and straight laced than i But when she came out with a zinger, it came out of left field, and you never saw coming. She was amazing. Clearly, she observed me a whole lot more than I thought she did, right?

Carlos Hidalgo 53:18

And what a gift that is to have. My wife and I were just, we went out for brunch today, with it being the holiday, and I just, I told her, I said, I just love how much we laugh. Yeah, what a gift that is to have in your marriage. We're just laughing together and laughing at each other in a way that's not demeaning, but appreciates our differences. And you know, we can tease each other and enjoy it and know it comes from a place of love, yeah.

Michael Hingson 53:42

How do we deal with the epidemic of loneliness in our lives and in our world?

Carlos Hidalgo 53:48

Wow, that's a great question. It's first of all, I think it's heartbreaking. I see this especially with men. And statistics would show that that men especially struggle with loneliness. I think number one is we have to come to the realization we were not meant to live in isolation. We are communal beings. God created us to live in community, and we need to step into that. And part of that is letting your guard down and being vulnerable and letting people know where you struggle. Now I'm not talking about wearing your heart on your sleeve and walking right every stranger and spilling, but those closest of relationships, and I can say, you know, for me, when I isolated, that's when I became the worst form of myself and went to places I never thought I would go. And so I think loneliness, first of all, get off social media and your phone, because that's not a connection. No, your friends, all of your 1000s of friends on Facebook, are not true friends. They're people, you know, but they're not people that are going to walk with you through some of the hardest times of your lives, and so find those. Group, find that community, whether it's your church, whether it's a small group that you take part in, whether it's people at your work, but really start to invest in those relationships and bring as much to it as you're expecting them to. And for me, it became just with those closest relationships. I'm an open book. I'm not going to BS. I'm going to talk about what's on my heart, what I'm struggling with, what my victories are, what my low points are. And for me, that starts with my spouse. As I mentioned, I've got three other men in my life that are around my age that I can confide in, be open with, and it's the most freeing, wonderful thing, and it's their relationships that I cherish, and I think that's how we end this cycle of loneliness. But I think a lot of people have been duped. Well, I'm on I've got a bunch of friends online, yeah, you know, put the phone down, get off your social media platform and go be human and interact with other people.

Michael Hingson 56:01

It gets back to the same thing we talked about earlier. There's a whole big difference between head knowledge and really knowing. And the friends who are truly your friends are people who you know and who know you and that you can truly be honest with and who will be honest with you. And that is not something that you get from all those Facebook friends. Otherwise, you're being awfully silly, right?

Carlos Hidalgo 56:23

And I also think we have to get out of this idea in our culture that if I don't affirm you, I somehow don't like you anymore, this idea that tolerance and love are the same thing. Some of my closest friends have been some of the ones that have come to me and said, Hey, here's what we've observed, and we're sure you don't like that about you, and you know this needs to change. And I love that. I love that I friends who will call my stuff and a wife who will say to me, this isn't the best you like what's going on here? I need that in my life, because if all I want to do is have people pat me on the back and affirm me. I'm going to get entitled pretty quick. Yeah, and that doesn't help at all. Right? How do we bring civil discourse to our society? We're in an environment and in a world where we just don't appreciate or have conversations anymore. How do we deal with that? Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, I think we have to get back to an appreciation for and a respect for human life and humanity in general. Michael, I'm sure if you and I spent a few hours together, we would eventually land on a topic that we don't just that we don't agree on. I can be okay with that, and because if I'm open to say, Hey, Michael is a human being. He's smart. He's overcome incredible odds in his life, and maybe if I listen, I can learn something. Doesn't mean I'm going to come to your side of the the position, but I can at least learn something. But I think systematically, over decades, we've been denigrating the the value of human life. I mean, how many millions of babies have we aborted in this country? You know, your your own story, your parents were told, hey, just put him in a home. He's not going to amount to anything because of his blindness. That's insanity, you know. So today, instead of civil discourse, if I don't like you, I berate you online, I make something up about you, or I kill you. And right so and to tell you how far we've gone, not only does that happen, but then we're gonna have people who celebrate in the murder of whether it's an insurance CEO or a Charlie Kirk, or anybody, and I just sit there and say, Okay, we've we've gotten so far right civil discourse. And so I think number one is just a respect and a value for human life, which we have a lot of work to do there. And then number two, again, back to what I said, this idea that if I disagree with you, I somehow don't love you anymore. And the example I use is this idea of, well, you need we need more tolerance and affirmation. There was a time Michael where my behavior within our marriage just was unacceptable. I mean, I was cheating on my wife, and once she found out she still loved me, but she couldn't tolerate the behavior for reasons that I think I need to explain. So at that point, you say, All right, well, how do those two things work together? If I had kept doing what I was doing, I know for 100% she would have loved me till the day she died, but she died, but she wouldn't have been able to stay with me, because you can't tolerate that behavior. She's supposed to affirm that. And so this idea that because I quote, unquote, love you, I affirm you, I actually make the case that if I love you, I'm going to help you be the best form of yourself, which sometimes means disagreeing with you and pointing things out in your life. That are unhealthy, that's fair. So I think we have to get back to that place of we can have disagreement, still have respect for each other. We can disagree vehemently and still do it respectfully, right? And then at the end of the day, I can respect your position because of who you are as a person, and that you know, giving you the benefit of the doubt. This is a well thought out position. And so, okay, great. We agree to disagree. We can still be friends, yeah?

Michael Hingson 1:00:27

And we might learn something, or at least be put on a path where we think about it, and we may discover that, oh, that person's right, correct, yeah, which is

Carlos Hidalgo 1:00:36

cool, yeah, and it's not that hard. And again, no, do your do your homework. Know what the real issues are, and stop reading headlines on social media.

Michael Hingson 1:00:46

Yeah, really, get away from that. What else should we know about you?

Carlos Hidalgo 1:00:50

Well, I'm the father of four amazing kids spread all over the country, ages 30 to 20. He'll be 24 in 10 days, and then an amazing daughter in law, soon to be daughter in law, my second son is engaged, gets married next year. I love the outdoors, anything outside. And I would say, if I want your audience to remember anything, it's that what Jesus Christ has done in my life has been nothing short of amazing. And like I said at the beginning, this is my operating system, and it's who I am and my reason for being in each and every day. And I sit here and I just am in awe of the life I get to live. So I'm very, very thankful and very, very humbled by it all.

Michael Hingson 1:01:36

If people want to reach out to you and maybe explore working with your company, using your company to help them. How do they do that?

Carlos Hidalgo 1:01:43

Yeah, you can email me at Carlos at Digital exhaust.co it's not.com so make sure it.co's or I won't get it. So you can shoot me an email visit our website, which is digital exhaust.co or looked me up on LinkedIn, just Carlos adalgo, H, I, D, A, L, G, O, right. That is correct. Yeah. I appreciate you getting the name right on the introduction. So thank you for that. I worked at it well.

Michael Hingson 1:02:12

I want to thank you for being here. This has been wonderful. And as I tell people all the time, if I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else on this podcast, and I'm not doing my job well, which means I do need to listen and think about it. And I appreciate all the insights that you gave us today, and I appreciate all of you being here and being with Carlos and me. Love to get your thoughts. Please reach out to Carlos. Please email me at Michael H i, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, but most of all, wherever you're listening or watching the pod podcast, please give us a five star review and a rating. We love that. We love your your input, please. Of course, I want it always to be positive, but I'll take whatever you send because we we value that. And for all of you and Carlos, you as well, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on the podcast. We'd love it if you'd let us know we're always looking to meet more people to help show that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are. And with that, I want to thank you again, Carlos, for being here. This has been absolutely fun.

Carlos Hidalgo 1:03:13

Michael, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it.

Michael Hingson 1:03:20

You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Episode 420 – How Customer Stories Create Unstoppable Business Growth with Scott Hornstein

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Great marketing does not start with your product. It starts with your customer.

In this conversation, I speak with marketing strategist Scott Hornstein about why storytelling, customer research, and trust are the real drivers behind successful brands. Scott shares lessons from decades in marketing, including his work with IBM and major technology launches, and explains how companies often fail when they focus on themselves instead of the people they serve. You will hear how listening to the voice of the customer can reshape messaging, build trust, and unlock growth. Scott also reflects on entrepreneurship, resilience, family, and the mindset required to get back up after setbacks. I believe you will find this conversation both practical and encouraging as you think about how relationships and trust shape business success.

Highlights:

· Creativity in Queens – Scott reflects on how music and culture shaped his early creativity.04:10

· From Literature to Marketing – His love of books leads him toward storytelling and marketing.12:57

· Learning to Experiment – A mentor teaches the value of trying ideas and learning from failure.20:46

· The Customer as the Hero – Scott explains why marketing must center on the customer.31:48

· Customer Insight Drives Messaging – Research helps reshape a company’s message and market entry.41:23

· Resilience Through Setbacks – Scott reflects on perseverance in life and business.50:59

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

I currently live in Reston VA, my wife and I having moved there to be close to our 2 daughters and our 2 granddaughters. I am an independent business consultant specializing in storytelling – which embraces marketing, research, and content. Family is the most important thing in my life and it has taught me that lasting relationships, business and personal, are steeped in empathy and commitment.

I was born in Manhattan on July 25, 1950. My parents soon moved the family to the up-and-coming borough of Queens. I attended the public schools in and around Forest Hills. Writing was always my goal.

I graduated NYU as an English major. Upon graduation I traveled, then pursued my (naïve) dream of living as an artist – as a writer, an actor, and a musician. I wrote plays for the brand-new cable industry, wrote for a movie-making magazine, was in several off-off Broadway plays, worked as a pick-up musician. I helped in the office for a former professor to earn subway money.

Got tired of starving to death. Took a job with CBS in the Broadcast Center, pulling together the Daily Log for the local station. Then, got hired to answer Bill Paley’s mail. Then, I was hired as a marketing manager for Columbia House where I got some of the best advice – keep going.

I met this guy from my neighborhood while commuting to my job in Manhattan. Turns our he worked for Y\&R and said they were looking for someone. I interviewed and jumped over to agency-side work as an Account Executive, then Account Supervisor, then, going back to my roots, copywriter and eventually Creative Director.

The entrepreneurial life has been a roller coaster, but I have been blessed to work with some brilliant people in marketing and sales, and some great companies. It allowed me to understand how I can really help my customers become successful in the long-term.

Ways to connect with Scott**:**

Medium

www.hornsteinassociates.com

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Well, hi everyone, and welcome once again to another episode of unstoppable mindset today. Our guest is Scott Hornstein, although when he came into the Zoom Room, I said, is it Hornstein or Hornstein? And of course, he also understood, because we're both of the same age, and are both fans of Young Frankenstein, who always said that his name was really pronounced Frankenstein. But you know, you have to have to know Gene Wilder for that. But anyway, if you haven't seen that movie, you got to see it. Mel Brooks at his best, but Scott is a marketing person and specializes a lot in storytelling, which fascinates me a lot, because I am a firm believer in storytelling, and I know we're going to have a lot of fun talking about that today. So Scott, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.

Scott Hornstein 02:20

Thank you so much, Michael. I have to start by saying I have great respect for your work, and this is really quite a privilege for me. Thank you very much.

Michael Hingson 02:32

Well, thank you. You're a long way from where you were born, in New York, in Manhattan. Now you're in Reston, Virginia, but that's okay. Well, you're not that far. It's just a short train ride, a few hours.

Scott Hornstein 02:41

I That's true. That's true, although with that particular train, you can never be sure exactly how long it's going to be good

Michael Hingson 02:52

point, yeah, yeah, good point. It is one of the things one has to deal with. But that's okay. But, you know, I've taken that train many times, and I've taken the the Metro liner as well, and also just the regular train. And I like the trains. I enjoy the train. I wish we had more of them out here.

Scott Hornstein 03:15

I do too. I when it a long time ago in business, when I had a client here in DC, and I was living in Connecticut, I started taking the train, and it was so superior to flying. Oh yeah. And then recently I was, as I was mentioning to you, I was in Germany and taking the trains there is just wonderful. It's so superior.

Michael Hingson 03:47

Yeah, I wish we would have more of them out here. If I, for example, want to take a train to San Francisco from where I live in Victorville, the only way I can do it is to take a train at roughly four in the morning to Los Angeles and then transfer on a train to go to San Francisco, which is no fun. I'll fly because it's it's kind of crazy, but I like the trains, and wish we wish we had more of them all over, and wish more people would use them. It's a lot better than driving, and it's a lot more pleasant. When I lived in the east, there were any number of times that I knew people who would travel from like Bucks County in Pennsylvania to New York Wall Street people, and they would go two, two and a half hours on the train every day and back again. And they formed discussion groups or other sorts of things. They they made it a part of their regular day, and it was there was nothing to them to do that.

Scott Hornstein 04:54

And to them, I say, God bless. I am not in love with commuting, right? Yeah.

Michael Hingson 05:00

Well, I understand that. I appreciate that, but they, they did well with it, and so good for them, or, as I would say in Australia, good on them. But you know, well, why don't we start tell us a little bit about you, maybe growing up in the early Scott and all that stuff. Let's start with that, sure.

Scott Hornstein 05:21

First one brief aside about Young Frankenstein when I was living in Connecticut, I would go to the theater in Stanford, and for one performance, my tickets were at the will call, so I went up to the ticket booth, gave them my name, and the woman be on the other side of the iron bars keeps throwing her head to the side, wanting me to look over to my left, and I finally look over to my left, and there's Gene Wilder. Oh my gosh. What an enormously tall individual, very gracious, very nice. In any case, yes,

Michael Hingson 06:06

with him, did you? Did you talk with

Scott Hornstein 06:09

him just for a moment, just for a moment, you know, just Mr. Wilder, how nice to meet you. And he said a couple of nice things. And that was about it. Still, we all went to see the to see the show. Still, it was quite a thrill for me. What show I do not. Oh, that was, oh, no, excuse me. That was the the madness of King Charles, madness of King George. King George. But he was quite mad, and the play is excellent, excellent. Well, anyway, in any case, I grew I was born in Manhattan. I spent the first couple of years of life on the west side. I don't remember much of that. But my parents quickly moved us out to Queens, which at that point was rather undeveloped. You could get a lot more for your money, and we have lived in an apartment building. And around our apartment building was nothing but empty lots. It was just not developed yet. But it was a great place to grow up because the there was so much going on in those years and so much so much music that was going on. The first recollection I have, in light of all the talk about vaccines and healthcare and all of this is I really remember that polio was a real thing there, and I remember kids with the braces on their legs. And I remember that when one of my friends got chicken pox, that the mothers would get us all together and have a play date so that we got chicken pox too. Okay, but it was,

Michael Hingson 08:20

I'm sorry, remember, I remember getting the polio vaccinations, even starting in kindergarten,

Scott Hornstein 08:24

yes, yes. And it was such a remarkable thing at that time. We all thought it was like a miracle. And, and Jonas Salk, I mean, he was like, such a hero, yeah. The other thing, so I, we were out in Queens, in an area that's the larger area is called Forest Hills, and it was, it was a great place, because the the whole museum, whole music scene was just exploding. So I'm moving on until my junior high school and high school years, and it was just all over the place. Yes, we were playing in bands, but also there were these wonderful venues to go to. And there was the subway. If my parents only knew where I really was, we would get on the subway, go down in the village, go to all the cafe bar Gertie spoke city, all these places to hear the this wonderful mind changing music. And by mind changing, I don't mean drugs. I mean mind changing that it was, it was just everything in life.

Michael Hingson 09:57

And there's nothing like hearing a lot. Music,

Scott Hornstein 10:01

even to this day, it's my very, very favorite thing to do. Yeah, and so many musicians and artists came out of that area. I not being one of them. But it was so exciting.

Michael Hingson 10:27

I remember when we lived in New Jersey, and I would commute into New York. I heard, for example, even then, and it was in like 96 to beginning of 2002 Woody Allen on Monday night would play his clarinet somewhere. And less, less, Paul was still doing music and playing music at the meridian ballroom. And you can even take your guitar in and he would sign it for you

Scott Hornstein 10:55

the it was Joe's Pub. Woody Allen would right. And I went there a couple of times to see him. Of course, it was so pricey that we had to kind of sneak in have one beer, yeah,

Michael Hingson 11:16

but still, it was worth doing.

Scott Hornstein 11:19

And then they Yeah, and they were great clubs. I think that was, there's certainly the blue note for jazz that I went to a lot. And then there in Times Square, there was iridium, which was where I was able to see Les Paul, right? And many of those greats.

Michael Hingson 11:42

Yeah, I never did get to go and get my guitar signed, and now it's too late. But oh, well, do you play? I play at it more than anything else. My father, I think, even before the war, before World War Two, or somewhere around there anyway, he traded something and got a Martin grand concert guitar. Oh, still, I still have it. That's wonderful. What a wonderful sound it is.

Scott Hornstein 12:15

What a wonderful story. Yes, I play as well. I And growing up very early on, I decided I wanted to be Ricky Nelson. Oh, there you go. But I quickly learned that I was not going to be Ricky Nelson. However, the guy that was standing behind him playing guitar, now that might be something that I could do. So yes, so I picked it up, and I played in all the bands and then, which quickly taught me that I was not cut out for rock and roll, that I wasn't very good at it, but it led me into many other avenues of music, certainly listening, certainly being part of that scene, I'd go see friends of mine who could play well rock and roll and And that was so exciting for me. And then I, I played in pickup bands through college. So on a weekend night there would be a wedding, Bar Mitzvah, and this guy, I forget his name, piano player, he he got all the gigs and Howie was the first choice for guitar, and if Howie wasn't available, they'd call me.

Michael Hingson 13:47

There you go, hey. So second choice is better than no choice. Absolutely.

Scott Hornstein 13:54

I i enjoyed it thoroughly and that they paid me money to do this. There you go, right, inconceivable to me.

Michael Hingson 14:05

So what did you major in in college?

Scott Hornstein 14:10

Well, I started off majoring in biology, and there you go. And why I chose biology is is a mystery to this day, it didn't last long. I cycled through a number of things, and I graduated with a degree in literature, in English, particularly American literature, which is not quite the same as learning a trade. But you know it, it was consistent with with who I was at that time. I was the guy who, if he went out the door, would have two books with him, just in case I finished one. I didn't want to be left at sea, so a voracious reader couldn't stay away from the theater. So it was very consistent with who I was and and it was good for me, because I think through things like like literature and fiction and biography, you learn so much about the world, about how different people are confronted with challenges, how they process their lives, how they overcome these challenges or not or not, it just exposes you to so much.

Michael Hingson 15:49

Yeah, and so I'll bet you had some challenges finding some sort of real, permanent job after getting a degree in English?

Scott Hornstein 16:03

Yes, I did. But when I got out the idea of it didn't cross my mind that people actually would not earn a great living by being just an artist. What did I want to do? I wanted to write. I wanted to be involved in music. I wanted to act. I did all these things until the point when I got thoroughly fed up with being poor, with not having a dime in my pocket. Ever starving to death is, is sort of what you would call it. Yeah, yeah. You know, I did. I have modest success. Yes, I was able to keep myself off the streets, but no, it was no way for a career. It was no way to even be able to afford your own apartment, for gosh sakes. So I from there i i had done a lot of promotion for the different things that I was involved in, trying to get audiences, trying to get awareness of what I was doing, and that led me to have some contacts inside of CBS. And when I started looking for a job, I started talking to these folks, and they offered me a job. So here I was, and actually gainfully employed.

Michael Hingson 17:44

What was the job? Well, I

Scott Hornstein 17:47

was sort of a gopher for my first job. Mostly what I did was type, but I do have one good story for you. So I was down in the depths of the CBS Broadcast Center, which is all the way on the west side of 5017 and it's an old milk factory, so which they had converted to broadcast purposes. And so there were long holes, and the halls would always slope down. And there was one day where I was late for a meeting, and I came running down the halls, and there are always these swinging doors, I guess, for in case there's a fire or something, and I'm bursting through the doors, and I go running, and I burst through the next set of doors, and I'm running, and I burst through the next set of doors, and I knock this guy right on his bum. I pick him up, I dust him off. I say, I am so sorry. He says, Don't worry about a thing. It's all fine. I continue running. A friend of mine grabs me and says, Did you see Paul Newman?

Michael Hingson 19:10

There you are.

Scott Hornstein 19:12

So I have the unique entry on my resume of knocking Paul Newman to the ground.

Michael Hingson 19:22

I Well, at least he was civil and nice about it.

Scott Hornstein 19:26

He was very nice about it, though. Yeah, so I worked there and then through my writing, because I was writing for a film magazine at night, which, of course, didn't pay a cent, not a cent, but I got to go to all the premiers, and I got to meet all the people and interview all the people so whatever. So through that, I was able to go over to the main building and answer letters for Bill Paley, who was the.

Michael Hingson 20:00

Chairman, Chairman, I said, Yes, right,

Scott Hornstein 20:02

and it was my job to explain to everybody why Mr. Paley, I never called him, Bill, never, nobody, no, no, why he was right and they were wrong. That was my job, and that I did that for a little while, I can honestly say that I enjoyed having money in my pocket, but that was not the most fulfilling of jobs, and from there, I was able to go over and get my first marketing position, working for the Columbia record and tape Club, which was part of CBS Records at that time. And when I Ben or Dover was the president of Columbia House at that time, and when he made me the offer, he gave me one of the great life lessons that I've I've ever had. And he said, Scott, if you sit in your office and you do exactly what I ask you to do, and you do it on time, and you do it perfectly, we are not going to get along. But if you are out there and you're trying this and you're trying that, and this works, and that doesn't work, but you get up and you keep trying, we're going to be fast friends. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. That's something that has stayed with me my whole life. One of the great pieces of advice that I've ever gotten,

Michael Hingson 21:57

well the for me, what's fascinating about it is thinking about how many people would really do that and allow that to happen, but it's really what more people should be doing. I've I've always maintained that the biggest problem with bosses is that they boss people around too much, rather than encouraging them and helping them and using their own talents to help people be more creative. When I hire sales people, the first thing I always told them was, well, the second thing because the first thing I always told them was, you need to understand right up front if you're going to sell here, you have to learn to turn perceived liabilities into assets. And that's got a story behind it. But the second thing that I always talked about was my job isn't to boss you around. I hired you because you convinced me that you're supposed to be able to do the job, and we'll see how that goes. But you should be able to but my job is to work with you to figure out how I can use my talents to help you and to enhance what you do to make you more successful. And the people who got that did really well, because we usually did things differently, and we both learned how to figure out and actually figure out how to work with each other and be very successful. But the people who didn't get it and wouldn't try that, generally, weren't all that successful.

Scott Hornstein 23:26

Not terribly surprised, sir. You know, I think that people miss the the humanity of all this. And that if we bring our respective strengths and work together, that it's going to be a more complete and more successful whole than if I try and dominate you and tell you what to do, right, just that hasn't been a successful formula for me. I have never done well with people who tried to tell me exactly what to do, which is probably why I went out on my own. Probably why, in the greater scheme of things that I I did well, working for people from Columbia House. I met this guy on the train, and we got friendly, and he said he worked for an advertising agency, and they were looking for somebody would I be interested in interviewing? And this was with the young and Rubicon. And I did get the job, and I did work my way up to an account supervisor. And then i i said, i. Hate this, and I went back to be a copywriter and worked my way up to be a creative director. But, you know, I went on my own on January 1 of 86 and it was like a liberation for me, because at that point there was a new a new president of the division that I worked for, and he was not a nurturing individual. He was more of the dominant kind of you'll do what I tell you to do. Didn't sit well with me at all, and I had the opportunity to go on my own. So I I packed up my dolls and dishes, and I walked in on January 2, and I said, Bill, I quit.

Michael Hingson 26:02

There you go. Was it hard for you to do that?

Scott Hornstein 26:11

You know, at that point? So I here I am. I'm a creative director. I got the office on Madison Avenue, and I'm doing freelance all over the place, not only because it was extra money, but because it was it was fueling my creativity. It was giving me something back. It was fun. And I really like to have fun. I have so much fun working with people and that interaction that that humanity, the spark of humanity. So I was doing a lot of freelance, and I wrote this proposal for this one design group who was near where I was living at that time, and it got sold. So they said, Do you want to you want to work on it? And at that point in my life, I didn't have any responsibilities. I had a studio apartment there that was real cheap. And I said, If I don't try this now, yeah, I don't think I'll ever try it. So that's what I did. I quit, and I walked out the door into the great unknown,

Michael Hingson 27:39

and the entrepreneurial spirit took over.

Scott Hornstein 27:43

It did, and it worked well for about six, seven months, and then we got to the summertime, and I couldn't get arrested for a while. But you know, you have to take it one day at a time. And I figured, all right, well, let's just be open and network and see what's going on. It's not the time to quit. It's not the time to go back and get a job. And I was fortunate in that I was sitting at the desk one day, and this one guy called me, and I had met him before his folks ran one of the biggest, or actually the biggest, telemarketing agency in New York at that time, and I had met, met this fellow, and he said, I got this project. I've been asking around for creative source, and three people gave me your name. So I figured, well, let's go talk. And that turned into a very, very good situation for me, it gave me a lot of responsibility and a lot of leeway to take all the things that I had learned and put them in service of my client and I had a ball. I loved it. The only thing I didn't love was the and I did love this for a while was the constant travel. Now, everybody doesn't travel, and they're all sitting in their rooms at home, looking at screens. But that was that was a great opportunity for me to to spread my wings and to take and I learned so much one of the. Initial assignments I had was for IBM and IBM at that time was, was Mount Olympus. Oh my gosh, working for IBM, and I worked in tandem with this research group. We were all working on the introduction of the IBM ThinkPad and what these folks, they had a methodology they called voice of customer research, which was a qualitative research we're talking to decision makers from a carefully prepared Interview Guide to come up with the attitudes, the insights that we could put together to to come up with a solution. And I was fascinated by this of how to tap into what what the customer really wants by talking to the customer. How unusual.

Michael Hingson 31:16

What a concept. Oh yeah. I mean

Scott Hornstein 31:19

then and now, it's still the operative phrase of this would be a wonderful business, business, if it wasn't for all those annoying customers and and this just turned that on its head. That's another thing that I learned that has stayed with me through my entire career, is that for the the storytelling, and what I mean by storytelling is, is two things. Is, first, you know all your stories are going to come from what you consider to be your brand, but if you're not developing your brand according to the wants, the needs, the desires, the expressed future state that your Customers want, then then you're wide of the mark. So I was able to bring this in, and I think do a much better job for my customers. Now, the way that relates into storytelling is that you're you're able to take what you do and put it into the story of how your customer succeeds with the hero in the hero's journey, is

Michael Hingson 32:55

your customer, your customer? Why do you think that is such a successful tactic to use,

Scott Hornstein 33:02

because everybody else is completely enamored of themselves. When other companies craft their their brand, it's mostly because why they think they are special and what their vision tells them is their future. And quite frankly, most customers really don't care when, when a new customer first confronts you and your brand. They ask three questions, who are you? Why should I care? And what's in it for me? And if you can't answer those, if the story that you tell whether complete or in fragments or in in different parts according to where they are on their consideration journey. It doesn't resonate. It doesn't resonate. Hey, I have the best technology out there. I have brilliant people working on this technology. And guess what? Your technology? Somebody will eat your technology in 18 months, and I don't care, I want to know. What does it do for me?

Michael Hingson 34:28

Yeah, as opposed to saying, After asking enough questions, I have technology that will solve this problem that you have identified. Let me tell you about it. Is that okay? Exactly?

Scott Hornstein 34:44

Yeah, exactly. And as odd as it sounds, that helps you to stand out in the field, in a crowded

Michael Hingson 34:55

field, it does, but it's also all about the. Relating to the customer and getting the customer to establish a rapport and relating to you. And when you, as you pointed out, make it about the customer, and you talk in such a way that clearly, you're demonstrating you're interested in the customer and what they want they're going to relate to you.

Scott Hornstein 35:24

There's two, two things in there that, well, there's a million things in there that are particularly true. And the first is not only recognizing and and internalizing the goals of your client, but also opening yourself up and saying, these are people. These are humans. And the other real distinguishing fact that a lot of people don't either realize or embrace is that in business to business, and I've spent most of my life in business to business, it's all personal. It's all about personal connections. It's all about trust. And call me crazy, but I am not going to trust a machine. I will have confidence in technology, but my trust is going to be placed in the human through this, one anecdote that that is has really impressed me is that I was doing one of these interviews once, and I was talking to the CEO of of this company. And I said, Well, you know, I of course, I'm working for company A and you've been a client for a long time. What's, what's the greatest benefit that you get from this company? And without hesitation, he said, our salesman. Our salesman is part of our team. He understands who we are, he knows what we need, and he goes and he gets it. So that kind of that, to me, has always been a touchstone on things.

Michael Hingson 37:43

Well, the fact that the salesman earned that reputation, and the President was willing to acknowledge it is really important and crucial.

Scott Hornstein 37:56

And within that, I would say the very important word that you used is earn. You need to earn that trust. Sure it doesn't come just because you have brilliant technology. It's all people. It's all personal, all people.

Michael Hingson 38:20

And that's success, the successful sales people are people who understand and work to earn trust.

Scott Hornstein 38:32

Well said, and I think that particularly in this age of accelerating remoteness, that this concept of earning the trust and the person to person becomes a compelling competitive differentiator. And I think that that telling the story of of how you make your customers successful, of the role you play, of where you're going, this allows you to bridge some of those troubled waters to people who are sitting remote. It helps you to open your ears you know where you're going, so you can listen, yeah,

Michael Hingson 39:40

well, and that's an extremely important thing to to keep in mind and to continue to hone, because bottom line is, it's all about, as I said, trust, and it certainly is about earning, and that isn't something you. First, it's something that you understand.

Scott Hornstein 40:04

It's a gift that can only be bestowed on your customer. You can want it, but they're the only ones who can give you. Your brand is the meal you prepare. You but your reputation is the review, right? So, yeah, you gotta earn that trust.

Michael Hingson 40:32

So how long so you you own your own company? How long has the company been in existence?

Scott Hornstein 40:40

I Well, let's see. I went on my own on January 1 in 1986 and I am still without visible means of support.

Michael Hingson 40:58

Well, there you go, same company all along, huh?

Scott Hornstein 41:03

I Yeah, you know, do different work with different people, sure, but yes, it's still me.

Michael Hingson 41:13

It's still, do you actually have a company and a name or anything like that?

Scott Hornstein 41:17

I did. I did for a long time. I operated under Hornstein associates, okay, and recently I have dropped that and I just work as myself. I think that I had employees, then I had expandable, retractable resources then, and I'm not so interested in doing that right now. I am interested in working as and I love working as part of a team. Collaboration is my middle name. I might not have put that on my resume, but yeah, and I'm just, I'm really just interested in being me these days.

Michael Hingson 42:13

That's fair. There's nothing wrong with that. No, well, in your current role, what do you think is the greatest contribution you've made to your clients, and I'd love an example, a story about that.

Scott Hornstein 42:28

I would love to tell you a story. Oh, good. So one of my clients is a manufacturer. And they manufacture of all things, barcode scanners, as you would use in a warehouse and in a warehouse, absolutely everything, including the employees, has a barcode. Theirs is different than the the ones that you would normally see, the ones that like have a pistol grip. These are, these are new. It's new technology. They're ergonomically designed. They sit on the back of your hand. They're lightweight. They have more capabilities. They're faster and more accurate. Well, that sounds like sliced bread. However, they had a big problem in that all the scanners in all the warehouses come from the titans of the universe, the Motorola's, the great big names and these great, you know the old saying of Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Well, you know, if they need more scanners. Why would they go elsewhere? They just go back and get the same thing. So the the big problem is, is how to penetrate this market? And we did it. I worked with them in a number of ways. The first way was to conduct interviews, qualitative interviews, with the executive team, to come up with their their brand. What did they think? What did they think that was most important? And they said, clearly, the productivity gains, not only is this faster, not only can we prove that this is faster, but the the technology is so advanced that now we can also give you. Information from the shop floor. Well, then we talked to their their partners, who were already selling things into these warehouses. And we talked to a number of companies that were within their ICP, their ideal customer profile, I think that's very important to be prospecting with the folks who can make best use of your products and services. And what we found is that it wasn't just the productivity, it was that we solved other problems as well, and without going heavily into it, we solved the a big safety problem. We made the shop floor more secure and safer for the workers. So we changed the message from Warehouse productivity to the warehouse floor of making each employee safer, able to contribute more and able to have a better satisfaction, and that we were able to roll out into a into great messaging. The initial campaign was solely focused on the workers, and our offer was We challenge you to a scan off our scanners, against yours, your employees, your products, your warehouse. Let's have a head to head competition, because we then knew from these interviews, from working with the partners, that once these employees got the ergonomic the lightweight, ergonomic scanners on their hands, and realized how much faster They were, and how much safer that they were, that they would be our champions. And in fact, that's what, what happened. I can go deeper into the story, but it it became a story. Instead of coming in and just saying, boost your productivity, it's the scanners work for your your overall productivity. It helps you to keep your customers satisfied, your workers, one of the big problems that they're having is maintaining a stable and experienced workforce, this changed the characteristic of the shop floor, and it changed the character, how the employees themselves described their work environment. So we were able to take that and weave a story that went from one end of the warehouse to the other with benefits for everybody in between. So you said, What is the the one you said, the greatest benefit, I would say the contribution that I'm most proud of, it's that it's to recast the brand, the messaging, in the form, in the shape of the customer, of what they need, of helping them to achieve the future state that they want. And I'm sorry for a long winded answer,

Michael Hingson 49:10

yes, that's okay. Not a not a problem. So let me what would you say are the two or three major accomplishments or achievements in your career, and what did they teach you?

Scott Hornstein 49:26

Well, you know, I think the the achievements in my career, well, the first one I would mention was incorporating that, that voice of customer research, bringing the customer to the planning table, letting the executives, the sales people, the marketers, unite around, how does the customer express their hopes, their dreams, their challenges? I would say the second. Uh, is this idea of taking all of the content of all of the messaging and and unifying it? Some people call it a pillar view. I call it storytelling, of relaying these things so that you are giving your prospects and your customers the information that they need when they need it, at the specific point in their consideration journey, when this is most important, and it might be that a research report for a prospect that talks about some of the challenges in the marketplace and what's being done, it might be as simple for a customer as a as a video on how do you do this? You know, how do you screw in a light bulb? Oh, here it is. Everybody's used to that. The the third thing, and, and this is something, forgive me, for which I am, I am very proud, is that now I take this experience and this expertise, and through the organization called score, I'm able to give this back to people who are are trying to make their way as entrepreneurs

Michael Hingson 51:35

through the Small Business Administration. And score, yes,

Scott Hornstein 51:40

very proud of that. I get so much for from that.

Michael Hingson 51:46

Well, what would you say are maybe the two or three major achievements for you in life, and what did you learn? Or what did they teach you? Or are they the same

Scott Hornstein 51:57

I did? Well, I would say they're they're the same, and yet they're a little bit different. The first one is, is that it's only very few people who lead the charmed life where they are never knocked down. I'm not one of those people, and I've been knocked down several times, both professionally and personally, and to get back up, I to have that, and you will forgive me if I borrow a phrase that indomitable spirit that says, no, sorry, I'm getting back up again. And I can do this. And it may not be comfortable and it may not be easy, but I can do this. So there was that I think that having kids and then grandkids has taught me an awful lot about about interpersonal relationships, about the fact that there isn't anything more important than family, not by a long shot, and from these different things. I mean, certainly, as you I was, I didn't have the same experience, but 911 affected me deeply, deeply and and then it quite frankly, there was 2008 when I saw my my business and my finances sort of twirl up into the sky like like the Wizard of Oz, like that house in the beginning,

Michael Hingson 54:09

but still,

Scott Hornstein 54:16

And I persevere, yeah. So I think that that perseverance, that that focus on on family, on humanity. And I would say there's one other thing in there, is that. And this is a hard one. Observation is that I can't do anything about yesterday, and tomorrow is beyond my reach, so I I have to take

Michael Hingson 54:56

today, but you can certainly use yesterday. As a learning experience,

Scott Hornstein 55:01

I am the sum of all my parts, absolutely, but my focus isn't today, and using everything that I've learned certainly. You know, I got tongue tied there for just a minute.

Michael Hingson 55:19

I hear you, though, when did you get married?

Scott Hornstein 55:25

I got married in 87 I I met my wife commuting on the train to New York.

Michael Hingson 55:35

So you had actually made the decision to could to quit and so on, before you met and married her.

Scott Hornstein 55:43

No, no, I was, I was I met her while I still had a job in advertising. That's why I was commuting to New York. And you know, in the morning there was a bunch of us. We'd hold seats for each other and just camaraderie, yeah, you know, have our coffee. Did she? Did she work? She did she did she was she joined the group because she knew she had just gotten a job in New York. And of course, for those who don't know New York? When I say New York, I mean Manhattan, the city. Nobody thinks of any of the boroughs

Michael Hingson 56:27

as part of New York.

Scott Hornstein 56:31

And yeah, I and one day gone in, she fell asleep on my shoulder, and the rest is history. There you go.

Michael Hingson 56:41

What So, what did she think when you quit and went completely out on your own?

Scott Hornstein 56:48

I you know, I never specifically asked her, but I would think that she would have thought that maybe I was not as solid, maybe not as much marriage material, maybe a little bit of a risk taker. I did not see it as as taking a risk, though, at that time, but it was actually great for us, just great for us. And yeah, met there, and then I quit. Shortly thereafter, she was still commuting. And then things started to just take off, yeah, yeah, both for my career and for the relationship, yeah.

Michael Hingson 57:51

And again, the rest of course, as they say, is history.

Scott Hornstein 57:56

It is. And here I am now in Reston, Virginia, and we moved to Reston because both daughters are in close proximity, and my two grandchildren. And you know, am I still confronted with the knock downs and the and the get up again. Yeah, the marketplace is very crazy today. The big companies are doing great, the mid size companies, which is my Market, and it's by choice, because I like dealing with senior management. I like dealing with the people who make the decisions, who if we decide something's going to happen, it happens and and you can see the impact on the culture, on on the finances, on the customer base. These guys are it's tough out there right now. Let me say that it's it's tough to know which way to go. This doesn't seem to be anything that's sure at the moment.

Michael Hingson 59:11

Yeah, it's definitely a challenging world and and then the government isn't necessarily helping that a lot either. But again, resilience is an important thing, and the fact is that we all need to learn that we can survive and surmount whatever comes along.

Scott Hornstein 59:33

And let me just throw in AI that is a big disruptor at the moment that nobody actually knows

Michael Hingson 59:43

what to do with it. I think people have various ideas there. There are a lot of different people with a lot of different ideas. And AI can be a very powerful tool to help but it is a tool. It is not an end all. Um. Yeah, and well said, I think that, you know, even I, when I first heard about AI, I heard people complaining about how students were writing their papers using AI, and you couldn't tell and almost immediately I realized, and thought, so what the trick is, what are you going to do about it. And what I've what I've said many times to teachers, is let students use AI if that's what they're going to use to write their papers, and then they turn them in. And what you do is you take one period, and you call each student up and you say, All right, I've read your paper. I have it here. I want you now to defend your paper, and you have one minute, you're going to find out very quickly who really knows what they're talking about.

Scott Hornstein 1:00:47

That, in fact, is brilliant.

Michael Hingson 1:00:49

I think it's a very I think it's a very powerful tool. I use AI in writing, but I use it in that. I will use it, I will I will ask it questions and get ideas, and I'll ask other questions and get other ideas, and then I will put them together, however, because I know that I can write better than AI can write, and maybe the time will come when it'll mimic me pretty well, but still, I can write better than AI can write, but AI's got a lot more resources to come up with ideas.

Scott Hornstein 1:01:21

It does. It does. And with that, it's a fantastic tool. The differentiator, as I see it, for most of my stuff, is that AI has read about all this stuff, but I've lived it, so I'm going to trust me at the end,

Michael Hingson 1:01:45

and when I talk about surviving the World Trade Center and teaching people what I learned that helped me in the World Trade Center, I point out most people, if there's an emergency, read signs and they're told go this way to escape or to get out or do this or do that, but there's still signs, and they don't know anything. I don't read signs, needless to say, and what I did was spent a fair amount of time truly learning all I could about the World Trade Center where things were, what the emergency evacuation procedures were what would happen in an emergency and so on. And so for me, it was knowledge and not just relying on a sign. And so when September 11 happened, a mindset kicked in, and we talked about that in my my latest book, live like a guide dog. But that's what it's about, is it's all about knowledge and truly having that information, and that's what you can trust.

Scott Hornstein 1:02:48

I'll give you a big amen on that one.

Michael Hingson 1:02:52

Well, this has been a lot of fun to do. We've been Can you believe we've been doing this an hour? My gosh, time, I know having fun.

Scott Hornstein 1:03:03

It's fun. And I would say again, in closing, I just have enormous respect for what you've accomplished, what you've done. This is been a great privilege for me. I thank you very much.

Michael Hingson 1:03:19

Well, it's been an honor for me, and I really value all the comments, the advice, the thoughts that you've shared, and hopefully people will take them to heart. And I would say to all of you out there, if you'd like to reach out to Scott, how do they do that? Well, there you go. See, just, just type, well, right?

Scott Hornstein 1:03:42

That's it. If you, if you sent an email to Scott dot Hornstein at Gmail, you'll get me.

Michael Hingson 1:03:56

And Hornstein is spelled

Scott Hornstein 1:03:58

H, O, R, N, S, T, E, I,

Michael Hingson 1:04:03

N, and again, it's scott.hornstein@gmail.com

Scott Hornstein 1:04:09

that's that's the deal. There you go. Well, find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on medium. I'm all over the place.

Michael Hingson 1:04:18

There you are. Well, I hope people will reach out, because I think you will enhance anything that they're doing, and certainly trust is a big part of it, and you earn it, which is great. So thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching us wherever you are. Please give us a five star review and a rating and but definitely give us a review as well. We appreciate that. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, Scott, you as well. We're always looking for more people to have on, so please introduce us and Scott. If you want to come on again, we can talk about that too. That'd be kind of fun. But I want to thank what I want to thank you again for being here. This has been fun, and I appreciate you being here with us today and and so thank you very much for doing it.

Scott Hornstein 1:05:07

My all the pleasure is all mine.

Michael Hingson 1:05:14

Episode 419 – From Old Time Radio to Comics: An Unstoppable Creative Journey with Donnie Pitchford

Tue, 03 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when a childhood dream refuses to let go?

In this episode, I sit down with cartoonist and Lum and Abner historian Donnie Pitchford to explore how old-time radio, comic strips, and a love for storytelling shaped his life. Donnie shares how he grew up inspired by classic radio shows like Lum and Abner, pursued art despite setbacks, and eventually brought the beloved Pine Ridge characters back to life through a modern comic strip and audio adaptations. We talk about creativity, persistence, radio history, and why imagination still matters in a visual world. If you care about classic radio, cartooning, or staying true to your calling, I believe you will find this conversation both inspiring and practical.

Highlights:

00:10 Discover how a childhood love of Lum and Abner sparked a lifelong dream of becoming a cartoonist.

08:00 Hear how college radio and classic broadcasts deepened a passion for old time radio storytelling.

14:33 Understand how years of teaching broadcast journalism built the skills that later fueled creative success.

23:17 Learn how the Lum and Abner comic strip was revived with family approval and brought to modern audiences.

30:07 Explore how two actors created an entire town through voice and imagination alone.

1:00:16 Hear the vision for keeping Lum and Abner alive for new generations through comics and audio.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

Donnie Pitchford of Texas is a graduate of Kilgore College, Art Instruction Schools, Stephen F. Austin State University and the University of Texas at Tyler. He has worked in the graphic arts industry and in education, teaching at Hawkins High School, Panola College, and Carthage High School at which he spent 25 years directing CHS-TV, where student teams earned state honors, including state championships, for 20 consecutive years.

In 2010, Donnie returned to the endeavor he began at age five: being a cartoonist! The weekly “Lum and Abner" comic strip began in 2011. It is available online and in print and includes an audio production for the blind which features the talents of actors and musicians who donate their time. Donnie has created comic book stories and art for Argo Press of Austin, illustrated children's books, written scripts for the "Dick Tracy" newspaper strip, and produced the science fiction comedy strip "Tib the Rocket Frog." He has collaborated with award-winning writers and cartoonists George Wildman, Nicola Cuti, John Rose, Mike Curtis, Joe Staton, and others.

In 2017, Donnie began assisting renowned sculptor Bob Harness and currently sculpts the portraits for the Texas Country Music Hall of Fame plaques.

Awards include the 1978 Kilgore College "Who's Who" in Art, an Outstanding Educator Award from the East Texas Chapter of the Texas Society of CPAs in 1993, the CHS "Pine Burr" Dedicatee honor in 2010, and a Distinguished Alumnus Award in 2018 from Spring Hill High School. In 2024, Donnie was inducted into the City of Carthage Main Street Arts Walk of Fame which included the placement of a bronze plaque in the sidewalk and the Key to the City.

Donnie and his best friend/wife, Laura, are members of First Methodist Church Carthage, Texas. Donnie is a founding officer of the National Lum and Abner Society and a member of Texas Cartoonists, Ark-La-Tex Cartoonists, Christian Comic Arts Society, and the National Cartoonists Society.

Ways to connect with Michaela**:**

https://www.facebook.com/groups/220795254627542

https://lumandabnercomics.com/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I've been looking forward to this one for a while. We have Donny Pitchford as our guest today. You're probably going, who's Donnie Pitchford? Well, let me tell you. So years ago, I started collecting old radio shows. And one of the first shows that I got was a half hour episode of a show called Lum and Abner, which is about a couple of characters, if you will, in Pine Ridge, Arkansas. And I had only heard the half hour show sponsored by frigid air. But then in 1971 when ksi, out here in Los Angeles, the 50,000 watt Clear Channel station, started celebrating its 50 year history, they started broadcasting as part of what they did, 15 minute episodes of lemon Abner. And I became very riveted to listening to lemon Abner every night, and that went on for quite a while. And so I've kept up with the boys, as it were. Well, a several years ago, some people formed a new Lum and Abner society, and Donnie Pitchford is part of that. I met Donnie through radio enthusiast of Puget Sound, and yesterday, USA. And so we clearly being interested in old radio and all that, had to have Donnie come on and and talk with us. So Donnie, or whatever character you're representing today, welcome to unstoppable mindset.

Donnie Pitchford 02:58

Huh? I'm glad to be here.

Michael Hingson 03:00

He does that very well, doesn't he? It's a

Donnie Pitchford 03:04

little tough sometimes. Well, I'm really glad to be here. Thank you.

Michael Hingson 03:10

Well, I appreciate the audio parts of lemon Abner that you you all create every week, and just the whole society. It's great to keep that whole thing going it's kind of fun. We're glad that that it is. But let's, let's talk about you a little bit. Why don't you start by telling us about the early Donnie, growing up and all that. I'm assuming you were born, and so we won't worry about that. But beyond that, think so, yeah. Well, there you are. Tell us about tell us about you and growing up and all that, and we'll go from there.

Donnie Pitchford 03:42

Well, I was born in East Texas and left for a little while. We lived in my family lived in Memphis, Tennessee for about seven years, and then moved back to Texas in 1970 but ever since I was a kid this I hear this from cartoonists everywhere. Most of them say I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was five years old. So that's in fact, I had to do a speech for the Texas cartoonist chapter of the National Cartoonist Society. And that was my start. I was going to say the same thing, and the President said, Whatever you do, don't do that old bit about wanting to be a cartoonist at age five. Everybody does that, so I left that part out, but that's really what I wanted to do as a kid. And I would see animated cartoons. I would read the Sunday comics in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and then at some point, my dad would talk about radio, and my mother would talk about listening to radio. We would have the reruns of the Lone Ranger television show and things like Sky King and other programs along those lines, and my parents would all. Way say, Well, I used to listen to that on the radio, or I would hear Superman on the radio, or Amos and Andy or whatever was being rerun at that time, and that fascinated me. And I had these vague memories of hearing what I thought were television programs coming over the radio when I was about two years old. I remember gunshots. I remember, you know, like a woman crying and just these little oddball things. I was about two years old, and I kept thinking, Well, why are we picking up television programs on my mother's radio? Turns out it was the dying gasps of what we now call old time radio. And so at least I remembered that. But when I was about, I guess eight or nine we were, my dad took me to lunch at alums restaurant in Memphis, and I saw that name, and I thought, What in the world? So what kind of name is that? And my dad told me about London Abner, and he said it reminds me. It reminded him of the Andy Griffith Show or the Beverly Hillbillies. I said, I'd love to hear that. He said, Ah, you'll never hear it. He said, those were live they don't exist, but years later, I got to hear them. So yeah, but that's how I grew up wanting to be a cartoonist and coming up with my own characters and drawing all the time and writing stories and that sort of thing.

Michael Hingson 06:24

So when did you move back from Memphis to Texas?

Donnie Pitchford 06:28

July 2, 1970 I just happened to look that up the other day. How old were you then? I was 12 when we came back. All right, so got into, I was in junior high, and trying to, I was trying to find an audience for these comic strips I was drawing on notebook paper. And finally, you know, some of the kids got into them, and I just continued with that goal. And I just, I knew that soon as possible, you know, I was going to start drawing comics professionally. So I thought, but kept, you know, I kept trying.

Michael Hingson 07:06

So you, you went on into college. What did you do in college?

Donnie Pitchford 07:11

Well, more of the same. I started listening to some old time radio shows even as far back as as high school. And I was interested in that went to college, first at a college called Kill Gore College, here in East Texas, and then to Stephen F Austin State University. And I was majoring in, first commercial art, and then art education. And I thought, well, if I can't go right into comics, you know, maybe I can just teach for a while. I thought I'll do that for a couple of years. I thought it wouldn't be that long. But while I was at Stephen F Austin State University, the campus radio station, I was so pleased to find out ran old time radio shows. This was in 1980 there was a professor named Dr Joe Oliver, who had a nightly program called theater of the air. And I would hear this voice come over the radio. He would run, he Well, one of the first, the very first 15 minute lemon Abner show I ever heard was played by Dr Oliver. He played Jack Benny. He played the whistler suspense, just a variety of them that he got from a syndicated package. And I would hear this voice afterwards, come on and say, It's jazz time. I'm Joe Oliver. And I thought, Where have I heard that voice? It was, it's just a magnificent radio voice. Years later, I found out, well, I heard that voice in Memphis when I was about 10 years old on W, R, E, C, radio and television. He was working there. He lived in Memphis about the same time we did. Heard him on the campus station at Nacogdoches, Texas. Didn't meet him in person until the late 90s, and it was just an amazing collection of coincidences. And now, of course, we're good friends. Now he's now the announcer for our audio comic strip. So it's amazing how all that came about. Well, I

Michael Hingson 09:16

I remember listening to sort of the last few years of oval radio. I think it was, I don't remember the date now, whether it's 57 or 50 I think it's 57 the Kingston Trio had come out with the song Tom Dooley, and one day I was listening to K and X radio in Los Angeles. We lived in Palmdale, and I heard something about a show called suspense that was going to play the story of Tom Dooley. And I went, sounds interesting, and I wanted to know more about it, so I listened. And that started a weekly tradition with me every Sunday, listening to yours truly Johnny dollar and suspense, and they had a little bit of the FBI and peace and war. Then it's went into half and that that went off and Have Gun Will Travel came on, and then at 630 was Gun Smoke. So I listened to radio for a couple of hours every week, not every Sunday night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And so that's how I really started getting interested in it. Then after radio went off the air a few stations out in California and on the LA area started playing old radio shows somebody started doing because they got the syndicated versions of the shadow and Sherlock Holmes with Sir John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson. And I still maintain to this day that John Gielgud is the best Sherlock Holmes. No matter what people say about Basil Rathbone and I still think Sir John Gielgud was the best Sherlock Holmes. He was very, very good. Yeah, he was and so listen to those. But you know, radio offers so much. And even with, with, with what the whole lemon Abner shows today. My only problem with the lemon Abner shows today is they don't last nearly long enough. But that's another story.

Donnie Pitchford 11:11

Are you talking about the comic strip adaptation? Okay, you know how long, how much art I would have to

11:21

do every week.

Michael Hingson 11:25

Oh, I know, but they're, they're fun, and, you know, we, we enjoy them, but so you So you met Joe, and as you said, He's the announcer. Now, which is, which is great, but what were you doing then when you met him? What kind of work were you doing at the time?

Donnie Pitchford 11:45

Well, of course, there was a gap there of about, I guess, 15 years after college, before I met him. And what ended up happening my first teaching job was an art job, a teaching art and graphic arts at a small high school in Hawkins, Texas, and that was a disaster. Wasn't a wasn't a very good year for me. And so I left that, and I had worked in the printing industry, I went back to that, and that was all during the time that the National London Abner society was being formed. And so I printed their earliest newsletters, which came out every other month. And we started having conventions in MENA, Arkansas and in the real Pine Ridge and the my fellow ossifers As we we call ourselves, and you hear these guys every week on the lemon Abner comic strip. Sam Brown, who lives in Illinois, Tim Hollis, from Alabama. Tim is now quite a published author who would might be a good guest for you one day, sure. And just two great guys. We had a third officer early on named Rex riffle, who had to leave due to various illnesses about 1991 but we started having our conventions every year, starting in 1985 we had some great guests. We brought in everybody we could find who worked with lemon Abner or who knew lemon Abner. We had their their head writer, Roswell Rogers. We had actors, I'm sure you've heard of Clarence Hartzell. He was Ben withers, of course, on the Old Vic and Sade show. He was Uncle Fletcher. We had Willard Waterman, parley Bayer, some of their announcers, Wendell Niles. And my memory is going to start failing me, because there were so many, but we had Bob's, Watson, Louise curry, who were in their first two movies. We had Kay Lineker, who was in their third movie. The list goes on and on, but we had some amazing when did Chester lock pass away? He passed away? Well, Tuffy passed away first, 1978, 78 and Chet died in 1980 sad. Neither of them, yeah, we didn't get to media. Yeah, we didn't meet either one of them. I've met Mrs. Lock I've met all of chet's children, several grandchildren. We spoke to Mrs. Goff on the phone a time or two, and also, tuffy's got toughie's daughter didn't get to meet them in person, but we met as many of the family as we could.

Michael Hingson 14:32

Still quite an accomplishment all the way around. And so you you taught. You didn't have success. You felt really much at first, but then what you taught for quite a while, though,

Donnie Pitchford 14:45

didn't you? Yes, I went back to the printing industry for about a year, and in the summer of 85 about two weeks before school started, I had got a call that they needed someone to teach Broadcast Journalism at. Carthage High School, and we had a department called CHS TV. I ran that for 25 years. I taught classes. We produced a weekly television program, weekly radio program. We did all kinds of broadcasts for the school district and promotional video. And then in the last I think it was the last 10 years or so that I worked there, we started an old time radio show, and we were trying to come up with a title for it, and just as a temporary placeholder, we called it the golden age of radio. Finally, we said, well, let's just use that, and I think it's been used by other people since, but, but that was the title we came up with. I think in 19 I think it was in 93 or 9495 somewhere in there. We started out. We just ran Old Time Radio, and the students, I would have them research and introduce, like, maybe 45 minutes of songs, of music, you know, from the 30s, 40s, maybe early 50s, big band and Sinatra and Judy Garland and you name it. Then, when the classes would change, we would always start some type of radio program that was pre recorded that would fill that time, so the next class could come in and get in place and and everybody participated, and they went out live over our cable television channel, and we would just run a graphic of a radio and maybe have some announcements or listing of what we were playing. And we did that for several years, usually maybe two or three times a year. And then in I think it was 2004 or so, we had an offer from a low power FM station, which was another another county over, and we started doing a Sunday night, one hour program each week. And I think we ended up doing close to 300 of those before I left. And so we got old time radio in there, one way or the other.

Michael Hingson 17:03

Well, I remember. I remember, for me, I went to UC Irvine in the fall of 1968 and by the spring the last quarter of my freshman year, I had started getting some old radio shows. So started playing shows, and then in the fall, I started doing a three hour show on Sunday night called the Radio Hall of Fame, and we did radio every night. And what I didn't know until, actually, fairly recently, was our mutual friend Walden Hughes actually listened to my show on Sunday, and so did the gas means actually, but, but we had a low power station as well, but it made it up, and so people listened to it. And I've always been proud of the fact that during the fact that during the time I ran the Radio Hall of Fame, I'd heard of this show called 60 minutes with a guy named Mike Wallace, but never got to see it. And then it was only much later that I actually ended up starting to watch 60 Minutes. Course, I always loved to say I would have loved to have met, met Mike Wallace and never got to do it, but I always said he had criminal tendencies. I mean, my gosh, what do you think he was the announcer on radio for the Green Hornet, a criminal show, right? Sky King, a lot of criminals. Clearly the guy. Anyway, I would have been fun to meet him, but,

Donnie Pitchford 18:31

and his name was Myron. Myron Wallach at the time. Wallach, you're right. I think that's right.

Michael Hingson 18:37

But it was, it was fun and and so I've actually got some Sky King shows and green Hornets with him. So it's, it's kind of cool, but Right? You know, I still really do believe that the value of radio is it makes you imagine more. I've seen some movies that I really like for that the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers with Kevin McCarthy back in 1955 I thought was such a good movie because they didn't show the plants taking over the humans. It was all left to your imagination, which was so cool, and they changed all that in the later remake of it with Leonard Nimoy, which I didn't think was nearly as good, not nearly as suspenseful. But anyway, that's just my opinion. But radio, for me was always a and continues to be a part of what I like to do. And so I've been collecting shows and and enjoying and, of course, listening to lemon Abner, So what made you decide to finally end teaching?

Donnie Pitchford 19:38

Well, you know, I could only do that so long. I was getting I was getting very tired, getting kind of burned out, and I had to have a change. There's something had to change. And I was able to take a few years early and retire, and I still the whole time I had a. That it was like a haunting feeling. I, you know, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I would pray, you know, you know, Lord, is there some way can I, can I get out of this? And can I do what I really want to do? And I had some mentors that was finally able to meet people that I would write letters to as a kid, a cartoonist and comic book editor named George Wildman was one of them. He was nice enough to answer my letters when I was a kid, and I'd send him drawings, and he would encourage me, or he would send little corrections on there, you know. And another one was a gentleman named high Eisemann, who passed away recently at age 98 on his birthday, but men like this inspired me, and that it kept at me through the years. I finally met George in 1994 at a convention of the the international Popeye fan club. And I'm I'm at high the same way, and also a writer named Nicola Cuddy, who wrote some Popeye comics. I met him the same way, same event, we all became friends, and I had a good friend named Michael Ambrose of Austin, Texas, who published a magazine devoted to the Charlton Comics company. Sadly, he's deceased now, but Mike and I were talking before I retired, and finally I got out of it. And he said, now that you're out of that job, how would you like to do some art? I said, That's what I want to do. So he gave me the opportunity to do my first published work, which was a portrait of artist George Wildman. It was on the cover of a magazine called Charlton spotlight, then I did some work for Ben Omar, who is bear Manor media publisher for some books that he was doing. One was Mel Blanc biography that Noel blank wrote, did some illustrations for that. This was all happening in 2010 and after that. So I was getting it was getting rolling, doing the kind of work I really wanted to do. And there's a gentleman named Ethan nobles in Benton, Arkansas, who wanted to interview me. I'd gotten, I don't know how he I forgot how he got in touch with me. Maybe he heard me on yesterday USA could be wanted to interview me about London Abner. And so he was starting a website called first Arkansas news. And somewhere in early 2011 we were talking, and I said, you know, you want this to be an online newspaper, right? He said, Yes. I said, What about comics? He said, I hadn't thought about that. So I said, Well, you know, you're a big Lum and Abner fan. What if we could we do a Lum and Abner comic strip? He said, Well, who would Where would I get? Who would do? And I said, Me. So I drew up some proposals, I drew some model sheets, and we did about four weeks of strips, and got approval from Chester lock Jr, and he suggested there's some things he didn't like. He said, The lum looks too sinister. He looks mean. Well, he's mad. He said he's mad at Abner. This won't happen every week. He said, Okay, I don't want LOM to be I said, Well, you know, they get mad at each other. That's part of the that's the conflict and the comedy

Michael Hingson 23:30

at each other. Yeah.

Donnie Pitchford 23:33

So we, we ironed it all out, and we came up with a financial agreement, and had to pay royalties and one thing and another, and we started publishing online in June 2011, and about six weeks later, the MENA newspaper, the MENA star in MENA, Arkansas, which was the birthplace of Lyman, Abner, Chet Locke and Norris Goff, they picked it up, and then we had a few other newspapers pick it up. And you know, we're not, we're not worldwide, syndicated in print, but we're getting it out there. And of course, we're always online, but and the first Arkansas news went under three or four years later, and so now we have our own website, which is Lum and Abner comics.com so that's where you can find us

Michael Hingson 24:24

online. So where's Pine Ridge?

Donnie Pitchford 24:28

Pine Ridge is about 18 miles from Mena, Arkansas. MENA is in western Arkansas, and Pine Ridge is about 18 miles east, I believe I'm trying to picture it in my mind, but it's it's down the road, and it actually exists. It was a little community originally named for a postmaster. It was named waters, waters, Arkansas, and in 1936 the real. At cuddleston. He was a real person who owned a store there in waters, and was friends with the locks and the golfs with their parents, as well as Chet and Tuffy. But he proposed a publicity stunt and an actual change of name to name the community Pine Ridge. So that's how that happened.

Michael Hingson 25:24

Now, in the original 15 minute episodes, who is the narrator?

Donnie Pitchford 25:28

Well, it depends what era their first one trying to remember. Now, Gene Hamilton was an early announcer in the Ford days, which was the early 30s. We don't have anything recorded before that. Charles Lyon was one of the early announcers, possibly for for Quaker Oats. I don't have any notes on this in front of me. I'm just going on memory here. Memory at the end of a long week. Gene Hamilton was their Ford announcer. Carlton brickert announced the Horlicks malt and milk did the commercials when they 1934 to 38 or so. Lou Crosby took over when they were sponsored by General Foods, by post them, the post them commercials, and Lou stayed with them on into the Alka Seltzer era. And his daughter, the celebrity daughter, is Kathie Lee Crosby, you may remember, right, and she and her sister Linda, Lou were a couple of our guests at the National lemon Avenue society convention in 1996 I think let's see. Crosby was Gene Baker came after Crosby, and then in the 30 minute days, was Wendell Niles. Wendell Niles, yeah, in the CBS the 30 minute series and Wendell. We also had him in Mina, super nice guy when it came, when it got into the later ones, 1953 54 I don't remember that announcer's name. That's when they got into the habit of having Dick Huddleston do the opening narration, which is why we now have Sam Brown as Dick Huddleston doing that every week.

Michael Hingson 27:27

So was it actually Dick Huddleston? No, it

Donnie Pitchford 27:30

was North golf, tough. He always played the part of Dick Huddleston. Okay, the only, the only time that, as far as I know, the only time the real dick Huddleston was on network radio, was at that ceremony in Little Rock Arkansas, when they changed the name of the town that the real dick Huddleston spoke at that event. And we actually, we discovered a recording of that. I was just gonna ask if there's a recording of that there is. Yeah, it's on 12 inch, 78 RPM discs. Wow. And they were probably the personal discs of lock and golf, and they weren't even labeled. And I remember spinning that thing when Sam Brown and I after we found it, it was down in Houston, and we brought them a batch of discs back, and I remember spinning that thing and hearing the theme song being played, I said, this sounds like a high school band. And suddenly we both got chills because we had heard that. I don't know if it was the Little Rock High School band or something, but it's like, Can this be? Yes, it was. It was. We thought it was long lost, but it was that ceremony. Wow. So that was a great find.

Michael Hingson 28:45

Well, hopefully you'll, you'll play that sometime, or love to get a copy, but,

Donnie Pitchford 28:50

yeah, we've, we have we played it on yesterday, USA. Oh, okay, so it's out there.

Michael Hingson 28:57

Well, that's cool. Well, yeah, I wondered if Dick Huddleston actually ever was directly involved, but, but I can, can appreciate that. As you said, Tuffy Goff was the person who played him, which was, that's still that was pretty cool. They were very talented. Go ahead,

Donnie Pitchford 29:19

I was gonna say that's basically tough. He's natural speaking voice, yeah, when you hear him as Dick Huddleston,

Michael Hingson 29:24

they're very talented people. They played so many characters on the show. They did and and if you really listen, you could tell, but mostly the voices sounded enough different that they really sounded like different people all the time.

Donnie Pitchford 29:41

Well, the fun thing are the episodes where, and it's carefully written, but they will, they will do an episode where there may be seven or eight people in the room and they get into an argument, or they're trying to all talk at the same time, and you completely forget that it's only two guys, because they will overlap. Those voices are just so perfectly overlapped and so different, and then you stop and you listen. So wait a minute, I'm only hearing two people at a time, but the effect is tremendous, the fact that they were able to pull that off and fool the audience.

Michael Hingson 30:15

I don't know whether I'd say fool, but certainly entertained. Well, yeah, but they also did have other characters come on the show. I remember, yes, Diogenes was that was a lot of fun listening to those. Oh yeah, yeah, that was Frank Graham. Frank Graham, right, right, but, but definitely a lot of fun. So you eventually left teaching. You decided you accepted jobs, starting to do cartoons. What were some of the other or what, well, what were some of the first and early characters that you cartooned, or cartoons that you created,

Donnie Pitchford 30:50

just, you mean, by myself or Well, or with people, either way, I did some things that were not published, you know, just just personal characters that I came up with it would mean nothing to anybody, but a little bit later on, I did a little bit of I did a cover for a Popeye comic book. Maybe 10 years ago, I finally got a chance to work with George Wildman, who was the fellow I talked about earlier, and it was some of the last work he did, and this was with Michael Ambrose of Argo press out of Austin, Texas. And we did some early characters that had been published by Charlton Comics. They had, they had characters, they were, they were rip offs. Let's be honest. You know Harvey had Casper the Friendly Ghost. Well, Charlton had Timmy, the timid ghost. There, there was Mighty Mouse. Well, Charlton Comics had atomic mouse, so and there was an atomic rabbit. And Warner Brothers had Porky Pig. Charlton had pudgy pig, but that was some of George's earliest work in the 1950s was drawing these characters, and George was just he was a master Bigfoot cartoonist. I mean, he was outstanding. And so Mike said, let's bring those characters back. They're public domain. We can use them. So I wrote the scripts. George did the pencil art. Well, he inked the first few, but Mike had me do hand lettering, which I don't do that much. So it was that was a challenge. And my friend high Iseman taught lettering for years and years, and so I was thinking, high is going to see this? This has to be good. So I probably re lettered it three times to get it right, but we did the very last story we did was atomic rabbit and pudgy pig was a guest star, and then George's character named brother George, who was a little monk who didn't speak, who lived, lived in a monastery, and did good deeds and all that sort of thing. He was in there, and this was the last thing we did together. And George said, you know, since I've got these other projects, he said, Do you think you can, you can ink this? So that was a great honor to actually apply the inks over George's pencil work. And I also did digital color, but those were some things I worked on, and, oh, at one point we even had Lum and Abner in the Dick Tracy Sunday comic strip, and that was because of a gentleman named Mike Curtis, who was the writer who lived in Arkansas, was very familiar with Lum and Abner, and he got in touch with me and asked, this was in 2014 said, Would it be possible for me to use Lum and Abner in a Sunday cameo? So I contacted the locks. First thing they first thing Chet said was how much I said, I don't think they're going to pay us. I felt like, Cedric, we hunt, no mom, you know. And I felt like he was squire skimp at the time, yeah, but I said, it's just going to be really good publicity. So he finally went for it, and Lum and Abner had a cameo in a Sunday Dick Tracy comic strip, and about four years later, they honored me. This was Mike Curtis, the writer, and Joe Staton, the artist, who was another guy that I grew up reading from as a teenager, just a tremendous artist, asked if they could base a character on me. And I thought, what kind of murderer is he going to be? You know, it was going to be idiot face or what's his name, you know. So no, he was going to be a cartoonist, and the name was Peter pitchblende. Off, and he was, he said his job was to illustrate a comic strip about a pair of old comedians. So, I mean, who couldn't be honored by that? Yeah, so I don't remember how long that story lasted, but it was an honor. I mean, it was just great fun. And then then I had a chance to write two weeks of Dick Tracy, which was fun. I wrote the scripts for it and and then there's some other things. I was able to work with John rose, a tremendously nice guy who is the current artist on Barney Google and Snuffy Smith. We did a story, a comic book story, on Barney Google on Snuffy Smith in a magazine called Charleton spotlight, and I did the colors, digital coloring for that. So just these are just great honors to me to get to work with people like that. And Nick Cuddy, I did some inking, lettering coloring on some of his work. So just great experience, and

Michael Hingson 36:02

great people, going back to atomic rabbit and pudgy pig, no one ever got in trouble with, from Warner Brothers with that, huh?

Donnie Pitchford 36:09

Well, not, not on atomic rabbit, however, pudgy pig created a problem because George was doing some art, and I think somebody from Warner Brothers said he looks too much like Porky, so the editor at the time said, make one of his ears hang down, make him look a little different. But pudgy didn't last long. Pudgy was only around maybe two or three issues of the comic book, so, but yeah, that's George. Said they did have some trouble with that.

Michael Hingson 36:44

Oh, people, what do you do? Yeah, well, I know you sent us a bunch of photos, and we have some of the Dick Tracy ones and others that people can go see. But what? What finally got you all to start the whole lemon Abner society.

Donnie Pitchford 37:07

Oh, well, that goes back to 1983 right, and I'll go back even farther than that. I told you that my dad had mentioned lemon Abner to me as a kid. Dr Joe Oliver played a 15 minute lemon Abner show on KSA you at Stephen F Austin State University. That got me. I was already into old time radio, but it was the next summer 1981 there's a radio station, an am station in Gilmer, Texas Christian radio station that started running Lum and Abner every day. First it was 530 in the evening, and then I think they switched it to 1215 or so. And I started listening, started setting up my recorder, recording it every day. And a friend of mine named David Miller, who was also a radio show collector, lived in the Dallas area, I would send them to him, and at first he wasn't impressed, but then suddenly he got hooked. And when he got hooked, he got enthusiastic. He started making phone calls. He called Mrs. Lock chet's widow and talked to her. He spoke to a fellow who had written a number of articles, George Lily, who was an early proponent or an early promoter of lemon Abner, as far as reruns in the 1960s and it was through George Lilly that I was put in touch with Sam Brown in Dongola, Illinois, and because he had contacted Mr. Lilly as well. And before long, we were talking, heard about this guy named Tim Hollis. Sam and I met in Pine Ridge for lemon Abner day in 1982 for the first time, and hit it off like long lost friends and became very good friends. And then in 84 I believe it was Sam and Tim and Rex riffle met again, or met for the first time together, I guess in Pine Ridge. And I wasn't there that time. But somehow, in all of that confusion, it was proposed to start the national lemon Abner society, and we started publishing the Jot them down journal in the summer of 1984

Michael Hingson 39:43

and for those who don't know the Jotham down journal, because the store that lemon Abner ran was the Jotham down store anyway, right?

Donnie Pitchford 39:50

Go ahead, yes. And that was Tim's title. Tim created the title The Jotham down journal, and we started publishing and started seeking information. And it started as just a simple photocopy on paper publication. It became a very slick publication. In 1990 or 91 Sam started recording cassettes, reading the journals, because we were hearing from Blind fans that said, you know, I enjoy the journal. I have to have somebody read it to me. This is before screen readers. And of course, you know this technology better than I do, but before any type of technology was available, and Sam said, Well, I'll tell you. I'll just start reading it on tape and I'll make copies. Just started very simply, and from then on, until the last issue in in 2007 Sam would record a cassette every other month, or when we went quarterly, four times a year, and he would mail those to the the blind members, who would listen to those. And sometimes they would keep them, and sometimes they would return them for Sam to recycle. But incidentally, those are all online now,

Michael Hingson 41:03

yeah, I've actually looked at a few of those. Those are kind of fun. So the London Avenue society got formed, and then you started having conventions.

Donnie Pitchford 41:14

Yes, yes. First convention was in 1985 and we did a lot of things with we would do recreations. We would do a lot of new scripts, where, if we had someone that we got to the point where we would have people that hadn't worked with lemon Abner. So we would have lemon Abner meet the great Gildersleeve. Actually, Willard had worked on the lumen Abner half hour show at some point. I believe les Tremain had never worked directly with them, but he was well, he was in some Horlicks malted milk commercials in the 1930s and of course, the Lone Ranger was never on the London Abner show and vice versa, until we got hold of it. So we had Fred Foy in 1999 and he agreed to be the announcer, narrator and play the part of the Lone Ranger. So we did Lum and Abner meet the Lone Ranger, which was a lot of fun. We had parley bear, so Lum and Abner met Chester of Gun Smoke. And those were just a lot of fun to do. And Tim, Tim would write some of them, I would write some of them, or we would collaborate back and forth to come up with these scripts. Did love and amner, ever meet Superman? No, we never got to that. That would have been great. Yeah, if we could have come up with somebody who had played Superman, that would have been a lot of fun. We had lemon Abner meet Kathie Lee Crosby as herself. Yeah, they met Frank brazzi One time. That must be fun. It was a lot of fun. We had some people would recreate the characters. We had the lady who had played Abner's daughter, Mary Lee Rob replay. She played that character again, 50 years later, coming back home to see, you know, to see family. Several other things, we had London Abner meet Gumby one time. Of all things, we had Dow McKinnon as a guest. And we had Kay Lineker come back and reprise one of her roles, the role she played in the London Abner movie. Bob's Watson did that as well. Some years we didn't have a script, which I regret, but we had other things going on. We had anniversaries of London Abner movies that we would play. So whatever we did, we tailored it around our guest stars, like Dick Beals, Sam Edwards, Roby Lester, gee whiz. I know I'm leaving people out.

Michael Hingson 43:52

Well, that's okay, but, but certainly a lot of fun. What? Yes, what? Cartoonist really influenced you as a child?

Donnie Pitchford 44:01

Oh, wow. I would say the first thing I saw that got my attention was the Flintstones on on prime time television, you know, the Hanna Barbera prime time things certainly Walt Disney, the animation that they would run, that he would show, and the behind the scenes, things that would be on the Disney show, things like almost almost anything animated as a kid, got my attention. But Walter Lance, you know, on the Woody Woodpecker show used to have, he'd have little features about how animation was done, and that that inspired me, that that just thrilled me. And I read Fred lachel's Snuffy Smith Chester Gould's Dick Tracy. Tracy, which that was a that's why the Dick Tracy connection, later was such a big deal for me. Almost anything in the Sunday comics that was big. Foot. In other words, the cartoony, exaggerated characters are called, sometimes called Bigfoot, Bigfoot cartooning, or Bigfoot characters. Those were always the things I looked for, Bugs Bunny, any of the people that worked on those some were anonymous. And years later, I started learning the names of who drew Popeye, you know, like LZ seagar, the originator, or bud sagendorf or George Wildman, and later high eysman. But people like that were my heroes. Later on, I was interested in I would read the Batman comics, or I would see Tarzan in the newspaper. I admired the work of Russ Manning.

Michael Hingson 45:49

Do you know the name Tom Hatton? Yes, I do. Yeah. Yes. Tom did Popeye shows on KTLA Channel Five when I was growing up, and he was famous for, as he described it, squiggles. He would make a squiggle and he would turn it into something. And he was right on TV, which was so much fun.

Donnie Pitchford 46:09

We had a guy in Memphis who did the same thing. His name was, he's known as Captain Bill, C, A, P, you know, Captain Bill. And he did very much the same thing. He'd have a child come up, I think some, in some cases, they're called drools. Is one word for them. There was a yeah, in Tim hollis's area, there was cousin Cliff Holman who did that. And would he might have a kid draw a squiggle, and then he would create something from it right there on the spot, a very similar type of thing, or a letter of the alphabet, or your initials, that sort

Michael Hingson 46:43

of thing. Yeah. Tom did that for years. It was fun. Of course, I couldn't see them, but he talked enough that I knew what was going on. It's kind of fun. My brother loved them, yeah? So later on, when you got to be a teenager and beyond what cartoonist maybe influenced you more?

Donnie Pitchford 47:03

Well, I would have to say George, probably because I was corresponding with him, right? Also, I would see the work of Carl Barks, who created Uncle Scrooge McDuck and the Donald Duck comics and all that. His stuff was all in reprint at that time, he was still living, but I didn't know he could be contacted. I didn't try to write to it, right? Years later, years later, I did get an autograph, which was, was very nice. But those people, a lot of people, Neil Adams, who did Batman, the guys at Charlton Comics, Steve Ditko, who was the CO creator of spider man, but he had a disagreement with Stan Lee, and went back to Charlton Comics and just turned out 1000s of pages, but his work was was inspirational. Another was Joe Staton, who was working at Charleton comics, who I got to work with on several projects later on, and I would say just all of those guys that I was reading at the time. Pat Boyette was another Charlton artist. I tend to gravitate toward the Charlton company because their artists weren't contained in a house style. They were allowed to do their own style. They didn't pay as much. But a lot of them were either older guys that said, I'm tired of this, of the DC Marvel system. I want to just, you know, have creative freedom. Charlton said, come on. And so they would work there and less stress, less money, probably one guy named Don Newton started there and became a legend in the industry at other companies. So I found all of those guys inspiring, and I felt I could learn from all of them.

Michael Hingson 48:59

Well, you always wanted to be a cartoonist. Did you have any other real career goals, like, was teaching a goal that you wanted to do, or was it just cartooning it?

Donnie Pitchford 49:07

Well, it was just a secondary, you know, as I said, when I started, I thought, I'll just do that for a few years. You know, I didn't know it was going to be like 27 but I we had a lot of success. We had, I had some student groups that would enter video competitions. And for 20 straight years, we placed either first, second or third in state competition with one Summit, one entry, another or another every year. And that was notable. I mean, I give the kids the credit for that. But then about five or six of those years, we had what we call state championship wins, you know, we were like the number one project in the state of Texas. So, you know, we had some great success, I think, in that so a lot of years there, I really, you know, that was a blessing to me. Was that career, you. Well, it just, it just got to be too much time for change. After a while,

Michael Hingson 50:05

was art just a talent that you had, and cartoon drawing a talent you had, or, I don't remember how much you said about did you have any real special training as such?

Donnie Pitchford 50:14

Well, all of my training was, I just couldn't afford to go to a specialized school. You know, at one time, the Joe Kubert School opened just about the time I graduated high school, it was in New Jersey. I just couldn't make that happen, so I went to state colleges and universities and did the best I could. I took commercial art classes, drawing classes, design classes, even ceramics, which came in very handy when I did some sculpting here in the last eight or nine years and worked as an assistant to a sculptor named Bob harness who lives here in Carthage, but I never had any actual comic strip slash comic book training, so I learned as much of that as I could from guys like George wild. And then after I started the lemon Avenue comic strip, an artist named Joe, named Jim Amish, who worked for Marvel, did a lot of work for the Archie Comics. And tremendous anchor is his. He's really a tremendous anchor, and does a lot of ink work over other artists pencils. Jim would call and say, he said, I want to give you some advice. I'm like, okay, at 3am he's still giving me advice. So I'd go around for two or three days feeling like a failure, but then I would, I would think about all the lessons, you know, that he had told me. And so I learned a lot from Jim and tremendous, tremendous guy. And I would listen to what high, sometimes high would call up and say, Why did you use that purple beg your pardon. So it was fun. I mean, those fellows would share with me, and I learned a great deal from those guys.

Michael Hingson 52:11

Are you in any way passing that knowledge on to others today?

Donnie Pitchford 52:16

I don't know that I am. I've had an offer or two to do some teaching. I just don't know if I'm if I'm going to get back into that or not. Yeah, I'm so at this point, focused on, quote, unquote, being a cartoonist and trying to make that, that age five dream, a reality, that I'm not sure I'm ready to do that again. And you know, I'm not, I'm not 21 anymore.

Michael Hingson 52:45

I didn't know whether you were giving advice to people and just sort of informally doing it, as opposed to doing formal teaching.

Donnie Pitchford 52:51

Well, informally, yes, I mean, if anybody asks, you know, I'll be glad to share whatever I can. But yeah, I'm not teaching any classes at this point.

Michael Hingson 53:01

Well, you have certainly taken lemon Abner to interesting places in New Heights. One, one thing that attracted me and we talked about it before, was in 2019, lemon Abner in Oz. That was fun.

Donnie Pitchford 53:17

Well, the credit for that goes to Tim Hollis. Tim wrote that as a short story years ago when he was first interested in lemon Abner. And I don't know if he ever had that published through the International oz society or not. I don't remember, but Tim later turned that into a radio script when we had a batch of guests. This was in 2001 we had, let's see Sam Edwards, Dick Beals, Roby Lester and Rhoda Williams. And each of them had done something related to Oz, either the children's records or storybook records or animation or something. They were involved somewhere in some type of Oz adaptation. So Tim turned his short story into a radio script that we performed there at the convention. So that was a lot of fun. And then he suggested, Why don't I turn that into a comic strip story? So that's what we did. But that was fun, yeah, and we used the recordings of those people because they had given us permission, you know, to use a recording however we saw fit. The only problem is we had a mistake. The fellow that was running the sound had a dead mic and didn't know it. Oh, gosh. So some of them are bit Off mic in that audio, but we did the best. I did the best I could

Michael Hingson 54:40

with it's it sounded good. I certainly have no complaints.

54:45

Thank you for that.

Michael Hingson 54:47

I I said no complaints at all. I think it was really fun and very creative. And it's kind of really neat to see so much creativity in terms of all the stuff that that you do. As a cartoonist, me having never seen cartoons, but I learned intellectually to appreciate the talent that goes into it. And of course, you guys do put the scripts together every week, which is a lot of fun to be able to listen to them well.

Donnie Pitchford 55:17

And that's what that was, the audience I hoped that we would would tap into right there and it, it was guys like you that would would talk to me and say, What am I going to do? You know, I can't see it. So that's why the audio idea came about. And it's taken on a life of its own, really. And we've got Mark Ridgway, who has created a lot of musical cues for us that we use and

Michael Hingson 55:45

who plays the organ?

Donnie Pitchford 55:47

That's Mark Ridgway. It is Mark, okay, yes, yes. And it's actually digital, I'm sure. I think it's a digital keyboard,

Michael Hingson 55:55

yeah, but it is. It's a, it's a really good sounding one, though.

Donnie Pitchford 55:59

Yes, yes. There are a few cues that I did, which probably are the ones that don't sound so good, like if we ever need really bad music. If you remember the story we did, and I don't remember the name of it, what do we call it anyway? Lum tries to start a soap opera. Think this was about a year ago. Yeah, and Cedric is going to play, I don't remember it was an organ or a piano, and I don't remember what he played, but whatever it was, I think was Mary Had

Michael Hingson 56:32

a Little Lamb, Mary's, Mary Had a Little Lamb on the piano. Sort of kind played.

Donnie Pitchford 56:35

It was played very badly, well that, yes, it was on purpose. When mom plays lum tries to play the saxophone. That was me, and I hadn't played this. I used to play the sax. In fact, I played in a swing orchestra here in Carthage, Texas for about five years back in from the early 90s. And so I had this idea, and I hadn't played the horn probably since, probably in 20 years, and his. So I got it out, and I thought, you know, it's gonna sound terrible because it needs maintenance, but it doesn't matter. It's lump playing it, so I got to play really badly.

Michael Hingson 57:14

It was perfect. It was perfect,

Donnie Pitchford 57:16

yeah, because it had to sound bad.

Michael Hingson 57:19

How do y'all create all these different plots. I remember so many, like the buzzard, you know, and, oh yeah, that was fun. And so many. How do you come up with those?

Donnie Pitchford 57:28

Well, I used to get some really good ideas while mowing the yard. Don't ask me, why? Or I get ideas. I get ideas in the weirdest thing, weirdest places. Sometimes I have ideas in the shower. You know, I said, I better write this down. Sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, but there the ideas just come to me. Yeah? The buzzard was fun. I'd had that one. Pretty creative. Yeah, the one about, the one about, let me see. Oh, there was one we did, where wasn't the buzzard? What was that other one? I called the Whisper? Yeah, there was a strange voice that was coming lum thought it was coming from his radio. And he turns his radio off, and He still hears it, and it was a villain who had somehow hypnotized everyone so that they wouldn't see him and he would use his voice only. And then there's a character I came up with, and let me see Larry Gasman played it, and I called him Larry John Walden, and he was the only guy he was blind. He was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized because he couldn't see the you know, I use the old thing about the watch in front of the eyes. I mean, he was the only guy that wasn't hypnotized, so he wasn't fooled by the whisper, and he could track him, because his hearing was so acute that he was able to find him. In fact, I think he could hear his watch ticking or something like that. So he was the hero of that piece. But, well, I just, I just think up ideas and write them down. Tim Hollis has written some of the scripts, maybe three or four for me, I've adapted some scripts that London Abner did that were never broadcast or that were never recorded. Rather, I've adapted a few, written several, and I keep saying, Well, when I completely run out of ideas, I'll just have to quit.

Michael Hingson 59:32

Well, hopefully that never happens. What? What are your future plans?

Donnie Pitchford 59:38

Well, right now, there's nothing major in the works other than just maintaining the strip, trying to continue it, trying to make it entertaining, and hopefully doing a little work on the website and getting it into the hands of more people. And I'd like to increase. Least newspaper coverage, if at all possible. And because this thing doesn't, you know, it's got to pay for itself somehow. So you know, I'm not getting rich by any means. But you know, I want to keep it fun. I want to keep having fun with it. Hopefully people will enjoy it. Hopefully we can reach younger readers, listeners, and hopefully lemon Abner can appeal to even younger audiences yet, so that we can keep those characters going.

Michael Hingson 1:00:29

Yeah, there's so much entertainment there. I hope that happens now in the the life of Donnie Pitchford. Is there a wife and kids?

Donnie Pitchford 1:00:40

Yes, there's a wife of almost 40 years. We unfortunately don't have any children. We've almost feel like we adopted several children all the years we were teaching. We we've adopted several cats along the way. And so, you know, we've had cats as pets for almost ever, since we were married. But that's she's, she's great, you know, she's, she's been my best friend and supporter all these years. And we were members of first Methodist Church here in Carthage, Texas, and doing some volunteer work there, and helping to teach Sunday school, and very involved and active in that church.

Michael Hingson 1:01:19

So I have a cat, and I hear her outside, not outside the house, but outside the the office here, she wants me to go feed her, and we, we shaved her yesterday because her hair gets long and Matt's very easily. So she got shaved yesterday. So she's probably seeking a little vengeance from that too, but, but my wife and I were married 40 years. She passed away in November of 2022 so it's me and stitch the cat and Alamo the dog, and Karen is monitoring us somewhere. And as I tell everyone, I've got to continue to be a good kid, because if I'm not, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be good. But it's a lot of fun. Well, I want to thank you for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun. I've learned a lot, but it's just been great to have another podcast talking about old radio shows. And you said again, if people want to reach out, they can go to lemon Abner comics.com if people want to talk to you about doing any kind of cartooning or anything like that. What's the best way they can do that?

Donnie Pitchford 1:02:24

Well, they can go to the London Abner dot lumen, Abner comics.com website, and there's a contact a link right there at the top of the page. So yeah, they can contact me through that. Probably that's the easiest way to do it.

Michael Hingson 1:02:37

Okay, well, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank all y'all out there. That's how they talk in Texas, right? It's all y'all for everybody.

Donnie Pitchford 1:02:46

Well, some of them do, and some of them in Arkansas do too. Well, yeah.

Michael Hingson 1:02:49

And then there's some who don't, yeah, y'all means everything, and it

Speaker 1 1:02:54

don't, yeah, I don't think squire skimp says it that way.

Michael Hingson 1:02:58

Well, Squire, you know, whatever it takes. But I want to thank you all for being here, and please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. Donnie would appreciate it. I would appreciate it, and also give us a review. We'd love to get your reviews, so please do that. If you can think of anyone else who ought to be a guest, and I think Donnie has already suggested a few. So Donnie as well, anyone else who ought to come on the podcast, we'd love it. Appreciate you introducing us, and you know, we'll go from there. And I know at some point in the future, the Michael hingson Group Inc is going to be a sponsor, because we've started that process for lemon. Abner, yes, thank you. Thank you. So I want to, I want to thank love and Squire for that

1:03:45

years. Well, it's been my pleasure.

Michael Hingson 1:03:50

Well, thank you all and again, really, seriously, Donnie, I really appreciate you being here. This has been a lot of fun. So thank you for coming.

Donnie Pitchford 1:03:58

Thank you. It's been a great honor. I've appreciated it very much.

Michael Hingson 1:04:06

Episode 418 – An Unstoppable Journey Through Grief and Purpose with Michaela Foster Marsh

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when grief becomes the doorway to purpose?

In this powerful conversation, I speak with Michaela Foster Marsh about transracial adoption, loss, creativity, and faith. Raised in Scotland with her adopted Ugandan brother during the civil rights era, Michaela shares how his tragic death led her to uncover his African roots, build a creative arts school in Uganda, and launch a charity supporting children with autism and disabilities. We explore dyslexia, music, resilience, and the spiritual nudges that shaped her journey. You will hear how grief can transform into service, how creativity can heal deep wounds, and why choosing hope is the most unstoppable decision you can make.

Highlights:

00:10 Discover how growing up in a transracial adoption shaped identity and belonging.

13:19 Hear how a tragic house fire changed the course of a life.

16:03 Learn how a late dyslexia diagnosis brought clarity and confidence.

30:12 Follow the journey to Uganda to uncover hidden family roots.

43:03 Understand the mission to support children with autism and disabilities.

1:00:44 Receive one powerful reminder about finding light after deep loss.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

Michaela Foster Marsh is an acclaimed musician, author, and founder of the Starchild Charity. She has released three internationally distributed albums, with music featured in television and film including Dawson’s Creek, The Matthew Shepard Story, and Breaking Amish. Michaela has performed at the Monaco International Film Festival, the Cannes International Film Festival, and was the last person invited to sing privately for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

She is the author of the memoir Starchild — the remarkable true story of her journey to Uganda to find the biological family of her adopted brother, 18 years after his death. The book was published in the US and distributed globally. Starchild is currently being adapted into a feature documentary titled The Starchild Covenant, directed by BAFTA Award-winner Alex McCall.

Michaela is also the founder and Executive Director of the Starchild Charity, which serves vulnerable children and women in Uganda and Scotland. The charity has built a School for Creative Arts in Vvumba, Uganda in memory of her brother, and a holistic centre for autism and disabilities in Scotland in memory of her late partner. She has received numerous honours for her humanitarian work, including a Prime Minister’s Award, a Peace and Unity Award, a Community Champion Award, and was a finalist for Scotswoman of the Year by the Evening Times in 2017.

Currently, Michaela is working on several creative projects:

· The Matoke Tree – A completed literary novel rooted in themes of race, adoption, religious oppression, and belonging, based in part on her own lived experiences.

· The Starchild Covenant – A feature documentary based on her memoir Starchild, currently in production with BAFTA Award-winner Alex McCall.

· Sunflowers at Christmas – A deeply personal memoir in progress, written in the wake of her partner’s death, exploring grief, love, and spiritual survival.

· Orion: A Mythological Rock Opera – An immersive stage work in development, blending original music with myth, transformation, and rebirth, inspired by her album I Undid Orion’s Belt.

Her work — across genres and geographies — explores the legacy of loss, the power of love, and the transformation of silence into story.

Ways to connect with Michaela**:**

Email:michaela_foster_marsh@hotmail.com

Websites:

· starchildcharity.org

· michaelaonline.com

Social:

· Instagram: @fostermarsh

· Facebook: Michaela Foster Marsh – singer-songwriter & author

· Facebook: Starchild Charity

· LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michaelafostermarsh

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

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accessiBe Links

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https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Transcription Notes:

Episode 417 – Unstoppable Resilience in the Face of Political Oppression with Noura Ghazi

Tue, 24 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0000

Courage is not loud. Sometimes it is a 13-year-old girl standing in a courtroom, promising to defend dignity no matter the cost.

Noura Ghazi’s life was shaped by detention, disappearance, and resistance long before she became a human rights lawyer. Growing up in Damascus with a father repeatedly imprisoned for political opposition, she chose early to confront injustice through law rather than violence. From defending political prisoners during the Syrian revolution to marrying her husband inside a prison and later founding No Photo Zone, Noura has built a life rooted in resilience, civil rights advocacy, and unwavering belief in human dignity.

Now living in France as a political refugee, she continues her work supporting families of detainees, survivors of torture, and the disappeared. Her story is not simply about survival. It is about choosing mindset over fear, purpose over despair, and love even in the shadow of loss. This conversation invites reflection on what it means to remain Unstoppable when freedom, justice, and even safety are uncertain.

Highlights:

00:07:06 – A defining childhood moment reveals how a confrontation in a Syrian courtroom shaped Noura’s lifelong commitment to defending political prisoners.

00:12:51 – The unpredictable nature of Syria’s exceptional courts exposes how justice without standards creates generational instability and fear.

00:17:32 – The emotional aftermath of her father’s release illustrates how imprisonment reshapes entire families, not just the person detained.

00:23:47 – Noura’s pursuit of human rights education demonstrates how intentional learning becomes an act of resistance in restrictive systems.

00:32:10 – The early days of the Syrian revolution clarify how violence escalates when peaceful protest is met with force.

00:37:27 – Her marriage inside a prison and the global advocacy campaign that followed reflect how personal love can fuel public courage.

00:50:59 – A candid reflection on PTSD reveals how trauma can coexist with purpose and even deepen empathy for others.

About the Guest:

Noura Ghazi’s life has been shaped by a single, unwavering mission: to defend dignity, freedom, and justice in the face of dictatorship. Born in Damascus into a family deeply rooted in political resistance, she witnessed firsthand the cost of speaking out when her father was detained, tortured, and disappeared multiple times. That lived experience became her calling. Since 2004, she has defended political prisoners before Syria’s Supreme Security State Court, and when the Syrian revolution began in 2011, she fully committed herself to supporting detainees and the families of the disappeared. Even after her husband, activist Bassel Khartabil Safadi, was detained, disappeared, and ultimately executed, she continued her advocacy with extraordinary resolve.

Forced into exile in 2018 after repeated threats and arrest warrants, Noura founded NoPhotoZone to provide legal aid, psychological support, and international advocacy for victims of detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and displacement across Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey. Her mission is not only to seek justice for the imprisoned and the missing, but to restore agency and hope to families living in uncertainty and trauma. Recognized globally for her courage and leadership, Noura remains committed to amplifying the voices of the silenced and ensuring that even in the darkest systems, human rights and human dignity are never forgotten.

https://nouraghazi.org/

https://nophotozone.org/

Book – Waiting by Noura Ghazi - https://www.lulu.com/shop/noura-ghazi-safadi/waiting/paperback/product-1jz2kz2j.html?page=1\&pageSize=4

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

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https://twitter.com/mhingson

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

Thanks for listening!

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Michael Hingson 00:09

Well, welcome everyone to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to chat with Nora Ghazi, who lives in, I believe, France right now. She was born in Syria. She'll tell us about that, and she has had an interesting life, and I would say, a life that has had lots of challenges and some treachery along the way. But we'll get to all of that, and I will leave it to her to describe most of that, but I just want to tell you all we really appreciate you being here and hope you enjoy the episode. So Nora, how are you?

Noura Ghazi 00:49

Thank you, Michael, for having me in this great broadcast, doing well.

Michael Hingson 00:57

Well, there you go. Well, why don't we start? I love to start this way. Why don't you tell us kind of about the early Nora, growing up and so on, where you grew up, what anything you want to talk about, regarding being a younger person and all of that and and however we want to proceed, we'll go from there.

Noura Ghazi 01:17

Okay, so since I was a child, my childhood wasn't like normal, like all the kids at my age, because my father was like a leader in opposition party against the previous Syrian regime.

Michael Hingson 01:34

So you were born in Syria?

Noura Ghazi 01:37

Yes, I work in Damascus. I'm from Damascus, but I have some like multiple origin that I'm proud of. But yes, I'm from Damascus. So since I was five years old, my father was disappeared and because he was wanted with other, like fellows at his party and other, let's say aliens, parties of opposition against the previous regime. So he disappeared for six years, then he was detained and transferred to what was named the supreme security state court. So it was during my adultness, let's say so since I was a child like I had at that time, only one sister, which is one year younger than me, we were moving a lot. We had no place to live. So my mother used to take us each few days to stay at some, someone place, let's say so it caused to us like changing schools all, all the time, which means changing friends. So it was very weird. And at that age, okay, I I knew the words of like cause, the words of leader or dictatorship. I used to say these words, but without knowing what does it mean. Then, when my father detained, it was his ninth detention. Actually, my mother was pregnant with my brother, so my brother was born while my father was in prison. And while he was in prison, the last time he disappeared for one year, three months, he was in like a kind of isolation in security facility. Then he was referred to this court. So in one of the sessions of the trials, I had a fight with the officer who, like who was leading the patrol that bring my father and other prisoners of conscience. So at the end of this fight, I promised my father and the officer that, okay, I will grow up and become a human rights lawyer and defend political prisoners, which I did at the end.

Michael Hingson 04:05

So what? What was the officer doing? He was taking people to the court.

Noura Ghazi 04:12

Yes, because Okay, so there is many kind of prisons now. They became like, more familiar to like public opinion because of, like 15 years of violence in Syria. So there was, like the the central civil prison in Damascus, which we call ADRA prison, and we have said, NIA jail, military prison. So those two prisons, they were like, holding detainees in them. So they they used to bring detainees to the court in busses, like a kind of military busses, with patrol of like civil police and military police. So the officer was like. Heading the patrol that was bringing my fathers from other prison.

Michael Hingson 05:05

So you, so you, what was the fight about with the officer and your father and so on? What? How? Well, yeah, what was the fight?

Noura Ghazi 05:16

It's very good question, although at that time, it was a very like scary situation, but now I laughed a lot about it. Okay, so they used to to catch all the prisoners in one chain with the handcuffs. So we used to come to hug and kiss my father before entering the court. So I was doing what I used to do during the trials, or just upon the trials, and then one of the policemen, like pushed me away. So I got nervous, and my father got nervous. So the officer provoked me. He was like a kind of insulting that my father is a detainee, and he is like he's coming to this court. So I, like I replied that I'm proud of my father and his friends what they are doing. So he somehow, he threats me to detain me like my father, and at that time, I was very angry, and I curse the father Assad just in on the like in the door, at the door of the court, and there was people and and Like all the the policemen, like they were just pointing their weapon to me, and there was some moments of silence. Then they took all the detainees into the court. So at this moment, while I'm entering the court behind them, I said, I will grow up and become a human rights lawyer to defend political prisoners.

Michael Hingson 07:02

What did the officers say to that?

Noura Ghazi 07:06

Because they used to look to us as because we are. We were against father Assad and the dictatorship, so they used to see us, even if we are kids, as enemies.

Michael Hingson 07:22

Yeah, so the officer but, but he didn't detain you. I was

Noura Ghazi 07:27

only 13 years, yeah, okay, they used to to arrest the kids, but they didn't.

Michael Hingson 07:37

So did the officer react to your comment? You're going to grow up to become a civil rights lawyer?

Noura Ghazi 07:43

He was shocked, was he? But I don't know if he knew that I become a human yes, there at the end, yeah.

Michael Hingson 07:54

And meanwhile, what did your father do or say?

Noura Ghazi 07:58

He was shocked also, but he was very proud, and until now, he like every time, because I'm also like, very close to to his friends who I used to visit in prison. Then I become a human rights lawyer, and I was the youngest lawyer in Syria. I was only 22 years old when I started to practice law. So during the the revolution in Syria, which started in 2011 some of his friends were detained, and I was their lawyer also. So I'm very close to them. So until now, they remember this story and laugh about it, because no one could curse or say anything not good about father Assad or or the family, even in secret. So it's still, like, very funny, and I'm still like, stuck somehow in, like, in this career and the kind of activism I'm doing, because just I got angry of the officer 30 years ago. So at this, at that moment, I've decided what I will be in the future. I'm just doing it well.

Michael Hingson 09:20

From everything I've read, it sounds like you do a good job.

Noura Ghazi 09:25

I cannot say it's a job, because usually you you do a job, you get paid for your job, you go at a certain time and come back at a certain time. You do certain tasks. But for me, it's like a continuing fight, non violent fight, of course, for dignity, for freedom, for justice, right, for reveal the truth of those who were disappeared and got missing. So yes, until now, I'm doing this, so I don't have that. Are the luxury to to be paid all the time, or to be to have weekends or to work until like certain hour at night. I cannot say I'm enjoying it, but this is the reason why I'm still alive, because I have a motive to help and support other people who are victims to dictatorship and violence.

Michael Hingson 10:25

So your father went into court and what happened?

Noura Ghazi 10:31

He was sentenced. At the end, he was sentenced to three years in prison. And it's a funny story, another funny story, actually, because, like the other latines at that at that trial, like it was only my father and other two prisoners who sent who were sentenced to three years in prison, while other people, the minimum was seven years in Prison, until 15 years in prison. So my mother and us, we felt like we are embarrassed and shy because, okay, our father will will be released like in few months, but other prisoners will stay much longer. So it's something very embarrassing to our friends who whom their fathers got sentenced to like more.

Michael Hingson 11:30

Did you ever find out why it was only three years?

Noura Ghazi 11:33

We don't know because it's an exceptional court, so it's up to the judge and the judge at that time, like it's it's very similar to what is happening now and what happened after 2011 so it's a kind of continuing reality in in Syria since like 63 which was the first time my father was detained. It was in 63 just after the what they called the eighth March revolution. So my father was only 11 years old when he was detained the first time because he participated in a protest. So it's up to the judge. It's not like a real court with like the the fair trial standards. So it's it's only once you know, the judge said the sentences for each one. So two prisoners got confused. They couldn't differentiate like Which sentence to whom, so they asked like again, so he forgot, so he said them again in different way. So it's something like, very spontaneously, yeah, very just moody, not any standard.

Michael Hingson 12:51

Well, so Did your father then serve the three years and was released. Or what happened?

Noura Ghazi 12:58

He was released on the day that he should be released, he disappeared for few days. We didn't know what happened. Then he was released. Finally he came. We used to live with my my grandma, so I was the one who opened the door, and I saw just my father. So we we knew later that okay, he was moved again to a security facility because he refused to sign a paper that say that he will not practice any oppositional action against the authority. So he refused, yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 13:43

Well, I mean, I'm sure there's, there's a continuing story, what happened to him after that. So he came home,

Noura Ghazi 13:53

he came out to my grandma. It was a big surprise, like full of joy, but full of tears as well.

Michael Hingson 14:01

And you're you were 16 now, right?

Noura Ghazi 14:04

I was when he was raised. I was 15, yeah, okay, yeah. And my sister was 14. My brother was two years and a half, so for him, okay, the father is this person that we visit behind bars every Monday, not this one who stay with us. So for him, it was weird. For my brother, he was very like little kid to understand. Then my father went to to see his parents as well. Then we came back to our apartment that we couldn't live more than few months because my father was detained. So at this night, everything was very, very, very new, like because before the three years he he was disappeared for six years, so there was. Nine years. We don't live with my father, so my brother used to sleep just next to my mom, actually my sister and me, but okay, we were like a teenager, so it's okay. So my brother couldn't sleep. Because why he keep, he kept asking why my father is sleeping with us while he's not with his friend at that place. And he was traumatized for many days. But usually when, like a political prisoner released, usually, like, we have a kind of two, three weeks of people visiting the family to say, Okay, it's it's good. We're happy for you that he was released. So the first two, three weeks were full of people and like, social events, etc. Then the, the real problem started. So my father studied law, but he was fired from university for security reasons at the the last year of his study, and as he was sentenced so he couldn't work, my mother used to work, and so like suddenly he started to feel that okay, He's not able to work. He's not able to fulfill the needs of his family. He's not able to spend on the family. The problems between him and my mother started. We couldn't as like my sister and me as teenagers. We couldn't really accept him. We couldn't see that. He's the same person that we used to visit in prison. He was very friendly. We used to talk about everything in life, including the very personal things that usually daughters don't speak with fathers about it. But then he became a father, which we we we weren't used to it, and he was shocked also. So I can say that this, this situation, at least on emotional and psychological level, for me, it lasted for 15 years. I couldn't accept him very well, even my my sister and and the brother and it happens to all like prisoners, political prisoners, especially who spent long time in prison.

Michael Hingson 17:32

So now is your father and well, are your father and your mother still alive? Or are they around?

Noura Ghazi 17:41

They are still alive. They are still in Damascus,

Michael Hingson 17:44

and they're still in Damascus. Yes, how is I guess I'll just ask it now, how is Syria different today than it was in the Assad regime,

Noura Ghazi 17:56

like most of Syrians, and now we should differentiate about what Syrians will talk. We're talking so like those Syrians, like the majority of Syrians, and I'm meaning here, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be very direct. Now, the Arab Sunni Syrians, most of them, they are very happy. They are calling what happened in in last eight December, that it's the deliberation of Syria, but for other minorities, like religious or ethnic minorities, of course, it's almost the same. For me, I feel that okay, we have the same dictatorship now, the same corruption, the same of like lack of freedom of expression. But the the added that we have now is that we have Islamist who control Syria. We have extremists who control Syria. They intervene even in personal freedoms. They they are like, like, they are committing crimes against minorities, like it started last March, against alawed. It started last July, against Druze. Now it is starting against Kurdish, and unfortunately, the international community turning like an attorney, like, okay. They are okay with with it, because they want, like their own interest, their own benefits. They have another crisis in the world to take care and to think about, not Syria. So the most important for the international community is to have a stable situation in Syria, to be like, like, no kind of like, no fight zone in the Middle East, and they don't care about Syrian people. And this is very frustrating for those who. Who have the same beliefs that I have.

Michael Hingson 20:04

So in a lot of ways, you're saying it hasn't, hasn't really changed, and only the, only the faces and names have changed, but not the actions or the results

Noura Ghazi 20:16

the faces and names, and most important, the sects, has changed. So it was very obvious for me that most of Syrians, they don't mind to be controlled by dictator. They only mind what is the sect of this dictator?

Michael Hingson 20:35

Unfortunately. Well, yeah. Well, let's go back to you. So your father was released, and you had already made your decision about what you wanted to be, what how does school work over there? Did you go to a, what we would call a high school? Or how does all that work?

Noura Ghazi 20:58

Yeah, high school, I was among the like the student who got the highest score in Damascus. I was the fourth one on Damascus when I finished. We call it back like Baccalaureate in Syria, which came from French. And I studied law, and I was also very, like, really hard, hard study person. So I was graduated in four years. Actually, nobody in Syria used to finish studying law in Damascus University only in four years. Like some people stayed more than 10 years because it it was very difficult, and it's different than like law college or law school or university of law, depending on the country, than other countries, because we only like study law. Theoretically, we don't have any practice because we were 1000s of students, it was the like the maximum university that include students. And I registered immediately in the Bar Association in Damascus, and I started because we have, like, a kind, it's, it's similar to stage for two years, like under the supervision of another lawyer who was my uncle at the first and then we we have to choose a topic in certain domain of flow, to write a kind of book which is like, it's similar to thesis, to apply it, to approve it, and then to have the kind of interactive examination, then we have the the final graduated. So all of them to be like a practice lawyer. It's around six years, a little bit more. So my specialist was in criminal law, and my thesis, what about what we call the the impossible crime. It was complicated topic. I have to say that in Syria at that time, I'm talking about end of of 90s, beginning of 2000 so we don't have any kind of study related to human rights. We weren't allowed even to spell this word like human rights. So then in 2005 and 2006 I started to study human rights under international laws related to human rights in Jordan. So I became like a kind of certified human rights defenders and the trainer also,

Michael Hingson 23:47

okay, and so you said you started practice and you finished school when you started practice, when you were 22 Yes, okay, I'm curious what, what were things like after September 11, of course, you know, we had the terrorist attacks and so on. Did any of that affect anything over in Syria, where you lived,

Noura Ghazi 24:15

of course, like, we stayed talking, watching the news for like four months, like until now we remember, like September 11. But you know, I now when I remember, it was a shock, usually for the Arab world, or Arab people like America is against the Arab world. So everything happened against it was like, this was like, let's say 2030, years ago. Everything that caused any harm to America, they celebrate it. So that. At that time, I was 19 years old, and okay, it's the first time we we hear that a person who was terrorist do like is doing this kind in in us, which is like a miracle for us. But then I started to to think, okay, they it's not an army. They are. There are civilians. Those civilians could be against the the policies of the US government. They could be like, This is not a kind of fight for freedom or for rights or for any like, really, like, fair cause. This is a terrorist action against civilians. And then we started, I'm very lucky because I'm from very educated family. So we started to think about, like, okay, bin Laden. And like, which we have a president from Qaeda now in Syria, like, you can imagine how I feel now. Like, I Okay, all the world is against al Qaeda, and they celebrated that the President in Syria is from al Qaeda. So it's, it's very it's, it's, really, it's not logical at all. But the funniest thing that happened, because, like, the name of Usama bin Laden, was keeping on every like, every one tongue. So I have my my oldest uncle. His name is Usama, and he lives in Germany for 40, more than 40 years, actually. So my brother was a child, and he started to cry, and he came to my mother and asked her, I'm afraid, is my uncle the same Usama? So we were laughing all, and we said, No, it's another Usama. This is the Usama. This is Osama bin Laden, who is like from is like a terrorist group, etc. But like this unfortunate incident started to bring to my mind some like the concept of non violence, the concept of that, okay, no civilian in any place in the world should be harmed for any reason, Because we never been told this in Syria and mostly in most of of countries like the word fight is very linked to armed fights, which I totally disagree with.

Michael Hingson 27:56

Well, the when people ask me about September 11 and and so on. One of the things that I say is this wasn't a religious war. This wasn't a religious attack. This was terrorist. This was, I put it in terms of of Americans. These were thugs who decided they wanted to have their way with people. But this is not the way the Muslim the Islamic religion is there is peaceful and peace loving as as anyone, and we really need to understand that. And I realize that there are a lot of people in this country who don't really understand all about that, and they don't understand that. In reality, there's a lot of peace loving people in the Middle East, but hopefully we'll be able to educate people over time, and that's one of the reasons I tell the story that I do, because I do believe that what happened is 19 people attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and so on, and they don't represent the the typical viewpoint of most people, religious wise in the Middle East. And I can understand why a lot of people think that the United States doesn't like Arabs, and I'm not sure that that's totally true, but I can appreciate what you're saying.

Noura Ghazi 29:28

Yeah, I'm talking about specific communities actually, who they are, like totally against Israel, and they believe that you us is supporting Israel. So that's that's why they have their like this like attitude towards us and or like that US is trying to invest all the resources in the in the Middle East, etc. But what you were mentioning. Is really very important, because those 19 persons, they like kind of they, they cause the very bad reputation for for Muslims, for Middle Eastern because for for for other people from other countries, other culture or other religion, they will not understand that, okay, that, as you said, they don't represent Muslims. And in all religions, we have the extremist and we have those peaceful persons who keep their their religion as a kind of direct connection with God. They respect everyone, and normally in in in Syria, most of of the population like this, but now having a terrorist as a President, I'm not able to believe how there is a lot of Syrians that support him. Mm, hmm. Because when Al Qaeda started in Syria at the beginning, under the name of japet Al Nusra, then, which with July, who is now Ahmad Al shara, was the leader, and he's the leader of the country now most of Syrians, especially the the the Sunni Syrians, were against this, like terrorist groups, because the most harm they cause is for for Sunnis in Syria, because all other minorities, they will think about every Sunni that they, He or she, like, believe and behave like those, which is totally not true.

Michael Hingson 31:47

Yeah, I hear you. Well, so September 11 happened, and then eventually you started doing criminal law. And if we go forward to what 2011 with the Syrian revolution? Yeah, and so what was, what was that revolution about?

Noura Ghazi 32:10

It was okay. It started as a reaction against detaining kids from school. Okay, of course, this like the Syrian people, including me, we were very affected and inspired about what was happening in Egypt and Tunisia. But okay, so the security arrested and tortured those kids in their south of Syria. So people came out in demonstration to ask for their freedom and the security attack those protesters with, like, with weapons, so couple of persons died. So then it was, it started to be like a kind of revolution, let's say, yeah, the the problem for me, for lot of people like me, that the the previous Syrian regime was very violent against protesters and the previous president, Bashar Assad, he refused to listen to to to those people, he started to, like dissipated from the reality. So this like, much violence that was against us, like, I remember during some protest, there was not like, small weapon toward us. There was a tank that bombing us as protesters, peaceful, non violent, non armed protesters. So this violence led to another violence, like a kind of reaction by those who defected from the army, etc. And here, my father used to say, when the opposition started to to carry weapon in a country that, like the majority of it, is from certain religion, this could lead to a kind of Jihadist methodology. And this is what happened. So for for people like us, which we are very little comparing of like, the other beliefs of other people like we were, we started to be against the Syrian regime, then against the jihadist groups, then against that, like a kind of international, certain International, or, let's say original intervention, like Iran and Russia. So we were fighting everywhere, and no one. No one wanted us because those like educated, secular, non violent people, they. Form a kind of danger for every one of those parties. But what happened with me is that I met my late husband during a revolution at the very early of 2011 and having the relationship with me was my own revolution. So I was living on parallel like two revolution, a personal one and the public one. And then, like he was detained just two weeks before our our wedding. He was disappeared, actually, for nine months, then he was moved to the same prison that my father was in, to the central prison in Damascus that we got married in prison by coincidence. I don't know if coincidence is the right word in this situation, but my late husband was a very well known programmer and activist. So we were he was kind of, let's say, famous, and I was a lawyer and lawyer that defend human rights defenders and political prisoners. And the husband was detained, so I used to visit him in prison and visit other prisoners that I was their lawyers. And because my like, we have this personal aspect that okay, the couple that got married in prison and that, okay, I'm activist as a lawyer, and my late husband was a well known programmer. So we created a very huge campaign, a global campaign. So we invested this campaign to like, to shed the light about detention, torture, disappearance, exceptional courts, then, like also summary execution in Syria. So then, after almost three years of visiting him regularly, he disappeared again in 2015 and in 2017 I knew that he was sentenced to death, and I knew the exact date of his execution, just in 2018 which was two days ago. It was October 5. So this is what happened then. I had to leave Syria in 2018 so I left to Lebanon.

Michael Hingson 37:27

So you left Syria and went to Lebanon?

Noura Ghazi 37:33

Yes, the The plan was to stay only six months in Lebanon because I was wanted and I was threatened like I lived a terrible life, really, like lot of Syrians who were activists also, but the plan was that I will stay in Lebanon for six months, then I will leave to to UK because I had A scholarship to get a master in international law. But only two months after I left to Lebanon, I decided to stay in Lebanon to establish the organization that I'm I'm leading until now, which was a project between my late husband and me. Its name is no photo zone, so it was a very big decision, but I'm not regrets.

Michael Hingson 38:23

You, you practice criminal law, you practiced human rights, you visited your your fiance, as it were, and then, well, then your husband in prison and so on. Wasn't all of that pretty risky for you?

Noura Ghazi 38:42

Yes, very risky. I, I lived in under like, different kind of risk. Like, okay, I have the risk that, okay, I'm, I'm doing my activism against the previous regime publicly because I also, I was co founder of the First Family or victim Association in Syria families for freedom. So we, we were, like, doing a kind of advocacy in Europe, and I used to come back to Syria, so I was under this risk, but also I was under the risk of the like, going to prison, because the way to prison and the prison itself were under bombing. It was in like a point that separate the opposition militias and the regime militias. So they were bombing each other and bombing the prison and bombing the way to prison. So for three years, and specifically for like, in, let's say, 2014 specifically, I was among, like, I was almost the only lawyer that visited the prison, and I, I didn't mind this. I faced death more than 100 time, only on the way to prison, two times the person next to me in the like transportation. It's a kind of small bus. He died and fell down on me, but I had a strong belief that I will not die,

Michael Hingson 40:21

and then what? Why do you think that they never detained you or or put you in prison? Do you have any thoughts?

Noura Ghazi 40:29

I had many arrests weren't against me, but each time there was something that solve it somehow. So the first couple of Earths weren't actually when, when my late husband was detained, he he made a kind of deal with them that, okay, he will give all the information, everything about his activism in return. They, they canceled the arrest warrant against me. Then literally, until now, I don't know how it was solved. Like I, I had to sleep in garden with my cats for many nights. I i spent couple of months that I cannot go to any like to family, be house or to friend house, because I will cause problem for them, my my parents, my brother and sister, and even, like my sister, ex, until like just three months before the fall of the Syrian regime, they were under like, investigation By the security, lot of harassment against them so, but I don't know, like, I'm, I'm survive for a reason that I don't really realize how,

Michael Hingson 41:52

wow, it, it's, it certainly is pretty amazing. Did you ever write a book or anything about all of this,

Noura Ghazi 42:02

I used to write, always the only book like, let's say, literature or emotional book. It was about love in prison. Its name is waiting. And I wrote this book in English and basil. My late husband translated it. Sorry. I wrote it in Arabic, and Basset translated it into English in prison. So it was a process of smuggling the poems in Arabic and smuggling the them in English, again out of the prison. And we published the book online just after basil disappearance in 2015 then we created the the hard copies, and I did the signature in in Beirut in, like, early 2018 but like, it's, it's online, and it's a very, like light book, let's say very romantic. It's about love in prison. I'm really keen to write again, like maybe a kind of self narrative or about the stories that I lived and i i I heard during my my journey. Unfortunately, like to write needs like this a little stable situation, but I did write many like legal or human rights book or like guides or studies, etc.

Michael Hingson 43:34

Now is waiting still available online?

Noura Ghazi 43:37

Yes, it's still available online.

Michael Hingson 43:40

Okay? It would be great if you could, if you have a picture of the book cover, if you could send that to me, because I'd like to put that in the notes. I would appreciate it if you would, okay, for sure. But anyway, so the the company you founded, what is it called

Noura Ghazi 44:02

it's a non government, a non profit organization. Its name is no photo zone.

Michael Hingson 44:07

And how did you come up with that name?

Noura Ghazi 44:12

It was Vasil who come up with this name, because our main focus is on prisoners of conscious and disappeared. So for him, it was that okay, those places that they put disappeared in them. They are they. There is no cameras to show the others what is happening. So we should be the the like in the place of cameras to tell the world what is happening. So that's why no photos on me, like, means that prisons or like unofficial detention centers, because they're it's an all photo zone, right?

Michael Hingson 44:54

And no photo zone is is still operating today.

Noura Ghazi 44:58

It's still operating. We are extending our work, although, like we have lots of financial challenges because of, like, funds issues, but for us, the main issue, we provide legal services to victims of torture, detention, disappearance and their families. So we operate in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey. We are a French woman led organization, but we have registration in Turkey and Syria, and like in seven years now, almost seven years, we could provide our services to more than 3000 families who most of them are women, and they are responsible about kids who they don't have fathers. So we defend political prisoners. We search the disappeared. We provide the legal services related to personal and civil status. We provided the services related to identification documents, because it's a very big issue in Syria. Beside we provide rehabilitation, like full rehabilitation programs for survivors of detention or torture, and also advocacy. Of course, it's a very important part of our our work, even with the lack of fund, we've decided in the team, because most of the team, or all the team, they they were themselves victims of detention, or family members of victims, even the non Syrian because we have many non Syrian member in the team. So for us, it's a cause. It's not like a work that we're doing and getting paid. So we're, we're suffering this this year with the fund issues, because there is a lot of change related to the world and Syrian issues, which affected the fund policies. So hopefully we'll be, we'll be fine next year, hopefully, and we're trying to survive with our beneficiaries this year,

Michael Hingson 47:02

yeah, well, you, you started receiving, and I assume no photo zone started receiving awards, and eventually you moved out of Lebanon. Tell me more about all of that.

Noura Ghazi 47:16

During my journey, I I got many international recognition or a word, including two by Amnesty International. But after almost two years, like just after covid, like the start of covid, I was thinking that I should have another residence permit in another country because, like, it became very difficult for Syrians to get a residence in Lebanon. So I I moved to Turkey, and I was between Lebanon and Turkey. Then I got a call from the French Embassy in Turkey telling me that there is a new kind of a word, which is Marianne award, or Marianne program, that initiated by the French president. And they it's for human rights defenders across the world, and they will give this award for 15 human rights defender from 15 country. And I was listening, I thought they want me to nominate someone. Then they told me that the French government are honored to choose you as a Syrian human rights defender. So it was a program for six months, so I moved to Paris with my cat and dog. Then they extended the program and to become nine months. And at the almost at the end of the program, the both of Lebanese and Turkish authorities refused to renew my residence permit, so I had to stay in France to apply for asylum and a political refugee currently.

Michael Hingson 49:10

And so you're in France. Are you still in Paris?

Noura Ghazi 49:13

I'm still yes in Paris. I learned French very fast, like in four months. Okay, I'm not perfect, but I learned French.

Michael Hingson 49:25

So what did your dog and cat think about all that? Sorry, what did your dog and cat think about moving to France?

Noura Ghazi 49:33

They are French, actually, originally, they are friends.

Michael Hingson 49:36

Oh, there you go.

Noura Ghazi 49:38

My, my poor dog had like he he was English educated, so we used to communicate in English. Then when I was still in Lebanon, I thought, okay, a lot of Syrians are coming to my place, and they don't speak English, so I have to teach him Arabic. Then we moved to Turkish. So I had to teach him Turkish. Then we came to. France. So now my dog understand more than four languages,

Michael Hingson 50:06

good for him, and and, of course, your cat is really the boss of the whole thing, right?

Noura Ghazi 50:12

Of course, she is like, the center of the universe,

Michael Hingson 50:16

yeah, yeah, just ask her. She'll tell you. And she's

Noura Ghazi 50:20

very white, so she is 14 years. Oh, it's old, yes.

Michael Hingson 50:29

Well, I have a cat we rescued in 2015 we think she was five then. So we think that my cat is 15 going on 16. So, and she moves around and does very well.

Noura Ghazi 50:46

Yeah, my cat as well.

Michael Hingson 50:49

Yeah. Well, that's the way it should be. So with all the things that you've been dealing with and all the stress, have you had?

Noura Ghazi 50:59

PTSD, yes, I started, of course, like it's the minimum, actually, I have PTSD and the TSD, and I started to feel, or let's say, I could know that the what is happening with me is PTSD two years ago. I before, like, couple of months before, I started to feel like something unusual in my body, in my mind. At the beginning, we thought there is a problem in the brain. Then the psychologist and psychiatrist said that it's a huge level of PTSD, which is like the minimum, and like, we should start the journey of of treatment, which is like the behavior treatment and medical treatment as well. Like, some people could stay 10 years. Some people need to go to hospital. It's not the best thing, but sometimes I feel I'm grateful that I'm having PTSD because I'm able to deal with people who are in the same situation. I could feel them, understand them, so I could help them more, because I understand and as a human rights defender and like victim of lot of kind of violations, so I'm very aware about the like, let's call it the first aid, the psychological first aid support. And this is helpful somehow. Okay, I'm suffering, but this suffering is useful for others

Michael Hingson 52:47

well and clearly, you are at a point where you can talk about it, which says a lot, because you're able to deal with it well enough to be able to talk about it, which I think is probably pretty important, don't you think?

Noura Ghazi 53:03

Yeah, actually, the last at the first time I talked about it very publicly in a conference in Stockholm, it was last October, and then I thought it's important to talk about it. And I'm also thinking to do something more about PTSD, especially the PTSD related to to prisons, torture, etc, this kind of violations, because sharing experience is very important. So I'm still thinking about a kind of certain way to to like, to spread my experience with PTSD, especially that I have lot of changes in in my life recently, because I got married again, and even the the good incident that people who have PTSD, even if they have, like good incident, but it cause a kind of escalation with PTSD,

Michael Hingson 54:00

yeah, but you got married again, so you have somebody you can talk with.

Noura Ghazi 54:06

Yes, I got married five months ago. The most important that I could fall in love again. So I met my husband in in Paris. He's a Lebanese artist who live in Paris. And yeah, I have, I have a family now, like we have now three cats and a dog and us as couple. But it's very new for me, like this kind of marriage, that a marriage which I live with a partner, because the marriage I used to is that visit the husband in prison. I'm getting used to it.

Michael Hingson 54:43

And just as always, the cat runs everything, right? Yes, of course, of course. So tell me about the freedom prize in Normandy.

Noura Ghazi 54:55

Oh, it was like one of the best thing I had in my life. I. Was nominated for the freedom prize, which is launched by usually they are like young people who who nominate the the nominees for this prize, but it's launched by the government of Normandy region in France and the International Institute for Human Rights and peace. So among hundreds of files and, like many kind of round of, like short listing, there was me, a Belarusian activist who is detained, and a Palestinian photographer. So like, just knowing that I was nominated among more than 700 person was a privilege for me. The winner was the Palestinian photographer, but it was the first time they invite the other nominee to the celebration, which was on the same date of like liberating Normandy region during the Second World War. So I chose, I thought for my for couple of days about what I will wear, because I need to deliver a message. So I, I I came up with an idea about a white dress with 101 names in blue. Those names are for disappeared and detainees in Syria. So like there was, there was seven persons who worked on this dress, and I had the chance to wear it and to deliver my message and to give a speech in a very important day that even like those fighters during the Second World War who are still alive, they they came from us. They came from lot of countries. I had the privilege to see them directly, to touch them, to tell them thank you, and to deliver my message in front of an audience of 4500 persons. And it's like I love this dress, and like this event was one of the best thing I had in my life.

Michael Hingson 57:21

Do you have a picture of you in the dress? Yes, I would think you do. Well, if you want, we'd love to put that in the show notes as well, especially because you're honoring all those people with the names and so on. Kind of cool. Well, okay, so, so Syria, you're, you're saying, in a lot of ways, hasn't, hasn't really changed a whole lot. It's, it's still a lot of dictatorship oriented kinds of things, and they discriminate against certain sex and and so on. And that's extremely unfortunate, because I don't think that that's the impression that people have over here,

Noura Ghazi 58:02

exactly I had a chance to visit Syria, a kind of exceptional visit by the French government, because, as political refugees were not allowed to visit our country of origin. And of course, like after eight years, like out of Syria after six years without seeing my family. Of course, I was very happy, but I was very traumatized, and I I came back to Paris in in July 21 and since that time, I feel I'm not the same person before going to Syria. I'm full of frustration. I feel that, okay, I just wasted 14 years of my life for nothing. But hopefully I'm I'm trying to get better because okay, I know, like much of human rights violations mean that my kind of work and activism is more needed, yeah,

Michael Hingson 59:03

so you'll so you'll continue to speak out and and fight for freedom.

Noura Ghazi 59:10

Yes, I continue, and I will continue fighting for freedom, for dignity, for justice, for civil rights, and also raising awareness about PTSD and how we could invest even our pain for the sake of helping others.

Michael Hingson 59:29

Well, I want to tell you that it's been an honor to have you on the podcast, and I am so glad we we got a chance to talk and to do this because having met you previously, in our introductory conversation, it was very clear that there was a story that needed to be told, and I hope that a lot of people will take an interest, and that it will will allow what you do to continue to grow, if people would like to reach out to you. And and help or learn more. How do they do that?

Noura Ghazi 1:00:05

We you have the the link of my website that people could connect me, because it includes my my email, my personal email, and I always reply. So I'm happy to to talk with the to contact with people, and it also include all the all my social media,

Michael Hingson 1:00:23

right? What? What's the website for? No photo zone.

Noura Ghazi 1:00:27

It's no photo zone.org. No photo zone.org.

Michael Hingson 1:00:30

I thought it was, but I just wanted you to say it. I wanted you to say it.

Noura Ghazi 1:00:35

It's included in my website.

Michael Hingson 1:00:37

Yeah, I've got it all and and it will all be in the show notes, but I just thought I would get you to say no photo zone.org Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a wonderful time to have a chance to talk, and I appreciate you taking the time to, I hope, educate lots of people. So thank you very much for doing that, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching. We'd love you to give us a five star rating. Give us a review. We really appreciate ratings and reviews. So wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast, please give us a five star rating. Please review the podcast for us. We value that, and I know that Nora will will appreciate that as well. Also, if you if you know any guests, and Nora you as well, if you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on the podcast, we would really appreciate it. If you would let us know you can reach me. At Michael M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you. Love to hear your thoughts about the podcast. So Nora, very much my I want to thank you again. This has been great. Thank you very much for being here.

Noura Ghazi 1:01:56

Thank you Michael, and thank you for those who are listening, and we're still in touch.

Episode 416 – An Unstoppable Approach to Orientation and Mobility with Mel Stephens

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 10:00:01 -0000

What if blindness wasn’t a limitation but a blessing?

In this conversation, I talk with Mel Stephens from Australia, a third-generation blind woman living with Rod Cone Dystrophy who believes blindness has given her more gifts than loss. We explore accessibility, guide dogs, mainstream education, Braille literacy, technology, YouTube, independence, discrimination, and what it really means to have a different ability. Mel shares how she built a life around horses, travel, cruising, and running a business, while pushing back against outdated views of blindness. You will hear honest insights about mindset, community acceptance, blind skills, and why learning Braille and orientation mobility still matter in a high-tech world. I believe you will find this both practical and deeply encouraging.

Highlights:

00:09 – Hear why blindness is described as a blessing rather than a tragedy.

03:09 – Discover why the real challenge is public perception, not vision loss itself.

11:13 – Learn how mainstream schooling built independence and strong blind skills.

25:17 – Explore the difference between disability and different ability.

50:20 – Understand why relying too much on technology can weaken core mobility skills.

1:01:13 – Get direct advice for anyone losing eyesight or raising a blind child.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

Mel Stephens is a third-generation blind YouTuber from Australia. With parents who are both blind or vision impaired, she grew up learning to stand on her own two feet. A proud guide dog handler, Mel is now teamed up with her second dog, Penelope. She’s always been an animal lover—mad for cats, dogs, and horses—and has two of her own, Maggie and Abby. To her knowledge, she’s one of the only blind Aussies to rescue and rehabilitate a horse, which she reckons is a pretty fair dinkum achievement.

A country girl through and through, Mel has spent most of her life in towns with fewer than 5,000 people, and there’s no way you’ll catch her living in the big smoke. That said, she does love a yearly trip to Sydney, where she soaks up the atmosphere of the footy and the city buzz—though after a week she’s happy to nick off back to the quiet life.

When she’s not looking after her animals or working as a PA for an orientation and mobility instructor, Mel’s usually off travelling. She’s train-mad—can’t get enough of them—and throws in the odd cruise for good measure. Her adventures are made possible thanks to skills she’s built since she was a kid, including mental mapping, echolocation, and her trusty guide dog partnership.

Mel doesn’t reckon blindness is a disability at all—it’s just another way of seeing the world. With a positive, no-worries attitude, she loves showing others that people who are blind or vision impaired can do pretty much anything if given the chance.

Ways to connect with Mel**:**

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melsblindlife/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Personal-Blog/Mels-Blind-Life-1326898004158153/

Blog: https://melsblindlife.wordpress.com/author/mickmate9/

Guide Dog Penelope Instagram: https://instagram.com/guidedogpenelope?utm_medium=copy_link

Guide Dog Penelope FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/pennyguidedog/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Episode 415 – Unstoppable Resilience: From Performing Arts to Empowerment Coaching with Teresa Hill-Putnam

Tue, 17 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when a thriving performing arts career collides with a rare autoimmune disease?

In this episode, I talk with Teresa Hill-Putnam about resilience, Myasthenia Gravis, positive thinking, and building an unstoppable mindset. Teresa owned a large performing arts school for 35 years before COVID and health risks forced her to pivot to virtual teaching. She shares how she was diagnosed after respiratory failure, how she learned to take life one day at a time, and why she believes in flipping the script when challenges hit. We also discuss empowerment coaching, motivational speaking, raising confident children, and her nonprofit, Performers with Purpose Foundation. Teresa’s story proves that setbacks can become stepping stones when you choose growth, purpose, and persistence. I believe you will find this conversation both practical and inspiring.

Highlights:

00:56 Learn how early dance training helped her overcome childhood shyness and build confidence.

05:03 Hear how a sudden health collapse led to a myasthenia gravis diagnosis.

12:33 Discover why taking one day at a time became her key to resilience.

20:05 Understand why she refused to quit despite being told to go on disability.

22:58 See how COVID forced a rapid shift to virtual teaching and musicals.

56:50 Learn how her nonprofit now provides thousands of Christmas gifts to children in need.

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

About the Guest:

After Owning and Directing a large performing Arts School for over 35 years, Teresa Hill-Putnam is now a Performance Coach & Empowerment CoachinLos Angeles, California. Teresa is also a published author, Motivational Speaker, and Special Events Coordinator.

Teresa has been teaching since 1985. She now coaches singers, actors, dancers, and performers from all around the world. She helps artists master their skills, materials, and mindset. Teresa has helped hundreds of artists develop their talents, follow their dreams, and successfully pursue their career goal.

In 1999, Teresa got very sick. In less than a week, she went from being able to dance and hold her leg above her head, to not being able to sit up, roll over, or even feed herself. She was in and out of the hospital for 18 months before she was finally diagnosed with a chronic neuro-muscular disease called Myasthenia Gravis.

Teresa has learned to take one day at a time and make the most out of every day. Today, Teresa is happy and healthy. Most people do not even know that she has Myasthenia Gravis. Teresa believes that everyone has a story. She hopes to inspire others by sharing hers. Teresa has published eight books and has a podcast called "Overcoming Obstacles Through Positive Thinking." She has even been featured in in several documentaries.

In 2018, Teresa helped to create non-profit called the Performers With Purpose Foundation. She directs performances year-round to help raise money for important community causes. Teresa’s favorite project is the PWP annual “Sub for Santa” project. Each year, the Performers With Purpose Foundation provides gifts, toys, and clothing to underprivileged children during the holiday season. After years of being a single, working mom living with a chronic illness, Teresa understands how difficult the holiday season can be for struggling families. Being able to “adopt” families that need help brings Teresa an immense amount of joy! Teresa’s most important accomplishment is being a Mom and a "Grammy." Teresa raised her own three children to become happy, healthy, and successful adults. Her oldest daughter owns a Performing Arts School in Denver and has two adorable little boys. Her son is in the United States Air Force and has two darling little boys and a beautiful baby girl. Teresa’s youngest daughter, Amber Mackenzie, is a professional actor, singer, dancer and screenwriter. Teresa currently works as Amber’s Performance Coach and Booking Manager.

Teresa uses her experiences as a mother, "Grammy," teacher, patient, coach, and entrepreneur to help inspire, guide, challenge, motivate, support, and encourage others toward success.

Ways to connect with Teresa**:**

Teresa's website: www.spotlightperformers.com

Performers With Purpose Foundation website: www.performerswithpurposefoundation.com.

Teresa’s podcast,, can be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, You Tube, or your favorite streaming platform.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAIx8SkZwXXPdNOkzPNHJZFwYne7yo3oG\&si=d1yL7Sp4FNRLXdmS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/teresa.hillputnam?mibextid=wwXIfr\&mibextid=wwXIfr

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teresahillputnam?igsh=eTJwazg1enRkb3N2\&utm_source=qr

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresa-hill-putnam-4bb92941?utm_source=share\&utm_campaign=share_via\&utm_content=profile\&utm_medium=ios_app

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:17

Well, hello, once again, everyone, wherever you happen to be in the world, I appreciate you being here. You are listening to or watching or both. Unstoppable mindset. Our guest today, Teresa Hill Putnam, used to own a pretty good size performing arts school, but today she's a performing arts coach, and she she does other things as well, and I'm going to let her tell you more about it, because it's no fun. If I give everything away, then what is there to talk about? So, Teresa, you like that? Huh? Yeah, great. So, Teresa, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 01:56

Well, thanks so much for having me. Well, why don't

Michael Hingson 01:59

we start as I love to do all the time. Why don't you tell us, kind of about the early Teresa growing up and all that?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 02:07

Well, I started dancing when I was about two and a half, three years old, and grew up as a dancer. And I was actually very, very shy as a child, and that's why my parents put me into dance classes, I would hide behind my mom, and so put me into the performing arts, and that helped me gain some confidence, and I was a good student. And just love the performing arts. I started my first business teaching the neighborhood students when I was 14, and all of my cousins and and stuff so much enjoyed that, and that grew into, you know, my next love, which is owning a studio, which I for 35 years in Colorado.

Michael Hingson 02:57

Now, what did your mom do? Dude? Was she a dancer? Did she do any of that?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 03:02

My mom, yeah. My mom grew up dancing. She wasn't really a dancer. She was a dance student growing up, my mom is an artist. My dad is a drummer. And, you know, I kind of just grew up in the in the arts world. And, you know, loved it from before I could even remember.

Michael Hingson 03:25

So, so your dad is a drummer. Yeah, he plays professionally.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 03:30

He did up until covid, and then things kind of shut everything down, and he hasn't really picked it back up since then.

Michael Hingson 03:37

Unfortunately, that's too bad we always need talent in the world, I know right, of course. Now, being a fan of old westerns like Gunsmoke, when you say he's a drummer, I'd say, what kind of whiskey did he sell? But that's a different story. Yeah, a little bit different. Yeah. Couldn't resist though, that's that's cool. Well, so you, you come by, although you were shy, you come by performing pretty honestly from parents who both did and do it or did it correct. So where did you? Where did you grow up in Denver, or where,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 04:14

you know, I was kind of all over. My dad got transferred a lot. So I spent some time in Kansas. I spent some time in Oklahoma, Utah, even a little bit of time in Hawaii and Colorado, just kind of all over. Most of my time, I guess, was spent at the University of Utah with the training with the School of Ballet West there.

Michael Hingson 04:36

So what, what work did your dad do when you were growing up that transferred you around, or

Teresa Hill-Putnam 04:40

the mom he was with the American stores company, Skaggs, drugs, gags, alphabeta,

Michael Hingson 04:47

okay, so

Teresa Hill-Putnam 04:48

they transferred him around a lot, so we went wherever dad needed to be,

Michael Hingson 04:53

but they kept him, which meant he must be successful. He must have been successful.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 04:58

Yeah, he was. He was really great at. It.

Michael Hingson 05:00

That's pretty cool. So you went to the University of Utah, and what degree did you get?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 05:06

Actually, I was in the dance department.

Michael Hingson 05:10

That makes sense, of course. What a silly thing to ask. So you graduated. What did you do after you graduated.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 05:21

Um, can just continued. I had my own school already.

Michael Hingson 05:24

Had your own school already. So you started out while you were in college, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 05:29

So you started out late high school, okay?

Michael Hingson 05:33

So you had the you had the entrepreneurial spirit, right from the

Teresa Hill-Putnam 05:37

outset, yes, sir.

Michael Hingson 05:41

Well, that's pretty cool. Well, so you, you, you had that school for 35 years, and what made you decide not to do that anymore? Well, when

Teresa Hill-Putnam 05:54

covid hit it, I have a disease called myasthenia gravis, and I've been on prednisone for 25 years, and so when covid hit, I'm very high risk, and so I had to get out of the classroom. Couldn't be around the kids very much because of the germs, not just covid, but the flu, and, yeah, strep and everything else. And so I decided to continue the virtual direction. And my daughter was doing the the in person, so I did all the online, and she did the in person. We did that for a little while. And then my youngest child, who was 17 at the time, needed to come to Los Angeles in order to pursue her career, which is film, television and music. And so I decided, you know, obviously a 17 year old is not coming to Los Angeles alone. So and I was teaching virtually anyway. So we put everything we owned in storage, sold the house, and moved to Los Angeles to follow a dream. Wow.

Michael Hingson 07:02

And how's that going? It's going great.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 07:05

That's cool. Yeah, we just got off of a six week music tour with her that we went on for the summer, and that was fun. And now we're back here, and she had a short film audition this morning. And you know, she just keeps, you know, between the the film, television and music, we're staying pretty

Michael Hingson 07:25

busy all necessary things to have around in a good fun world, yes, by any standard. Well, so when did you discover you had Myasthenia grab us?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 07:36

Well, in 1999 I started getting super sick. I went from being able to dance and, you know, hold my leg above my head and, you know, I had all the strength and and everything, and then within about a week, I couldn't even get out of bed. I just went downhill. So quickly I had no strength. Was struggling to breathe, was struggling to eat, swallow, I couldn't lift my arms or my legs, couldn't walk, couldn't sit up. And then they they did a lot of tests on me. Nothing was coming back positive. They couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. It took about 18 months to figure that out, and finally, 2001 they diagnosed me with myasthenia gravis.

Michael Hingson 08:27

So, so what is that disease Exactly? I've heard of it, but I don't know a lot about most

Teresa Hill-Putnam 08:31

people don't know what it is, actually, so I'm I'm surprised you've even heard of it. It's quite rare. It's an it's a neuromuscular disease. It's autoimmune. And basically, my brain is telling my body what to do, but my muscles don't always respond. It's a disconnect between the nerve and the muscle. So I take medicine called mestinon. I take it about every four hours, and what it does is it acts like a television antenna, and it connects my muscles to my nerves and makes my muscles work.

Michael Hingson 09:05

It brings them back into line so they do what they're told, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 09:09

Yeah, and without it, my muscles don't work. And with it, my muscles work. So it the drug itself was created as an antidote for nerve gas, interestingly, and it works great for myasthenia gravis, um, you know, I'm still on prednisone, which will that helps with the autoimmune part of it, but then the mestanon helps with the symptoms. It's, you know, there's no cure, there's just treatments. And luckily for me, you know, the treatments do work. I had my chest cut open in 2001 and had my thymus removed, which is a little tiny gland that's next to your heart. And so anyway, they took it out. It's supposed to be the size of a green pea, and they got mine out, and it was bigger than the doctor's. Hand, wow. And they took they sent it away to do testing. They thought for sure, it must be cancer, because it was so big. Well, it wasn't. It was healthy, luckily. But getting rid of the thymus, my body was attacking itself, and that helped a lot. But it, you know, like I said, there's no cure it. There's just treatments, and that was one of the treatments, and now I'm doing great. You know, I still have to take the medicine every day and whatnot, but most people don't even know that I'm that I have anything that I'm sick at all.

Michael Hingson 10:33

Do you wake up during the night to take medicines? You said every four hours?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 10:37

Yep, usually I do. And if I don't, I wake up real weak, and then it just it takes me about two hours to kind of get my body going again. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 10:47

So is this a genetic disease?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 10:50

You know, they say it's not. However, I have a cousin with Myasthenia. My mom has it, and so does my oldest daughter. And so even though they say it's not genetic, I don't know if they really know the genetic makeup of this. So, you know, yes, I say it is because, you know, obviously, in my family it is, but, you know, I don't know,

Michael Hingson 11:14

yeah, well, it's kind of one of those things that, over time, people will learn more about it. I mean, it's like, like autism. I've talked to a number of people on this podcast who felt when they were growing up that they were different or or something wasn't right, and when they were adults, they were diagnosed as being on the spectrum. And I subscribe to the to the theory that one of the biggest increases in autism has come about because we're learning more about it and we measure it more Absolutely, measure it more accurately, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 11:52

So, and I think that myasthenia gravis has become a lot more well known, and it's becoming a little bit easier to be diagnosed. I mean, like I said, it took them 18 months to diagnose me, but that was back in 1999 and I'm hearing, you know, I'm on a lot of different platforms with other patients with myasthenia gravis. And you know, some it takes them a long time to get diagnosed, but oftentimes the doctors are more familiar with it now, and people are getting diagnosed a little bit quicker. Thank goodness. Yeah, well, I was in respiratory failure before they figured out what was wrong with me

Michael Hingson 12:29

and those but those are the kinds of things that will come along and hopefully help people be more accurate in diagnosis in the future, as well as playing out, not figuring out what it is. And people, hopefully, over time, will spend more of their efforts learning how to actually cure it. But that's, of course, another story.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 12:47

Yeah, well, and there are a lot of new treatments available. I haven't tried anything else, only because what I've got is working. So why mess with it? Right? But I was in a documentary. Actually, we filmed during covid For this documentary. It's called a mystery to me, and it's all about myasthenia gravis. And, you know, it was a company that that that did the documentary, is a company that it now has other treatments available, which is fantastic.

Michael Hingson 13:25

So yeah, and once people start paying attention to these kinds of things, those are the the very concepts that help more and more people truly understand it, which is great, absolutely. Yeah, so since you became ill with this, what have you learned?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 13:44

Oh, I have learned so much. It's amazing. You know, I wouldn't wish illness on anybody, sure, however, because I got sick, I have learned to take one day at a time. I've learned to appreciate things a lot more than I ever used to. When I got sick, I was working, you know, like, 60 hours a week, you know, so stressed about, you know, being the best at everything and and doing doing everything. I was definitely a workaholic. And one thing that I've, what you know, learned over the years, especially after I got sick, was to just take one day at a time, do the best I can do every single day, and try to make the most of every day that I have. You know, you never know when life is going to

Michael Hingson 14:38

change, right? And you don't know how it's going to change Absolutely.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 14:44

And I've also learned to flip the script a lot. You know, if something is negative, I try to flip it and turn it into a positive, and try to learn from every setback. And, you know, look at it differently, like instead of, you know, oh, this is off. All this. You know, this is happening to me. This is terrible. I try to flip it and say, Why is this happening to me? What am I supposed to learn from this and becoming more positive and more mindful?

Michael Hingson 15:13

So what kind of answers have you gotten turning myasthenia gravis into a positive

Teresa Hill-Putnam 15:21

Well, I mean, just learning to take every day at a time. Yeah, you know, one day at a time. I mean, some days I wake up and I feel fantastic, and I can do everything that's on my to do list for the day. And other days I, you know, wake up and I don't feel so great, and so I just kind of have to do what is necessary and prioritize a little bit more. So yeah, I have a running to do list all the time. It's on my phone. And you know, some things get checked off and some things don't. And you know, what doesn't happen today will happen tomorrow or next week, or whenever it gets done.

Michael Hingson 15:57

It does help you put a lot of things in perspective, doesn't it? It sure does. And there's a lot of value in that. And you know, some of these things you just didn't have any control over happening, but you certainly do have control over how you decide to deal with it, absolutely. So that's that kind of makes a lot of sense well. So you own this performing arts studio for 35 years. Tell me more about that. What does that entail? What what did you learn from doing that? It must have been obviously a school that that grew, and you had to learn a lot to go along with it. But tell me about all that.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 16:38

Well, I started out with just myself teaching, and then it grew and grew and grew, and at one point I had nine full time teachers and 700 students, and decided that that was more than I liked. I didn't enjoy that so much because that put me out of the classroom and more in an administrative role, and I really missed teaching. So we slowly, kind of actually downsized the school rather, you know, you always hear about businesses trying to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Well, we got too big too fast. And so over time, we downsize the school a bit. And I got back into the classroom, which is where I so much, you know, much appreciated being in the classroom. I love teaching. And I just felt like when I was in the office all the time, I wasn't making a big enough difference in the lives of the people that I was working with. And that's, I mean, my purpose is in life is to make the world a better place. And I felt like I was just, you know, maneuvering people where they needed to be, but I wasn't actually, you know, making that big of a difference when I had such a big school. So anyway, we taught ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, musical theater, voice lessons. You know, everything was within our school, and I decided about 250 300 students was about where I really that that was the right number for us. So it worked out great.

Michael Hingson 18:23

Well, that's how many people did you have in a class, typically at a

Teresa Hill-Putnam 18:26

time, usually, well, it depends on the class. I guess that's true. You know, if it was a musical theater class, it might be 25 kids. If it was a ballet class with three and four year olds, it might be eight kids, so it just kind of all depends. We also offered private lessons, and you know, it, it just all depended upon the age group and the type of class being taught.

Michael Hingson 18:54

Yeah, that makes sense, but I hear exactly what you're saying. I really love to teach. And when I was in college at UC Irvine, My desire was to graduate, get advanced degrees and then go into teaching. Well, that that changed, and I didn't get to do that directly, but over time for me, I ended up getting back into teaching, in a sense, because after September 11, now I do a lot of teaching about not only disabilities, but about leadership and trust, and I realize that, in fact, we're all teachers, and we all can can take advantage of being able to be teachers to help other people. One of the things that I always told every sales person that I ever hired was be a student for a year, ask questions. You'll learn a lot more that way, and your customers want you to succeed. Your customers are generally not jerks, and they want you to succeed. So give them the opportunity.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 19:58

Well, and everybody has a story. Yeah, and it's important that we all share our story. You never know. You know your story might be somebody else's, you know, safety net, you you might help them figure out their solution to their own life just by sharing your story. So I think it's very important that we, you know, get back to the basics and start, you know, talking to people and sharing our stories and helping each other out. Well.

Michael Hingson 20:27

And I believe, well, I believe absolutely that's what the whole purpose of unstoppable mindset is all about. This podcast is all about giving people the opportunity to tell their stories. Because, in fact, I think everyone has a story or stories to tell, and some of those stories are going to be about challenges they faced, and maybe nobody else has faced them, but they did, and so it's important to tell those stories to help them, but also because we're showing anyone who is involved in observing this podcast that they're more unstoppable than they think they are, and I think we really way too much undersell what we can do and what we should be doing. So I'm really glad to have that possibility and opportunity here

Teresa Hill-Putnam 21:16

well, and I don't know how many times my doctors told me over the years to quit my job and go on disability because it was just too much and I wasn't physically going to be able to do it. And, you know, I didn't do that, and I'm so glad I didn't do that. You know, I just kept going and and hopefully that experience taught my my own children, for one, but also my students and their families, hopefully it taught them, you know, endurance, yeah, and the importance of, you know, the show must go on, you just keep going.

Michael Hingson 21:50

So when you when you had the studio and so on, people were aware that you had

Teresa Hill-Putnam 21:58

myasthenia gravis. Yes, there were several years that I was very sick, I would come in when I was well, and otherwise I would have to, you know, when I was well enough. Otherwise I would have to rely on my employees,

Michael Hingson 22:10

yeah, so they were run, Oh,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 22:12

yeah. Everybody was very aware of it.

Michael Hingson 22:15

And and the point is, though, that that is why, by any definition, you were able to teach them about endurance and and resilience.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 22:24

Yes, you know, there, there were several years there that, you know, I didn't know if I was going to make it. Yeah, so, you know, but I, but we kept, we kept on going. I didn't close the doors. So you, you made the choice. Yes, well, and over the 35 years, we had a we had a fire in the building, which wiped us out. We had to go to a temporary facility while they fixed the fire. And then we also a dam broke above where the studio was, and it completely flooded the whole shopping center where the studio was, and we had like, six inches of mud throughout the entire studio. So we had to go to a temporary facility for that. And then, of course, you know, well, well, we got, actually, we got robbed. At one point, they broke in and broke all the windows and, like, ransacked the office and stuff. Luckily, we didn't lose a whole lot there, other than the windows and, you know, sense of security, yeah. But nobody was hurt, so that that was good. It happened in the middle of the night. And then, of course, covid, you know, which shut us all down for a while, and we had to go. We shut down on a Friday and Monday morning, we opened virtual. And I didn't even know that that was a thing at the time. To be honest with you, I had never done anything virtually. And look at me now. I mean, that's pretty much all I do is virtual teaching, which, you know, everything happens for a reason. And you know, I I'm not thrilled that covid happened. However, it didn't teach me a lot about what is possible.

Michael Hingson 24:09

When did you actually close the the the studio? Um, or when did you switch ownership?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 24:15

I we switched in July of 2021 Oh, okay, when my daughter took over and and turned it into her own school. Her school is called amplified arts. Our school together was spotlight Performing Arts Center, and then she bought the school. It's all hers and it hers is now amplified arts. And then I run my company, which is now called Spotlight performers. Which, like I said, I do, I do coaching for children, you know, in the performing arts, vocal acting and dance, and then I work as a performance and empowerment coach for professional entertainers, any

Michael Hingson 24:58

professional entertainers. Trainers we would would have heard of.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 25:02

You know, I can't really tell that information because of confidentiality. Yeah, I got it, but I do work with my own daughter. I can tell you that her name is Anthony Mackenzie, and she's pretty amazing.

Michael Hingson 25:16

Let me rephrase the question, just for fun, any any performers that we would have heard of, not mentioning names. But have you worked with them other besides you famous people?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 25:28

Yes, okay, yeah, I'm very confidential with my students only you know they're in the public eye. So yeah.

Michael Hingson 25:42

Well, no, that's fine, but it's neat that you're well recognized, and you you get to continue to to do that sort of thing, which is really pretty cool. Tell me more about how you do this virtually, because I I took dance when I was growing up, although I've forgotten a lot of of the steps and so on and but I remember, you know, some of what I did, but still, I appreciate the whole concept of virtual but how do you do that?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 26:13

Well, we have a little area set up in our home that, you know, that I teach. But when during covid, we actually turned the entire master bedroom of my house into a dance studio, and had, you know, we moved the bars, and we moved, you know, everything. We ripped out the carpet and put in the dance floors and did all of that, and just teach like a normal class, yeah, yeah. And we now for dance, I just do private lessons at this point. So, you know, it's a lot easier, you know, space wise, to only do one on one, but it worked out during covid as well.

Michael Hingson 26:53

So, so when you're when you're teaching dance, how many cameras do you have that you you have running in the virtual environment like that, usually just the one, really, and it can, and it can show everything from footwork to whatever else you need.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 27:08

Yep, cool. Well, and we adjust the distance from the camera based on what it is that that needs to be observed, right? Well, so, yeah,

Michael Hingson 27:20

I have done some speaking virtually. I can do it. I don't like virtual for me, as well as performing live,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 27:30

no And mainly, well for

Michael Hingson 27:33

me, especially, I don't get any feedback from the audience. So when I'm speaking and I'm in front of an audience there, when I'm when I'm speaking, I know what to expect, or I know what kind of reactions, having done this for 23 and a half years, I know what kind of reactions I should be getting based on whatever I'm saying, but I don't get that same information in a virtual environment. So it's a little bit more of a challenge, but I've done it long enough that I know I can. Can do it virtually if I need to,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 28:07

well, and it's kind of hard to read the room when you're in a virtual setting, you can't hear them, you can't, you know, I can't see them, you know, as much. So it's kind of hard to read the room as well. You don't get the the feedback from the audience as much in a virtual setting, but I do also motivational speaking events, and I do love having an audience.

Michael Hingson 28:30

Yeah, one of the things that fascinated me during covid was how different groups put on virtual concerts, and they were able to to figure out how to time it so that it sounded just as natural as if they were all there together. That that's gotta be a challenge.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 28:51

Well, it is a challenge. You know, I do a lot of Voice Lessons like, you know, singing lessons with my students on on Zoom, and there's a setting on zoom that you have to switch to be original sound for musicians. If you don't switch that, then the sound is kind of funny, and there is a little bit of a time delay, so it's, you know, it is harder to do things as a group, you know, and for, like, music, concerts and stuff like that, because there is a time delay, and everybody's Internet is a little bit different with speed. And so, yeah, it is a challenge. Luckily, most of what I do with the the music is one on one, and so it makes it much easier. They play their music from their home, or, you know, their office, or wherever they are. So you know, there's no time delay with the music and their voice. It's the same. But when I'm playing the piano and they're singing to the piano, I just have to go slower, because then I realize that there is a little bit of a time delay. Or.

Michael Hingson 30:00

Once, once they start singing, you can then customize your playing to that. It is a lot easier with one i It seems to me that I recall news broadcast during covid Where whole Philharmonic orchestras figured out ways to perform virtual school.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 30:20

Yeah, you have to figure it all out when we when we were doing virtual learning, and we were doing classes, we were doing entire musicals virtually, and we performed several musicals with our classes completely virtual, and it was definitely different, yeah, but we made it work. The show must go on. We made it work.

Michael Hingson 30:44

What did you learn from that,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 30:47

that we can do it? There you go. So cool to learn that we could do anything we were scheduled, or I was scheduled to record this documentary, a mystery to me, and that was, you know, before covid hit, they were supposed to start filming in April, but we had been working on it for months and months and months prior to that. And then everything got shut down. And so they, the production company, sent out all of the cameras and the sound equipment and the lighting and everything to us and computers and everything, they send it all out to us. And my daughters helped the production company. We got everything set up in our home, and then somehow the production company was able to take over the computers and run everything virtually. It was the first time it ever happened, and because of it, they won lots of awards for this documentary, because we still filmed it. It that we still did it, and it was really super fun and educational for all of us. That's when my daughter really decided she had to come to LA that was it. She just, she really had the bug, then she really wanted to come to LA when she was seven. And I told her, you know, I'm a single mom, I've got a chronic illness. I'm running a business. I can't take you to LA when you're seven. If you still want to do it when you graduate from high school, then I'll take you to LA at that point. So she worked her tail off and graduated when she was 16 so that we could go to LA but it was filming that documentary that she was determined that was the end of it. She knew that was where she was going.

Michael Hingson 32:32

And I understand conceptually, and probably even a little bit more technically, how the documentary company was able to take control over the computers and so on. But the neat thing about that, from their standpoint, is, because they were able to control the computers, they were also able to help deal with the timing for what you were doing as well, which is pretty cool.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 32:56

It was amazing that it happened. Yeah, you know, I was just so, so pleased with how it all was put together. They did a great job, and it turned into a very nice piece.

Michael Hingson 33:08

So that's great. That is, that is really exciting. Well, so you, you eventually left the performing arts school. But why did you decide to become a performance and empowerment coach?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 33:27

Well, I started writing books in in 2010 and my goal was to always become a motivational speaker and to share my story and to empower people. But I had, you know, a little kid I at the time, my youngest was six. My two older kids were older. They're 10 and 14 years older than my my youngest, and because I got sick between my second and my third child, and couldn't have kids for a while because I was so sick. But anyway, I decided that in 2010 I really wanted to share my story and become a motivational speaker, and that kind of empowered me to become more of an empowerment coach. I mean, that was kind of what I wanted to do all along. And when I came to LA I didn't want to run a big school anymore. It was time for me to retire from that and, you know, teach virtually, one on one, students or clients. But I also wanted to help entertainers. I wanted to work with. There's a lot of entertainers that they get really frustrated with themself, or they get really down on themselves. You know, you hear about kids that you know were child actors, and then they got into drugs, or they got into, you know, a different direction, where it wasn't healthy. And so I really wanted to use, you know, my experience of working with kids over the. Years. I mean, I've worked with 1000s of kids over the years, and they've all had their own set of of problems and and abilities, I should say, not, certainly not all problems, but we've, we've overcome a lot, and I wanted to be able to share that, and be able to share that knowledge with the people that really needed it the most, and so, yeah, that's why I became a performance coach and an empowerment coach. I not only work with performers, but I also work with patients different types of chronic illnesses. One of my keynotes is the show must go on, and it's patient empowerment. And that would be the empowerment coaching, the step into your spotlight keynote that I do. It's the kind of it's called, create the life you want to live that's more for performance, you know, coaching that's more for singers, dancers, actors, performers, so that they can follow their dreams. But you know, then I also do, for just everybody, flip the script, which, again, we talked about how overcoming obstacles, just figuring out how to turn the negative to the positive, you know. So that's another one of the speeches that I give. And also, we live in a kind of a crazy world right now, right? Yeah. And I think it's really important that we all work to, you know, be the change that needs to happen in the world. So that's something that I also talk to, you know, different groups about, not only groups of like women's conferences and stuff, but also children, you know, teaching kids Dare to be different. You know, they don't have to follow the crowd, and adults don't have to follow the crowd. We can be the change. So, you know, empowerment coaching is goes hand in hand with performance coaching. When I'm working with entertainers, I have to empower them a lot to overcome the obstacles that they have. Might be imposter syndrome. It might be anxiety or, you know, believe it or not, even superstars have performance anxiety, or they get chased, right? So there's a lot of empowerment coaching that goes along with the performance coaching.

Michael Hingson 37:24

And it's it's so unfortunate that in our world, we don't really see enough where children are taught to have the confidence that they should have or that they can have. We, we don't really as much as we should encourage people to think about the impossible and how to make it possible, or, as I like to say it, what's wrong with saying, why not? You know, and then in going from there, we just don't teach that. We don't teach curiosity nearly as much as we should.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 38:04

That is true, and we got to remember that the kids are, you know, these little kids that are growing up now are our future leaders of tomorrow. You know, it's very important that we teach them how to handle these things.

Michael Hingson 38:16

Yeah, and we should be teaching people to be more curious. I keep hearing all the time about helicopter parents and so on, and they just really smother their kids so much, and the kids never get a chance to really explore, which is unfortunate, because that's the time to really explore, is when you're a kid. This is true. I do appreciate that there are a lot of other scary things that go on in the world, but you can still allow your child to be curious and explore without stifling all that creativity and saying, Well, you can't go outside because somebody might shoot you or something like that, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 38:57

Well, and you can keep your children safe, but also keep them involved, you know, you just have to be very aware of what your children are doing and you know, and and put them in activities that they're going to gain the confidence that they need and the skills that they need to be successful.

Michael Hingson 39:15

So I remember when I was growing up and the doctors, when it was discovered I was blind, told my parents to send me off to a home, because no blind child could ever grow up to do anything. And my parents said, You guys are wrong. Of course he can. And my father at the time, yeah, scary. I'm still trying to figure out what to do, aren't we, all right, yeah, well, there is that we grow up? Yeah, yeah, I'll never grow up, as Mary Martin said in Peter Pan, true, but, but my father owned in Chicago a television repair shop. Of course, you don't have those sorts of things anymore for TV to hide. You just go get a new one. But back then you replace to. You replaced resistors and capacitors and so on. And occasionally he took me on calls with him, and he said, Now, don't put your hand inside the TV, because it's plugged in, right? And you get shocked. I don't remember the circumstances. I don't know that I deliberately stuck my hand in the TV to see what would happen. But I did touch a TV in the wrong spot, and I did get a shock, and my dad saw it, and he said, see what happens. But as I recall, I wasn't trying to stick my hand in the TV, I was just trying to put my hand somewhere. Just ended up in the TV. But I did learn what electricity felt like which was a cool thing. Quite a shock. Yeah, quite a shock. I can't say whether that really led me to decide that I wanted to get a master's degree in physics, but still a lot of fun

Teresa Hill-Putnam 40:55

that we teach kids. You know that when they make a mistake, that they learn from it and they move on, and that mistakes are part of learning.

Michael Hingson 41:03

Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with that. Well. And I always tell my vocal

Teresa Hill-Putnam 41:06

students, for example, if you don't squeak, you're not working hard enough. Yeah, you got to get to a point where you squeak sometimes, or that you hit a wrong note, or, you know, whatever, if you always stay in a safety zone, you're not going to learn from it. So stretch and grow well, and there's certain safe places to stretch and grow. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 41:26

Mm, hmm, absolutely, which made perfect sense, yeah. Well, so as what's the difference between a performance coach and an empowerment coach? Well, a

Teresa Hill-Putnam 41:38

performance coach is a skills coach, so I teach kids to or clients, not just kids, adults as well, to sing, to dance, to act, to perform. Okay, we do? We work on the skills also we work on their career. So there's, you know, resume writing, there's headshot development, there's different profiles that you have to have. There's a lot with it. Career wise, that's not just skills, but in order to be an entertainer, there's certain things that you have to have, career wise, and then the last part of it is empowerment coaching. So Performance Coaching is a combination of all three. Empowerment coaching, on the other hand, is kind of something within itself. It's the motivational speaking. It's empowering people to, you know, overcome obstacles, to set goals, to to, like, create the lives that they want to live, to to dream. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Michael Hingson 42:43

And that makes sense, because that's what really empowerment is all about. And I think all too many of us could use a lot more empowerment coaching, because we underrate ourselves, which is, of course, what I said earlier, talking about unstoppable mindset. We, we underrate ourselves. We, we don't think we're nearly as unstoppable as we really are, because we sell ourselves short, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 43:06

Well, and people think that to be positive, to be a positive person, that you have to be positive all the time. But even positive people are not positive all the time. They have bad days they you know, they have days where they have a lot of anxiety, they have, they may have days where they really start to doubt themselves. It doesn't mean that you know you're not a positive person if you doubt yourself. It just means that you know being positive or being healthy is is a journey. It's, you know, it's not a destination. Life is a journey. And you know, there's highs and lows of every everyday life for everybody.

Michael Hingson 43:47

The idea, though, is that if you're a positive person, you are able to get to the point when you're not feeling positive. You recognize that, and you work to overcome that. Which is, yes, which is what a lot of people have to learn to do, which they haven't learned to do, but it would make sense if more people would focus on, alright, this happened. Why did it happen? What can I do about it? How do I learn from it? And that's the thing we don't teach ourselves nearly as much as we should about introspection and self analysis.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 44:22

Absolutely well, and I call it flip the script, because you know things are going to happen. You know life, life happens, and it's just a matter of how you deal with it. For example, the other night, I was picking my daughter up from work, and we noticed that we had a nail in our tire, and we were on our way home, and we noticed it was like 637 o'clock at night, and we had a nail in the tire, and there was no way we were going to get home without having a flat tire. So I turned around, and we went over to Costco, and we got the tire fixed. And rather than being all frustrated about it, we just went in. They said that they'd fix the tire, and we went to the the snack bar and

Michael Hingson 45:05

got some snack bar ice

Teresa Hill-Putnam 45:08

cream fixes everything, right? You know, when all else fails, eat chocolate, that's right, or chocolate ice cream, that's even better.

Michael Hingson 45:16

Sure, then you have a double whammy that fixes everything.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 45:19

Oh, I know, right? So, you know, it's just a matter of life happens, and not everything in life, even for positive people, is going to be positive. So you just have to figure out how to make things be the best. You know, I, I always say, you have to find the joy. You know, we go for walks every day, and I try to find smiley faces wherever I can, like with rocks and sticks. You know, they're smiley faces. Sometimes you'll find them on the sidewalk or whatever. And if we can't find them, we make them, you know, I find leaks and sticks, and we make smiley faces for other people to find. And you know, you just have to make your own fun and make your own happiness

Michael Hingson 46:03

for it, and things come up, as you said, and the fact of the matter is that you can decide how to deal with it. You didn't, apparently, have any control over that nail getting into that tire, but you had absolute control over how you decided to deal with it. Right? Happens all the time, and and we do have control over how we decide to deal with whatever comes along in life, but I agree, chocolate ice cream is the number one fix, right?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 46:30

Well, everything happens for a reason. Maybe we just need a chocolate ice cream that night, right? But you never know

Michael Hingson 46:36

what else might happen. You know. You never know who you might meet or what else might happen. So it's life is an adventure, and if we don't treat it as an adventure,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 46:45

what good are we? Absolutely, I agree.

Michael Hingson 46:50

So as a motivational speaker, who is your audience?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 46:53

Well, I work with a lot of women's groups, a lot of retirement communities will bring me in to to empower their residents, Girl Scout troops, schools, universities. You know, it just kind of depends on which, you know, which message that I'm I'm giving at the time. I also work with businesses and at different conventions and luncheons,

Michael Hingson 47:27

just kind of depends. And do you charge for speaking?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 47:32

Usually, yes, yeah, yes.

Michael Hingson 47:35

Girl Scout troops probably don't have nearly as much to pay, but that's okay

Teresa Hill-Putnam 47:40

well, and it just kind of depends on the organization that I'm working with. And, yeah, I'm involved in the distance, and there's a lot of factors in it.

Michael Hingson 47:48

I agree, and that's what I find as well. You know, there are some places that don't pay Rotary Clubs, typically don't pay for speakers, but you never know what else you might get out of it. So that's okay, absolutely.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 48:02

And you know what you get out of every every job that I ever do, every event, I always learn as much as I give, yeah, or I meet somebody amazing

Michael Hingson 48:16

well, and my and my belief actually goes a little bit further if I don't learn at least as much as anyone else. I'm not doing my job right? Absolutely, I think that is so true. So what? What made you decide to start public speaking?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 48:30

Um, like I said, in in 2010 I wrote my first book because I wanted to share my story. Okay? I started public speaking way back then, wow.

Michael Hingson 48:42

And I love to teach. So go they go together, don't they go together? Yeah. Well, tell us about the books that you've published. You've done, what? Eight books now,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 48:52

I've done eight books. I have, I actually have three of them right here. Unfortunately, I'm out of stock of the last one, but here's one. This is my they're all my story. This one is called The show must go on, and that was the first one that I that I published, and that one really is more my myasthenia gravis story. And then the second one is called from one stage to the next, and that one is just kind of a continuation of that, of my myasthenia gravis story, and kind of what, what the next step was, the script of life here. There's kind of a glare, sorry about that. The script of life is what I've learned, you know, over the years, behind the scenes. It's it says here, director's notes, descriptive life, things I have learned behind the scenes, but it's all part of the overcoming obstacles through positive thinking. And then the last one that I did, it's called Life is not a dress rehearsal. Yeah. And which is, again, just the things that I have learned. They're part of some of the the lessons that I've learned, which is all kind of part of my podcast as well.

Michael Hingson 50:11

Now, do you self publish, or do you have a publisher?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 50:15

Right now, I'm self publishing, but I'm actually looking for a literary agent so that we can go in the in a different direction.

Michael Hingson 50:24

I asked because you said you were out of some of your books. So I was just

Teresa Hill-Putnam 50:27

kind of actually out of the new one. The life is life is not a dress rehearsal book. I'm out of that one right now. Then I also have two goal setting workbooks, one for adults and one for children. And then I have one book that it's called my daily pep talk, which is just a bunch of positive sayings and quotes. So whenever I'm having a bad day, I actually use mine. I just open it to a page, and that's my positive thought for the day. And then, using my performing arts background, I wrote a handbook for dancers and dance teachers and and that one is actually going worldwide. Studios are buying that one to use it for teaching. And it's my my curriculum.

Michael Hingson 51:17

Well, if you can't practice what you what you preach. What good are you? Right? Yeah, I mean, it's Talk is cheap, but it's it's a lot harder to talk and then actually follow through and support what you teach. But that's what really people look for. And I'm of the opinion that, in reality, people know when you're blowing smoke and when you're really serious and when you're serious, you do put serious, you do practice what you preach, and that's the way it ought to be. That is right. I agree. Yeah. So tell me about your podcast. It's called overcoming obstacles through positive thinking, which is what you also mentioned about one of your books. But tell me about the podcast a little bit well,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 51:59

it's on Spotify Apple podcasts. It's on YouTube, and we'll put a link to the YouTube podcast as well. Basically, I just take a topic and then I just talk about it, and they're very short. I did that on purpose so that people can listen, you know, on their way to work. You know, they're like, five to 10 minutes long each, so that they can quickly listen and hopefully be empowered through the day by listening to the different topics. Yeah, I've got 50 episodes I guess, right now on the podcast, you know, and hopefully I can inspire somebody through that.

Michael Hingson 52:45

We've done unstoppable mindset, typically for an hour. But of course, it is a conversation which is, which is a little bit different than what you do, right? But it seems to be going pretty well. People like it. We are. We're continuing to publish it, and no one is has come and said, don't do it anymore. So we're having a lot of fun,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 53:05

quite a few of yours, and you do a great job. You do it, yeah, it's fun, and it's it's very positive.

Michael Hingson 53:12

It all started out doing radio at kuci, at UC Irvine, when I played old radio shows for almost seven years. I love, I collect old shows, and so we would play them and talk between them and so on. So I learned a lot about radio doing that, and so that helped in getting the podcast started as well. When, when I was asked to do one, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 53:38

You know, I think it's a really good way to educate the public. I have another podcast that I do with the performers with purpose Foundation, which is my nonprofit that we started back in 2018 and with that one, we do more interviews like this, so you know, and it's to bring education to people that want to go into the entertainment industry. You know, we have different artists on people that have been in Broadway shows, people who are music artists, you know, actors, singers, dancers, performers, agents, managers, that kind of thing, and then we do like, a conversation, like, what you're doing here, which is fun.

Michael Hingson 54:27

I am of the opinion there is nothing in the world like doing seeing a live show. Of course, I've had the opportunity to see several on Broadway, but also elsewhere, and there's just nothing like doing that. It's so powerful.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 54:43

It is very powerful.

Michael Hingson 54:45

My my favorite one, still, from a powerful standpoint, is, I'm trying to remember exactly when it was. It had to be in 1979 I think, no, it was early. Other than that, it was 1977 I think, or early 78 anyway, I was invited to go with a friend to a Broadway show. It was a Shakespeare play, Othello and the two stars. I cannot remember who played Desdemona, but James Earl Jones played Othello and Christopher Plummer played Ergo. What a show. Oh, that's fabulous. What a show. It was. As powerful as I have ever seen. It was amazing, you know, and you know what's going to happen at the end. But even so, when people are falling on their swords, the whole audience would go, I mean, it was like they didn't even see it coming. Well, of course they knew. I mean, it's not like Othello was brand new, but that's how powerful it was. It was great. I love that's awesome. I love live theater. Never have

Teresa Hill-Putnam 55:50

had it's cool that live shows can really do that to you. Yeah, right. Bring so much emotion,

Michael Hingson 55:59

and that's part of what you teach

Teresa Hill-Putnam 56:01

absolutely if you, if you can make them laugh or you can make them cry, you've done your job, yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 56:10

And, and then they can go out, and if they remember it so much the better.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 56:15

Well, they'll remember it more if you make them laugh or make them cry, right, right, absolutely, right.

Michael Hingson 56:20

So you have three children and five grandchildren. That's a growing so,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 56:25

so blessed with that. Yeah, my oldest just turned 35 a few days ago. And then I have a son who's 31 and I have a daughter who's 21 and then I have four grandsons and one little grand baby girl. Wow.

Michael Hingson 56:42

Well, you have more males overall, well, except you got two daughters and one son, but still more males than mcfeemes. Well, that's, that's,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 56:49

yeah, more male grand babies.

Michael Hingson 56:52

Yeah, and more coming.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 56:56

Well, not from my two oldest, I think they're both done, but my little, my, my little, my young little girl. She's not little anymore. She's 21 my youngest will eventually have children. And, and then I get to enjoy it all over again.

Michael Hingson 57:09

There you go. Yeah, it's part of what makes it fun. And, and, and grandmama will get them all into performing arts.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 57:19

Well, you know, I'm called Grammy, because it's kind of like the music award,

Speaker 1 57:23

only they are, yeah,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 57:26

yeah, that'll be fun. And, you know, I don't know if they will all be actors, singers, dancers, performers, or just whatever wonderful thing they come up with. I think my oldest grandson's probably going to be a scientist, and I think I'm not really sure about the others, maybe comedians. They're all pretty funny, so we'll

Michael Hingson 57:51

see nothing like having a lot of laughter around.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 57:54

Is there? You know, they bring so much joy? Yeah, yeah. Well, tell us

Michael Hingson 57:58

about your your nonprofit, your foundation.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 58:01

It's called the performers with purpose Foundation, and we started it well, 34 years ago, I guess. Okay, well, 35 years ago, I had my daughter, and then shortly after she was born, when she was 10 days old, I left my abusive husband and and we ended up getting a divorce, and that first Christmas was really, really, really hard for me, because I was a single mom, didn't have any money. I had, you know, a brand new baby that was couple months old, and it just broke my heart, because I did. I wanted to give her the world, but I couldn't give her the world because I was a single, broke mom, and decided at that point that I was never going to be in that position again. And started doing a program called sub for Santa the following year. So when she was a year old, started providing Christmas. I owned a performing arts school at that point still, and started doing performances around Christmas time to raise money to provide for other families who needed help. And so hence, performers with purpose. We did performances to, you know, provide Christmas for these families. And that started 34 years ago. And so and we and we've done it ever since. So all of my kids grew up knowing sub for Santa. That's what we did for Christmas every year. But in 2018 we decided to go ahead and form a non profit organization called the performance with purpose Foundation, and get our 501, c3, status so that we could be tax exempt and and do it right? You know, do it on a bigger scale, I guess. And so now we raise money year round by doing performances, and the money goes to provide Christmas for underprivileged children that need it. So last year, I think we donated like 25 100 gifts for children, both my my daughter in Colorado, works her program, and then we work a program here in in California as well. So we have two different divisions that we provide. You know, toys, gifts, clothing and necessities to the families that need them.

Michael Hingson 1:00:21

So if you had one thing you wanted to say to everyone that they should remember or take away from today, what would it be?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 1:00:30

Huh, let's see, maybe work to find your purpose and try to make the world a better place. There you go. By whatever that purpose is. What's your purpose? Um, to teach everything that I have been so lucky to learn.

Michael Hingson 1:00:56

You know, as profound as it gets, yeah,

Teresa Hill-Putnam 1:01:00

you know, if people want anything to yourself,

Michael Hingson 1:01:04

yeah, yeah, share, share. People want to reach out to you and so on. How do they do that?

Teresa Hill-Putnam 1:01:09

My website is, is performers with, I'm sorry, spotlight performers.com or we can, you can reach out to performers with purpose foundation.com

Michael Hingson 1:01:21

and we'll have everything in show notes as well. But it's always good to ask and and get that Well, I want to thank you for being here today. This has been a lot of fun. I'm glad that we had the opportunity to, you know, to do this and to, I think, provide a lot of information. I learned a lot. I appreciate it, and I hope other people who are out there monitoring us also learned a lot. If, if you liked our podcast wherever you are, please give us a five star rating wherever you're listening, or YouTubing us or whatever. But we would appreciate your rating. We love five star ratings, especially, of course, and also, if you'd like to reach out to me, it's easy. It's Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and for all of you out there, including you Theresa, if you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. I'd love to get an introduction, because we always want to have more people on and be inspired and learn a lot more. And as I said earlier, and I'll say again, if I'm not learning at least as much as anyone else, I'm not doing my job, and so I need the opportunity to learn. So bring on the learning experiences. It's a lot of fun. But again, Theresa, I want to thank you for being here. This has been cool.

Teresa Hill-Putnam 1:02:42

Well, thank you so much for having me. It's been such a pleasure.

Michael Hingson 1:02:50

Episode 414 – Unstoppable Thinking: How to Overcome Self-Doubt with Mitzi Ocasio

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What if the hardest limits in your life were the ones you placed on yourself? In this episode, I talk with Mitzi Ocasio, host of the “Mitzi, Let’s Think About It” podcast and author of four children’s books, about overcoming self-doubt, managing time as a mom and creator, and building a brand rooted in curiosity and trust. Mitzi shares how growing up in shelters shaped her humility, how she learned to see her platform as a blessing instead of pressure, and why thinking deeply can change your mental health and relationships. You will hear how she built an award-winning podcast, how she handles criticism, and why grace matters more than judgment. I believe you will find this conversation both practical and inspiring as you reflect on your own mindset.

Highlights:

00:02 – How financial hardship built her grit.

03:20 – How constant moves shaped her resilience.

16:07 – Why she launched her podcast in 2020.

23:16 – How she overcame self-doubt.

27:39 – The mindset shift that changed everything.

31:26 – The best advice she got about building a brand.

49:22 – What people get wrong about podcasting.

56:35 – The deeper message behind her novel.

About the Guest:

Mitzi is an avid advocate for holistic well-being and the host of the "Mitzi, Let's Think About It" Podcast. In her podcast, she delves into topics such as mental health, mindfulness, and personal development, exploring the wonders and challenges of living a healthy, balanced life.

Through coursework in psychology, Mitzi has developed an understanding of human behavior and decision-making, while also building a solid foundation in analysis. This dual perspective allows her to approach problems from both a human-centric and data-driven angle. She has dedicated her time to understanding the interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit. Each week, she presents insightful conversations with experts, thought leaders, and everyday heroes. These conversations have provided valuable insights on topics such as stress management, emotional intelligence, and the power of positive thinking, inspiring and empowering us on our wellness journey.

Mitzi is also a self-published author of 4 children’s books. She firmly believes that by encouraging children to think differently and more consciously, we can steer the future towards a positive trajectory. She is a strong advocate for the power of our thoughts and the words we choose, as they ultimately shape our lives.

When she is not engrossed in her podcast or penning children's stories, Mitzi is a mother to two young boys under four years old, a dog, a cat, and a couple of fish. Her role as a wife to her husband is equally significant. She manages these responsibilities while ensuring a clean, safe home environment for her family to thrive in.

Mitzi tries to inspire others not only to think, but to tap into critical thinking. So others' perspective can change their lives into something they never thought about before.

Ways to connect with Mitzi**:**

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Mitzi-Think-Inc/100064244280126/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mitzithinkinc

X (Twitter): https://x.com/MitziThinkInc

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitzi-ocasio-3a343a24b/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

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Transcription Notes:

Episode 413 – Unstoppable Public Speaking Skills for Leaders and Entrepreneurs with Robert Begley

Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Fear silences more people than failure ever could. In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with world-class speaking coach and author Robert Begley to explore why trust, clarity, and moral character matter more than polished delivery. Robert shares how his journey from a stage-frightened kid in New York to coaching powerful speakers was shaped by Aristotle’s timeless principles of ethos, pathos, and logos. Together, we talk about why audiences want conversation, not performance, how stories build trust faster than facts, and why learning to control fear instead of avoiding it changes how you lead, sell, and speak. This is a practical and thoughtful conversation about using your voice with purpose in a distracted and divided world.

Highlights:

00:10 – Why trust and character matter more than polish when you speak03:41 – How timeless principles from history still shape powerful communication today08:51 – Why authenticity is essential in an AI-driven, distracted world13:44 – How fear of embarrassment silences people before they ever use their voice17:33 – What speakers can listen for to know if an audience is truly engaged25:06 – Why fear of public speaking is really a thinking problem, not a talent issue33:16 – How storytelling helps messages stay memorable long after the talk ends40:00 – Why learning to control fear, not avoid it, leads to stronger leadership and confidence

About the Guest:

Robert Begley is a world-class speaking coach, keynote speaker, author, and founder of Speaking With Purpose LLC. With more than 15 years of experience transforming lives through the power of effective communication, Robert helps entrepreneurs, executives, and emerging leaders craft unforgettable presentations that inspire action and drive results.

A native New Yorker who once struggled to command the stage, Robert learned to conquer his fear of public speaking and now coaches others to do the same. He has delivered hundreds of presentations across the U.S. and coached NYPD officers, immigrants from tyrannical regimes, Fortune 500 executives, and business owners to speak with purpose, power, and persuasion.

Robert is the author of Voices of Reason: Lesso

ns for Liberty’s Leaders (Indie Books International, 2025), a book that blends public speaking mastery with historical analysis. Drawing on Aristotle’s rhetorical principles—ethos, logos, and pathos—he dissects the speeches of iconic figures like Patrick Henry, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ayn Rand, Martin Luther King Jr., and Magatte Wade to teach timeless lessons for courageous leadership in today’s context.

He leads multiple coaching programs including Voices of the American Dream, for immigrants learning to share their personal stories, and Elite Speakers Forum, where rising communicators develop their craft in a supportive community. Robert has also partnered with global organizations like Students For Liberty and Liberty Ventures to teach persuasive speaking to international student leaders and business executives.

Robert now lives in Orlando, Florida, with the love of his life, Carrie-Ann. When he’s not coaching speakers or crafting keynotes, you might find him running Spartan Races, reflecting on philosophy, or attending rock concerts or ballet performances.

Ways to connect with Robert**:**

📘 Book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3V8Z19K

✉️ Email: robert@begley.com

🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertbegley

📣 Substack: https://robertbegley.substack.com

📷 Instagram (optional): @robertusmagnus

🐦 X (Twitter) (optional): @robertbegley

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Episode 412 – An Unstoppable Comeback Fueled by Honesty and Consistency with David Price

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when addiction, loss, and uncertainty collide with discipline, honesty, and trust. In this episode, I sit down with David Price, a visionary CEO who shares his journey from growing up with addicted parents and battling his own drug addiction to building a multi-million-dollar insurance organization in less than a year. David opens up about hitting bottom, finding clarity through recovery, and learning how mindset, patience, and consistency reshaped his life and business. We explore what it really takes to build trust, lead people well, and stay focused when growth feels uncomfortable. This conversation is about resilience, personal responsibility, and why an Unstoppable mindset is built one honest decision at a time.

Highlights:

00:10 – Hear how David Price’s early life with addicted parents shaped his resilience and stress tolerance03:18 – Learn how growing up unstable planted the seed for David’s drive to become a business owner05:01 – Discover the moment David realized addiction was no longer something he could manage alone15:51 – Hear the unexpected reason David walked into a recovery meeting that changed everything24:16 – Learn how small, achievable habits helped David rebuild his life after getting clean37:50 – Understand the hard business lesson David learned after choosing the wrong partner44:34 – Hear how losing six figures of monthly income overnight forced David to rebuild from zero53:49 – Learn why David believes trust is more valuable than money when building an unstoppable business

About the Guest:

David Price – CEO & Founder, The Price Group IMO

David Price is the visionary CEO and Founder of The Price Group IMO, one of the fastest-rising organizations in financial services.

His journey to success was anything but ordinary. Growing up in a broken home and battling drug and alcohol addiction for years, David hit rock bottom more than once. In 2013, he made the life-changing decision to get clean and rebuild his life. That moment of clarity became the foundation for everything that followed, teaching him resilience, grit, and an unshakable drive to create a better future.

In 2018, David discovered the insurance industry. With no prior experience, he earned his license and built a simple, scalable system that allowed everyday people—single moms, career changers, and those just looking for a side income—to succeed. Within 36 months, he became a millionaire, and by his fourth year he was generating more than $1 million annually.

In October 2024, he launched The Price Group IMO, partnering with top carriers and introducing a superior lead program that created even greater opportunities for people to work from home and build real financial freedom. In less than 350 days, the organization produced over $10 million in sales, cementing itself as one of the fastest-growing IMOs in the country.

Today, David’s mission extends far beyond personal success. He is dedicated to helping people reinvent their lives, showing them how to earn an income, work flexibly from home, and build businesses of their own. Many of the agents and agencies he mentors are already on track to reach six and seven figures, proving the power of his model.

Beyond business, David is a member of the Forbes Business Council and an active voice on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube, where he shares transparent insights, strategies, and motivation for people seeking more freedom, flexibility, and purpose in their careers.

Ways to connect with David**:**

📸 Instagram: instagram.com/davidpriceofficial

🎬 TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidpriceofficial

📘 Facebook: facebook.com/davidpriceofficial

🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/davidpriceofficial

▶️ YouTube: youtube.com/@DavidPriceOfficial

🐦 X (Twitter): x.com/IAMDavidPrice

🌍 Website: tpglife.com

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, hello everyone. I want to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host, Mike hingson, and our guest today is David Price who is by any standard of visionary CEO. He formed the price group IMO, and I asked him what IMO stood for, and he's going to tell us that, among other things, as we go forward today. But he's got a great story to tell, and I'm absolutely certain he's got a lot of interesting kinds of lessons and observations that we all can use. So without further ado, as it were, David, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

David Price 01:59

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you for the great intro, and definitely an honor to be on a podcast with you. Man, really appreciate that.

Michael Hingson 02:06

Well, I'm glad that you were able to make it and you have the time to do it so you live in Puerto Rico now these days,

David Price 02:14

yes, Puerto Rico is my home. Been here a little bit over two years and enjoy the weather and the fresh air and everything that comes with

Michael Hingson 02:22

it, as we were just talking about that you had mentioned after checking it, can get down into the 60s and 70s. I know out here in Victorville in the winter, we can get down into the teens and below. So, oh well, I stay in the house, and can can keep the house warm if we need to or not. Our home is almost nine years old, so it's really pretty recent, pretty new, great insulation and solar and everything else. So the bottom line is that we stay comfortable in the house, although I wouldn't mind being in a place where it doesn't get below 60 at night, but you know, oh, well,

David Price 03:03

definitely, definitely enjoy. I'm from New Jersey, so definitely don't, don't miss the cold. Matter of fact, growing up, you know, I remember we had oil heat where you had to put, you know, tank, and you had to fill the tank with oil. And I remember there's, you know, some winters where we ran out of it, and my mom didn't have money to to get new oil, you know, put more oil, and definitely, uh, didn't have the heat in the winter for, you know, short periods of time and stuff like that. So don't, don't miss that at all.

Michael Hingson 03:34

I lived in a town in Massachusetts where our home was heated by oil for a while, and there were a few times that it was actually a rental, and the the owner also had his home attached. But the bottom line is, we did run out of oil a couple times, and we we coped with it, but still, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. So here we have gas heat, and that seems to be working pretty well. I'm I'm not sure whether we would have been better off if we had just gone all electric and have more solar panels on the house, but it works. Okay. So we we keep decent temperatures well. So tell us. Let's start. Tell us a little bit about you growing up, what life was like and all that. Where did you live in New Jersey?

David Price 04:28

Yeah, so I lived in man, probably about 20 places by the time I was in high school in New Jersey, I grew up to two drug addicted parents. They got divorced before I could remember, and mom had me when she was 18. So it's, you know, really two, two drug addicted kids, and, you know, lived in homeless shelters, the projects, you know, whatever we could do, I mean, hotels and stuff like. That so definitely had a rougher childhood, something that, at the time, wasn't fun. Now I look at that, and I think that helped me develop the mindset and my ability to just handle stress and different things. That helps me as an entrepreneur. My mother, she got clean when I was in middle school and and like, life started getting better then Right? Life started getting better and we stopped moving so much. We went to one school for my whole entire high school, which was really cool. That was a big goal of my mom's that she was able to do for us. And I wrestled. I enjoyed that I wasn't the greatest student. I think wrestling really saved, saved me, gave me some focus, gave me, you know, when you're really good at when you're good at a sport, you get a little bit extra love from the teachers and stuff, I believe. So I think that that really helped guide me in the right direction. But you know that that was little, short, short, brief summary of my childhood.

Michael Hingson 06:07

So did you have addictions for a while? Were you actually addicted?

David Price 06:12

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, you would think in my mind, like, you know, I love my parents. I'd say they make the same mistakes they did. But yeah, eventually in high school, somebody offered me some some drugs. And you know, I said no, a bunch of different times. And he's like, Oh no, you got to try this one, which was ecstasy, actually. And I remember trying that, and like, my first thought, like my attic mind, was like, Oh my God, this was so good. What else am I missing? And then I just became open minded to try pretty much anything after that. And you know, I struggled with drug addiction on and off for 20 years. I guess, not really on and off. I think you always struggle with it. You just do a better job coping with it. But, you know, towards the end of that time, I was pretty functional for the majority, majority of it. But then towards the end, you know, the drug addiction really takes over, and I finally lost everything, actually back into a no heat story. So I was in New Jersey. I was staying in a friend's apartment. He abandoned the apartment. He stopped paying rent. He stopped paying the electric again, no heat. It was the winter, and he had gas. So I thought, I thought it would be a bright idea to boil some water on the stove and that would heat up the place. And all it did was, you know, throw mist all over the everywhere, right? It was just like, all everything was fogged up. It was like, didn't, didn't really warm anything up. And, you know, finally, just, like, woke up one morning, and I was like, What the heck is going on? Like, I need to, I didn't know what to do. I said, I need to make a change. And I had a girl for that time, and I waited, I woke her up, and I was like, Hey, listen, we're going to Louisiana. She looked at me like, like, I was crazy, and Louisiana was my father. My father lived there, and I didn't have a good relationship with him. I haven't talked to him in years, but I knew he would give me a place to stay, which was actually my grandma's house, on her pull out couch. And that was like 2012 did it magically get clean because I moved, moved to a different area. You know, a lot of times people think you could just move, and that changes things. But I was still the same person. You know, made it a little harder to use, not knowing anyone. But I eventually walked into swaps up meeting in July of 2013 and that was the last time I used so, you know lot more to that. It wasn't just magically show up to meeting, but, but that that was, uh, to answer your question, yes, I struggle with drugs all the way up into 2013

Michael Hingson 08:51

so you did drugs all the way through college and then beyond, yeah.

David Price 08:56

So I did college. I did two years online college, and I was actually one, one class short of a associate at the time. I had a pretty good job, which I thought was my career for 1k car allowance. I was managing people, and I was always interested in business, so I wanted to go to school for for business. And I was also in the army, so I had the GI Bill, so I was using that, and I just got to, like, that last, the last class I needed. I was like, you know this at that time, my addiction was pretty bad again. And I was just like, Man, this isn't even something I'm enjoying doing. If I look at back at how I would have done it differently, is I was like, Oh, let me do all the prerequisites first. So I was doing. So I did two years of just like, boring stuff that, like I wasn't, wasn't into when I should have at least been taking the business classes and and stuff like that first, even though, you know, someone told me you should do prerequisites first, in case you want to change your major. But ultimately, I just wanted to learn about business.

Michael Hingson 09:55

Now, why did you want to learn about business? What what prompted? You to decide on that path? Yeah.

David Price 10:03

So, you know, I remember being about eight years old, and, you know, living with my mom, it was me and my sister. She's two years younger than me. Her name is Jessica, and we're living in the projects in Woodbridge, New Jersey, and my mom was just always out partying. I mean, there's times we came home, the door was locked, it was pouring rain. Didn't know where she was. And, you know, it's Christmas. Sometimes we'd have Christmas presents, but it would be because of a church donated it like you know we were. We had enough to survive, for sure, but we didn't have much extra. And my grandfather, which was my mom's father. He owned a mechanic shop in Piscataway, where he worked on, like, tractor trailers and heavy equipment. And you know, when I would go to his house, and he had a professional interior decorator, you know, the towels match the everything. Everything was just like beautiful. You know, breakfast, you had a real breakfast. In the morning, you had lunch, you had a real dinner. Everyone sat down, and I was like, oh, okay, so this is, this, is it like, it's, you know, welfare, government assistance, or there's the opportunity to be a business owner. This is what life looks like. So those were really the only two examples I had. So, so for me, I'm like, Man, I want to be a business owner. I want that. I don't want what I have. I want what my grandpa has. So I was always interested in business from a very young age.

Michael Hingson 11:30

Did he teach you a lot about business? What was how did he interact with you and help?

David Price 11:37

Yeah, I think the biggest thing is really by example. You know, I like nice things. He liked nice things. He brought us to nice restaurants. He brought me to Disneyland, like, you know, when I was, like, nine years old. And, you know, never really been on a vacation before that, and not, haven't found any vacations really after that. For a long time, he would buy, like, a new Lincoln Town Car every couple years. So it was just, again, just kind of seeing the lifestyle, you know, the lifestyle that you get to live. And then, you know, watching TV. There's, you know, some, some shows that I like, that that, you know, there are business owners and stuff. So he didn't talk to me too much about business me and and he talked to me about, like, you know, one thing about grandpa was he was a perfectionist. He was just anything he did, he's just gonna do it really, really well, attention to detail. And, you know, a lot of those things, which I definitely see how important that stuff is. Now, maybe I didn't understand as much as a kid, right? You're like, Oh, you're spending too much time doing this or that. But, you know, definitely sees that that way. That's why he was successful.

Michael Hingson 12:48

So did was he aware that you had a drug addiction? Yeah?

David Price 12:55

Yeah. I mean, I've hit it for most of my life, but, you know, after, after a while, it's pretty, pretty apparent to people close to the thing is, with the attic, and you have a lot of friends that are recovering addicts as well, and we talk about this, and it's like, we think that no one knows, and then then we get clean, and we're like, man, everyone knew. It's like, how the heck why did we think no one knew that that we were messed up all the time.

Michael Hingson 13:22

Yeah, well, so I hear, I hear what you're saying, and it's amazing how much people observe, although they may or may not say something about it. After your almost two years of college, got you an associate's degree, did you do any college after that?

David Price 13:39

No, I didn't, I know my thing. I wasn't a I wasn't great in school. I didn't like reading much. I enjoy reading now, but to me, I was, I was more of a like, let me figure this out. You know, a great example is I was out of work because, actually my addiction. I got fired from from from a career job that I had, and I needed something. So my buddy's ahead, get your job of working with the landscaper. I'm like, All right, well, I've never done that before. I guess, you know anyone could could do that. So I was working with a landscaper. And you know, if you've never done it before, you're going to be slow compared to what they're used to. And very important, when you're a business owner, times the money, and it's super important. And he let me go pretty fast, within like, a week or two, I just, I just wasn't experienced enough. And I was like, Well, I guess I'll start my own landscape company, right? And and I went and bought, you know, the trailer. I bought the lawn mower. I bought everything I needed. One of my friends was a successful he looks successful. Landscaping business. Talked to him a little bit. He said he'll coach me on some things. And, you know, start, started to put a put an ad of the Yellow Pages and and started going to work. So I was that kind of person where I rather just, you know, try to figure this out and and make it happen, versus you. You know, go to school, knowing what I know now. Now I'm in my 45 right? So, like, now I'm like, Man, I wish, you know, the times that that I was younger, that I was, you know, going to school is definitely wish I took, took it more serious, right? Because I it's not so much that I believe in school more. I believe in utilizing your time better, you know. So like, you know, when I was in high school, just not paying attention and just, you know, guessing to get by on tests and stuff, it's like, I'm there for, you know, majority of the day. So I might as well took the time to learn the things while I was there.

Michael Hingson 15:37

Yeah, well, it's all about learning. And obviously, at some point that mindset sort of kicked into you, and you decided that you really did need to learn and and take that approach a little bit more, which, which makes a lot of sense. Of course,

David Price 15:54

yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's, you know, it's, it's wisdom, right? It's just, you know, as you get older, you start learning, yeah, and I think the, you know, as I've become more successful as a business owner, you start looking back, and you're like, all right, why am I successful as a business owner? Like, what did I do? And really, you know, it's I got more information, and then I actually utilize the information I got, like that. That's really what it is, you know. And as I try to figure out how to scale my business further and have more success, it's just like, how do I find more information that I'm not doing, you know, and and you know, put put that into good use.

Michael Hingson 16:33

Well, you mentioned that you went to a meeting in 2013 and among other things, that caused you to decide to clean up your act, if you will, get a clean life and get rid of addiction and so on. What was the main thing that caused you to take the leap and go out of the lifestyle that you had into what I'm sure you would now acknowledge as a much more productive lifestyle and not have addiction and so on? Yeah.

David Price 17:01

So, you know, the crazy thing is, you know, you're taking me back, right? I'm thinking about some, some, like, memories and where I was at and, like, ultimately, it's the the mindset I was in. You know, ego is such, such a tough thing. You know, people talk about ego, and they think, like, Ego means like, Oh, I think I'm better than you, or I dress better than you, or whatever. But for me, like ego is like the inability to learn from somebody else, like that. That is where ego really hurts you. And, you know, I use drugs for majority of of my life. Well, I guess not the majority anymore, but, but for a while, was majority of my life. I'm almost 20 years and, you know, I always felt like I was in control, like I could quit if I want, I could stop what I want, right? I don't need to ask for help. You know, growing up with with my mom in addiction, she was, she was in the 12 step program, right? She was in those rooms. I was in those rooms as a kid, so I knew all about them, and I was like, Man, those people are weak minded. They can't help me. They need it. I don't need this. Like, these are the thoughts that just go through your head right when you when your head's in there and telling these things. And when I was in Louisiana, you know, same thing. I was going to figure this out myself. I didn't realize so. So my drug of choice was, was heroin. And for me, like, I thought that was the problem. What I didn't realize it was all of them were the problem, right? Which included alcohol, like, anything that was going to change the way my mood is my response to things, right? Is the problem because, you know, right now, you put drugs in front of me, like, my mind straight. It's like, really simple for me, like, no, that's bad, you know, have a few beers and you put something in front of me, it's like, oh, wait, that might sound like a good idea, right? My thinking changes when I put a substance in me. So I can't have any substances in me. So I was dating a girl, the girl that drove me from New Jersey to Louisiana. We were together in Louisiana, and she kept, like, stealing from my family. And I was like, Holy crap, dude. Why do you steal? Like, I wasn't the kind of addict that stole from that stole from people. Why do you why do you keep stealing? Like, stop it. I was like, maybe if we bring it to the 12 step meeting, they can help you. So we took a taxi. I didn't, didn't have a car. The car we got there were broke, was broke. So we took a taxi. So in my head, I was just going as a supporter. I was going to help this girl, this, this wasn't for me at all. This was so this girl would stop stealing from my family, that that was the goal and the plan. And she's like, well, you know, some of these meetings are closed, and you have to be addict to get in. They won't let you in. I'm like, Well, I got my badges. Don't worry, they're gonna, they're gonna let me in. And I'm sitting in the meeting, and all of a sudden, I'm just overwhelmed with emotion. I just start crying. And I don't know why I'm crying. At the time, I'm like, What the heck is going on? Why am I crying? Why am I feeling all this? I know now, you know, it was definitely, you know, God thing, a spiritual thing, whatever, whatever someone's beliefs are, but, but I don't think it was. I think it was, you know. So me realizing I was in that right place, and actually feeling something that was gonna keep me there. And I was like, All right, okay. And then, you know, while I'm in this meeting, I'm receptive now, and I'm listening, and they would say certain things, like one was like, Oh, if you're new, you should do 90 meetings in 90 days. I'm like, okay, 90 meetings in 90 days. That sounds good, right? And then the ego kicks in. I'm like, All right, well, I'm going to show my girlfriend that I could do 90 meetings in nine days, and tell her she should do it too. So it again. I'm still trying to help her, right? So I made the commitment to do it. She didn't do it. She went to jail a bunch of times afterwards, and I stayed clean. I you know, I did the nine meetings in nine days, and I stay clean. So it wasn't even a planned thing. It was, it was literally and again, I look at like that was God knowing exactly what needed to happen for me to get me to do what needed to be done for me to be clean.

Michael Hingson 20:55

But you, you did get clean and they, I think the the ultimate thing, I guess I would say, is that you, you had a perspective, that you allowed to be created and you grew, and so no longer was being driven by substances. It was really being driven by you and your will and your mind.

David Price 21:21

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, um, yeah. Then, you know, that's the first step, you know, get getting getting clean, stop putting substances in your body. And then, then after that, it was, you know, how do I like, I got that figured out now. And it took, took some time before I would say I got that figured out, then it was like, Well, what do? What's the next steps? Yeah, you know what's, what's the next things I could do to better myself?

Michael Hingson 21:49

Well, there's always chocolate, but that's another story. But no, seriously, I appreciate what you're saying. So what did you do after you got clean. So you said that was in 2013 so what did you do then?

David Price 22:06

Yeah, so, you know, throughout my addiction, what would happen is I would typically have my dream job, which I thought was my dream job, and I would get fired because, you know, I just, they, everyone knew I used in my industry. They just, I was just a really good worker. And like I said, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't stealing things from people, like, you know, things just look, look pretty normal in my life, but then I lose the job. Like, all right, I need to get clean. Like, I need to get clean like, I'm just, you know, I was, I was taking too much, like, I went to work, just too messed up for him, you know. And what were you doing? What kind of work I worked in the oil business and like, inspection. So I managed the inspectors that went out in the field and quantified and qualified, like the ships and the barges and the shore tanks, sort of like, you know, oil companies, like PP and Hess and so and so that would happen, and then, and then and then I would detox, I would get clean for a little bit, right? And then I would get a better job making more money. And then, like, that cycle would keep going. So this time in Louisiana, I was like, All right, I'm not going to work, like, because that would happen. Like, as soon as I have money, life's good. I'm like, I could use again, as I'm going to spend some time and really work on myself and figure out what, what the heck's going on? So I took about a year off of working, and then, then it was time to go to work, right? I was broke, so I definitely had to go to work. You know, I was bumming cigarettes from people, sleeping on people's couches, you know, I was clean, but, you know, I didn't have a car. I was still broke, I was, you know, negative net worth. And I was like, Alright, I need a job, you know. And I started talking to the people in the program, and this guy, Jason, he's like, Yeah, I can get you a job offshore. Because I was in Louisiana, they got a lot of people that work in offshore, and that's a good, good way to make some money. And I was looking to make some money. And he's like, you know, cleaning toilets as a galley, hand, basically, cleaning toilets, washing dishes and mopping floors for minimum wage, 725, an hour. And I've only worked minimum wage as a teenager before that. I mean, my last job before that was like, $70,000 a year salary. But it didn't matter. I was like, All right, yeah, I'll take it. Because I knew, like, once I started at one place, I would get to that next level. Like I just, I just had to get started. And that was, that was it. So I was out there cleaning, cleaning the floors, clean the toilets, washing dishes, and and I was just, I was like, Alright, this is, this is the next step. And you know, quit smoking. I was about nine months clean. I quit smoking when I was working offshore. I was overweight, not healthy at all, not doing any kind of exercise. And I was just like, All right, well, I guess, got to work on that. And, you know, made a goal. I'm going to walk 30 minutes a day on like a tread. Know, they had a treadmill off there, over there. Then I was eating anything, right? So I'm like, All right, well, maybe I'll stop drinking soda. And I was just looking for, like, just small, simple, easy things I knew I can do, you know, because I think a lot of times my life, I'm like, All right, well, let me get healthy. So I'm going to start running five miles a day. And it's, you know, we don't work that way, right? And I learned that. So I learned it's just like, let me find this a small thing I can accomplish,

Michael Hingson 25:27

but you, but you intuitively, at least, seem to know the things you needed to do to to better your life and your body, which I'm sure are the kinds of things that you learned over time, associating with people, of course, with the 12 step program and all that. So you, you knew what you needed to do, but you made the commitment and you established the mindset to do it,

David Price 25:54

yeah, and the goal was to make the commitment small enough I could almost definitely do it like that. That was, that was the goal. Because, you know, I was, I was a pretty good wrestler. I did scholarships go to college, you know. So for me, like making my goal, walk 30 minutes on it, try to it was, was a super, super small goal, but it just had to be, like something so simple, you know, and that's trying to teach people now, like people will come to me be like, I got a goal to do this. And, like, this huge, huge thing. I'm like, well, let's, let's start, let's start with something that you know you'll do, right? Because, you know, a lot of times people will tell me these great goals they have, but then they don't actually follow through with them. So like, I want to, I want to bring them back to Earth and find something that they can actually do, and then we could work up to that big goal. I don't want them to give up on it, right? I have, you know, now, you know, I'm way more fit now and eating better, you know, I just kept adding on to onto I just kept building on to that.

Michael Hingson 26:53

Well, giving up smoking had to be a pretty big thing to do. How did you do that?

David Price 26:59

So, you know, there's I've been a pretty spiritual person since, since I got clean. And it's a crazy story. I wouldn't believe if someone else told me this, but I'm gonna tell it. Tell it anyway. I was, I was trying to quit. I swung, like, two packs a day, and I wanted to quit. I didn't know how. Again, same thing. And one day, I was like, You know what? I'm just gonna get my knees and pray. And I got on my knees and I said, God, will you please take the desire to smoke away from me? And that was the last time I smoked. Now it didn't work that magically well, like, I still had the urge to smoke after that, but I would just, every time I did, I just, like, no, God's got this, God's got this, God's got this, and it just got easier and easier and easier. So there's, I say there's two real times where I, like, got on my knees and like, pain as an adult and prayed. And one was to stop smoking, and the second one was for patients. You know, I, you know, being an entrepreneur, you always want things to happen faster than they are, and it causes a lot of anxiety, right? It causes a lot of, like, these negative emotional feelings. And I'm like, man, what the heck is going on? And then I finally, like, stopped, and I realized I was like, Oh, I'm just not being patient. I want to be, like, way further along than I am, but like, it's, it's not unrealistic what I want. And I realized, like, it was lack of patience was causing me a lot of pain. So I got a second time as an idol to really get rid of get that fixed.

Michael Hingson 28:48

So I think one of the lessons I'm hearing here is, although you did get clean, and others can do that, it is a process. It doesn't magically, necessarily happen overnight, but it's also a process where you had to create and set the mindset that said you're going to do it, and then you had the mental strength to follow through on that. Yeah.

David Price 29:16

I mean, the, you know, I actually teach a mindset course for somebody every five weeks, they do it in a series that they do. And I mean, mindset is the most. It's super important. Everything starts with your mindset and a great mindset, could help you do great things and a bad mindset? Could, you, know, help you really, really fall apart. But, yeah, just just really, being really clear on on what it is that you want to do, understanding, right, like, you know, when I asked God to remove the desire to smoke, I didn't, like, magically think, like, that was it. I wouldn't have to, like, think about it again, you know, just realizing, like, all right, cool. Probably still going to think about, but let me, let me keep putting it in God's hands. And then same with, like, staying clean. Like, you know, I walked into a meeting. I had two in in 2013 but like, I end up going to at least one meeting a day for the first year, you know. So there was a lot of work. So it was like, you know, knowing, knowing what is that you want, come up with an action plan, but then also understanding that, like, things aren't going to go as planned either, and, you know, not quitting through that.

Michael Hingson 30:34

Yeah, do you still go to meetings?

David Price 30:37

I don't currently, so I do a lot of self development. Okay, you know, when you're you're in a 12 step program, they basically, the word is, you know, if you stop go to meetings, you're going to use and, you know, my thought process on that is a 12 step program is a self help program. That's really what it is. And, you know, I feel like, as long as I'm continuing to doing things to better myself, you know, I continue to grow spiritually and in different ways. Like, you know, to me, like using any any substance is just it wouldn't make sense in my lifestyle, like I go to sleep at eight o'clock. Like that would definitely interfere me go to sleep at eight o'clock, you know, I'm trying to, I'm trying to slow down the rate of aging. So that wouldn't, that wouldn't coincide with my goals. But I definitely see a lot of people relapse. And typically the thing I hear is, you know, they just, they stopped growing, they stopped doing things. They just started existing, you know, and I feel like that's just a really bad place or hard place to be for an addict, well,

Michael Hingson 31:46

well, I think for anyone, because I think we're here to learn, we should learn, and we should continue to learn, and we should continue to grow. When we stop doing that, then we've lost all perspective on on how to improve us and other people, because learning is a part of what we always do.

David Price 32:05

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You know, I was talking to one of one of my agents, and she told me she was in a funk. And, you know, we the conversation ended. I'm like, thinking, so I'm always like, Alright, cool. How do I help this person? What's the next step? And I was like, You know what? I bet you she's not reading. So I sent her a text message, like, Hey, are you reading? Are you been reading? You know? And she hasn't. And I was like, well, and I always like to bring things back to myself. I was like, I know for me, I was like, when I'm learning, I'm never in a funk like, when I'm learning, like, is, I think it's impossible to be in a funk while you're learning, like you said, like when you're not growing, and learning like you're just existing, and when you're existing then then you're in a funk.

Michael Hingson 32:49

Even if you're reading fiction. I learn a lot from from reading fiction, because the people who are creating it are exactly that they're creating it, and it may not be a factual thing based on what we consider facts. But a lot of people who even write fiction are writing very creative things that are very thought provoking, and we should take those into account as well. Yeah, no, I agree 100% Yeah. I think that's very important. So what, what work did you go into after you got yourself all clean between 2013 and 2017 and we'll get to that. But what did you do for those four years

David Price 33:29

working offshore, like I said, as a galley hand. While I was off there, I was paying attention to see what other jobs I could get. It looked like being in the safety department was a really good job. So the safety one, they don't get dirty. And then the other thing is, the pay was really, really good, so I ended up applying for a job in safety. I moved into that department, and then the job I was on, it was, it was 14 days on, 14 days off. And that's one reason why I want to work offshore, because, like, working for a month and being off for a month. So in that one it was 14 days on, 14 days off. But I'm trying to catch up with my life. So for me, like having 14 days off, I'm like, I got to do something with this time. Yeah. So actually, ran into I was at a car dealership, and this lady came in collecting, collecting a check. And I'm like, this, is this the repo people? They look like the repo people. So I started talking to her, and sure enough, she was the repo people. And I was like, What do you guys ever hire people part time? And they're like, Yeah, we're always looking for good people. I was like, you know, I do this offshore. Can you? Can you make this work? And she's like, Yeah, yeah, definitely. So I'm training up, and this is going to be my first commission, full commission job. I've never worked fully commission. I worked as a delivery driver, right? You know, where you get tips, but, like, never fully commission. And so they're training me, and during the training, right when I'm about to get ready, the. Oil economy collapses in Louisiana. Yeah, a lot of people are laid off. And you know, it's to me, it was like, such a spiritual path, because it was just like, everything just happened in line exactly how it should. Because if I didn't talk to this lady, I would, I would had no work again, and not know what to do now. I'm like, All right, well, I guess I'll be a full time repo person. And at that time, I was making more money than I've ever made before, working 100% commission. And it really showed me that commission would, you know? Because to me, everyone's scared of commission, or, you know, oh, I can't count on commission, or, you know, I can't afford commission. And to me, I was like, Man, this, this is way better, you know, I'm a hard worker. I'm an efficient worker. So it just made sense. So now I'm replowing cars for a living in Louisiana, and in 2016 they had a flood. They had a huge rainstorm, and over 200,000 houses got flooded, and tons of cars got flooded. So now I'm pulling to the neighborhoods looking for cars, and they're there. They're all missing, right? All the houses are gutted. I'm like, Oh, wow, I'm not going to be to find anyone's car, because no one's car is where it's supposed to be now, yeah. So I was like, Man, I got to make a drastic change. So I'm like, What the heck am I do now? And I was like, well, these houses need to be rebuilt,

Michael Hingson 36:21

but you were thinking about that. And so it wasn't like you were just reacting. You were you were pondering, where do we go from here?

David Price 36:28

Essentially, yeah, yeah, no. I mean, that was, that. Was it, you know, I was still, you know, going through the motions because, you know, we trying to find cars was the best thing I had. But I, you know, meanwhile, going into all these neighborhoods and just seeing all these houses, my gutted in their front, you know, all their belongings outside of like, man, these people need help. Like, it was a new problem to solve, basically, right? So, what you do? So I was like, All right, well, I don't know much about construction. These houses do need to be fixed. I do have a friend in New Jersey that owns a construction company. I called him up. I was like, hey, if I get some houses that some houses that need to be rebuilt, would you come here and rebuild them? He said, Yes. So say, All right, well now I need to know how to do estimates, and that I didn't know either. So I reached out to my other friend who did estimates, and he was out of work. So I'm like, Hey, want to start a company. We'll do 5050, partners, and he said, Yeah, let's do it. So I was just knocking on doors all day long, doing free estimates, doing free estimates, did over 100 estimates, and finally got a call and went and met the person. They had two houses, and they want us to rebuild both their houses. They cut us a check for $80,000 at that time, I didn't own a hammer. I didn't own one tool. I was driving like an old Nissan ultimo with like 200,000 plus miles on it. That was financing that bought for like 1600 bucks, you know, dead broke, and, you know, we went into business. And from there, we just kept getting more and more jobs. We were eight months in. We were invoiced over $800,000 and then I noticed my my partner, which was my roommate, seemed like he was doing drugs and he was with employees. So now I'm like, oh, man, what do I do now? So, so I had to make a decision. And I actually walked away from that business. I walked into the licensing department, took my name off the license, took my name off everything, and just, just handed over to him, because we're 5050, partners. I had no, no control over the business, over him. I mean, that was like my first business mistake I've made is bringing someone in as a 5050, partner. So now when I bring partners and I make sure I'm always 51% just to make sure that, you know if something happens, I have the control over Right, right?

Michael Hingson 38:56

Well, so what year was that? That was what? 2016 2017

David Price 39:01

Yeah, 2016 2017

Michael Hingson 39:06

and then by 2018 you started moving into insurance. Why insurance?

David Price 39:13

Yeah, so after, after, I walked from that. I really had no I had no plan. I mean, I literally walked from it. The home that I lived in was a condo that we were renting, that the company was paying for. I didn't have anything. And, you know, I ended up catching a job, working in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, for seven months, doing disaster work. So that was good. And before that, I was looking for a business opportunity. I was like, All right, you know, I'm in my 30s now, nothing's I've done up to this point is going to give me the life that I really wanted. I need to find, like, the right vehicle and and just go all in and for that vehicle be right, it has to let me do what I want, where I want, with whoever I. On. And I was living in Louisiana, and I miss being by the group beach. I grew up by the beach, so I'm like, I want to move to Florida. So I need something that's going to let me live in Florida. And I was just looking at calling all my friends are business owners, and just talking to any successful person I can and just trying to get some advice. And somebody led me to insurance, and I heard insurance is a great business to be in. I didn't know a lot about it. I thought you needed, like, a degree to sell insurance. I didn't realize most states you could just take a 20 hour course

Michael Hingson 40:31

and and pass a test.

David Price 40:33

Yes, take a 20 hour course and pass the test. And I didn't realize it was, it was that easy. You know, wanted to find out how they found their people. Like, how are you selling people? So, like, when I repoed cars, I did real well, because the company I worked with would send me so many cars to find. There's no way I would have find them all. So I always had work to do. I always had cars to look for. When I was in construction, I was really successful, because so many houses were flooded, the local population couldn't handle all the work. You know, people had to come in from from different states to do it. So if I was going to sell insurance, I want something similar. I wanted more people looking for the product than was currently being served. I didn't want to, like, have to, like, talk to friends and family and sit up tents at Walmart and and flea markets. I wanted to make sure there was some kind of, uh, kind of system where, where I could talk to people already interested in insurance, and they had that system. So I got my license and got really uncomfortable for some time, and built, built a built a business.

Michael Hingson 41:38

Why do you think, since it probably somewhat goes without saying, but ever since 2018 you've been in the insurance world. What? What is it that really made it click for you? Why did why did it click? And why have you been successful? And we'll obviously talk more about that. But why have you been so successful when so many others have a problem with it and don't make a success out of it. Out of it.

David Price 42:03

Yeah, you know they there's some statistics where they say 92% of agents won't make it. And from my experience, I've hired, I hired over 5000 agents since, since I've had my license, and majority of people don't actually do what they're supposed to do. Majority people don't even do what they say they're going to do, right? So, big, big mindset issue, really, if you if you really want to break it down. So that's why most people don't have success. So my first six months, I wasn't really having the success I wanted. Matter of fact, I remember saying to myself, Man, I would have made more money working this many hours at time and a half at McDonald's, and thought about quitting since six months in. So hurricane Michael hit the panhandle, and I was like, Man, I can go there and make a ton of money. I got contractors calling me, you know, I knew disaster work inside and out. And I was just like, you know, it's only been six months. I can't really say I learned anything. Or I can't really say I tried anything in six months. Like, if I do something for six months and I quit, I can't I can't really say like it worked or not, because I don't feel like six months is a long enough sample size, right? If I was like, Hey, I'm gonna learn how to play the guitar, and then I just quit after six months. Like, I just feel like, you can't proficiently, really learn how to play the guitar within six months. So I decided to keep going. And you know, things started getting better, and things started getting better, and as they get better, like the your belief increases, and then as your belief increases, you try harder, and as you try harder, and things get better. And it's just like this, this onward, outward spiral instead of a downward spiral. But yeah, most people, they their activity is so inconsistent that they'll do what they're supposed to do for like, a week, and then they don't feel like they got the results. So then they don't do it for the following week, and then maybe the next week they do something, and then the next week they don't. I always compare it to like, going to the ocean when the water's cold, and just kind of being in, like that, that little spot where the water's right there by your hips, like half in, halfway out, and it's like the most uncomfortable spot to be in, and that's where most people hang out most, most of their lives.

Michael Hingson 44:17

Yeah, rather than jumping all the way in and realizing you can get used to it and

David Price 44:21

enjoy it. Yes, and it's way faster to get used to it.

Michael Hingson 44:25

Yeah, we had a guest near the beginning of unstoppable mindset, who loved to swim in the ocean out here in Southern California. He swam without a wetsuit. He did it all year long. And when he I asked him about what happened when he first started doing it in the winter, and he said, Well, he said, I just decided I was going to do it. But he said, as I moved closer to the ocean, I started moving slower. And he said, I realized I was moving slower. And he said I just had to decide to overcome the fear and jump in. He said, I jumped in in a couple of seconds. I was used to the water. Or he said, I've been doing it ever since. He's even swim nose to nose with a dolphin, and he has been very successful at swimming in the winter as well as in the summer, because he got used to it.

David Price 45:12

Yeah, it's amazing. It's amazing what we can get used to. I mean, we're, we're set to adapt, right? I mean, we humans can adapt to so many different things, but a lot of times we let our mind really stop us from so many different things.

Michael Hingson 45:34

So in 2018 is when you started the price group.

David Price 45:38

IMO, so actually, I started working with an insurance carrier in 2018 and I just had an agency at that time, and I did that till 2023 and the things started, things weren't the same there anymore, you know, just to politely say it, and agents weren't happy anymore. They changed comp plans, they changed the way they did a lot of different things, and it was becoming a really hard place for an agent to be successful and make money. So I decided to add some A rated carriers, right? Some add some other insurance carriers to work with. And when I did that, and they found out, they actually canceled my contracts. So I went from making six figures monthly to nothing, just just in one day, just in one day, it just happened, you know, where my pages completely got shut off. And that is, you know, when, when I started the price group, the IMO, and that was, I think, 351 days ago. And the reason I know that is yesterday was day 350 and we hit $10 million in production in 350 days. Which blows my mind so

Michael Hingson 46:52

well, since I promised we would do it. IMO stands for,

David Price 46:56

yes, independent marketing organization. So basically, what the IMO is, it's the buffer between the insurance carriers, something like Transamerica, Mutual of Omaha, American general. You know, they don't want to deal with just every agent that wants to be an agent, so they contract the IMO, and then the IMO will contract the agents or smaller agencies. So it's really just a middleman, so you don't have, you know, a large insurance company just dealing with somebody that just got their license.

Michael Hingson 47:25

Well, you said that you were when you were discontinued by the insurance agency. You said you were making like six figures a year. What kind of habits did you develop that took you to that within two or three years, so that you were actually making and became a millionaire because of all of that.

David Price 47:44

Yeah, there was a six figures, monthly, figures, monthly, it shut off. And, yeah, you know, it's trying to, I mean, there's, there's so many habits, but the the biggest, the biggest thing I see that I do different versus other people is I don't pay attention to scoreboard where somebody might be like, oh, man, I just made more money than I've ever made before in a week or a month or a day, and then they immediately, like, take off the next day, or, like, go on vacation, or they're celebrating, like, my celebration is like, Oh, look at that. Like, for instance, I told you, you know, two days ago, I just noticed we did $10 million in production since we started. Did over, like, 1000 or over 10,000 policies, right? 10,000 families. We helped. And I was like, All right, cool. Like, nothing changed. Like, I still went to work that day. I end up working, you know, till late. So, so it's just a matter of, like, really, continue to continue to put the effort in, regardless of what the results are. And then some people might look at that be like, well, that's crazy. Why is this guy work so much? And then it's, it's really like trying to see what, what's possible, you know, what, what, what you can do. You know, I was always thought like, once I would be in a spot where I'm at now, I'd probably spend a lot of time on the beach and do nothing, but sitting on the beach and doing nothing bores me, right? I mean, I could do it for a little bit, but it's like, you know, entrepreneurs, successful entrepreneurs, like solving puzzles, solving problems and doing things. And that's what I enjoy on a daily basis, yeah.

Michael Hingson 49:23

And it's, it's part of the habit, it's part of the mindset. And if suddenly you started seeing a change and something wasn't working, what would you do? So if suddenly your income started to go down, you would certainly notice it. What would you do?

David Price 49:39

Yeah, so the first thing is, you look at the numbers, right? Even not just go down, like you know, typically, it's always going up, so even if it's flat, right? I remember in 2000 I think was 2020 and 2021 at the end of 2020 I looked at the production at the end of the year, and it was almost the same as 20. 20. I'm like, wait, how'd that happen? Like, why did I grow? Because I grew very fast all the years previous, you know, by huge percentages. I was like, what happened? What? Why was there so little growth? So I'm like, All right, let me, let me look at that. And then I realized we spent the same amount of money for marketing, like, the same exact dollars for marketing, basically, from from the previous year. So that's why there was no growth. So when, when things start changing, you want to look at metrics. So I'm always looking at I always try to find different metrics. So how many agents are we hiring? How many policies are we writing? How many leads are we getting out? What's the closing ratio on the lead? So I'm checking all these metrics every single month. So that way, I'm looking at improving them. So that way, if there is a problem, we could hopefully catch it sooner than later.

Michael Hingson 50:45

Well, and that really was my point in asking the question. You you go think about it, and you look at what's going on, because you know what what works. And you will, you will figure out what isn't working, and then you will adapt and do what you need to do to change it so that you can continue to be successful. But it doesn't sound like, as you said, you're keeping score. You're doing it because you love the work that you do, and I know you've you've done over $50 million in sales and helped 1000s of families and so on. What's the real secret that caused you to be able to have such rapid growth,

David Price 51:27

vigorous honesty? You know, the to be able to do, you know, $50 million and help 50,000 clients. You know, it takes a huge team, right? It's not me. I can't do that by myself. And you know, to build a huge team, you need a good culture. And to have a good culture, you need to be someone that people people want to follow people that they look up to and people that they trust. And you know, a lot of times newer agency owners will come up to me, and they'll, they'll as like, you know, what's the best piece of advice you give me, and I was like, just always be honest, you know. Like, you can lie to somebody. You could fool them for a little bit, but eventually they'll figure it out, you know, and then you lost that person's trust. Because if I can get, if somebody's, you know, let's say someone's watching this, and they're like, You know what, I want to sell insurance. They have no experience at all. And if I could get them to, like, really, really trust me and just be really coachable and do everything that they're supposed to do, like, they'll be successful, yeah, but if they catch me lying to them, they're not going to be as coachable, and then I have a harder time helping them be successful. So I think it's just really important to just just always be as honest as you can, even if they don't like it, you know, just be as honest as you can.

Michael Hingson 52:42

I I talk a lot about using guide dogs since I've been using guide dogs since I was 14, and I talk about the fact that dogs may love unconditionally, and I think that's true unless there's something that's really damaged them, but they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between dogs and people, by and large, is that dogs are open to trust. And it is a it is a two way process. They are looking for someone to be the team leader, but they're also looking for someone who they can follow and who they can trust and not be afraid of, and who they know intuitively is going to support them. And I think that's just as true in in any kind of business that we as human beings deal with, and it is all about trust. I think that's the most important thing that we can bring into business, is developing a sense of trust. And I I've met with customers when I was selling products, and I would learn as much as I could about what they're looking for, why they're looking for, what they're looking for, what they expect to do with it. And there have been times that the products that I had would not do what the customer wanted. And although I'm sure that some of my bosses would have hated it if they were there to hear it, I would tell the customer that this won't work, and here's why, but here's also what will work invariably by gaining that trust, what I've discovered is that in the long run, there will be greater rewards, and the customers who learn to trust me and who learn from my knowledge will reciprocate in the future. And I think that is so true. Trust has got to be the one of the, well, if not the most significant thing that any of us bring into business. And clearly, you've done that. And clearly that's what you promote. You've you've done, as you said, in less than 350 days, you've done over $10 million in in sales. And that that says a lot that there's a lot of trust there somewhere. And it's not just your team, although that's a part of it. It's also the people that that they all work with, whose trust they've developed.

David Price 54:55

Absolutely it's like, um, you know, it's way more about. Valuable currency than than money. You know, it's, it's so much more valuable.

Michael Hingson 55:05

And I would assume, if I asked you, what are or what, what lessons should other entrepreneurs learn from all of this? Trust would certainly be one of them. Do you have other things that you think that entrepreneurs really need to learn and take to heart?

David Price 55:19

Yeah, I think the the other thing is, you know, if you plan on being an entrepreneur and you're not having success yet, you got to go all in and you got to go all in on one thing, you know, what I see a lot of people do is they want to have seven or seven different businesses at once, you know, and you're spreading your focus, then, instead of, like, putting your focus on one thing, you'll be so think about, there's so many very, very successful people with just one business, right, you know, and that's, that's a big thing I see now, you know, once you have a business and it's on autopilot, and, you Know, and then it's okay to diversify, you know, people like, well, you know, millionaires have, you know, multiple businesses and multiple streams of income, you know, but, but I'm willing to bet the majority of them made their money with one and then diversified,

Michael Hingson 56:13

yeah, yeah. Or, or, or not. But they, they may very well diversified and and gone off to develop other teams and create other businesses that they've made successful, which, which makes a lot of sense. Can you give us a success story of someone within your team who you are inspired by, who has been very successful, and you've helped so many people. What's a successful story where somebody within your team has inspired you because of what they did?

David Price 56:48

Yeah, you know, we got a we got a bunch of cool, cool stories, and always get some new ones. One that pops in my head when you say is Dana. Dana got her license. So Dana reached out to me. We actually grew up in the same town. We used together. She got clean before Me, and she messaged me on Facebook. I didn't like nowhere, and she's like, Dave, I don't know what you're doing, but I want to do it too, just from some Facebook posts she seen. So I didn't even bother giving her any more information. I just sent her the link that you need to sign up for the insurance course. She told me she wanted to do it, so I figured she had all the information she needed. So I sent her the link. She quickly gets her license. And she was like, super introverted, no real sales experience, very shy, very timid, and probably the worst example of somebody that would be successful back then, that's when we went out to people's houses to sell insurance, so probably the least chance to be successful. And she she sucked. She sucked for like two years, like she's my best example of somebody that just just didn't get it for a long time. And she was a retail worker before this, so she worked in, like, the stores in the mall, right? So she had no, no experience single mom, you know, basically, just like, Listen, this isn't going to cut it for how all my daughter to live and but she just, she still went to work every day. So there's a lot of times I'll meet an agent, like, Oh, I've been Asia for four years, but, like, they didn't go to work every day for four years, right? They had a license for four years, but they didn't go to work every day. She went to work every day for two years, and all of a sudden, just out of nowhere, man, she just, she just started having success as an agent. And what was really cool with her is because she went through so much struggle and became so successful as an agent, she was able to be able to help other people go through the same thing. So now she's actually the biggest agency in my IMO. She did almost $400,000 in production last month. She leads a team of amazing people. She has other single moms on her team, and she's just, she's just crushing it. She lives in a high rise in Miami, like her daughter wants for nothing. You know, she's does Jiu Jitsu, and, you know, whatever, like her daughter does Jiu Jitsu. She's like, this little, cute, little six year old thing running around beating up boys in a ghee. But it's just cool. It's just such, so inspiring to like watch that, because it didn't come easy for her. She just kept she just kept fighting, and so So, and I think she's gonna be so much more successful than she is. She's already super successful, but, but I feel like she still has so much more potential. And it's just really, it's just, it's great to watch. It's to me like, you know, I always, I was always short on money my whole life, right? Money was always a big factor. And now it's not so now it's like, the currency that I get paid in is success stories, and that's what really drives me.

Michael Hingson 59:57

And I bet that if we were to ask. Curve. She really appreciates where she came from and what she's done and where she's going. She would say absolutely, because she has clearly had to think about it. And that mindset, that thing we call an unstoppable mindset, is, is what really kicked in for her, which is so cool,

David Price 1:00:20

absolutely, yeah. No, it's, it was it was amazing. Yeah, unstoppable is the exact, exact word for her.

Michael Hingson 1:00:26

Well, if there's someone who's listening or watching us today, who's stuck and who's kind of in a dead end job or whatever, what would you say is the first mindset shift they need to make to to move forward, and the

David Price 1:00:39

first thing is, be open minded. You know, I remember having so many different jobs throughout my life, and just like, accepting it, right? Just like, oh, there's my job. There's my dream job to start like, rationalizing it and just, you know, being open minded to something else may suit you better, you know. And a lot of times, people will get really caught up on the vehicle. And, you know, instead of the destination, you know, someone was like, Hey, David, you know, you can live, you can live on a beach. And, you know, make a million dollars a year selling volleyballs, and have a lot of free time and freedom to do what you want, like, all right, well, I'm a volleyball salesman. Then, you know, so, so the, you know, as long as it's legal and moral. You know, the thing to get the lifestyle doesn't mean too much, because ultimately, you know, you want that to open up freedom, you know, I don't spend, you know, my life's a lot more than just insurance at this point.

Michael Hingson 1:01:38

Yeah, that's stuff. Even selling insurance is stuff. It's the mindset, it's your mind. It is the the whole world that you've developed inside and outside of you that really makes the difference. Absolutely, yeah, well, I appreciate that. What's the biggest mistake you see that people make when they're trying to start a business, or they're doing a business,

David Price 1:02:04

they completely underestimate the amount of effort that needs to go into it. You know, they they want to wing it. They want to do a part time. They Another big one is they don't, they don't work hard for themselves. They don't, you know, like, if someone's at their job, and their their mother in law is like, Hey, can you pick up from the airport? They're like, No, I'm at my job. But when they're they're working in their business, they're like, Yeah, of course, I'll pick you up. We'll go to lunch afterwards, right? Like, you know, I would say the the best thing about working for yourself or that work for else, good, good and bad, depending on on what your work ethic is. So I think just gotta be real clear with, you know, when you're going to work, you'll be real clear with what you're going to do. Make sure you're doing things that are going to create revenue for your business, and then you have to be okay to say no, no to people you know, no one. You know, I'm not picking someone up in the airport, in the in the middle of the day, you know, I'll send you an Uber but you know, there's, there's certain things that that needs to get done, for for the business to run, especially, especially in the beginning. I mean, now obviously I got more freedom so I can do things like that, but in the beginning, like I got work, I got work to do,

Michael Hingson 1:03:14

and that's fair. I think that's certainly fair, and that you're the one that has to set your boundaries and your priorities, and as long as you're doing it, as you said, for good, moral and ethical reasons, then that's what you should do. And I suspect that in general, when you do that, even if somebody needs a ride from the airport, like you said, you could send an Uber. You've got other ways of dealing with it. You'll always make sure that people get what they need. I would think that that's the case. Yeah. Well, David, I want to thank you for being here. This has been enjoyable, very educational, and I hope that people will learn a lot from it. I have, and I really appreciate your time, and it's getting on toward dinner time for you will be fairly soon. But you know, who knows? It depends on how late you work. But I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening. If people would like to reach out to you. How can they do that?

David Price 1:04:13

Yeah, I'm on most social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, LinkedIn, as David Price official. You can also check out our website, TPG life, calm and submit your information again. TP, G life.com, and then, yeah, but okay, I think you know any social media, just feel free to reach out to me in the direct messages and be happy to help me any way I can.

Michael Hingson 1:04:45

Have you written any books yet?

David Price 1:04:47

Not yet, not yet, like I still did before I got one, I need to go through and spend some time editing.

Michael Hingson 1:04:52

Yeah. Well, you let us know when it's all done. We'll, we'll help promote. Thank you all for listening. We appreciate it. So we would really value you giving us a five star rating wherever you're watching or listening to the podcast, and if you any of you out there, and David, you as well. If you know of anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, we would appreciate an introduction. We're always looking for more folks who have stories to tell us, so we would really appreciate you doing that. But again, David, I just want to thank you for being here and taking the time to be with us today.

David Price 1:05:26

Absolutely thank you for the opportunity, and it was definitely a very pleasure to appreciate that

Michael Hingson 1:05:34

Episode 411 – An Unstoppable Mindset Built on Love Over Fear with Linda Mackenzie

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What does it really mean to live with an unstoppable mindset when life keeps changing the rules? In this conversation, I had the privilege of talking with Linda MacKenzie, whose life story spans poverty, reinvention, creativity, faith, and deep personal responsibility. Linda grew up in the Bronx with very little, learned resilience early, and carried those lessons into a life that has included engineering, broadcasting, authorship, and decades of work around positivity, healing, and intuition. As we talked, we explored fear not as something that controls us, but as something that can guide us when we learn how to listen. We also discussed the importance of trusting your inner voice, choosing kindness even when it feels difficult, and staying grounded in truth rather than noise or fear. I believe this conversation offers something meaningful for anyone who wants to better understand themselves, live with greater purpose, and remember that an unstoppable mindset is built one choice at a time.

Highlights:

00:47 – Learn how early poverty and cultural diversity shaped a deep respect for people and resilience.03:25 – Understand why looking at a person’s heart matters more than labels or background.07:28 – Hear how lifelong learning and creativity fueled constant reinvention.09:56 – Discover why fear can be used as a signal instead of something to avoid.11:22 – Learn how positive thinking became the foundation for long-term impact.13:09 – Understand why truth and responsibility matter more than opinions.17:49 – Learn how intuition and inner voice guide better decisions.22:29 – Discover the two core fears that drive most human behavior.29:11 – Hear how natural healing and mindset work together over time.32:49 – Learn why giving back to the community creates balance and purpose.46:31 – Understand how positivity shapes collective consciousness.58:58 – Learn what it means to live with responsibility, kindness, and self-trust.

About the Guest:

Linda Mackenzie is the epitome of the multi- hyphenate! A former telecom engineer who designed worldwide communications networks for the airlines and Fortune

1000 companies, Mackenzie is a mainstay in pioneering entrepreneurial spirit. She launched one of the first used PC stores, a datacom consulting firm,a wholesale gift manufacturing company and was the former President of a mind- body supplement manufacturing corporation.

Today she heads one of her proudest accomplishments to date, as President of CREATIVE HEALTH & SPIRIT-- a Manhattan Beach based media & publishing company

started in 1995 and Founder of HealthyLife. net - All Positive Talk Radio which commenced in October, 2002.

Linda Mackenzie is also an author, radio host, lecturer, audio/ TV/ film producer, screenwriter, Doctoral Clinical Hypnotherapist Candidate, a world- renown

psychic who has appeared worldwide on hundreds of radio shows, almost all network and cable TV stations and in several award winning documentaries.

Ways to connect with Linda**:**

Social Media: Twitter: https:// twitter. com/ lindamackenzie; https:// twitter. com/ positiveradio

Linked In: https:// www. linkedin. com/ in/ linda- mackenzie- 590649b/

Facebook: https:// www. facebook. com/ linda. mackenzie. 56

Instagram: https:// www. instagram. com/ healthyliferadio/

You Tube: https:// www. youtube. com/@ LindaMackenzie

https:// www. youtube. com/@ healthyliferadio Websites: www. lindamackenzie. net, www. healthylife. net, www. hrnradio. com

P. O. Box 385, Manhattan Beach, CA 90267 books@ lindamackenzie. net www. LindaMackenzie. net

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be, I am Michael Hingson, and you are listening or watching unstoppable mindset. And today, we have a wonderful guest to talk with. She is an innovator by any standard. She's done a lot of different kinds things. She describes herself as a self as a multi hibernate, and I'm gonna let her explain some of that, but I think she's got some interesting and relevant stories to tell, and I'm really glad to have her here. I'd like you to meet Linda. MacKenzie, Linda, welcome to on top of a mindset.

Linda MacKenzie 01:58

Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here

Michael Hingson 02:02

and you're in Manhattan Beach, right, correct, yeah. So you're not all that far away from me from where I am, up in Victorville. So you know, we could probably open our windows and if we yelled loud enough, we could hear each other. But anyway, tell me about the early, early Linda, growing up and all some of that stuff. Well, that was kind

Linda MacKenzie 02:22

of an interesting journey. You know, I was born in the Bronx. My mother was Bostonian, Irish, and my dad was Northern Italian. He had the red hair. My mother had the dark hair, and a typical Italian family, you know, and Irish family, they were constantly fighting, so I delved into books and ran to the church for peace and quiet and and many, many things like that. And we were very poor, you know, we had two dresses. I had two dresses a year. And we, you know, did, had to come home for lunch because we didn't have lunch money and stuff like that. Walked walk that mile to school, too much to school. And we did. I actually lived on the second highest point on the eastern seaboard and so but we grew up really fun. You know, we had when I was growing up in New York, one one street was Italian, the next one was Irish, and the blacks had a street, and the Japanese had a street, and the Koreans had a street, and the Germans had a street. And we all went to school together, and we had one common denominator. We were poor. So when I had sleepovers, I had every kind of person, and we just took each other for who we were and not what we were. And so that was a very nice thing growing up. And because we were poor, we got a lot of advantages. For example, our chorus was in high school, our chorus was taught by Metropolitan Opera singers. So we learned and got many things. And if you were very bright and understood that, we to try and get everything we could do, you know, and use it to improve yourself, it happened so and that's kind of what we did.

Michael Hingson 04:14

Well, I think that's really cool, and it's great that you grew up in an environment where everyone understood that we're all part of the same world and and they got along. So you never really had to face a whole lot of or you see other people face a whole lot of that, the kinds of problems that we see in other parts of the world, that everyone worked out pretty well together.

Linda MacKenzie 04:35

Yeah, I for us. We did, and I've learned to take people, but I always looked at the heart of a person. You know, I may never have remembered their name, but I would remember everything they said, and I could see their soul. So I I never, ever really saw color of skin or anything like that, and and so it was kind of an enigma for that. I mean, it was. An easy for me growing up. I mean, I had three attempted rapes before I was 11, you know, you had to learn street smarts. You know, you go to church and you got, you're passing the strip club with, you know, all the drunks trying to grab at you at eight years old, trying to pull you away. So, you know, so you learned real quick on what to do and what not to do, and I ended up getting married, put my ex husband through school. He became a biochemist, and went to college for two years, and then quit and put him through school, and then, you know, had a baby at, you know, is married at 19 and had a baby at 21 and, you know, was divorced at 27 and moved to California at well, divorced at 25 I guess, yeah, and then moved to California in 27 and just had a really interesting life. I've been through every strata society, from extremely poor to not so poor to middle class to nouveau riche to old money. I've even jet set. I've done it all so, great experience, no matter what. Did you ever get remarried? Yes, I did. I got I got married to a commodities broker that actually worked at the World Trade Center and in the Mercantile Exchange up there in the comics and the mercantile and, you know, as a matter of fact, there was one day because I was cute when I was, you know, 2728 and my husband was a broker on a floor trader, and he'd say, come in, as it's this particular time, onto the floor, and come meet me on the floor. Well, they didn't really have a lot of women on the floor. Yeah, back in those days. I mean, you know, back in the days where I grew up, my husband had to approve a bank account if I could have a savings account. So you could, you couldn't even, you know, have a credit card if you were a woman, you know. So I went through a lot of stuff. But anyway, I remember walking on the floor, and the whole exchange stopped because he told me wear a mini skirt. And I did. And he went in and did a whole big thing on trading gold, and made a lot of money that day. Walked on the exchange. That's what ended up happening. But Seth, you

Michael Hingson 07:17

talked about, you just made me think of something you talked about, you saw people's hearts and so on, but you never remembered their names. I know for six years I worked up at Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, which is where I've gotten all of my guide dogs. Because after September 11, one of the things they asked me if I come be their spokesperson. One of the things that we heard, and I never believed in until I saw it in action, is that most of the people at guide dogs know every single dog that goes through the campus bills. They'll never remember your names. They don't remember students names, but they remember the dogs,

Linda MacKenzie 07:53

right, right? Well, they have intimate Well, I mean, I remembered my mom's name. Well, that's a start.

Michael Hingson 08:04

It's just kind of funny, because, you know, the students and the trainers do get along well, but it's just so funny. How so many people up there would remember the dogs. I could go down the corridor going to the Veterinary Clinic, and people would come up and they go, Hi Rosell, or hi Africa. I can't quite remember your name, but it's so funny. That's great, you know, and can't argue with it. It's nice to be remembered somehow, even if it's for the dog. That's right, that's right. So did you just have two years of college, or did you ever finish?

Linda MacKenzie 08:39

Yeah, no, I went back and I got a degree, and then I got grandfathered in, and I have a PhD in clinical hypnotherapy, and I have been recognized as a furthering the profession, and also by the American Board of hypnotherapy, they say that I'm the their most creative, prolific minds, which I said, Oh, good. I can use that in PR for at least 10 minutes? Yeah, at

Michael Hingson 09:05

least it's something to say.

Linda MacKenzie 09:07

Yeah, no, but I've always I was. My Autobiography is called Life is like Girl Scout badges. I'm kind of writing that so and it's because whenever I finish something or did something, you know, I would go on to something else, because I feel life is just a wonderful thing. So I've done many, many things I've done, you know, when I was 18, I won awards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art for my artwork, and I was offered a contract with Columbia Records to sing, but the promoter, the ME TOO movement was back then too, and I chose not to do it, so I didn't go with them, which is a funny thing, because now I'm 76 this year, and I am producing a children's record and next month, and I've written the songs and done the music, and we've got people from Off Broadway and different kinds of people coming together. For for a wonderful record for children on how to stop negative thought, to stay positive and what and how to transcend fear. So that's my project for this year. You know, so, but I've done so many things. I mean, I don't know where you just start.

Michael Hingson 10:18

That's fine. Well, I hope to hear the record someday.

Linda MacKenzie 10:22

Oh, you will. It's going to be so much fun. It's so much fun.

Michael Hingson 10:26

I you know, you know who Neil sadaka is, yes, and he's got this song, Breaking up is hard to do. Well, it turns out that in 2009 he did a whole album for kids. The title song is waking up is hard to do. It's never it's cute. Somebody told me about it earlier this year, and I went and found it. It is a cute album, and it's the melodies are most all of his other songs, but the words are all kids related, and they're very clever.

Linda MacKenzie 10:53

Well, this was a book that I wrote about 20 years ago, and and then I and somebody picked it up, and then they said, you need to write a script. And I said, Well, I don't know how to write a script, so I bought a book and I wrote a script, and they it was picked up while Ron Howard had it, and Hawk Koch, who did sliver, and Deborah Johnson, and it's been in play for 20 years. I mean, the last producers that had it was crazy, Rich Asians, and it was never produced, and every single time they wanted to produce it, so I said, You know what, I'm going to write the book myself. So I rewrote the book. My daughter's doing some education. She's a teacher, so she's doing some educational things so that the people in education can, you know, take the chapters and the characters and learn how to be positive from these things and and it's really kind of a fun thing, so I'm really excited about it. So I just said, I'm not going to wait for them. I'm going to do it because the kids need it now more than ever. They just get away from that social media and to really start connecting and to understand that it's not the witchcraft, it's not the, you know, the social media that, or you know what it is, is your own mind and your own self, and using the quality of your mind and understanding that and moving through it and having a Positive attitude that will get you so far in life, and that's what my goal is, is to just, you know, I've been doing that for almost, I don't know, 40 years. Is my whole goal was truth and positivity. So Well, there

Michael Hingson 12:33

you go. By the way, since you have written books, I would appreciate it if you would email me and attach pictures of the book covers, because I'd love to put them out as part of the show notes.

Linda MacKenzie 12:45

Okay, great. That would be great. I have four books out. I I had started a positive Talk Radio Network back in 2002 and you know, we're going to a lot of we go. We have 45 hosts. It's live. We do podcasts, and we've been doing podcasts since 2004 if you can believe that, and we were pioneer in internet radio and so and that's because I was an engineer for 18 years, and I was the first woman Datacom engineer in any airline in the world, and designed stuff for Continental Airlines and Western airlines and international airlines and things like that. And, you know, air to ground, radio and right go to the when you go to the airport, if you use computerized tickets, that was kind of my I participated in that with other wonderful people, and I worked with microwave and did all of that as matter of fact, I redesigned a computer center. So every year I've done something, you know, and I've been successful, and then I move on, you know. But the radio network is my longest one. That's 23 years. So we'll be 2024, years this year, which is a lot of years, but we're helping people, because it's all positive talk. So although we do have a news program, I tried to make it positive, but we report the old way, you know, with, you know, checking sources and really having too much opinion. And when you have an opinion, say it's your opinion, you know, not trying to which

Michael Hingson 14:21

is fair, which is which is fair. Well, if you ever need a guest on the podcast or on any of the radio shows, just let me know. I'm always looking for opportunities to also be positive and and motivate people. So if

Linda MacKenzie 14:33

we can, just have to go to the site, and there's a thing called all shows, and go through all of the hosts, because we have over 45 of them, and, you know, and so, and each one does

14:47

their own. Got it? What's the site?

Linda MacKenzie 14:50

Again, it's called Healthy Life. Dot.net. It's or heal thy life.net. So it's healthy life or heal thy life. Same got it? Same thing. Saying different, different way of saying it and and you can listen 24/7, I don't do any apps. We are syndicated on 75 channels of distribution. So if you wanted to get on, tune in, or streama, or some of these other wonderful networks in Europe, you know, we go to 137 countries. So it's a pretty good network. And if you want to be happy and get learn things, you know it's just wonderful. We're starting some new shows that nobody's ever done, and I can do an exclusive here for you, if you want it, our network is going to be doing I've been following a while that there's certain kinds of classical music, right? That when you listen to it can reverse cancer, stop Alzheimer's, stop Parkinson's. And there are certain things at certain frequencies. And I have one of the greatest classical Taurus in the world, in my opinion, and he's going to be doing a show where people can listen to the music and then and help themselves heal right on air, I'm stupid by John Hopkins University. And, I mean, it's not just namby pamby or, you know, La La Land stuff. It's no, I'm saving for certain things. So it's it's really no one's doing that. So it's going to be really fun for me to do.

Michael Hingson 16:27

Are you familiar with Joe fatale? No. He is a an individual who has done a lot with with sound to not only help people from a wealth standpoint, but also help them in terms of dealing with health. I've, I've been on a couple of his mailing lists, and he's had some interesting, some interesting things, and a couple of people who've worked with him and so on have been guests on unstoppable mindset. But it's an interesting guy, but definitely parallels a lot of what you're saying, certainly stuff, I have also believed, right?

Linda MacKenzie 17:03

We've had Jonathan Goldman, who has written, He's a graduate of Berkeley School of Music, but he's been doing sound healing. It was an interesting story with him, and he's on our network, and he's been doing shows with us for over 20 years. And it was funny, he went to Tibet and he was loved the chants of the Tibetan monks. And he went over there, and he said, can I try that chant? And they said, No, that chant, you know, is like 10 years. You have to do it in 10 years, you know, you have to train for that. He goes, Can I try? And they said, Yes. And he got it perfectly. And so now the Tibetan monks go to train with him in Boulder, Colorado every year around June timeframe. So it's kind of a fun story. So he's been in sound healing for a long time. And there's a lot of different things that are true, but like today, you have to make sure that it resonates with you, because not everything that you're hearing is true, and people are bastardizing things. And the closer you are to the truth, and the closer that you and you can depend on your own truth meter, because everybody's got one, yeah. And if you depend on that and listen to just that, and if it tells you stop, I don't want to do this anymore, then you just go to that point, and then you will get the benefit from everything.

Michael Hingson 18:25

One of my favorite things that I've talked about several times on the podcast when I talk to people about inner voices and their thoughts is I ask a number of people, did you used to play or do you play Trivial Pursuit? And when they say, Yes. One of the things I constantly ask people is, how often did somebody ask a question? Immediately you thought of an answer, but you went, Oh, that was just too easy. And so you think again, you come up with a different answer, but the first answer that you thought of was the correct one, which is absolutely all about listening to your inner voice and listening to correct what you're being told.

Linda MacKenzie 19:00

That's right. You're 99% right if you listen the first time and don't use your mind to think. You know, the brain is divided into two kinds. You know, the left logical brain. What you need if you're crossing a street. I mean, I would like to know there's a car and step back, but the right side of the brain is where your creativity is, and I call the seat of soul. And what happens is, is that your creative side is the thing that heals you. Your left logical side is just like the monkey mind. And so what happens when you're doing hypnosis? What you're doing is you're getting the left brain to listen to a story, but you before you do it, you have an intention, and the intention is the right brain knows exactly what you need to do, but it's very kind, and it lets the left brain sit there, be in control, except at night, and you'll notice that if you're ill, and when you wake up in the morning, you feel, most times, a lot better. And that's reason is, is because the right side of the mind has. Has actually taken control right and the left side of the brain is sleeping, so your right side of the brain can absolutely heal you. And this is where your your gut feel comes from, too, is from the right side of the brain. And we are much more than we think we are. You know, we're just spiritual beings in a physical body, not a physical being in a you know, we're not just physical beings, you know, right?

Michael Hingson 20:28

Well, and it all goes back to the spiritual and to the light. And absolutely is true. I know that I've, we've had on on this podcast, a number of Reiki Masters and other people, and we've had people who bring on singing musical bowls and so on.

Linda MacKenzie 20:50

And it's interesting about that, because, you know, here in Japan, Reiki has 12 levels, but they're only taught three here, and they're never taught the level to where you protect yourself, because when you're out there in the universe and you're going into doing some of these things, everything exists, even a thought form exists. So you want to make sure that you're as protected as possible when you're doing these things right and so, but most of the people don't know, because they don't allow you to do that. And Reiki, there is a you're there in it, day in, day out. That's your career. You know, it's not just a pastime. And the Tibetan bowls are great. However, for me, when they do the regular way of doing it, it's like chalk on a chalkboard. For me, when they do it opposite and backwards, I'm in heaven. So it's really interesting how everybody's body is different. Every person is unique. And we have to understand that when we're looking at health or with mind or with body, we want to understand that we are so important. Each one of us is important. Never should be belittled or, you know, and treat everybody with kindness and love and and respect and truth

Michael Hingson 22:06

exactly right. And I'd love to see a whole lot more of it than oftentimes we do see, but I know that that it's so important that we focus on doing things to protect ourselves. And one of the things that that I talk about is I wrote a book that was published last year called on stop or excuse me, called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. And the whole idea behind the book was that at the beginning of the pandemic, I realized that although I had escaped from the World Trade Center, and I had, in fact, known what to do, which was a mindset that clicked in when the emergency happened. I never really worked to teach other people that. So I wrote, live like a guide dog, and used lessons that I learned from all of my guide dogs and my wife's service dog, the lessons from those dogs to, in fact, learn how to deal with the different things that we have to deal with, and learn how to, in reality, control, protect ourselves and move forward in a positive and constructive way. In other words, really learning about the fact that you can control fear. Fear is not something that you you need to allow to overwhelm or, as I put it, blind you or paralyze you. The reality is that fear is a wonderful thing that you can use as a very powerful tool to help you function and succeed even in the most adverse circumstances possible.

Linda MacKenzie 23:40

Well, I one of the songs on the record is called fear is fear is my friend, and it's a wonderful song, and it teaches you that fear. I did a big study for 20 years on fear, right? Because the only way that people can control you is through fear. Okay? If you don't have fear, no one can control you. No one, okay, yeah.

Michael Hingson 24:08

Well, and just to interrupt for a quick sec, I would say it's not that you don't have fear, but you control it.

Linda MacKenzie 24:16

Well, you overcome it. You

Michael Hingson 24:17

exactly, right, exactly. You use it. You use it in a powerful, better way. Anyway, go ahead, right?

Linda MacKenzie 24:23

Well, fear does, for me is that when fear comes in, it's, it's a wake up call, saying, yeah, look at this. What is it that you're fearful of, and what? Because the only way you can go through exactly right through it. And so when I did this study, it was very interesting, because I found that fear comes from two places. One is a fear of loss, and the other is a fear of death. When you fine tune fear all the way all the way all the way all the way down, it's fear of loss or fear of death. And it's funny, because we come in with nothing, we're leaving with nothing. The only thing we take. With us is the love we give and the love we get. That's it. And I've been on the other side and worked on the other side for the British government and all sorts of stuff, so I know that there's life after death, yeah. And so therefore there's really nothing to fear except to find out what the lesson fear is trying to teach you when you learn it, and you learn it all the way that lesson, you will never have to repeat it in your life again. And so fear is so, so important, and yet not to be feared. Don't fear

Michael Hingson 25:35

don't fear it. No, as I said, it's a very powerful tool that can help in so many ways, right, which I think is really important. Well, after college, you started working at various things. What did you do after college? What was kind of your first endeavor?

Linda MacKenzie 25:51

Well, I started with the New York telephone company, and I was called when I was selling touch tone telephones. They had just come out.

Michael Hingson 26:01

Was it, was it called? Was it called 9x then? Or was it was that?

Linda MacKenzie 26:05

Well, in New York, it was no. It was, yeah, that was the trade trade, yes, but it was New York telephone company, yeah. And then I went to work for the National radiology registry, and I designed a prison. When I moved to California, I started to really take off, and I designed a people coming out of prison weren't able to get jobs and and so the X ray they did teach in some prisons in Chino, as a matter of fact, how to become a x ray technician and and so, and an ultrasound wasn't even out back then, back in 77 so I started a prison program to it was a temporary agency so that when a doctor's office or a hospital, their x ray technicians didn't show up, they would call us, and then we would send somebody out, and then they would like the people we would send, and they would give them jobs. So the we so I tried to do that. And then I started working for the airlines and and I they said, Well, do you want to be a reservation person? I said, No. And they said, Well, do you want to be, you know, at the ticket counter agent? Yeah, no, no. He said, Do you want to be a flight attendant? I said, No. And they said, Well, what do you want to do? And I said, Put me in accounting at the mail desk. I want to see where the money goes, and then I'll figure out where I'm going to go. And they said, What? And I said, Just do it, you know. And I had made friends with someone, and so they gave me the job, and I kept moving. And every six months I'd find another error, a million dollar error, and this and this and this. And I finally worked my way up into computers and and then I was the very first woman in any as a data com engineer in any airline in the world. And I started doing a lot of things like that, and then went to work for Western airlines. And then I did worked for CETA, which is Society International Telecommunications aeronautic, which is a largest telecommunications company in the world, based in France and Switzerland. And then I from there, after my daughter graduated from college, I said, enough of this engineering. And so I quit, and I started a metaphysical company, and I got onto a lot of TV. I started my radio show in 1996 I started writing books, and I then from there, I was president of a dietary supplement manufacturing company for a while, and then I manufactured audio tapes and and our company, our vitamin company, was the first company to do mind body medicine. So we would have my partner, was Vice President from GNC, and we started a business in New York and in California. And what we did was we would do an arthritis formula, which she was great at formulation. She was one of the best in the biz. And I would do audio visualization tapes, so that when you were taking the formulas, you would be working on a body level, but the mind would, you would start helping to grow bone with the mind. So we were the first ones to do all these wonderful things for that. And we sold to Trader Joe's and house markets and all sorts of stuff. And then the big farmer came in, and then that was that, you know, they bought up almost all the vitamin companies, and then they started, you know, most of the vitamin companies out there aren't worth their salt, and they're not giving you good vitamins. So and then from there, I went into doing the radio network and which I've been doing, and then I stopped doing books. And then two years ago, I said, you know, I'm getting old, and if I want to get these books out, I better get them out. So I probably. Myself that I was going to do one a year. And for the last two years, I did those two new books, and then I was, I was going to do the children's book this year, but they say that April is the best time to release a children's book is that's when the stores and the education people are looking at it and getting towards summer and all that. Yeah, yeah. So I'm waiting until next year to release that, the album and stuff. But so this year I had to put together a new book, which I'm doing. I just, I'm almost finished with that, so I can release it in September, and that is going to be where it's, I think it's going to be called, help yourself heal with natural remedies or naturally, and it's going to have 40, or about 40 different illnesses, and all the natural medicine with it, plus in the back, it's going to have what is an amino acid, all these terms, so that people can understand. I like to do things that are complete and and I don't do anything if somebody has to get something from a book or a product or a thing that I do. Otherwise I won't do it, yeah, because I want it for everyone, you know. So, so anyways, I'm, I'm working on that as we

31:08

speak. Well, there you go. Well,

Michael Hingson 31:11

so it'll be out in like, September or October.

Linda MacKenzie 31:14

Yeah, exactly. I'm, I'm doing, I'm just about completed with it, and I just have about three or four chapters to go, but I keep finding new things I want to put in. For example, you know, since there is a censorship on the natural health sites, I'm going to include all of the wonderful health site, health natural health sites, so that people will have a reference so they don't have to worry about things, you know and where to get information. So it's going to be good.

Michael Hingson 31:44

Well, when that book gets to the point where you have a book cover, I certainly want to put that in the show notes as well.

Speaker 1 31:50

Okay, great. That'd be great. And

Michael Hingson 31:53

maybe we can release this about the time the book is is made visible to the world, so that that'll help.

Speaker 1 32:01

That'd be great, sure. Well, so what

Michael Hingson 32:05

do you consider your profession today?

Linda MacKenzie 32:09

Me, I'm my own profession. Me, the I don't have a profession. I have many hats that I'm wearing, right? So I mean tremendous amounts. I'm still running the radio network, and in a radio network, you need 21 individuals to do it, and there we have four, and I'm doing about, I don't know, 10 or 12 of the 21 things to do. So if you want to give me a hat for there, that's that. And then I'm an author and I'm doing the record, so I'm that, and I'm a radio host and, you know, and I give pictures. And the thing is, is that it's like, I'm not busy enough, but I love giving back to the community, because, you know, when you are there's six things you need in your life to be happy and balanced, right? And one of them is giving to the community. So I wasn't really before covid, I was doing a lot, but I wasn't really doing anything for my community. So what I did was I it took me four months. They had to do a homeland security check and a thumbprint and, you know, all sorts of stuff, to do guided meditation for healing for seniors. So we're going to be taking, and that's starting in two weeks, in August 8, and we're, we're going to be doing at the Senior Center in Redondo Beach and and so people will come, and we're going to work on different kinds of anti aging issues, like arthritis and, you know, macular degeneration and bones and diabetes and stuff, and every every two weeks, I'll be doing a guided meditation and helping people heal with that. So, so now I've got the community in and so I've got all my six pieces of my pie, and now I'm stable again.

Michael Hingson 34:00

There you go. It's nice to have peace in the world, right? Yeah, it is. It is. So tell me, given all the things you've done, tell me a story or two about things that you've done, something very memorable that comes to mind.

Linda MacKenzie 34:15

Oh, there's so many, I'm sure. I mean, because on top of that, you know, I've been a psychic since I'm eight years

34:21

old, right? So how did you discover that? How did

Linda MacKenzie 34:25

you I saw God when I was eight? Okay, I'm very God based. I'm not from the planet Altair or the universe. I never took a course. I mean, I listened to God. God said, Jump. I said, Hi. How high and and that's what I do. But I've done I'm very respected in the community. I do a lot of, like, a lot of things for for that, there's, you know, I've done documentaries on it, and there's 17 different distinct psychic abilities. I have them all, and I don't do. Two of them, I don't do prophecy and I don't do trans mediumship, which means that an entity will jump into you and talk through you. And that happens because for a long time, I was on ABC, NBC, BBC, Japan TV. I worked with International Society for paranormal research, and we went over to London to investigate for the British government, you know, some of the Belgrave Hall, whether the ghost things were real or not. And one of the things that was interesting, because there's a lot of stories on those you know that are like, kind of titillating, or saying, Oh, what's going on? I was so basically, I tested my abilities for 37 years before I came out. So what I would do is say I was 16, and I would have pre Cognizant dreams. So I would write the dreams out. And what I would do is I would give them to my girlfriend after I wrote them, and then when one of the dreams would come true, I'd have a witness that was there with me, and I'd go over to her house, and I'd say, hey, Eileen, can you pull the dream with the roller coaster there? And she would pull it out. And then I said, read it. And then that way, I learned to decipher what was coming from God, what was coming from me. Because, you know, there's a lot of, you know, where if you don't know how to manipulate the energy. So it was a long, long time I, you know, by the time I was 15, I had read every metaphysical book in the New York Public Library, everyone, and so I took it very seriously. And I was, you know, busting psychics in New York at 21 and and then finally I just stopped, and I didn't come back out until I was about 37 and so when I went to London, they there was a, we had a Cora Derek. A Cora was the one of the leading psychics in London. And then we had Peter James, who was on sightings. And then we had me, and we three went over. And then we would go into they would take us individually to these different sites. And they would say, Okay, what do you feel, and what do you see? And so I would be taking, you know, they take me to these different things and, and I would see all these different things, and I would say it, and it turned out, I'm saying I'm not very comfortable here. I'm not comfortable here. And then we go to the next site, and I would tell them, Oh, I see a woman with a red hat. And I gave them names and places and dates and and it turned out that they were taking me on the path of Jack the Ripper, and to the point where I gave them new information on Jack the Ripper that they never had before. And so I have an ability that I can stand on a piece of ground, and I can go back to the beginning of time and tell you names and dates and places of who was there all the way back up. So there's a lot of things, and the government has asked me to work for them on many projects. They've been charting me since I'm 15 and so, and I just don't, I don't do and one, and I'm not going to say which, but one of the presidents of the United States, when they were in office, asked me to be their psychic, and I told them, I don't do politics, sports books or lottery tickets, and I turned them down. I mean, I was going to go to dinner with them, because Henry Kissinger was going to be my dinner partner at the Jonathan club, you know. And I thought he was an interesting guy, you know, whether you liked him or you didn't like him, he was an interesting guy. And I like to meet different people, because even if you it's not somebody you like, you need to understand the people so that you know how to handle them in a correct manner, you know. And so even if you don't like someone, you treat them with respect, and you learn you better, you understand, you know. So, so that's those are some stories.

Michael Hingson 39:01

So, so let's, let's get to the reality of the world. Did you ever visit the Del Coronado hotel and talk to the ghost down there?

Linda MacKenzie 39:08

Yes, oh, good. We did. We were one. We were the group that was doing it, that was filmed. We did the Queen Mary. We did. We were, if you saw that on television. It was probably me there. It wasn't as as haunted as some of the other places. I mean, you know, there was one place in England that was very interesting, so we did a documentary called ghost of England, and there was a one house. I don't remember the name of it, but there was a three generations that had died that were still in the house. The house was in the family for 300 years, and I released a little girl there that was eight, that was a, you know, a spirit there, and I released her to her mom. She had died of consumption. It was really interesting, because. Because they knew of each other, and it was, here's these three different generations, and they can see each other, and they know each other. So that was very interesting, because the Society for paranormal research actually did research into the phenomena of ghosts and the ghost at Belgrave Hall, we found we were very truthful. There was no ghost at Belgrave Hall, okay? I mean, it was explained away by phenomena that, you know, street lights and rain stuff. So we did a lot of that, but we wanted to make sure that everything that we did was in truth. And then another thing that we found was I did another documentary called ghost of New Orleans. And New Orleans is a very, very, very strange place. And I actually went back and they asked me to do a I did a 17 part interactive museum display for a paranormal Museum in New Orleans, and it was all teaching about psychic ability and how not to fear it. And it's not the devil's work. It's, you know, it's just a natural ability that we have. And I wanted people to understand that, but get the truth not from a lot of these people that are just talking that don't know, you know. So anyway, so we did in New Orleans. It was interesting, because the ghosts work together. We were all on different floors, and on each floor, they would give us papers, and they would, you know, newspapers in the morning, and the newspapers would end up in our rooms, in different places all the time, and it was just and we didn't move them. Nobody touched them. The room wasn't able to get in. So there's all sorts of phenomenon there that is just kind of interesting, you know, there.

Michael Hingson 41:47

So just, does some of that have to do with voodoo and so on, but just because they're so prevalent down

Linda MacKenzie 41:52

if you understand that everything exists, you have to none of that was the voodoo, because, very specific thing, yeah, and it's a specific practice, okay, and so it's not something that I would get into. Or, do you know? I mean, it's not we were, I was attacked several times there. I mean, we went into a we went into a house where there was an entity there that had committed 27 murders, and it was they were all buried in the backyard, and they never even knew until we told them about it, when he came after me on that and so you know, you you have to know what you're doing when you're Doing this, too, you know. So you know, but most ghosts, you just tell them to go away, or if you and sometimes you want to see them, you know, maybe it's your mom or your dad that you're missing. So one of the ways that you can do that is you can say, Hey, before you go to sleep, put a pen and a pencil by your bed, and just say, I would like to see you, dad tonight, and and then you say, I would like to remember that I saw you, yeah. And then when you get up in the morning, you just jot down little words or something, anything that you remember. And then after a while, you'll be able to get a rapport where you'll be able to start to remember, and then able to communicate.

Michael Hingson 43:23

Yeah. And the reason I asked about the Dell, just because that's that is a a ghost I've, I've heard so much about, and a friendly ghost, as I understand it. So there's a woman, I guess what? She died in a room there. But it's one of the things that everybody talks about with the Dell all the time, of course.

Linda MacKenzie 43:40

Well, one of the funniest things that happened was, well, there was two funny things. One was, you know, we were at the doing the the Comedy Store, the magic and magic club. And the Comedy Store is what that Tootsie shores place, anyway. So we were doing, doing the Comedy Store, and there's a ghost there that puts his hands up people's skirts. Well, that's nice. I went in there, and they didn't tell me, and all of a sudden, I'm going, what the heck. And I look there and I see and I and these, and they said, Oh yeah, we forgot to tell you. I said, Yeah, you didn't forget you wanted to catch that on camera. I said, Well, you did. So it's funny. It's a comedy

Michael Hingson 44:28

story. I'm sure the ghost thought it was funny.

Linda MacKenzie 44:30

Yeah, he did. I bet. So, yeah. So there's, there's, I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of stories and and that's my book coming out in 2027 that's going to be called, and then what happened? Paranormal stories, believe it or not, you know. And those are going to have 40 stories in there on things that have happened to me, where people are going to say what? And you can believe it or not, that's coming

Michael Hingson 44:58

up too. So do. Well, and that's that's ultimately it. People can decide to believe it or not, and a lot of people will poo, poo it. It doesn't change the reality of the situation, though,

Linda MacKenzie 45:12

no, but you know, it's okay. Wherever you are is good, as long as you love one another, or at least try and be kind to one another. I think we can accomplish a lot just by doing that, yeah, and agree to disagree. You know, we we don't have to get upset if the other person has 100% doesn't agree with us. We have to just agree to disagree and not try and get heated. But the

Michael Hingson 45:38

other, the other side of that, or the other part of that, not the other side, is that if you really take that, that tact, and you agree to disagree and you continue to converse, you never know what you're going to learn, as opposed to what we see so often now, somebody disagrees, and there's just this complete block wall that comes up. There's no discussion at all, and that's never a good thing to do.

Linda MacKenzie 46:03

Well, this morning on my radio show was interesting. I went out with a girlfriend of mine, and she's really into these conspiracy theories, and I'm just not there, you know. So she was trying to put her point through and saying, you know, the collective consciousness has to understand this so we can do something about it. And I said, Yeah. I said, Well look, I said, Here's what I've decided. I said, I'm 76 if somebody else wants to do the activism for this kind of stuff, then at 50, go and do your thing. I said, but I think that when you start getting angry and you start getting heated, what's happening is the collective consciousness is there for everyone. We're all part of everything. We are part of everyone and everything. And so when you get upset, that's not helping the consciousness to make everything right. And if you get a group of people thinking the same thought, you can actually change consciousness and make the world better. So instead of sitting there, do something about it. Donate to something. But don't just sit there and talk about it, you know, actually do something about it and start making sure that you're staying positive about it, and what you can do positively for the situation. And don't get caught in the controversy because you're making more negative energy, yeah, and that never works, no. Positive always overcomes negative. So if you want something to happen, think positive, be buoyant, positive always overcomes negative. So you need to do that.

Michael Hingson 47:39

And it is, it is so true, and so many people, you know, we're, we're in a world now where there's so much negativity. It's so unfortunate, because I think people miss out when they do that. And you're right, that's, it's not really part of the good, constructive collective consciousness, either,

Linda MacKenzie 48:00

right, right? So we just have to, you know, people think that they can't do anything when things happen. And what I'm saying if you come from the premise that everything is energy, right? And so if you are just loving your spouse or loving your dog or being kind to people that energy is positive, right? And so sure you are doing something, because if we make a lot of positive energy in that collective consciousness, as above so below, right? So if we go ahead and do that, then it will drift down, and we will have a better, happier place, but being negative doesn't help you. Negative makes your immune system depressed. It gives you illness, and it's these are all proven things, so you might as well stay positive. And I don't mean Pollyanna, where you don't things, but you know, understand things and understand that there's a greater force in the back of things too, that, you know, it's not just all about us. You know, there is a for me. I believe that there's a God, and God is in control, and so we have to trust that to some degree.

Michael Hingson 49:14

On September 11, and I wrote about this in my book thunder dog, and I've talked about it a few times here, when I was running away from tower two, because I was very close to it when it collapsed. The first thing I thought of as I started to run was, God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And immediately I heard in my head, as clearly as we're talking right now a voice that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, who is my guide dog, and the rest will take care of itself. And I immediately had this absolute sense of peace and calm and conviction that if I did that, I'd be fine. And I was so. I'm saying that in part to tell you I understand exactly what you're saying, and that was kind of perhaps one of my experiences. But the bottom line is that we need to learn to listen. And one of the things that I talk about and live like a guide dog is that so many people worry about every little thing that comes along. They are just worried about, how am I going to deal with this? Or the politicians are going to do this to me and that to me and everything else. And the reality is, we don't have control over any of that. What we have control over is how we deal with stuff. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be aware of what's going on around us. But by the same token, if we worry about every little thing, and we don't really worry about the things over which we have some influence, we're only hurting ourselves.

Linda MacKenzie 50:50

And it delays it, and it delays it, and it delays it. So you if you want things to get over quickly, learn to listen. And sometimes, you know, people would say, what is meditation? And I said, Well, it's kind of like prayer. You're listening to God's answers, you know. So I mean, there, I've never been alone, because I've always had a very strong connection with God. And as a matter of fact, it was very interesting. I'll tell you the story about the radio network, and basically, I had just been offered by Sci Fi Channel. They said, We love working with you. So would you take and there was a big

51:31

ghosty, a ghost

Linda MacKenzie 51:36

show coming up. It was very big. And I said, No, I won't do that because it wasn't in truth, and you just want to make people cry. You want to feed off those emotions. That's not me. So Mary from sci fi said, You know what, Linda, we like working with you, so just go home and design a show for us, and we will do it. So I got home and I was so excited, because now I was going to make the big money, and I was going to get known and God comes in, and he goes, Linda. And I said, What? And he said, I want you to start a radio network. I said, What? And he says, Well, look. He goes, I gave you all the tools to do it. He goes, You were a data com engineer, you've been in radio. He goes, you're doing positive stuff. He goes, I want you to do a positive network. And I'm going, Wait a minute. I says, you know, I'm just getting this big opportunity, you know? And he goes, Well, listen, he goes, You know, when you're doing a lecture, now you're he goes, you get 1000 people coming to your lecture. He goes, so you're a point of light. He goes, think if you were to get 4045, people to do a radio network, all with positive thought. He goes, then you become a lighthouse. And I said, Okay. And I said, But what about this opportunity? And he goes, Well, you don't have to do it. And I said, well. I said, God is asking me, and I'm going to say, No, I'm not going to do that. I said, No, that's not going to happen. I said, and my Italian came in because I said, Okay, I'll do it. But when I get upstairs, you and I have it a sit down, and he just laughs. He thinks I'm funny so, and he has always been with me 100% of the time. And a lot of times he'll tell me, No, you can do this yourself. You do it, you know. And so I but I've been in a realm where I can go back and forth and I understand, you know. And I talk, you know, you can talk to anybody you want, sure, if you're if you're there, you know, if I need help from Einstein, I'll say, Hey, Uncle L, I need you what? And I go, ask God,

Michael Hingson 53:43

yeah, it's it's interesting. It's so many people just belittle so much and but everyone has to make their own choices, and I don't have control over the the choices that people make. I can only talk about my experiences and what I do and so on, and people have to make up their own minds. Which is, which is the way it should be. I think that all of us are individuals that are given the opportunity to make choices, and we can decide how we want to proceed, and the time will come when we will have to defend our positions, or it will have all gone really well. And so the bottom line is that that we make the choices and we have to live by what happens as a result the consequences

Linda MacKenzie 54:36

right, and we have to take to learn, to get take responsibility for our actions. You know, the songs on this album address all the major things that we need to do to stay positive and to have a happy life. And so it's not just for kids, it's for parents, and it's for grandparents, and it's for anyone who wants to listen. And it's it's going to be a good. Thing when I get this all done, and I'm it's one of them, my, one of my projects that I wanted to do for a lifetime. And once I get this done, I'll be happy.

Michael Hingson 55:09

So well, you do a lot of different stuff. You must have a personal life too. How do you balance the two? Well, and what do you do in your personal life?

Linda MacKenzie 55:20

Well, I love to exercise. I do. I love to cook. So once a month I do a psychic soiree, you know, so I do. I've been on a specific diet, you know, no dairy, no salt, no sugar, no effervescence, no since 1992 I don't go to medical doctors. I haven't been to a medical doctor since 1992 and I do everything with just herbs and exercise and getting enough sleep and stuff. So I cook for dinners, and I have a family, and we go out, and I have wonderful friends and bands that I follow in town, so we go out. And I'm actually even going out on a date next this coming Thursday night, which hasn't been for a long time, but so there's and then I do a lot of working with the senior centers and so and then do and I love watching dumb TV that I don't have to think. I like dumb

Michael Hingson 56:23

I like dumb TV too. I know exactly what you mean when you say that. I have always been a fan, also, of old radio shows. So I love listening to all the old time radio shows from the 30s, 40s and 50s and so on. And some of them can make you think. But by the same token, the reality is that there's something to be said for just being able to escape, right?

Linda MacKenzie 56:46

My latest thing is watching Chinese soap operas. They're 40 episodes long, and I love them. And even though they're subtitles, you get to see how they think and how a different kind of person, you know, culture thinks and does, and it's interesting that you can see how much the same they are as we you know, that they want the same things, they have the same values. You know, because we are all the same, and we have to understand that

Michael Hingson 57:19

I know, one of the things that I've said many times, that I know, I'm sure, that a lot of people just think I'm crazy, but I point out that what happened on September 11 was not a religious war. It was a bunch of thugs who wanted to try to bend the world to their will. But that's not the the Islamic religion. The reality is that all of the religions, all the major religions, especially in the world, are always to get to God, and Far be it from me, to judge someone else because they happen to belong to a different religion or subscribe to something different than what I do.

Linda MacKenzie 57:54

Well, it's interesting that I did a study on religion. As a matter of fact, on on our radio network we have James Bean, and he's been doing, he was on wisdom radio, so for 40 years, he's been doing spiritual awakenings, where he does comparative religions. And it's interesting that all of the religions have a, you know, a Jesus, you know, or a Mohammed, and they all die, and they all get resurrected in three days. Every single one of the religions has that. And if you and every single one of the religions has a version of the Our Father, Mm, hmm, almost exact words, because Jesus, you know, so, so you know, as far as respecting other religions. I think you have to too. But nothing should be overwhelming, you know, right? Like, oh, absolutely nothing should be overwhelming on because of religion. Like, I don't think that the girls should have to wear burkas because it's religious, right, you know. I think there's some things that you know are not exactly right.

Michael Hingson 59:00

Well, you know, Tolstoy once said The biggest problem with Christianity is that people don't practice it. It's the same sort of That's right, concept. I agree with you. I don't think that girls and women should have to wear burkas or not be educated, or not be educated. Well, I wish, I really wish they would be educated, yeah. And so today, actually, yeah, oh, they do and and I think more and more people are beginning to realize it, but not enough yet, in some of these countries where they're willing to stand up and and say, We're not going to tolerate this anymore.

Linda MacKenzie 59:32

But I hope about the money, though, unfortunately, so it's power and money, but when they understand that it's the love and kindness that's more important, and that's the only thing that you take with you. Yeah, maybe we can change this world, and I hope we do well.

Michael Hingson 59:50

I agree with what you're saying, and I think that people, but people do need to, at some time, recognize that there's something. To be said for principle in the world too.

1:00:02

Yes, I agree. So what

Michael Hingson 1:00:08

do you hope that people gain today from listening to your show?

Linda MacKenzie 1:00:13

Well, today we did a really, kind of an interesting thing. It was called Linda's world. And once a month, at the end of the month, I don't even know what I'm going to say, and so I come on and I just talk, and we talk a little bit about current events, and then we talked about anti aging, and I do herb of the week, and I give you different kinds of information on that, and we did all these things on anti aging and what vitamins and different things that can help you doing it. And so it's really we do spirit, and we do mind, body, spirit. So you know, you can go to healthy life.net, and click on podcast on demand. There's two buttons at the top. One is Listen Live. You just click on that. We don't have an app. We don't track you. We just allow you to listen for free. And we also have a podcast network with 3200 podcasts from wonderful, wonderful people, some who have passed over, but now, but they're still there, and they have still valuable information called HR and podcasts.com that's 3200 free podcasts there that people can access as well. So you can go to the podcast on demand button, click that, and you'll find my face, or look for Linda McKenzie, and click on that, and there'll be, I think, three months of shows that you can listen to, and you can see all the different kinds of topics. And I'm usually booked six months in advance, because I've been doing radio for so long, there's a lot of people that really like to come in, so I hope that people get one idea, one thought that makes their life positive from the show. And hopefully I'm giving 60 of them,

Michael Hingson 1:01:52

yeah, I hear exactly what you're saying. And you know, if I can inspire one person when I speak, if I can get people to think a little bit more about something, then I've done my job right, and I think that's the only way to do it. Well, if people want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to contact you?

Linda MacKenzie 1:02:14

Okay, well, you can reach me if you want to email me. It's Linda at Linda mckenzie.net and that's m, A, C, K, E, N, Z, I, E, all one word, and Linda mckenzie.net that's my website, or they can go through healthy life.net and get me through that way too. And of course, I'm on all of the social media sites as well, right? You know? And on my website is all my appearances. I go up to San Jose and do expos and talks. And, you know, just did, just came and finished a past life regression class. I think I'm going to be doing a gemstone healing class. And, you know, whatever strikes me for the moment is what I do. So you never know. So you go on there, and you know, they want me. I've done a TV show this year, and they want me to do another one and continue. I said, Well, kind of have to pay me, because I'm doing a lot of stuff, you know, you know, you have to give me a little bit more money if you want another one. So I gave them their one, first one, and it's called Live with Linda, and that you can reach on, it's on Roku and Amazon, and that was just last September, and it's live with Linda, and it's also on soul search.tv and you can get it there as well.

Michael Hingson 1:03:30

So did the Sci Fi Channel ever come back to you anymore?

Linda MacKenzie 1:03:33

No, no, just checking that time, you know, I wasn't young and cute anymore. Now cute. I'm still,

Michael Hingson 1:03:40

yeah, you're cute. I believe it'd be cute. You're cute. I'm cute. Yeah. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening. I hope that you've learned something that you find there are relevant things that Linda has had to say. I'd love to hear from you. Please email me at Michael H, I, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, I'd love to hear your thoughts about today, wherever you are experiencing the podcast. Podcast, please give us a five star rating. We value it, and we value your thoughts and your comments, and for all of you, and Linda you as well. If you know of anyone else who we ought to have as a guest on unstoppable mindset, please introduce us. We're always looking for more people to visit with and talk with. As I've said many times, I believe everyone has a story to tell and and we all want to, well, I want everyone to tell their story so that we can help show the world that everyone is more unstoppable than they think they are. But you know, if you know anyone, we'd love to hear from them. And you so again, Linda, I want to thank you. This has been fun. I really appreciate you taking all the time today.

Linda MacKenzie 1:04:48

Well, thank you so much for having me and listeners out there. Be happy, be kind, and stay in love. You.

Michael Hingson 1:05:00

Episode 410 – Why Confidence Beats Fear in Building an Unstoppable Generation with Iuri Milo

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Fear is shaping how our kids grow up, and it may be costing them their confidence, resilience, and hope. In this conversation, I talk with Iuri Milo, a licensed clinical social worker with over 20 years of experience, about what he is seeing firsthand in schools and therapy rooms across the country. We explore the rise in student anxiety and suicide, how fear-based parenting and constant digital input affect young minds, and why building protective factors matters more than chasing risk labels. Iuri shares how School Pulse was created after a wave of student suicides, how proactive text-based support is helping students feel heard before they reach crisis, and why confidence, connection, and mindset are essential for long-term mental health. This episode offers a grounded, hopeful look at how parents, schools, and communities can help young people develop an Unstoppable mindset rooted in courage rather than fear.

Highlights:

00:10 – Hear how Iuri’s work in therapy led him to focus on helping students and families.

02:22 – Learn how immigrating to the U.S. shaped Iuri’s resilience and outlook on life.

03:43 – Discover how missionary service helped Iuri build confidence and maturity.

12:13 – Hear what led to the creation of School Pulse after student suicides in the community.

17:20 – Learn why fear-based parenting may increase anxiety instead of confidence.

34:24 – Discover how proactive text-based support helps students before crisis begins.

About the Guest:

Iuri Melo is married to Katie, and is the grateful father of 5 incredibly cool children (Aydia, Elle, Jona, Kole, and Leila). He is an LCSW of 20 years, and the Co-Founder of SchoolPulse. Iuri is the published author of “Mind Over Grey Matter - Training the Mind to Heal the Brain”, and the best-seller for teens “Know Thy Selfie - Tips, Tricks, and Tools For an Awesome Life.” He spent his 20 years as an LCSW in private practice, where he won several awards for his work, and developed a unique modality for his work with clients, “Adventure Based Therapy.”

In 2017 after a several teen suicides hit his community in Southern Utah, and at the request of a local principal, Iuri Melo Co-created SchoolPulse. Since then SchoolPulse has become the best student support service in the country, proactively delivering optimism, positivity, growth mindset strategies, and the best positive psychology skills directly to students and parents over text, email, and through schools. This innovative evidence-based service is not only inspiring teens' lives, but also parents, and faculty. SchoolPulse’s objective is to help students to perform better academically, socially, and personally. “Everyday at SchoolPulse is a highlight reel of courage, kindness, and growth. It’s amazing to see what a kind, respectful, and gentle interaction can do to heal and inspire our souls.”

With more than 300 schools, in over 25 states, SchoolPulse is a tsunami of goodness that is flooding schools throughout the country. It sounds a bit fantastic that Iuri’s vision of “blessing the human family” is happening over text, but indeed it is.

Iuri’s sincere and enthusiastic approach can be seen in his VIDEOS which SchoolPulse delivers to students, parents, and faculty via text and email. Iuri releases videos every week based on questions that teens have, and provides them with the answers they need to develop an extraordinary and growth minded psychology.

Ways to connect with Devin**:**

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iuritiagomelo

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iuri-melo-1b41482/

Insta: https://www.instagram.com/iuritmelo/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SchoolPulsePodcast/videos?view=0\&sort=dd\&shelf_id=2

Know Thy Selfie - t.ly/juUMB

Mind Over Grey Matter - t.ly/SxNUU

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

chael Hingson 00:00

Ac Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, howdy, everyone, wherever you happen to be on this fine day, I would like to introduce myself. I am Michael Hinkson, your host here on unstoppable mindset podcast, and today we have as a guest, Yuri Milo, who is a Utah resident, and he is going to talk about all sorts of stuff. He's got five children, and he is married to Katie, and he has been in the therapy and and other works for the past 20 plus years, has done a lot to really work with school children, and he's going to talk about a program that he helped begin back in 2017 I believe it was. So we'll not give anything away, because it's more fun to let him do it. So Yuri, welcome to unstoppable mindset.

Iuri Milo 02:19

Michael, I am ready. We're going to be unstoppable today. I have a feeling. So I'm ready to go down any one of those roads that you're just discussing, including some other new ones that I'm sure you and I are going to carve through today. So Well,

Michael Hingson 02:33

I want to start with something in your bio, you refer to the fact that you have been an LCSW for 20 years. LCSW stands for

Iuri Milo 02:42

a licensed clinical social worker. So when you go to school, yeah, and you get your master's in social work, then you still have to do some some work and some licensure. When you get about 4000 hours and two years into it, hopefully, and you pass the test, you got to pass the test, then you you kind of get that licensure piece, and that really allows you to then do kind of the individual work. And I have to say, it's, it's, it's been a good experience for me. I definitely has been a blessing for myself and my family so and it's just helped me to meet and to get into the nitty gritty of people's lives, 1000s of people's lives. And I'm just so grateful for that to be a part of that.

Michael Hingson 03:24

Well, let's start a little bit and tell us about kind of the early Yuri, growing up and all that was a fun place to start. You know, at the beginning, as it were,

Iuri Milo 03:33

man, let's, let's go all the way back to the Genesis. So I actually was sure it's kind of an interesting story. I don't know a whole lot about it, because I was very young. But I was actually born in Mozambique, Africa, as back when it was a Portuguese colony, and then at the age of one, which, of course, I don't recall, but I moved to Portugal, and grew up there until I was about the age of 15, and then came to America, right? Like the just like an immigrant story, and I moved to Provo Utah. My sister was attending Brigham Young University at the time, and and I didn't have a whole lot going on for me by then, my parents had kind of divorced, and my mom suggested, you know, hey, why don't you just, why don't you go to America? I think there's just more opportunity there. And I was fortunate enough to be able to do that. I came and finished up high school, then went to college, then did some kind of humanitarian religious service, which we've talked about before, too, Michael and and then went on and stayed with school, got my Bachelor's, my master's and, and here we are right. 20 years later, married five kids, just just taking life as it comes

Michael Hingson 04:41

well, and we talked about it a little bit, and I thought it might be worth asking so you, you did missionary work for the LDS church for two years. Tell us a little bit about that and how that affected you.

Iuri Milo 04:54

Mike, that was so meaningful for me, I just have to say I. In fact, I was just reading an article the other day specifically about boys, and I think it was talking specifically about how boys kind of have a tendency, or maybe for a little while, they've been lagging behind, just a lot of metrics, specifically to young women, right, who seem to be just succeeding, kind of an academic areas and and a lot of them are more engaging more in academic or higher education than boys are. And I think a lot of that discussion was about how young men are struggling, like young men are struggling to kind of progress. And I feel like for me, when I engaged in that experience. It was such a meaningful experience. My guess is that a lot of listeners don't know, but basically, you're kind of assigned to an area, right? And you go to that area and there you get to live with other missionaries, and you engage in service. I mean, it could be religious service. It could be other types of service, but really you just end up meeting and talking to 1000s of people from all walks of life, and that was such a coming of age experience for me. I feel like I left there with just a confidence that I didn't have before that really kind of catapulted me forward into my life and into my relationship. So it's amazing that I'm, I'm going to be 50 this year, Michael, and that was when I was 20 years old, when I did that. And it's amazing that that experience still has so much sway and influence in my life. But it does. It was really a positive thing from,

Michael Hingson 06:40

where did you Where were you assigned? Where did you go? I went

Iuri Milo 06:44

to beautiful New Jersey, and I served in the lower half of that, all the way from kind of New Brunswick, North Brunswick, all the way down to Cape May and to Trenton and Camden and, oh my gosh, I have such fast you did. I did, yeah, it was just kind of, what you do, you kind of, you know, go through all sorts of areas which is just so fabulous, but, you know, I got to see just some absolutely gorgeous places in in Jersey, and also some places where there's some really, some really challenging poverty, yeah, I just got to see and be a Part of all of that in those communities is really an enriching, deep, rich opportunity. So really grateful for that.

Michael Hingson 07:29

Yeah, and I think that's the advantage of it, when you can truly go and experience it and experience something that's different than what you normally experience or do it, it has to enhance, I would think your view of the world, and certainly how you you picture things, and I think that's so important that you had the opportunity to do that.

Iuri Milo 07:55

Yeah, I agree. It was truly transformative. And I would even say, especially as I've gone into the field of psychology, I would definitely say that that two year experience was really formative, I think in my ability to make that decision into the future, it certainly created additional abilities and skills and definitely created some additional compassion and understanding in me. So it was, it was good for me. I hope it's been good for others and but like I said, there's so many cool opportunities that people can engage in. So you're asking me about that?

Michael Hingson 08:32

Yeah? Well, you you went, you went and did that work. You came back and you went to college. You must have gone to college because you had to get a master's degree along the way.

Iuri Milo 08:42

Yeah, I did. I jumped right back into college. Was motivated to do that. Performed better than I had before, which, which was great, too. So the that kind of service time was really good for me. I think it matured me quite a bit. And I jumped right back into it. You know, finished up my associates, got my bachelor's and then my master's. So it's, it was, it was a good thing for me to do

Michael Hingson 09:08

what you get your bachelor's degree in I got my bachelor's in psychology.

Iuri Milo 09:12

I got my book in psychology with a minor in sociology, and then, gratefully, was accepted into the University of Utah and finished up my my Master's of social work there.

Michael Hingson 09:24

Wow, so you've been in essentially the social sciences, psychology and social work, your your whole career.

Iuri Milo 09:32

Yes, I have, I have that was kind of one of the decisions I made, is once I kind of decided to go down that road. I wanted to get as much experience as I could, even working wise. I worked with like foster care agencies, I worked in group homes, I worked in hospitals as a social worker and a Care Center as a medical social worker. So I got a little bit of experience, or even in emergency rooms as well as a social worker there. So I got a little bit of a. A nice and extensive history in that, in that field, and but for the past 20 years, it's really been in in private practice that I've really kind of done my work. And then, of course, the last seven with school pulse and starting up that that service as

Michael Hingson 10:16

well, what drew you to go into therapy and do what you're doing.

Iuri Milo 10:22

You know, that was my final internship. When I was finishing up school, I was kind of in charge of finding an internship for myself, and I tried to pursue something that would pay me a little bit. And so I actually met up with a good with who became a good friend of mine. Was a local therapist here who said that he would take me on and let me do an internship there. And sure enough, I did. And so when I finished my internship and finished my year, you know, he basically offered me a position. Said, hey, you know, why don't you stay here and help me to run this private practice, and you can do kind of the substance abuse, and you can work with kids, which were some areas that he kind of was hoping not to do. He wanted to transition and to do other work. And I was doing that actually at the same time that I was doing medical social work at a local Care Center. And then as I built my clientele in the private world, I just stayed and definitely the the money was better, especially once, you know, I was kind of able to go on my own and build my own practice. And so that's kind of how I got into private practice. And once I started it pretty much stayed in, yeah, been pretty good. The rest is history as they say. Rest is history as they say.

Michael Hingson 11:39

So you so for the last 20 years, you've been in private practice. Why did you decide to go out on your own,

Iuri Milo 11:50

specifically with private practice? I mean, this is kind of a pretty usual arrangement, like, when you're, you know, being interned, or you're working for somebody else, for somebody else's practice, right? There's, we kind of have a financial arrangement right, where I was giving a share of my profits to that individual. And at some point I I tried to renegotiate that right. I wanted to kind of take less right or make more right. And at that point, my good friend, who's still a good friend to this day, said, Hey, you know, I think you're probably it's time for you to go on your own. And I did. I kind of bit the bullet. Gave that a try, and it was pretty spooky, but you hadn't thought about it. No, I hadn't really thought about that. I just kind of wanted to renegotiate, and so I ended up doing that, and and then later on, partnered up with a few other people and really had a nice, thriving practice with multiple therapists and interns and even some nurse practitioners there who were doing some psychiatry there. And all of that kind of slowed down once I began school pulse seven years ago, and right now I've really got kind of just a small little private practice that I work in the afternoons and where I kind of do my private work, and then the other half of the day I spent trying to build this program and to promote it throughout the country.

Michael Hingson 13:15

Well, tell us about school plus pulse. You've read, you've you've mentioned it now a few times. So yeah, tell us kind of what school pulse is all about.

Iuri Milo 13:24

You bet I you know, we started that about seven years ago. We We actually had kind of a surge of student suicides here in 2017 where we lost about seven kids in our community to suicide, and good friend of mine, who's a principal, whom I really respect, and I knew at that time, reached out to me, felt like all he really had at his disposal were just reactive tools and and so what he wanted to do was to find a way to be more proactive, to be more engaging, And to really prevent suicide, instead of just kind of passively waiting and then intervening once things have occurred. And that was really the genesis. That was the beginning. That's where we started. And we started by creating this program that would proactively engage students, versus via text, and then to provide some feedback back, and we've grown now over the past seven years, where we now have an entire team of individuals that we proactively engage students via text we send them. We've created these incredible videos and activities that promote evidence based positive psychology, growth mindset and cognitive strategies to students. Our goal is to protect students, to give them or to feed them or to nurture them with the kinds of things that will insulate and protect them from student suicide, from depression and anxiety, and ultimately to help them to perform and to succeed in school as. Well, and so we provide text based support. We have these email campaigns that go out to parents and to students, and then we provide schools with the suite of services that help to promote student success and, of course, to prevent student suicide and other behavioral issues that they deal with the school. So we've kind of become this, what in schools or districts they call a multi tier solution. And that's really what we try to promote or give to schools, is we want to come in to the rescue. We know they're overwhelmed. We know that students have a ton of needs that they can't meet. All those needs, and we want to come in and immediately provide a solution for them to address those problems and address those issues in a way that's not burdensome to them so

Michael Hingson 15:49

well, why have there been so many teenage suicides?

Iuri Milo 15:54

You know, interestingly enough, you know, the CDC has, you know, put out some date or some some data specifically about that, and over the past few years. I mean, in fact, even our Surgeon General, I don't think he's actually our Surgeon General right now, but Vivek Murdoch suggested that the youth mental health crisis was the defining crisis of our time. And so all of these metrics, right, all the way from student anxiety to students feeling hopeless or persistently sad, or students who are having suicidal ideation or attempting suicide and completing suicide, those numbers all seem to be trending in the wrong direction, as far as to why that is. Michael, I would imagine that there's more than one variable. There's a book that I'm sure you may be familiar with, probably your your listeners are familiar with, as well as a book called The anxious generation. I think he has some pretty compelling data and information there, and he talks about two particular factors that I think are interesting. One, of course, is the kind of the meteoric rise of technology and cell phones in particular, not just specific to social media, but phones as a whole. And then, I think he actually talks about parents, particularly. He feels that we've become overly protective of our children, and in a sense, we have, we have we're preaching fear more than we're preaching confidence like encourage, right? So that's something that I constantly tell people, is, send your kids out into the world with confidence, confidence that that they can succeed, but also that when they fail or when they go through difficult times like that, we're going to somehow find a way to synthesize those experiences and for our good, right, for our profit. And so that's those are some of the solution, or some of the things that I think have been mentioned as significant factors to that kind of youth mental health crisis that you're talking about

Michael Hingson 18:03

well, so today we we see more instances where students, especially girls, but, you know, I think probably all, but especially girls are are Taken, they're kidnapped, and so on and so parents naturally want to monitor them closely or closer, but that has its own problems, as you're pointing out. How do you deal with that?

Iuri Milo 18:31

You know, interestingly enough, and I don't have that data before me, I think those things are more visible, but I think what I would actually say is, in regards to that, and I think I'm kind of quoting Martin Seligman, who's kind of the father of positive psychology, is when it comes to where our communities are, we're actually safer than we've probably ever been like and I think so all of those things I think that You've just mentioned have all actually kind of tracked down. They are more visible, and I think as a result, parents have become a little bit more protective. But the actual data suggests that it's all been going down. We're actually safer than we've ever been, even though I think those things are more visible now than they've ever been from the past.

Michael Hingson 19:20

So Well, the problem is, of course, in part, that the media, when something does happen, they make a big deal out of it, and that helps to create a lot of the fear that I think people experience.

Iuri Milo 19:37

I think you're right. I think you're right. I think obviously the availability right? I mean the fact that this is plastered everywhere, in fact, when I'm when I'm talking to people who struggle, for example, with like an anxiety disorder, one of the things that I always tell them is you need to find a way to manage your input, like and when I say input, I just need the information that you have coming in. Because. If we're constantly putting in the information that's creating that anxiety inside of us, like that's where we're going to live from, it's from a place of fear, instead of a place of courage and confidence, which I think is where we ought to be coming from. But and so if somebody right feels like they have those tendencies right to kind of be anxious, or to worry a lot, or to worship their worries. I always tell look, you need to manage your input. You need to manage that the information that you're taking in, and make sure that you're at least combating that right with some kind of optimistic and confidence building type language, so that you're not just being driven by fear. We cannot be driven by fear like that's like one of my goals, like, fear cannot be driving the car. Fear can be a passenger, but it cannot be driving the car. And oftentimes, when I see people in therapy, that's exactly what's going on. Fear is making their decisions for them instead of their goals, their objectives, their dreams, the things that they want to pursue and the things that are of value and so yeah, we ought to, I hope we can be teach. I hope we can teach that to our kids. Often.

Michael Hingson 21:15

We can teach it to our parents as well. I know that one agreed, yeah, one of the things that I decided to do when the pandemic began was to write a book about fear. And in part, that happened because in on September 11, I learned that we don't control everything. In fact, we don't control most things. And in fact, was given a message as I was running from tower two, I heard a voice in my head that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle and the rest will take care of itself. And I had the sense that if I and my guide dog worked together, which is really something that most people miss, because they just think the blind the dog does everything, and the blind guy just tags along, which is not true, but if we work together, we would be fine. Well, we were fine. And so when I started to work on live like a guide dog, when the pandemic began, and the whole idea was to use the lessons I had learned from a guide dogs on my wife's service dog, to actually help people learn about fear and learn that mostly fear is always about trying to worry about all the things over which we have absolutely no control, which is well more than 90% of all the things we worry about. And so we don't just worry about the things over which we really influence. That doesn't mean you're not aware of the other things, but you don't have to fear them, because you don't have control over them, and all you can do is worry about the things over which you have control. And so I hear what you're saying, and I understand it, and I agree with it, that so many people are just so fearful of so many things, and yeah, social media and other things don't help. But still, ultimately, people need to learn for themselves that they have to focus just on the things over which they really have an influence and use the rest of what they experience as a vehicle to help them focus, to deal with what they can

Iuri Milo 23:25

Michael, that's absolutely brilliant. That's so inspiring. And I know you've told me a little bit about that. That's just fabulous. It actually reminds me, and I'm sure that your listeners are probably familiar with the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, yeah. But I think Stephen Covey talks about that very simple, that very principle. He talks about this, the kind of our circle of control and our circle of concern, right? And if you can kind of imagine, right, there's these two circles, right? It's kind of a smaller one in the middle and then a bigger one around that one, and that circle of control is what you've just described, right? Is, is our ability, our ability, right, to influence things. And influence is such a key word because it's not control, right? It's not our ability to control things, our ability to influence things, but also to be aware, like you said, right, of that circle of concern, right, which is, you know, composed of what other people think, what they're doing, their opinions, right? In fact, have you ever heard of the book by Byron Katie called loving what is man? That's a good book. But anyway, she has a principle in there that I think you would enjoy. He said, she said, there are three kinds of business in this world. There's God's business, other people's business, in your business. And she talks about, you know, how God's business is, in a sense, like, I mean, she's not necessarily referring to God as this. Like. Heavenly Father or heavenly being. But she's saying God, as in, God's business is just what happens around you, right? They're just events or accidents or circumstances that happen around you. Of course, other people's business, right? Is, is what they do. It's what they think. It's their opinions, it's the things that matter to them. And of course, your business is what you're doing. And so her, her concept, right? Is, take care of your business. Like, stop being in God's business. Stop stop being in other people's business. Because when you're in those businesses, you're not in your own business. And so I've always kind of liked that idea of minding your business, right? Not in a narcissistic or like I'm the only person in the world, type of thing, but learning how to take care of your business, and being in that place where you can have maximum impact and influence, but not getting caught up in that fallacy of control, right, where we end up not only creating A ton of anxiety for ourselves, but it really just having incorrect expectations of ourselves in the world around us.

Michael Hingson 26:08

Well, I remember when the World Trade Center events happened, and for so long afterward, I realized along the way that we didn't have control over and we didn't have any influence over the events of September 11 actually happening, and I don't think I have yet to see a single piece of evidence that tells me that even if the entire United States government works together, which they should do more of anyway, but if they had worked together, that they would have been able to predict and stop September 11 from happening. But what we, each and every one of us, getting back to God's business, other people's business, and your business, getting back to that concept. What was true, and is true is while we didn't have any influence and couldn't have influence over the events actually occurring, we have total influence and control over how we deal with it. And I've seen so many instances where people go after the Muslim church. They go after one thing or another. They say these people are bad. And the reality is, this wasn't a religious thing. This was just a group of thugs who decided they wanted to have their own way, and unfortunately, they functioned very well as a team and kept it quiet, which is why we couldn't figure it out, but the bottom line is, we have control over how we deal with it. And I met one gentleman who had been a fireman up to and including September 11, and then he decided that he wanted to become a police officer because his brother had been an officer and killed on September 11, and he wanted to go after all those terrorists and kill them, which is not a very positive reason for becoming a police officer. And that kind of hatred doesn't help. And I think that it's very important that we really need to look at why we do the things that we do and that we do, and for the right reasons. There's a group of people called Business Continuity people. They're in the business continuity industry. They describe themselves, according to one person who I met from the group called the what if people, they're always analyzing, well, what if this happens? What do we need to do to react to keep the business going? What if this happens? But what I noticed in talking with them, and I was at one of their conferences and delivered a speech in London last year about it. One of the things I noticed is they don't do it out of fear. They do it because they know that they can keep businesses going. But they're not doing it out of fear. They're focusing on what if for a different reason. And that's the thing that I think that we need to do more of collectively as humans, is do it for the right reason, and let fear help focus you, but don't let it overwhelm or blind you.

Iuri Milo 29:14

Yeah, that's beautifully said. I've heard that that the message of fear is prepare, right? So I think that that, I like that idea right, that you can take, you know, what could potentially be right, kind of, what if ing ourselves to death, right, where we're kind of just or catastrophizing all the potential bad, but what you're describing right is a very intentional look at the what ifs in order to prepare or to find some solutions to some of the problems that could arise. And so I think that that's the key, right is sometimes I'll describe our emotions or even fear as kind of like the lights on a dashboard. Ride on a car, right when you kind of get your, you know, your oil light is blinking, or your engine light comes on, or your tire, you know, is low, and that means something, right? There is a message to that. And so I think that's exactly what we can do, is we can see if we can identify, like, what's the message here? Or perhaps an even more important question is like, what can I do right to address this in a positive way? What do I need to do to address the problem? And so sometimes, when we ask a better question, we'll get better results, we'll get better answers. And so whereas when we ask all the wrong questions, we're going to get crappy we're going to get crappy responses.

Michael Hingson 30:41

So this is hard to resist, so I won't. Did you ever watch the TV show The Big Bang Theory?

Iuri Milo 30:48

Oh my gosh. I think I've seen maybe one or two episodes, but I never got into it. Should I get into it?

Michael Hingson 30:53

Michael, oh, it's fun. It's funny. I'll have to do it. So Penny, one of the women on the show had a car and her check engine light was on for 15 or 13 years while the show was on. So I'm not sure that the check engine light means anything, because she never had a problem with it. Just saying, I love that. I love that. No, I I hear what you're saying, and I think it's it's so important that people need to step back, we need to become more introspective, and we need to start to do more work to understand why we're afraid, because then we can work on fixing that problem. But no one people can advise us, but we have to do the work ourselves

Iuri Milo 31:38

we do. And even going back to one of the statements that you made just a few minutes ago, Michael, in in regards to, like, our ability to respond right, or, or to, kind of, in a sense, I feel like we're these meaning making machines, right? And I'm reminded of, you know, Victor Frankel's book, Man's Search for Meaning, which you know as a listener. If you haven't had a chance to listen or to read that book, I would just highly recommend it. That's like, it's like a top five for me. It's really solid. But there's kind of this, this wonderful quote in there where he says, between stimulus and response, right? Between what happens to us and what we do with it, right? Or in our response is this space, and in that space is our ability to choose our response. And in our ability to choose our response lies our freedom and our happiness, right? So that's really what that space is, right. Is not just to choose what that response will be, but I would even say that in that space is our ability to choose what that event actually means, right? And if you and if you think about like I, I tend to kind of subscribe to this concept of, you know, cognitive or cognitive behavioral therapy, right? Which is the idea that the way that we perceive the events in our lives matters more than the events themselves, and so our ability to have these these belief systems or ideas are really key. Are great long term solutions that really impact your mood and well being. In fact, sometimes I'll, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Inception, Michael, but it's one of my absolute favorite movies. I love that movie. And at the beginning of that movie, you kind of have this idea of of extraction, which is the individuals in this movie would go into people's dreams, go into their mind, through their dreams, and their purpose was to steal secrets right from people's minds. But then the movie kind of changes gears a little bit from from the extraction of an idea or an extraction of a secret to inception, right or planting an idea inside someone's mind, an idea so powerful that it would fundamentally change that person. And so I I always like to kind of optimistically or maybe even idealistically think that that their ideas that we can plant inside of our minds that are so powerful that they can positively transform us, and I absolutely believe that. And so I find that as a therapist, that's definitely one of those things that I'm constantly looking to do is sometimes extract right some of those ideas that are running unconsciously inside of us that are just they're no longer of service. They're not effective, they don't help us. And that, of course, is planting the kinds of ideas and belief systems that will help someone to live an extraordinary life because they have an extraordinary mindset.

Michael Hingson 34:56

And in reality, I believe we have all the answers. Is that is we know what to do. We know how to make that happen, or we should, but we we ignore it. We don't listen to our inner voices. We don't listen to and observe so many things that go on around us that we

Michael Hingson 35:15

again, just allow fear to take over and overwhelm us, which really doesn't help and doesn't serve us in very good stead at all. Tell me a little bit more about school pulps. How does it? How does it work? Why is it? Why is it so successful? What do you do?

Iuri Milo 35:35

Well, I don't know if it's, I mean, it's, it's successful because we're able to intervene directly with students. So let me I'll kind of explain it with maybe a little bit of a backstory. That'd be great. Yeah. So So I think schools and I, I've been indirectly involved with schools now for seven years. I don't presume to be an educator myself, but I have had the privilege of just meeting the most extraordinary superintendents, principals, administrators, school counselors, school social workers and school psychologists. So I feel like I've learned a lot over the past seven years. And I think one of the things that schools really want to do right is and schools kind of have to do this. They have to provide services to all students, right? And one of the things that schools right now have to do is they have to provide some sort of whether it's curriculum or initiatives that are meant to prevent student suicide and to improve student wellness, right? And so that's really where school pulse comes in. What we want to be for schools, is that systemic solution, right? There's that great quote which I'm sure you realized, or that you'll remember, Michael, which is, you know, we, we don't rise to the level of our goals or objectives. We tend to fall to the level of our systems, right? Because sometimes systems just aren't in place to make something be sustainable. And what we really want to do is we want to come into schools and provide them with a sustainable solution to all students. And we do that in a variety of ways. So for example, like one of the first things that I tell schools to do the moment that we walk into a school is, let's begin our once a week email campaign to every single parent and every single student our video, we deliver one video a week that those are our Student Success videos that are just packed to the brim with evidence based positive psychology growth mindset strategies and other cognitive strategies that have been proven not only to protect children from suicide and other disorders and other problems, but also to improve student success, student persistence, student wellness, student happiness. And that's really a core principle of positive psychology is the realization that success revolves around happiness and not the other way around, right? It's kind of this Copernican revolution, right? Where we sometimes think that happiness revolves around success, but it's actually the other way around. Happiness is a huge advantage for people, and so our goal is we want to deliver in a in a non spammy way, in a very informational way, the best content available to parents and to students to help them to be successful, to help them to engage in their school culture, To help them to better and improve their relationships, and to help them to succeed academically, of course, which is what schools are there to do anyways. And so we do that through our email campaigns that schools can begin immediately. We provide them with the most comprehensive mental health resource for teens in the country, Truly, truly, and I know that that can sound a little cliche, like really Yuri, is it really the most comprehensive and the best? And the answer to that, Michael is absolutely yes. We have created that. We give that to every school. We also provide schools with our live text based support. Just imagine having a student come into your office, right? Maybe they're struggling, they're failing in school, or they're having issues with their with their grades, or maybe they're having some suicidal ideation or struggling with substance abuse, or maybe their parents are divorcing, and as a counselor or an administrator, you say, Man, I want to provide this kid with some support, right? And you can opt that student in to our amazing text based support, and you've literally at the click of a button, you've just given that student this tool that will be with them all year long, through the holidays, through the summer months, proactively engaging them twice a week over text and then anytime that. Student engages. They're going to engage with a live team of people, not artificial intelligence, but a live team of people that will be available to them after school through the holidays. It's incredible. So we want to provide real tools to schools that don't create more work for them that actually are relieving work from them. And so we're we've really worked hard. We've really tried to listen really. We've tried to listen to them like, what are your problems? What issues are you having? Where Are you overwhelmed? And then let us come in and come to the rescue and provide you with real solutions that relieve your struggle and your overwhelm.

Michael Hingson 40:45

What are some examples, if you can relatively easily do it? What are some examples, for example, of texts? Oh my gosh. What are some examples of texts that you might send to a student that that help them with that?

Iuri Milo 41:00

I love it. So every Tuesday, we deliver our brand new Student Success activities. So for example, the one that just went out today, we always try to make our Student Success activities match the time of the year. Obviously it's the beginning of the school year for most people. So the text that just were the activity, the video that just went out this last Tuesday was how to become a better student, or, How do I get to be a better student, right? And so we just released this text, right? It has our little video image, and it just has a little question about, like, Hey, have you ever thought about or how, how do you become a better student? Or, What things are you doing right now to help you to be a better student? And it just has the link. The kids can click on the link, it immediately opens the video, and the kids can watch it. And then on Fridays, we do a variety of things. We send out other inspirational and engaged, engaging content. For example, we might share that quote. We might share the quote that just says, Hey, do you know that positive relationships, multiply your joys and divide your sorrows. Or, you know, we might share that quote by Victor Frankel, or we might show where we might share another quote, let's say by Winston Churchill, that maybe says like, you know, six your your failures aren't fatal, your successes and final, right? And this idea that we can just keep trying and trying and trying and trying and trying. We try to always release texts that are engaging, that are trying to engage the students, because when they engage back, they're going to get a live person that's enthusiastic, that's grateful, and that has a ton of resources available to them to give to those kids, but man, we have seen some incredible success. Michael, I mean, just all the things that you can imagine, all the way from students who are themselves struggling, maybe with suicidal ideation, or whose parents have gone through a divorce, or who have lost a loved one, or maybe who are suicidal themselves, or who are self harmony, or maybe who are having some homicidal ideation, and they share that with us, and we're able to intervene. And we just have some truly like Nobel Prize winning type experiences with students who tell us where they're maybe struggling, or they're dealing with physical or sexual or emotional abuse, and we're able to intervene and help those students is just absolutely phenomenal.

Michael Hingson 43:24

Do you oftentimes use stories to to help people relate?

Iuri Milo 43:30

Sometimes, I mean, so that's what, that's one of the beauties, right of having real people answer real texts is they can relate, right? They can talk to them about their own struggles, their own challenges in high school and middle school, right? And they can connect individually with their students. But ultimately, of course, our goal is we want to make sure that we're interested in them. We're asking them questions. We want to make sure that we're seeking to understand, first, right, and then certainly providing them or or or matching them, or meeting them where they are, which really just means with our own experience, right, with our own stories.

Michael Hingson 44:07

Someone you're engaging students, you you may very well ask them questions, because you've got live people who want to really get to know them.

Iuri Milo 44:16

That's exactly right. We have kind of an acronym, and I won't spend the time to kind of tell you what each letter of it means, but there's kind of six or seven key areas that kind of govern our conversation or the way that we speak to people, and the first six are really all relationship building strategies where we greet students with enthusiasm, we thank them for being there. We match them, we ask them questions we seek to understand, and then only at the end, right do we offer suggestions or provide some advice with permission. But really, the key is helping students to feel a sense that they're being heard, that it's. Safe, that they're being understood, and only then do we then provide, you know, with some ideas or some suggestions that they could try on their own. So we're and, of course, and I will just say this, because this is important. We I want to make sure that people understand that we're not attempting to be a solution unto ourselves. Really. What I mean by that is our goal is always to connect those students to their networks where they are like we realize that the most important factor for that students, well being, their happiness in the short and long term are positive relationships where they are. So our goal is always to connect students to their parents, to their guardians, to the professionals at the school and to other local resources. That's what we want to build for them, because we know that that's the ultimate protective factor.

Michael Hingson 45:54

Yeah, I would suspect that sometimes some of your team gets into some pretty heavy discussions

Iuri Milo 46:06

they can. I mean, we have, we have students who come to us right with I want to tell you that about 80 to 85% of our engagement in interactions with students are of a positive nature, which is actually important too, because by talking about the positive, we enhance it, right? But obviously we have, you know, 15 to 20% of our conversations are, at times, students who are struggling, right? Yeah, all the way from just very basic things, I had a fight with my friend, or I just failed my test, or I'm stressed out, or I'm tired, or I'm not sleeping well, like you said, all the way to, you know, them reporting physical or sexual abuse, and us just caring for them and then connecting them with the help so they can get right help, right there where they are.

Michael Hingson 46:53

Yeah, and that's, that's really the issue. And ultimately, all you can do is, well, it's not as simple as saying be supportive, but all you can do, really is, is to be there to listen to guide, but students ultimately have to take some steps on their own at your direction.

Iuri Milo 47:15

Absolutely, absolutely. And like I said, that's kind of our triage, right? Is, is always, I mean, one of the first questions that our team will ask a student who comes to us is always, is your parent? Are your parents aware? Have you spoken to them? Do they know about this? Would you be willing to speak to them? Right? We want to forge that. We want to strengthen that. And then if that's not a possibility, or if they choose to not do that, then our next our next movement, our next scale, right is, is we look to connect those wonderful students to the professionals at the school, which usually means a school counselor, school social worker, one of their administrators, who then kind of help to make that transition, honestly, Back to the parents, but, but that's really what we're what we want to do. Like I said, we're we're not arrogant. We're born on humility. We're not, we're not the ultimate solution or the final solution. We're just, we're part of that, and we're really honored, yeah, we're really honored to be part of that.

Michael Hingson 48:18

So I assume that as part of what you're doing, you're also working to train the schools, train the staff to be more connected, to deal with more of these solutions, and to understand, hopefully more of what's going on with their students as well

Iuri Milo 48:38

what we are, I think, and I Think this is kind of a key part, and I'll just share it as my own personal opinion. I really feel like I'm thinking about like universities, like Yale, Harvard, Stanford, I mean, even like BYU, or, I'm sure, other colleges or universities throughout the country, and some of the most, if not the most popular classes on campus have to do with wellness, student wellness, the science of happiness. My goal, honestly, Michael, is, why are we not doing this in high school, like, why are we not teaching these valuable concepts that not only protect our kids, right? Which is really where I want to aim. Our focus is on building the protective factors for our children, instead of just being enamored and hypnotized by the risk factors or the diagnostic side of things, and so that's really what I'm hoping to bring to schools, is this incredible dose and injection of positive and growth mindset strategies that help students to succeed, academically, socially, in their relationship. Groups in their life, physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc, like that is the goal. That's where I feel like my opinion is that's where school should be. Doing more, more of that proactive and preventative measure, instead of this overly focus on suicide, which, of course, is important, and I want to prevent suicide. My opinion is that I think we'd be doing a better job of preventing suicide by leaning on and fortifying the protective factors of children instead of just focusing on the risk factors, right?

Michael Hingson 50:36

And I hear what you're saying, and I understand it, and I agree. I think it's so much more important, and there's so many reasons to do that, and hopefully more people will catch on to it, including parents. Because parents have to learn to interact with their students in a different way than a lot of parents tend to do today.

Iuri Milo 50:59

So that's one of the things that we do right is part of our is part of our our email campaigns are meant to go out to parents, and we do that for two reasons. Number one, because we I'm a parent myself. I've got five kids like I think it's fabulous like that. We want to send we want to be completely transparent and share the very best that we have with those parents so that they have some fabulous resources to use with their own children. That's one. And then, of course, the other kind of mentioned the right is the idea that we just, we're trying to develop them, and at the same time, also be respectful of parental rights and be transparent, right?

Michael Hingson 51:44

You have written two books, mind over gray matter and Know thy selfie. Tell me about those.

Iuri Milo 51:49

Oh man, those were like joyous times in my life. I'll tell you just a brief little story. I won't take too long, I promise, but that's okay. Mind Mind Over gray matter was, was the first book that I wrote, and it's really kind of geared more towards adults, but I I want to say that I was maybe 13, maybe 14 years into my practice or so, and had always kind of thought of this idea of writing a book had kind of been percolating In my mind. My mom was a writer herself, just a beautiful poet, truly like in my opinion, just immensely, immensely talented. And I think in some way, consciously or unconscious, she kind of planted this little idea inside my mind to write. And I was always kind of intrigued by that, and so I had always kind of talked about this idea of writing and wanting to write. And my wife, honestly, God bless her, she, she challenged me. He said, you just stop talking about it and do something about it. And I'm so grateful for her. And I think that that statement probably hurt and stung a little bit, but honestly it became a little bit of the driving force. And I started, I mean, I would wake up, I kind of had a little bit of a routine. I would wake up about five. I would write and edit and edit and write and write and edit. And I did that for months and months and months and and began to kind of build this project and put it together. And that's really what mind over gray matter was. It's kind of built on this idea that we can use our mind, our best thinking, our best self, basically to change the brain that sometimes acts from a really irrational or primitive place. And so I kind of try to make this distinction right between our brain, which is kind of the biological survivalistic organ that's kind of housed inside of our inside of our cranium, right, and our mind right, which is our best thinking and that we can kind of educate and train our brain to do those things that are of greatest worth and value. And so it's just filled with lots of ideas and fun chapters that are meant to just elevate one's perspective and one's mindset to really create an extraordinary mindset, or extraordinary psychology so and then, know, thy selfie was kind of that version, but written for teens like so, kind of writing things at that kind of more teenage language, but just really, just some platitudes and some ideas on how to make their life better and to just live deep and suck the marrow, right, which is kind of one of my very favorite quotes by Henry David Thoreau, right? That's what I want kids to do, instead of just getting caught up in apathy and just ambivalence and not doing anything.

Michael Hingson 54:55

So if you could go back and tell your younger self something about mindset. What would it be?

Iuri Milo 55:03

I think, as a young boy, was really fortunate. I feel like I just grew up in an extraordinary place with, I think, parents that really cared and loved me. I'm so grateful for my older brother and sister who really led the way for me. But I dare say that that that some of my life, especially when I moved here to the United States, when I came to America, I think fear really held me back. Fear, fear of fear of results or outcomes or being rejected, and I just didn't it just, I just didn't know enough, you know, I didn't really think of the idea that rejection really just means next or a redirection, right? And so I think as a result, I really held back. I didn't try a lot of things, and so I have some regrets, which I think is absolutely fine. I think I think it's fine to have some regrets as I look back into my life, but I think that's one thing that I would say is, is I wish I would have lived a little bit more courageously. I wish I would have been a little more proactive and engaged instead of passively, kind of waiting for things to come to me. So I would have said, Yuri, like, just send it my friend. Like, get out there, give it a go, try things out. Like, go out there and fail spectacularly and figure that out, learn from that and move on to the next thing and and really build some skills that will become these renewable sources of joy and happiness for you, and just go for it, and so that that's what I would have said. I would have said to just stop shrinking, instead start rising up.

Michael Hingson 56:57

What's one common myth or mistake about therapy and psychology that you wish you could just totally eliminate,

Iuri Milo 57:04

I think thanks for asking that. That's a fun question. Probably one of the questions that I most asked as a clinician is, did you ever get kind of bogged down by meeting with people and just hearing all the negative things about their life. And so I think that the assumption there, right, Michael, is that therapy is this kind of negative place, right, where we're just kind of commiserating, or I'm just listening to people's problems, and somehow it's burdening me and my soul, and I think my answer to people is Man Therapy is such an incredibly positive environment, at least with me. I mean, I guess I can't speak for anybody else, but, but for me, it's never just about me absorbing right like this receiver like people's misery. It's taking some of those struggles at times, right, and learning how to synthesize those so that we can turn them towards benefits, or how to move forward, how to look for solutions like so for me, therapy is this incredibly optimistic place where we're constantly looking to build and grow and develop and create and find a way to take the challenges of our life and consecrate them for our good. Like to have them build it, build us for our good. And so that's, I think, one of the misconceptions that I would love for people to realize is that, like you're going to come to therapy and you're going to leave, I hope, relieved and feeling with a sense of hope from day one, like that's how you should be feeling when you leave that therapist's office.

Michael Hingson 58:55

Ultimately, you, as a therapist, can only you can give people a lot of information, but you have to do it in such a way that you show them that they have to adopt the answers for themselves. You can't force people to do that. And it's so exciting. I'm sure when you see that happen,

Iuri Milo 59:15

it is but I but I think that that's actually really important too. Michael, right is, is the recognition, right, that that there is a clear and distinct line right between myself and other people, right? And influence. We talked about that a little bit earlier, right? Because I have to realize that, like I have to realize that I'm here to invite, to present, to encourage, to assist, but then that people certainly have that ability, and that's their business, right? Like that's their business. Their business is to choose whether to do or to follow or to be encouraged or not. And I think that that's for me, that's been helpful in my profession to keep myself, I suppose, happy and joyous with where I am, despite some of the choices of my clients, like. Is I truly, I truly respect them, and I respect their ability to choose for themselves whether to do whatever I suggest or whatever things we come up together in therapy, or whether or not to and I respect that, and I respect that that may be a long process for them, and that there's a lot of story to be written, and that things don't have to change according to my timeline.

Michael Hingson 1:00:24

Well, the other part about that is that the very fact that you project that kind of an attitude and help people see that it's up to them, and that you have, if you will, the line that you won't cross, maybe that's not the way to put it, but you you have a part that you play, but they're really the main players. When you're able to project that and people understand it, that's got to be a cool thing.

Iuri Milo 1:00:53

It is. And my hope is that that'll do two things. Number one, I, I do it's really important for me, I think, as a therapist, right, I I don't want to speak to just be heard, right, or just for the sake of speaking my my goal, right, as a therapist, right, is, is, I want to craft the message in a way and with the kind of tone and attitude, right, that it will make it more likely that it will be received, right? And so when I approach things with gentleness, with kindness, with compassion, right, even when I approach it with that kind of mentality of like, hey, here are a couple of ideas, and you can take them or leave them like, and I love you either way, right? I actually find that that opens people and makes them more receptive to listening when it's not given from a place of constraint, right, right? And so for me, that that's really what it's about, right? Is I try to convey that attitude in part because I'm I'm hoping that my words or my suggestions can be considered not because I I'm somehow communicating all the truth or capital T truth all the time, but I work really hard to try to provide, you know, obviously things that are could be meaningful and valuable for them.

Michael Hingson 1:02:16

As I said, You're conveying through attitude and through the way you behave, something that people can react to, and hopefully they they see it and they do it. What are a few habits that you have adopted to help maintain your mindset every day?

Iuri Milo 1:02:38

I've got a couple of things. I and I'll speak spiritually here for a second, that the practice of prayer and it you know, and for you that might be contemplation for you, that might be meditation for you, that might be journaling, whatever that is. But without a doubt, I just have to say that I find that a lot of my days sometimes are spent with this kind of active conversation that's happening through prayer for me and for me, that has just been it's been something that actually my mind will turn to almost automatically. I mean, it's been a long time. I'm almost 50 years old. I've been doing that for a long time, yeah, but it's become a really significant part of my life. The other thing that I would say, and I kind of talked about, kind of having, you know, some activities, right, that kind of become these renewable sources of joy or happiness for me, and I really like those you know, whether it be like, you know, playing the guitar or climbing or running with friends or doing these activities, especially if I can include them or include my family in it, that's like, top notch, right? Because that's like, the top or the peak of my life is to do those things with my family. But I would say doing those things and continuing to find ways to keep my mind, my body, my spirit, growing. I just feel like I think we're made to evolve like I think everything in our bodies and mind screams evolution and progression. And when I believe that I'm growing and evolving, I'm happier, for sure. And so for me, that's something really important as well as I feel like I have to be nurturing growth, and when I am, I find that there's energy inside of me, so that's an important key

Michael Hingson 1:04:43

for me. I'm with you. I know for me, prayer is a very important part of what what I do. And for me, it isn't so much the praying me saying, God, this is what I need, because God knows what I need. It's more me listening to get the answers

Iuri Milo 1:05:05

so important. I agree with you. I think that that's one area, Michael that just speaking to you. I'll use you as my coach. I feel like I could do better there. I could do better there. I think allowing God or a little bit more time for that inspiration or potentially even revelation to come through. That's an area where I feel like I'm sometimes so rushed right that I maybe do a lot of talking there, kind of like what I've been doing in this episode, Michael and maybe I need to allow more of those times to just to listen. I think that would be a powerful practice that I think I need to maybe improve a little bit as well.

Michael Hingson 1:05:56

Well, if people want to reach out to you, to learn about school, pulse, or just interact with you in some way. And I don't know whether you're taking on too many additional clients, but how do they do that?

Iuri Milo 1:06:07

Yeah, I mean, so you can for school pulse, specifically, you can go to our website, at school pulse.org, and you can, you can reach out to me. You can, you can see kind of what we're about. And I'll also provide some stuff for Michael if you want to add that, please like a link to those. If you want to reach out to me individually, you can just go to you can just email me directly at Yuri. And my name is kind of strange. It's I, you are i at school, pulse.org, and you can just email me directly and and let's chat. I'm happy to engage with you in wherever state you're in, so I'd love to help

Michael Hingson 1:06:47

cool well, I want to thank you for all of this today, and I want to thank all of you for being here with us. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you find it helpful, and that you'll reach out to Yuri, because I am sure that school pulse will help your kids, and I'm sure that he's got lots of wisdom that he would be very happy to share. So please reach out to him. I'd love to hear what you think about today's episode. Please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com

Michael Hingson 1:07:15

that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and please, wherever you are, give us a five star rating for the podcast episode today. It's valuable. We love your feedback. We love your thoughts, and I want to hear what you have to say. And for all of you, including you, Erie, if you know anyone who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, love to have an introduction. So please do that. But for now, I just want to thank you, Yuri, this has been great. I want to thank you for being here and for all the wisdom that you've imparted to us today.

Iuri Milo 1:07:50

You're very kind. I really appreciate you, Michael and your your searching questions. You're very good. I really appreciate that

Michael Hingson 1:08:01

Episode 409 – Unstoppable Innovation: How Entrepreneurs Can Defend Their IP with Devin Miller

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Protecting your ideas can be the difference between building momentum and watching someone else run with your work. In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with patent attorney and entrepreneur Devin Miller to explore what founders and business owners really need to know about patents, trademarks, and intellectual property. Devin shares how his background in engineering, startups, and law shaped his approach to innovation, and he breaks down the real differences between provisional and non-provisional patents in clear, practical terms. We talk about common mistakes entrepreneurs make, how legal protection supports growth instead of slowing it down, and why understanding intellectual property early can help you compete with confidence. I believe this conversation will give you clarity, direction, and a stronger foundation for protecting what you work so hard to create.

Highlights:

00:01:18 – Hear how growing up in a small town shaped Devin’s approach to problem-solving and business.00:12:53 – Learn why Devin combined engineering, business, and law instead of choosing a single career path.00:19:32 – Discover how a student competition turned into a real wearable technology startup.00:30:57 – Understand the clear difference between patents, trademarks, and copyrights.00:33:05 – Learn when a provisional patent makes sense and when it does not.00:53:52 – Discover what practical options exist when competitors copy or knock off your product.

About the Guest:

Devin Miller is the founder of Miller IP, a firm launched in 2018 that helps startups and small businesses protect their inventions and brands without breaking the bank. He’s overseen over a thousand patent and trademark filings with a 95 percent success rate on patents and an 85 percent success rate on trademarks, making sure garage inventors and side hustlers get the same high-quality service as big tech.

Before starting his firm, Devin spent years at large law firms working with clients like Intel and Amazon, but he found his true passion in helping scrappy entrepreneurs turn ideas into assets. He blends legal know how with an entrepreneur’s mindset, offering flat fee packages, DIY legal tools, and hosting webinars and a podcast series to demystify IP.

A lifelong runner who knocks out 10+ miles a day and 30-40 miles daily biking (except Sunday), Devin listens to audiobooks and podcasts while training for marathons. When he’s not drafting office action responses or co-hosting Inventive Journey, you might catch him brainstorming the next Inventive Youth program or sipping coffee while sketching partnership agreements.

Ways to connect with Devin**:**

If you’d like to talk strategy or swap running playlist recs, feel free to schedule a chat at http://strategymeeting.com

LinkedIn profile

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawwithmiller/

Firm website [https://www.lawwithmiller.com](https://www.lawwithmiller.com "https://www.lawwithmiller.com")

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Well, hello to all of you, wherever you happen to be today, you are listening to or watching or both unstoppable mindset and I am your host. Mike hingson, our guest today is Devin Miller, who founded the company, Miller IP, and he'll tell us all about that and what that means and so on as we go through this. But I will tell you that he is a lawyer. He deals with patents and other things and a lot of stuff relating to startups. I think that's going to be a lot of fun to talk about. So without any further ado, as it were, Devin, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Thanks for having me on. Excited to be here. Well, we're glad. We're glad you're here. Can you hear me? Okay, now I hear you.

Devin Miller 02:06

Well, we're sorry for the delay, but I said I'm excited to be here and looking forward to chatting.

Michael Hingson 02:11

Well, perfect. Well, let's start. I love to always do this. Let's start kind of at the beginning. Why don't you tell us about the early Devon, growing up and all that?

Devin Miller 02:21

You know, I I'm happy to do. I don't know there's anything that probably stands out. I was probably fairly typical. So I was raised in a religious family, so we're attended church regularly every week. And I had a couple sisters, an older and a younger one, and was went through, went through schooling and or studied, probably the typical course. So I don't know there's anything stands out. I was in a small town, so grew up as, probably not as small as I'd like it to be anymore, but a small farming town, and it was, it was kind of always enjoyed the small town fill, and actually am back to being in that same hometown where I live now with my family. But yeah, so I did that, and I did probably the at the time, the typical thing with the it's growing up with kids and sports and doing things, and went through high school and and after that, jumped or went off to college. But I don't know if there's anything in particular that stands out in my mind, other than probably, at least in my mind, a pretty typical childhood and upbringing, but enjoyed it nonetheless. But happy to provide any details or I can jump into a bit about college.

Michael Hingson 03:38

Well, where did you go to college?

Devin Miller 03:40

Yeah, so I went to Brigham, young university, just or BYU, just out here in Utah. So I went off to so, or I graduated high school and I went off to a year of college. So I went off to BYU, kind of intending to go into electrical engineering, which is what I or one of the degrees I ended up studying with, and then I did that for a year, and after which I went off and did a served a religious mission for my church, so Church of Jesus Christ, or Latter Day Saints, otherwise nicknamed Mormon. So I went off and went to Taiwan for about two years. So didn't have any idea, even at that point where Taiwan was and certainly didn't know the language, but when studied that, or they have a training center where you get an opportunity to study it for about three months. So I studied it and then went off to Taiwan and served that religious mission for my church for a couple years before coming back to the high school, or good, not the high school to college to continue my studies.

Michael Hingson 04:43

I several, several comments. One, I know what you mean about small hometowns. We moved from Chicago, where I was born, to California when I was five, we moved to a town called Palmdale, and it was a very small rural town about 60. Five miles north of Los Angeles. I don't know what the population was when we first moved there, but it couldn't have been more than 1000 or 1500 people spread out over a little bit of a distance. For me, it was great, because without there being a lot of traffic, I was able to do things I might not have done nearly as well in Chicago things like riding a bike, learning to ride a bike and walking to school and and not ever fearing about walking to school for any reasons, including being blind. But oftentimes I once I learned how to do it, I rode my own bike to school and locked it in the bike rack and then rode home and all that. But then Palmdale started to grow and I'm not quite sure what the population is today, but I live in a town about 55 miles east of Palmdale called Victorville, and as I described Victorville growing up, it was not even a speck on a radar scope compared to the small town of Palmdale, but we we moved down to Southern California from the Bay Area my wife and I to be closer to family and so on. In 2014 we wanted to build a house for Karen, because she was in a wheelchair her whole life. So we wanted to get a a house that would be accessible. And my gosh, the only place we could find any property was Victorville. And at that time, in 2014 it had 115,000 people in it. It has grown. Now it

Devin Miller 06:31

has grown. And it tends to be that, you know, it feels like everybody's always kind of chasing the small town then, or people find out about it. Everybody moves in. It's no longer a small town, and then you're off to chasing the the next small town, wherever that might be. So it's kind of a perpetual cycle of of chasing that small or at least for the people to like it. Not everybody loves it, but I'm certainly a proponent of chasing that small town feel from from place to places, as you're trying to or trying to find or recreate what you probably grew up with. So it is a it is a cycle that everybody I think is chasing,

Michael Hingson 07:09

yeah, well, for me now, my wife passed away in 2022 we were married 40 years. And so the thing about it is that there are probably advantages for me living alone, being in a place that has a few more people and a few more of the kind of amenities that at least somewhat larger towns have, like a Costco and some some restaurants. We actually live in a homeowner's development, a homeowner's association called Spring Valley Lake, and I live within walking distance of the Country Club, which has a nice restaurant, so I'm able to go to the to the restaurant whenever I choose, and that's kind of nice. So there's value for me and being here and people say, Well, do you ever want to move from Victorville now that your wife died? And why do I want to do that? Especially since I have a 3.95% mortgage? You know, I'm not going to do that, and I'm in a new house that. Well, relatively new. It was built in 2016 so it's pretty much built to code. And insulation is great. Solar is great on the house. Air conditioning works, so I can't complain.

Devin Miller 08:20

No, sounds like a good setup, and it's kind of one where, why, if you enjoy where you're at, why would you move to go somewhere else that you wouldn't necessarily enjoy? So it just sounds like it works out.

Michael Hingson 08:29

Well, it does, and I can always, as I need to being a keynote speaker and traveling, there's a shuttle that'll take me down to the nearest airports. So that works out. Well, that's awesome. So you went to, I'm a little bit familiar with the the whole LDS missionary program, Mission program, we we were not part of the church, but we lived, when my wife and I got married, we lived in Mission Viejo and we had neighbors right next door to us, who were members of the church, and they came over one day and they said, we have an issue. And I said, Okay. And my wife said, Okay, what's the issue? Well, we have a couple of missionaries coming in, and the only homes that are available to these two boys are homes that already have young female girls in them. So they really can't be in those homes. Would you be willing to rent your one of your rooms to missionaries? And so we said, and well, Karen said, because she was a member of the Methodist church, we said, as long as they don't try to mormonize us, we won't try to methodize them. And we would love to do it. And it worked out really well. We had a couple of missionaries for a while, and then they switched out. And eventually we had a gentleman from Tonga for a while, and we actually had a couple girls for for a while. So it worked out really well, and we we got to know them all, and it was a great relationship. And they did their work, and at Christmas time, they certainly were invited to our Christmas parties. We. Had every year a party. What we actually had was what we call a Christmas tree upping. We got the tree, we brought it into the house, and we invited all of our friends and neighbors to come and decorate the tree in the house. Because, needless to say, we weren't going to do that very well. Karen especially wasn't going to be able to stand up and decorate the tree. So we got them to do all the tree decorations and all that, and we fed them. So it worked out.

Devin Miller 10:26

Well, it's awesome. Sounds like, great. And you hit on. I said, that's probably my, my favorite part of the Christmas is a Christmas tree. So growing up, we always had a real live tree, but it was always, you know, it was downstairs in the basement, and had lower ceilings. And so I was always kind of the opinion, hey, when I grow up, I want to have the a huge, you know, kind of like in the newbies at 20 plus or 20 or 20 plus foot tree, yeah. And lo and behold, we, or at least the couple houses that we build have always had, at least in the living space, have had the pretty high ceilings. And so that's always what we do. We'll go out and we'll cut down a live tree. So we'll go out to kind of in nature, to the forest, where they let you cut them down, and we'll, we'll cut down, usually it's around a 20 plus foot tree, and then have it strung up in the house. And I always tell my wife, I said, I'd rather that one could be my Christmas present. I'd be just as happy, because as long as I have my tree, it's a good Christmas for me.

Michael Hingson 11:23

Yeah, oh, I hear you. Well, one of the boys who lived next door to us went off on a mission to, I think it was Argentina, and was gone for, I guess, two years. What was really funny is when he came back, it took him a while to re acclimatize his speaking English and getting back his American accent. He was he definitely had much more of a Spanish accent, and was much more used to speaking Spanish for a while. So the the three month exposure period certainly got him started at the at the center there in Utah. And then he went off and did his missionary work and then came home. But, you know, it's, it's got to be a wonderful and a very valuable experience. How do you think it affected you?

Devin Miller 12:10

Yeah, I think I said, I think it would be, you said it probably well, is it like one where to say, Hey, this is the most fun time in your life, and you'll never have a more fun time. I don't know that. It's kind of like, you know, I liken it to I so I like to do a lot of running, so or in older years. I don't know that I was as much in younger years, but kind of discovered not that I love running, per se, but love to get out and decompress and otherwise, kind of have a time where I don't have a lot of intrusions or other things that are pressing in on life. And so with that, you know, I've done a number of marathons and marathons, you know, everybody again, says, Well, did you have fun? Or was it a good or was it good marathon? So I don't know that it's ever fun. I don't and do it, but it's a good accomplishment. You it's, you go out, you set your mind to something, and then otherwise, at the end of the day, you reach your goal. And, you know, kind of has the that sense of accomplishment and learning and become improving yourself. That's probably a lot of how I like in a mission is, you know, you have a lot of stresses of learning a new language, being in a different culture, doing something that you're unfamiliar with or not accustomed to, and at the end, you know, you learn a lot of things, you are gain a lot of skills. You hopefully impact a lot of people's lives for the better. And so it is definitely one of those where it's a great accomplishment, but it's not, you know, it's not one way to say, hey, this was a fun vacation where I got to go play for two years. So it it works out well, and I would absolutely do it again.

Michael Hingson 13:31

Yeah, I'm sure you learned a lot, and you probably learned a whole lot more in a lot of ways, than most of the people that you you visited with because you treated it as an adventure and an adventure to learn. So that's pretty cool, absolutely. So you came back from that and you went back to college, and did you continue in electrical engineering? Or what

Devin Miller 13:56

did you do? Yes and no. So I did continue in electrical engineering. Or so I came back and, you know, the intent was, and what I continue to do is to study electrical engineering. I did add on a second degree, which I was a Mandarin Chinese and so I can't remember, I mentioned I I served in Taiwan for those couple years and had an opportunity to kind of, you know, learn and study the language. So as I was doing that, I kind of came back and said, Well, if I've already put in the effort to learn the language and to study it, I might as well, you know, utilize it, or add it to the degree. And so I I really started, or I added that as a second degree to the first degree. So I came out with both the degree in Chinese or man or Chinese, as well as electrical engineering. So yes, continue to study that. And then from that, you know, kind of just as a part of that story. So I was coming out, kind of getting, you know, the senior year, kind of getting towards the end of that degree, and looked at and said, you know, what do I want to do when I grow up? And I still know if I know the full answer, but I did look at it and say, Hey, I, you know, I don't know exactly what I want to do when I grow up, but I don't, I like engineering. Engineering, but I don't want to be an engineer in the sense that, you know, not that I didn't like engineering, but it was one where a typical electrical engineers, you come out of graduate school, you go work for a big company. You're a very small cog and a very big Will you work for. You know, 1015, years, you gain enough experience to have any say your direction and what projects you work on or really have any impact. Not saying that's not really what I want to do when I grow up, or when I start into the working world. And so kind of with that, I, you know, I had a couple interests I enjoyed, you know, kind of the startup, small business, kind of that type of world. And I also found it interesting to on the legal aspect of intellectual property, so patents, trademarks, and really more. At the idea of, hey, you're going to work with a lot of cooling or cool inventions, cool people are working on a lot of unique things, and you get a lot more variety. And you get, you know, kind of be more impactful. And so that was kind of the the Crossroads I found myself at saying which, you know, kind of which direction I want to go. And, you know, kind of, rather than take one or the other, I kind of, I split the road and decided I was going to do both. So I went off to graduate school and did both an MBA or a master's in business administration as well as a law degree, kind of focused more on intellectual property. So went off and studied both of those kind of with the intent of, you know, I don't want to just be fit into one box or do just one thing, but I'd like to keep a foot in the business world, startup world, and have an opportunity to pursue my own business as well as doing the law degree. So I did that in a Case Western Reserve out in Cleveland, Ohio, studying both of those degrees

Michael Hingson 16:34

when you were getting your degree in manner, in Chinese. Was that all about speaking the language, or was it also involved in history and civilization and understanding more about China? What was it like?

Devin Miller 16:47

It was really more, certainly, there was a or, I guess, are you saying within college or within the mission itself?

16:54

In college? Okay, yeah. I mean, it was,

Devin Miller 16:57

it was still primarily focused on the language. You know, the nice thing is, you can test out of a number of the, you know, entry level or their beginning classes, as long as you can show a proficiency. So there may have been some of that, and you still got, you know, some of the classes, would you still study a little bit of poetry, or, you know, within the language context, they've used poetry as a way to kind of learn different aspects of the language. You'd get a little bit of history, but pretty, or vast majority of focus was kind of both speaking as well as the the written and, you know, those are really as opposed to, like English speaking, where it's phonetics and you can or sound out and kind of understand what a you know, what something means by sounding it out, you don't have to know the word in order To, you know, to pronounce it. Chinese is not that way. So you have characters that are just every character you have to memorize. There is no phonetics. There's no way that you can look at a character and sound it out. And so there's a large amount of just memorizing, memorizing, you know, 20,000 characters to read a newspaper type of a thing. And then on the flip side is you have to learn the language, which is, you know, which are already focused on that, more on the mission, but you have to do pronunciation, so you can say the same word with different tones and it has entirely different meaning. So really, there was enough there on the language side, they tended to primarily focus on that, just because there was quite a bit there to

Michael Hingson 18:19

dive into. It's a complicated language.

Devin Miller 18:23

It it is certainly or uniquely different from English. I would say probably English to Chinese speakers is the hardest language because it's the most different from their language. And vice versa for English speaking Chinese is at least one of the this or harder languages because it is entirely different. So it is one that has a lot of intricacies that you get to learn.

Michael Hingson 18:45

I took German in high school for three years, and then in college, I did a lot of shortwave listening and encountered radio Japan a bunch. So I actually took a year of Japanese, and I think from a written language, it's a lot more complicated than spoken language. I think it's a lot more straightforward than Chinese and a lot of ways easier to learn. But even so, it is different than than Latin languages by any standard.

Devin Miller 19:16

But it is. It's an animal in and of itself, but it makes it fun.

Michael Hingson 19:21

Yeah, that's right, it does make it fun. Incident. And then, as I said, it was an adventure. And all of that was, was an adventure. My master's is in physics. That was an adventure. And until you spend a lot of time dealing with physics and hopefully getting beyond just doing the math, you learn how much of a philosophical bent and how much about society and the way things work really is wrapped up in physics. So again, it's it's kind of fun, and unlike a lot of physicists or engineers. I've never thought that one is better or worse than the other. I think they both have purposes. And so as a physics person, I never pick on engineers.

Devin Miller 20:11

I am, I wouldn't pick up. I wouldn't pick on any physics or physicists or physics majors, either, because that's equally, if not more difficult. And so there's a lot of learning that goes on and involved with all of them. But they're all of them are fun areas to

Michael Hingson 20:26

study with. They are. So once you you got your master's degrees, and you you got your law degree, what did you go off and do?

Devin Miller 20:36

Yeah, so I mean, I would probably back it up just a little bit. So kind of during that period where I was getting the degrees, couple things happened. Had a couple kids. So started out first kid while I was doing the, I guess the second year where I was in under or doing the law and MBA degree, doing it as a joint degree. And so had the had a kid. And then during that same period, the next year, about a year about a year and a half later, had another kid. And so that puts me as a it's a four year program, if you combine both of them together. And so I was in the kind of the third year, the four year program. And while I was doing those studies, you know, I had a I was doing a couple things. One is, I was doing the both, or studying both majors, raising the family. I was working about 20 hours as a law clerk or for a law firm, and then during that, I can't remember or if it was a flyer, or if it was, you know, an email or whatnot, but came across a business competition, or it's kind of a, it was kind of a, a multi disciplinary competition wherever, you know, people of different degrees and different fields of study would get together, you form a group of four or five, and you work on developing an idea, and then you would enter it into the competition and see how it goes. And so we did that the first year, and we did something, an idea to make Gym Bags less smelly, and then enter that in and took second place. And during that period, next year comes along, we're all in our final year of our degree. And as we're doing that, we are studying the degree and or entering the competition again. And we decided to do something different. It was for wearables. You know, this is before Apple Watch, or, you know, the Fitbit, or anything else. It was well before I knew that, but we just said, Hey, when I was there, thinking, hey, wouldn't it be cool I'd ran my or, I think, my second marathon that time. Wouldn't it be awesome if you could monitor your hydration level so that you can make sure you're staying well hydrated throughout and it helps with the air, not being a sore and being, you know, quicker recovery and performing better. And so out of that, took the genesis of that idea, entered it back into the business comp, or that is a new idea, into the business competition, and did that with the partners, and took second place again, still a little bitter, or bitter that about that, because the people that took first place has entered the same thing that they entered the previous year, but polished, or took the money they've earned previously and polished it made it look a little nicer, and won again because it looked the most polished. But that aside, was a great, or great competition. Enjoyed it. And from that, you know, said, Hey, I think this is a good idea. I think it can be a, you know, something that you could actually build a business around. And so said, Hey, or kind of told the the people that were in the the group with me, you know, we're all graduating. We're going different directions. Would be pretty hard to do a startup altogether. So why don't we do this? Or why don't you guys take all the money that I got, you know that we you're in some reward money, or, you know, prize money. If you take my portion, split it amongst yourselves, and I'll just take ownership of the idea, whatever it is, where, you know, wherever I take it, and simply own it outright, you know, basically buying them out. And so that's what I did. So coming out of, you know, getting the MBA in the law degree, that was kind of always the intent. So, or coming out of school, I went and joined a law firm here in Utah. Was a full time patent attorney, and then alongside, you know, had the side hustle, what I'd really say is kind of a second full time job to where I was, you know, pursuing that startup or small business alongside of doing the law firm. So that was kind of the the genesis for, as I graduated full time attorney working, you know, with a lot of our cool clients and other things, and then also incorporating the desire to do a startup or small business. And that's kind of been, really, the trajectory that I've taken throughout my career is really, you know, finding ways to combine or to pursue both interests together.

Michael Hingson 24:26

What happened to the business?

Devin Miller 24:28

Yeah, so it so it's still alive today. I've been, I exited. Now it's been a couple year and a half, two years somewhere in there. Have to think back. So it started out. So with the business I started out, it was actually one where, rewinding just a little bit when we when I got started, my dad was also an electrical engineer. He'd actually, you know, he's well or farther into his career, and he done a number of different things across their medical devices through his career. And so he kind of, or he joined on as kind of doing it with us. Hustle with me, and we took that, started to build it. We brought on some additional team members. We brought on an investor, and actually built out and grew the business. It also evolved. So we were starting to test or test out the technology have it with some colleges and some other, you know, athletes, which was a natural place to start it at and about that time, and we were getting kind of to that next hurdle where we either needed to get a further investment or cash infusion, you know, to kind of take it to a more of a marketable, you know, a except a Polish full or ready to go to market type of product. And at that time, as we're exploring that we had or came or got connected with somebody that was more in the diabetes monitoring, they were doing it more from a service base. But you know, the overlay as to kind of how the technologies are overlapped with what they're doing tended to work out pretty well. And so we ended up combining the business to be one, where it was redirected a lot of the technology we developed underlining to be more of a wearables for the diabetes monitor. So that was a number of years ago. I stayed on doing a lot of, some of the engineering and development, primarily more in the intellectual property realm, of doing a lot of patents and whatnot. And then about a year and a half, two years ago, got bought out, was exited from that company and and that continues on today. It's still alive and growing, and I kind of watch it from, you know, from a distance, so to speak, or kind of continue to maintain interest, but don't are not necessarily active within the business anymore. So that was kind of a long answer to a shorter question, but that's kind of where the business eventually evolved to.

Michael Hingson 26:36

So now I'm sure that the company is doing things like developing or working with products like continuous glucose monitors and so on.

Devin Miller 26:46

Yep, yeah, that's kind of the direction as to what they're headed you

Michael Hingson 26:49

well, and what's what's been interesting about several of the CGM type devices is that for people who are blind, there's been a real push to try to get some of them to be accessible. And what finally occurred about a year ago, maybe two years ago, is that one of the devices that's out there was approved to actually incorporate an app on a smartphone, and when the app came out, then it was really easy, although it took an effort to convince people to pay attention to it and do it, but it became technically a lot easier to deal with access, because all you had to do was to make the app accessible. And so there now is a continuous glucose monitor that that is accessible, whereas you wherein you get all the information from the app through voiceover, for example, on the iPhone or through talkback on a android phone that you get when you're just looking at the screen, which is the way it really should be anyway, because If you're going to do it, you should be inclusive and make it work for everyone.

Devin Miller 28:06

No, that's cool. Yeah, there's a number of I think, between, you know, being a prevalent, you know, issue that people are dealing with, to, you know, different trying to address things earlier on, and also to motivate people do healthier lifestyle. And kind of the direction I think, is headed where a lot of the the company that's continues on today, from our original technology, is on the non invasive side. So a lot of them have, you have to have a patch, or you have to have periodically prick, or put an arm, you know, arm, right? Something where has a needle in the arm. And this one is kind of trying hair working to take it to that next level, to where it's no longer having to be invasive, and it's really all without having air with sensors that don't require you to have any sort of pain or prick in order to be able to utilize it. So kind of fun to fun to see how the industry continues to evolve.

Michael Hingson 28:55

Well, today, we're working on that, and tomorrow, of course, the tricorder. So you know, we'll, we'll get to Star Trek

29:03

absolutely one step at a time.

Michael Hingson 29:05

Yeah, but I've kind of figured that people were certainly working on non invasive technology so that you didn't have to have the sensor stuck in your arm. And I'm not surprised that that that's coming, and we'll be around before too long, just because we're learning so much about other ways of making the measurements that it makes sense to be able to do that.

Devin Miller 29:31

Yep, no, absolutely. You know, it is a hard nut to crack. The body is very complex. A lot of things going on, and to measure it, not invasively, is certainly a lot that goes into it, but I think there's a lot of good, good technologies coming out. A lot of progress is being made, and certainly fun to continue to see how the health devices continue to hit the market. So certainly a cool area.

Michael Hingson 29:53

So why did you decide, or maybe it was a natural progression, but why did you decide to go into patent law? Yeah.

Devin Miller 30:01

I mean, I think it was probably a natural progression, and in the sense that, you know, it is one where overall desire was, Hey, I like engineering from the sense I like to think or how things work and kind of break things down and to have a better understanding. So really, intellectual property law and patents and trademarks and others allowed me to work with a lot of startups and small businesses, see a lot of cool things that they're developing still play a hand in it, and yet, also not, you know, be mired down to a long project over multiple years where you, you know, you're a small cog in a big wheel. And so, yeah, that was kind of one where it fit well within kind of the overall business, you know, business desire and business aspect of what I wanted to accomplish, and also just overall, you know, enjoying it or enjoying it. So that's kind of where it might, you know, it married well with the the desire to do startups and small businesses, as well as to work with a lot of other startups and small businesses.

Michael Hingson 30:55

That's a lot of fun, to be able to deal with startups and see a lot of new and innovative kinds of things. And being in patent law, you probably see more than a lot of people, which does get to be exciting in an adventure, especially when you see something that looks like it has so much potential. Yep.

Devin Miller 31:14

No, it is. It is fun. I get to see everything from I've worked on everything from boat anchors to credit card thing or devices that help elderly people to remove them more easily, from their wallet to AI to drones to software other or software platforms to medical devices. So it gives a ability to have a pretty good wide exposure to a lot of cool, different, you know, very different types of innovations, and that makes her just, you know, a fun, fun time, and be able to work or work with the air businesses as they develop. Are all those different technologies?

Michael Hingson 31:50

Well, on the the law side of things, what's the difference between a provisional patent and a non provisional filing?

Devin Miller 31:57

Yeah, so, so I don't back it up, and I'll get to your question. But maybe I'd set the stages to when you're looking at what is the difference between a patent and trademark and copyright, because a lot of times when people look at that, that's probably a good question too. Provisional trademark, or I want a, you know, or a non provisional copyright, or whatever it might be, and kind of get the terminology mixed up. So if you're to take it one step back, a provisional patent app or a patent is something that goes towards protecting an invention. So something that has the functionality that does something, that accomplishes something, a trademark is going to be something that is protecting of a brand. So name of a company, name of a product, a cash, phrase, a logo, and those type of things all really fall under trademarks and copyrights are going to be something that's more creative in nature. So a painting, a sculpture, a picture, a book, you know, all those type of things are going to fall under copyrights. And so really, when you're looking at it, you know, kind of breaking it down initially, you look at it as you know, which one is it. And so now to your question,

Michael Hingson 32:58

well, before you go there, before you go ahead, before you go there. So if I'm writing software, does that fall under patent or copyright? I would assume if the software is to do something, it would be a patent.

Devin Miller 33:12

So software primarily is under a patent. So there's, technically, you can copyright software. Now there's, it's pretty limited in its scope of protection. So if you're to do or software and do it under a copyright, really, all it protects is the exact way that you wrote the code. So you know, got it using this exact coding language. If somebody come along, copy and paste my code, you'll be protected. But it doesn't protect the functionality of how this code works or what it does. It is purely just how you wrote the code. So most of the time, when you're looking at software, it's really going to be more under a patent, because you're not going to want to just simply protect the identical way that you wrote the code, but rather what it does and what it does, yeah. So yep. So yeah, you for if you're to do as as your example, software, primarily, you're going to it's going to fall under patents.

Michael Hingson 34:01

Okay, so anyway, back to provisional and non provisional.

Devin Miller 34:05

Yeah, so, and when you're looking at doing a patent, you can do there's a couple different types of patents. One is a design patent. It really just goes to something the esthetic nature, the look and feel of a of an invention. So if you're thinking of the iPhone, you know, used to have the curved edges. I had the circle or a button at the bottom. It had, you know, the speaker placement and all those things. And it was just that outward appearance, not the functionality, could go under a design patent, but what the primary patent, which is what most people pursue, is what's called the utility patent application. And the utility patent application is really going towards the functionality of how something works. So the utility, how it works, what it does, and then kind of the purpose of it. And so with that, when you're looking at pursuing a utility patent application, there are a couple different types of patents that you can or types of utility patent patent applications. So. As you mentioned, one is called a provisional patent application. The other one is called a non provisional patent application. So a provisional patent application is kind of set up primarily, a lot of times for startups or small businesses where they're going to have a some product or an innovation that they're working on. They're in earlier stages. They're wanting to kind of protect what they have while they continue to develop it, and kind of flush it out. So provisional patent application is set up to be a one year placeholder application. So it will get, you know, you file it, you'll get patent pending, you'll get a date of invention, and it'll give you a year to decide if you want to pursue a full patent application or not. So you can file that gives you that one year time frame as a placeholder. The non provisional patent application would be the full patent application. So that would be what has, all the functionality, all the features, all the air, formalities and air, and it will go through the examination process. We'll go look at it for patentability. So those are kind of the difference provisional, one year, placeholder, less expensive, get your patent pending, versus the non provisional, that's the full patent application and gives you kind of that, or we'll go through examination.

Michael Hingson 36:12

Do most people go through the provisional process just because it not only is less expensive, but at least it puts a hold and gives you a place.

Devin Miller 36:22

It really just depends on where people are at. So kind of, you know, a lot of times people ask, Hey, well, what would you recommend? And I'll usually say, hey, there are typically two reasons why I would do a provisional patent application. And if you don't fall into either of those camps, then I would probably do a non provisional patent. Got it. So generally, the two reasons I get one is certainly budgetary. Give you an example. So our flat fee, you know, we do our primarily everything, flat fee in my firm, and a provisional patent application to prepare and file it, our flat fee is 2500 versus a non provisional patent application is 6950 so one is, Hey, your startup, small business, to have a limited funds, you're wanting to get a level of protection in place while you continue to pursue or develop things, then you would oftentimes do that as a provisional patent application. And the other reason, a lot of times where I would recommend it is, if you're saying, Hey, we've got a initial innovation, we think it's going to be great. We're still figuring things out, so we'd like to get something in place while we continue to do that research and develop it and kind of further figure it out. So that would be kind of, if you fall into one of those camps where it's either budgetary overlay, or it's one where you're wanting to get something in place and then take the next year to further develop it, then a provisional patent application is oftentimes a good route. There are also a lot of clients say, Hey, I'm, you know, we are pretty well. Did the Research Development getting ready to release it in the marketplace. While we don't have unlimited funds, we still have the ability to just simply go or go straight to a non provisional so we can get the examination process started, and then they'll go that route. So both of them are viable route. It's not kind of necessarily. One is inherently better or worse than the other is kind of more where you're at along the process and what, what kind of fits your needs the best.

Michael Hingson 38:09

But at least there is a process that gives you options, and that's always good. Absolutely, patent laws, I well, I won't say it's straightforward, but given you know, in in our country today, we've got so many different kinds of things going on in the courts and all that, and sometimes one can only shake one's head at some of the decisions that are made regarding politics and all that, but that just seems to be a whole lot more complicated and a lot less straightforward than what you do With patent law? Is that really true? Or are there lots of curves that people bend things to go all sorts of different ways that make life difficult for you?

Devin Miller 38:50

Um, probably a little bit of both. I think that it so. The law, legal system in general, is a much more slower moving enemy, so it does have a bit more of a kind of a basis to anticipate where things are headed in general. Now, the exception is, there always is an exception to the rule. Is that anytime the Supreme Court gets involved with patent law cases, I'd say 95% of the time, they make it worse rather than better. So, you know, you get judges that none of them are really have an experience or background in patent law. They've never done it. They really don't have too much familiarity with it, and now they're getting posed questions that are fairly involved in intricate and most of the time when they make decisions, they make it worse. It's less clear. You know, it's not as great of understanding, and it otherwise complicates things more. And so when you get the Supreme Court involved, then they can kind of make it more difficult or kind of shake things up. But by and large, it is a not that there isn't a lot of or involved in going through the process to convince the patent and examiner the patent office of patentability and make sure it's well drafted and has the it's good of coverage and scope, but at least there is, to a degree, that ability to anticipate. Hate, you know what it what's going to be required, or what you may likely to be looking at. You know? The other exception is, is, you know, the, ironically, I think the patent office is the only budget or producing or budget positive entity within all of the government. So every other part of the government spends much more money than they ever make. The Patent Office is, I think the, I think the postal office at one point was the other one, and they have, now are always in the in the red, and never make any money. But, you know, they are the patent office. Now, the problem with that is, you think, great, well now they can reinvest. They can approve, they should have the best technology, they should be the most up to date. They should have, you know, all the resources because they're self funding, and yet, there's always a piggy bank that the government goes to raid and redirects all those funds to other pet projects. And so, or the patent office is always, perpetually underfunded, as ironic as that is, because they're getting, always getting the piggy bank rated, and so with that, you know, they are, if you're to go into a lot of the patent office, their interfaces, their websites or databases, their systems, it feels like you're the onset of the or late 90s, early 2000s as far as everything goes. And so that always is not necessarily your question, but it's always a bit aggravating that you know you can't, as an example, can't submit color drawings. People ask, can you submit videos? Nope, you can't submit any videos of your invention, you know, can you provide, you know, other types of information? Nope, it's really just a written document, and it is line drawings that are black and white, and you can't submit anything beyond that. So there's one where I think eventually it will sometime, maybe shift or change, but it's going to be not anytime soon. I don't think there's any time on the horizon, because they're kind of stuck it once they move, moved over to the lit or initially onto the computer system, that's about where that evolution stopped.

Michael Hingson 41:51

Well, the other thing though, with with videos, especially when you get AI involved and so on, are you really seeing a video of the invention. Or are you seeing something that somebody created that looks great, but the invention may not really do it. So I can understand their arguments, but there have to be ways to deal with that stuff.

Devin Miller 42:13

Yeah, and I think that even be prior to AI, even we just had, you know, videos been around for 20 or 30 years, even, you know, digital format or longer. That probably, and the problem is, I think it's more of the search ability. So if you have a drawing, you can more easily search drawings and compare them side by side, and they'll do it. If you have a video, you know what? What format is the video? And is it a, you know, dot movie, or dot MOV, or is it.mp for is it color? Is it black and white? How do you capture it? Is it zoomed in as a kind of show all the details? Or is it zoomed out? And I think that there's enough difficulty in comparing video side by side and having a rigid enough or standardized format, the patent office said, man, we're not going to worry about it. Yes, so we could probably figure something out, but that's more work than anybody, any administration or any of the directors of the patent office ever want to tackle so it's just always kind of kicked down the road.

Michael Hingson 43:06

Do they ever actually want to see the invention itself?

Devin Miller 43:12

Not really, I mean, you so the short answer is no. I mean, they want to see the invention as it's captured within the the patent application. So the problem

Michael Hingson 43:21

is, the drawing, they don't want to see the actual device, or whatever it is, well, and a lot

Devin Miller 43:24

of times, you know as a inventors, they you know as a patent applicants, as the inventors and the owners, you're saying, hey, but I want to show them the invention. Problem is, the invention doesn't always mirror exactly what's showing in the patent application. Because you're on generation three of your product patent application is still in generation one, yeah, and so it doesn't mirror, and so the examiners are supposed to, they don't always, or aren't always good, and sometimes pull things and they shouldn't, but they're supposed to just consider whatever is conveyed in the patent application. Yeah, it's a closed world. And so bringing those additional things in now you can, so technically, you can request a live in office interview with the examiner, where you sit down live. You can bring in your invention or other or details and information, and when you do it live, face to face with an interview, you can walk them through it. Most very few people attorneys ever do that because one clients aren't going to want to pay for you to one of the offices, put you up in a hotel, you know, sit there, spend a day or two to or with the examiner to walk them through it. It just adds a significant amount of expense. Examiners don't particularly like it, because they have to dedicate significantly more time to doing that. Yeah, they're allotted, so they lose they basically are doing a lot of free work, and then you're pulling in a lot of information that they really can't consider. So you technically can. But I would say that you know, the likelihood of the majority of attorneys, 99 point whatever, percent don't do that, including myself. I've never been to do a live or live one, just because it just doesn't, it doesn't have enough advantage to make it worthwhile.

Michael Hingson 44:58

Well, in talking about. About the law and all the things that go on with it. One of the things that comes to mind is, let's say you have somebody in the United States who's patenting, or has made a patent. What happens when it all goes to it gets so popular, or whatever, that now it becomes an international type of thing. You've got, I'm sure, all sorts of laws regarding intellectual property and patents and so on internationally. And how do you get protection internationally for a product?

Devin Miller 45:32

File it in each country separately. So, you know, there are people, and I understand the inclinations, hey, I want to get a worldwide or global patent that covers everything in every country. The short answer is, you can't. I mean, technically, you could, if you file a patent into every country separately, nobody, including when I used to work or do work for companies including Intel and Amazon and Red Hat and Ford. They don't have patents in every single country throughout the world because they just don't have enough marketplace. You know, you go to a very small, let's say, South African country that you know, where they just don't sell their product enough in it, it just doesn't make the sense, or the courts or the systems or the patent office isn't well enough to find, or it's not enforceable enough that it just doesn't capture that value. And so there isn't a ability to have a global, worldwide patent, and it really is one where you have to file into each country separately. They each have their own somewhat similar criteria, still a different, somewhat similar process, but they each have their own criteria in their process that has to go through examination. So when you're looking at you know when you want to go for whether it's in the US or any other country, when you're deciding where you want to file it, it's really a matter of what marketplaces you're going to be selling the product into. So if you look at it and you know, I have as an example, some clients that 95% of their marketplace is all in the US, that's where they anticipate, that's probably where they're going to sell it. Well, yes, you could go and find, if you have 2% of your marketplace in Japan, you could go file a patent and get it into Japan, but you have such a small amount of your marketplace that's probably there that it doesn't make sense. And vice versa will have as an example. And a lot of times in the medical devices, they'll a lot of times file both in the EU as well as in the US, because those are two of the predominant medical device and are places where a lot of innovation is going on, where there's a lot of focus on utilization, development, medical devices, and there's just a lot of that demand. And so you're really going to look at it is which, where's your marketplace. The other times are the people, a lot of times, they'll get tripped up on so they'll say, Well, I probably need to file into China, right? And I said, Well, maybe because the inclination is, well, everybody just goes to China. They'll knock off the product. And so I want to have a patent in China so that I can, you know, fight against the knockoffs. And that isn't while I again, understand why they would ask that question. It wouldn't be the right way to convey it. Because if you if all it is is they you have no real, you know, no desire, no plan, to go into China. You're not going to sell it. You're not going to build a business there. If they're knocking it off and just just doing it in China, so to speak, then they're not. There isn't going to be a need to file a patent in China, because you don't have any marketplace in there. There's nothing really to protect. And if somebody makes it in China as a just picking on China, making as an example, and imports it into the US, you can still enforce your patent or otherwise do or utilize it to stop people from importing knock off because it's in the US, because they're, yeah, exactly, they're selling it, importing it, or otherwise doing activities in the US. So it's really a matter of where your marketplace is, not where you think that somebody might knock it off. Or, Hey, I'm gonna get a try and get a global patent, even though my marketplace is really in one or two spots.

Michael Hingson 48:38

What about products like, say, the iPhone, which are commonly used all over.

Devin Miller 48:44

Yeah, they're going to do, they'll do a lot of countries. They still

Michael Hingson 48:47

won't do. They'll still do kind of country by country.

Devin Miller 48:50

Yeah, they'll now, they'll do a lot of countries. Don't get me wrong, a lot of right. Phones are sold throughout the world, but they'll still look at it as to where it is, and they still have, you know, issues with them. So one of the interesting tidbits as an example, so going back and rewinding your time, taking apple as an example. You know, they came out with, originally, the iPod, then they had iPhone, and then they had the iPad. Now the question is, when they originally came out with their watch, what did they call it?

49:17

Apple Watch? Apple Watch. Now, why

Devin Miller 49:20

didn't they call the I wash, which is what it made sense. It goes right along with the iPhone, the iPad, the iPhone, you know, the all of those iPod on that. And it was because somebody had already got a trademark in China that was for a different company, unrelated to the apple that had it for the iWatch. And so when Apple tried to go into the country, they tried to negotiate. They tried to bully. They weren't able to successfully get the rights or to be able to use I wash within China. China was a big enough market, and so they had and rather than try and split it and call it the I wash everywhere but China and trying to have the Apple Watch in China, they opted to call it the Apple Watch. Now I think they might. Of eventually resolve that, and I think it's now can be referred to as the I watch, I'm not sure, but for, at least for a long period of time, they couldn't. They called it the Apple Watch when they released it, for that reason. So even if you have, you know, a big company and one of the biggest ones in the world, you still have to play by the same rules. And why, you can try and leverage your your size and your wealth and that to get your way, there's still those, there's still those hindrances. So that's kind of maybe a side, a side note, but it's kind of one that's interesting.

Michael Hingson 50:30

So that's the trademark of how you name it. But how about the technology itself? When the Apple Watch was created, I'm assuming that they were able to patent that.

Devin Miller 50:39

Yeah, they will have, I'm sure they probably have anywhere from 30 to 100 to 200 I mean, they'll have a significant amount of patents, even it's just within the Apple Watch, everything from the screen, the display, how it's waterproof, how it does communications, how does the battery management, how does the touch, how does the interface, all of those are going to be different aspects that they continue to, you know, did it originally in the original Apple Watch, and are always iterating and changing as they continue to improve the technology. So generally, you know that, I'm sure that you will start out with as a business of protecting you're getting a foundational patent where you kind of protect the initial invention, but if it's successful and you're building it out, you're going to continue to file a number of patents to capture those ongoing innovations, and then you're going to file it into all of the countries where you have a reasonable market size that makes it worthwhile to make the investment.

Michael Hingson 51:32

So if you have a new company and they've got a name and all that, what should new businesses do in terms of looking and performing a comprehensive search for of trademarks and so on to make sure they are doing the right thing.

Devin Miller 51:49

Yeah, a couple of things. I mean, it wanted, if you're it depends on the size of company, your budget, there's always the overlay of, you know, you can want to do everything in the world, and if you don't have the budget, then you have to figure out what goes in your budget. But if I'll take it from kind of a startup or a small business perspective, you know, you first thing you should do is just as stupid and as easy as it sounds, you should go do a Google search. Or, now that you have chat GPT, go do a chat BT search and a Google search. But, you know, because it's interesting as it sounds, or, you know, is you think that, oh, that's, you know, kind of give me or an automatic I'll have still even till today, people come into my office. They'll say, Hey, I've got this great idea, this great invention, and a Lacher getting a patent on it, and they'll start to walk me through it. I'm like, you know, I could have sworn I've seen that before. I've seen something very similar. We'll sit down at my desk, take two minutes, do a Google search, and say, so is this a product that you're thinking of? Oh, yeah, that's exactly it. Okay. Well, you can't really get a patent on something that's already been invented and out there, and so, you know, do a little bit of research yourself. Now there is a double edged sword, because you can do research and sometimes you'll have one or two things happen. You'll not having the experience and background, not entirely knowing what you're doing. You'll do research, and you'll either one say, Hey, I've done a whole bunch of research. I can't really find anything that's similar. When, in fact, there's a lot of similar things out there. There's a patent, and people will say, yeah, it's the same, it's the same invention, but my purpose is a little bit different. Well, you can't if it's the exact same or invention. Whether or not you say your purpose is different, doesn't get around their patent and same thing on a trademark. Yeah, their brand's pretty much

53:20

identical, but they're

Devin Miller 53:21

doing legal services and I'm doing legal tools, and so it's different, and it's, again, it's one where there's there they have a false sense of security because they rationalize in their head why it's different, or vice versa. You also get people that will say, Hey, this is even though it's significantly different, it's the same purpose. And so while, while they really could go do the product, while they could get a patent or a trademark, because they think that it's just overall kind of the same concept, then they talk themselves out of it when they don't need to. So I would say, start out doing some of that initial research. I would do it if I was in their shoes, but temper it with, you know, do it as an initial review. If there's something that's identical or the same that's out there, then it gives you an idea. Probably, you know, you're not going to be able to add a minimum, get or patent their intellectual property protection, and you may infringe on someone else's but if you you know, if there's, there's some differences, or have to do that initial research, that's probably the time, if you're serious about, you know, investing or getting business up and going, you've probably engaged an attorney to do a more formal search, where they have the experience in the background and ability to better give a better understanding or determination as to whether or not something presents an issue.

Michael Hingson 54:32

Yeah, well, that's understandable. If I've developed something and I have a patent for it, then I suddenly discovered that people are selling knockoffs or other similar devices on places like Amazon and so on. What do you do about that? Because I'm sure there must be a bunch of that that that does go on today.

Devin Miller 54:53

Yeah, yes, it does. I mean, I wouldn't say it's not as probably as prevalent as some people think. In other words, not every single. Product, right, being knocked off. Not everything is copied. Sometimes it's because, you know, either I don't have the ability, I don't have the investment, I don't have the, you know, it's not as big enough marketplace, I don't have the manufacturing, I don't have the connections, or it is simply, am respectful, and I'm not going to go do a discord because I'm not going to try and rip off, you know, what I think is someone else's idea. So it doesn't happen that as frequently as I think sometimes people think it does, but it certainly does occur. You know, there's a competitive marketplace, there's a profit incentive, and if there's a good product that's out there that people think they can do something with, and there's a motivation to do it, either because people are unaware that it's an issue, or that they they're unaware that they can't copy it or is protected. And so if you get into that, you know, there's a few potentially different recourses. One is, you know, a lot of times you'll start out with the cease and desist. Now caveat. A cease and assist letter doesn't have any legal teeth. It is basically a letter that you can either send yourself, or if you want to look more seriously at a law firm, send that basically says, Hey, we're putting on notice. We believe there's an issue. We'd like to remedy this outside of the court system or the legal system, to give you an opportunity to fix it. You know, you're on notice. Either fix it or we're going to pursue it, and it's going to cost you a lot more. So a lot of times, you'll start out the cease and assist. Now you don't have to. Some people don't because they say, Hey, doesn't have any legal, you know, legal recourse, or doesn't have any legal teeth to it. And I just want to get, you know, to work to resolve or get this going in the court system. So some people think, well, I'll get a cease and assist letter. If they get that, then I'll be fine. I'll just stop doing it, no harm, no foul. That's not the case. If you're ripping somebody off, or you're infringing intentionally or not, they can come after you, whether or not you stop just because you or once you become aware of it. In other words, it's kind of like speeding. You can't just simply say, Well, I didn't know that I was going 70 and a 40 mile an hour. I didn't know it was 40 miles an hour, so I'm okay. If I just or when the cop pulls me over, I say, I'll go 40 miles an hour. Now you can't simply do that same thing with infringement. So a lot of times, it starts with the cease and desist beyond that you kind of have, depending on where it's being sold, you can sometimes have a couple different options. Always you have the option of going in and doing, you know, enforcing whether it's patent, trademarks, copyrights. You can enforce those in court now, enforcing them in court, if you go through from start to finish, with some very small amount of cases, go all the way from start to finish, because they usually settle out. But if they go start to finish a patent lawsuit, you're at least six, if not seven figures, sometimes eight figures, to get all the way through. If you go to a trademark lawsuit, you're usually anywhere from 30 to 60 or 70,000 if you go to copyrights, you're probably anywhere from 20 to 40,000 so it's not a insignificant investment. And people say, well, then nobody ever enforces your patent. Well, your apple is an example, and you're making millions of or billions of dollars off the iPhone, then a million dollar lawsuit to protect that source of an investment makes sense. If you're only making $10,000 a year off your product, going and doing a lawsuit, even if you have a patent, doesn't make sense. So you do have to have that as an overlay, but it's always an option. With some of the advent of some of the things, like Amazon, to a lesser degree, social media marketplaces, a lot of times, they have options to for enforceability that you can pursue. It's not as rigid, or it doesn't have as much or ability to go back and forth and prove your case is a lawsuit. But as an example, if you're selling on Amazon, Amazon for patents, trademarks and copyrights, they have their own internal system that you can submit a an issue or complaint, and you have to still pay, it's not free, and go through their process, but now you're more like as an example, if you submit a patent and you have a legitimate, you know, gripe, you can sometimes get through that process for four to $7,000 which is a lot more doable. And so you can submit, hey, here's what they're doing, here's my patent, here's what their product is. They'll have somebody that isn't a judge or a jury, but is still within their legal department. They will look at that, make a determination. Sometimes they'll reach out to you or to the other party and get more details information, and they will make a determination. So that's oftentimes where, you know, I encourage people to start just because it is oftentimes a less expensive way that if you can remedy an issue, it gives you a better recourse, it may give you the same outcome that is less expensive. In that, as I said, you have kind of some of those similar recourses on social media, you know, Facebook marketplace or others, that you can do some of those same types of enforcement activities. So sometimes you can go other less expensive recourses, and other times you have to decide, you know, the couple others. And I'll pause, I mean, sometimes you all say, well, I'll never have that much money. And, you know, I always like to point out, you know, it doesn't mean that just because you can't afford a lawsuit to somebody else that can't afford the lawsuit on your behalf. So the example, Apple has a every big company, or every company, really, almost always has a competitor. Apple has Sams and coke has Pepsi, you know, Ford has Chevy, those type of things. And so. Sometimes you're going to say, hey, this, you know, biggest player, Apple's ripping me off. Well, I can't take on Apple. If this is truly valuable and they really are likely infringing, go to SAMHSA as an example. And either, you know, work, collaborate with them, license your or your technology and your patent, or, you know, look for acquisition and the bigger players, if it's valuable to them. Oftentimes we'll do that. Or there's also sometimes, you know, they get a bad rap, and often times rightly so, but they're what are called patent trolls, which are there in the process of they will look for patents that they think are likely to be infringed, have a legitimate case and are worthwhile to pursue, and they're basically law firms or similar entities then we'll go and either require a patent or work out a deal where they'll enforce it on your behalf. And now they do it without, typically a large investment. In other words, they'll front the cost, but they also take a pretty good amount of the damages that are, yeah, so there's a number of different ways to do it, you know, depending on kind of what your circumstance is, how big it is, how big the damages are, how big the other player is, but those are kind of a few of the typical recourses.

Michael Hingson 1:01:06

So here's a question that I always found interesting. My wife, when she was alive, was a quilter, and one of the things she could never do was to create any kind of quilt or needlepoint or any kind of design using any Disney characters, because Disney had wrapped all of that up, and, and, and the word came down to the whole world, if you use the Disney character, will sue you. Is that really? That? Can that really be locked into that level. Yep, pretty much. I mean, it's all trademarked, and

Devin Miller 1:01:45

most of it is under copyright. So if you're copyright, Mickey Mouse, his image is going to be copyrighted. Yeah. Copyrights are typically, you know, depending on when they're filed and how they do it, nine years plus the life of the author. So they have a pretty good lifespan. And so, you know, it is copyright, and Disney is a very aggressive if I were to give them the one in the one hand, they squash everybody. They will heavily monitor and even if you're a smaller business, if you get any sort of online presence or any sort of are selling it, they have a lot of tools that monitor all the marketplaces and websites and scraping, and they will eventually, like you, find you. Now you may, if you're only selling $1,000 or you're just selling it in the farmer's market, and you're really not online, it may be difficult to detect you. You may be able to get away with it, but if you get any size or any real presence, especially if you're online, they will find out, and they'll come after you, and they'll probably sue you. Best case scenario is they'll give you a cease and desist, and you'll plead innocence, and they might give you the exception, but I wouldn't count on it. Yeah, the one note I would say is that Disney is having a problem of some of their earliest characters and some of their earliest copyrights. Have they been around long enough that they have their trade or copyrights have now expired? So if you're to take Steamboat Willie is an example there, which is really the original Mickey Mouse that is no longer that that copyright has expired, so it's the life of the copyright, and it's available to the public. So if you were to go and base a quilt on a Mickey Mouse character that is Steamboat Willie, you could or you could go do that, and they wouldn't have any real recourse. Now, the opposite isn't true. If you go do the current iteration of Mickey Mouse, which is does not look the same, has different designs. Yeah, the ears are bigger. The nose is different. A lot of the shapes are different. That is selling their copyrights, right? So you have to be careful the version. Same thing with a lot of the Winnie the Pooh characters, Winnie the Pooh is now, or the original Winnie the Pooh is not under copyright anymore. Same thing with Piglet, same thing with Tigger. And that's actually one of the interesting things was, is as those came out of copyright, so as they were no longer protected, the first thing that the industries did is they wouldn't made a whole bunch of horror, slasher movies based on those original characters. And so you can go find a Mickey Mouse, a murderous Mickey Mouse that's out there. There's a Winnie the Pooh. That's a slasher movie that's out there. They basically took iconic kids, you know, family friendly things, and did the exact opposite, which is make it as as terrible and as horrible as possible, and put it out in a movie. Never seen the movies. I'm not a big slasher in horror. Yeah, I'm not. But so that. So those are instances to where, yes, they are very aggressive. Same thing, Disney owns Marvel. You do anything with Marvel, same thing, they're going to come after you super aggressively, because they have billions of dollars tied up in those in those brands,

Michael Hingson 1:04:31

Stan Lee might come. Stan Lee might come and haunt you exactly.

Devin Miller 1:04:36

But you know, so you ask, yeah, they are very aggressive. You would that they would probably be a fairly accurate, you know, understanding that they'll come after you, but there are starting to be, because they've been around long enough and their copyrights have expired, some ways to start to navigate around that

Michael Hingson 1:04:52

interesting, but it makes sense and but that's why I asked the question. I was just curious, because I I sort of assumed that you. Was really locked up that way. And my wife said, we'll never, we'll never do anything like with Disney characters and all that. And she never put it even in charity quilts and so on, just because they're, they're that protected. And you know, the other side of it is, I understand that. You know, Disney worked hard to create its brands and so on. So that's understandable. The irony

Devin Miller 1:05:25

always is, is, when you're the start of the small business, you always say, this is unfair. They're picking on it. They're anti competitive. They don't want to allow for competition right up until you create something of your own that's starting to get some value, yeah. And if somebody else comes and knocks it off, then you're right back to well, I don't want, I put all this time, money and effort to build this I want to make the money. You can't just simply knock it off and copy me. So it always kind of is which side of the coin you're on. If you're on the one that has done the time and the work and the effort you want to capture maintain that value, if you're the one that wants to be the competitor to the business, then you always gripe about how unfair it is, how aggressive and anti competitive they are. Yeah, it's kind of whichever side you're, which side of the issue you're on.

Michael Hingson 1:06:07

Have, have you ever written any books talking about any of this?

1:06:11

Um, I haven't done any books. So we have.

Devin Miller 1:06:15

I have technically done one book. So we do. I do my own podcast. It's called the inventive journey. We did have the fur some of the top episodes were basically just transcribed and a little bit summarized and adjusted, but really just it was mostly taking those top episodes and put it into a book format. So technically, I wouldn't count it as writing a book, because it was really more of taking a podcast and putting in book form. But that is out there. But beyond that, I do a lot of content, so we have, I probably done at this point, hundreds of blog posts, tons of information, a lot of resources. I do both webinars, I do podcasts and put out a lot of content, but I haven't really ever taken a time. And, you know, the honest reason is, as part of it, I think books are good and good and bad in the sense of air they written. Books are dying out now that they My kids love written books, you know, hard paper cap. I actually like those, but it is slowly, slowly decreasing the marketplace and really as a business, I've always had a hard time for me personally, in the industry and business, I've been finding enough justification for how I would actually go out and make a return on it, as well as leverage it and utilize it and utilize it to drive clients, which is really what you want to do, right? You put out the book with the intent of, hey, now I'm going to use this as ability to generate clients. A problem is, is, you know, that requires you to go out, you have to get enough readership, you have to be able to market it, you have to link it to your services. And I've just never been able to make that close enough connection to really justify putting out a book, I'm sure I, you know, I can speak and write and do enough things to fill plenty of pages. But as a business justification, I've always found that, you know, if I put on an online blog post as an example, and I put it on our website and I put it on LinkedIn and others, then it gets SEO. I can share it easily with clients. I can refer back to it with what we do. People find it. So I can put out a lot of that same content that would go in a book without doing in a book format, and it gives the ability to more tight or directly tie it with the business. So that's always the justification I found for putting it out in different other formats.

Michael Hingson 1:08:12

Well, even so, since you've done a compilation of podcasts, if you have a picture of the book cover, I'd love to put it in the show notes.

Devin Miller 1:08:20

Yeah, I can certainly send it along to you, and it's available on Amazon. You know, I don't know how often it gets purchased, because we primarily put it out as a client generation. We'd give it away with we do client gift boxes to all of our clients. When you're new on board, you'll get a it's a water bottle. You get some treats, to get some other fun things. We put it in there. So we've sold a few bucks, but it's certainly not from the perspective of, I'm not a top listed author, not a will, you know, okay, have lots of reviews and all that, but I'd love to

Michael Hingson 1:08:52

share, happy to share the book cover and the picture. That'd be great. Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe explore using your services, how do they do that?

Devin Miller 1:09:02

Yeah, I'll give a few different ways, depending on how and what they want to reach out to me for. So general website, which has a lot of great content, or content lot of information. You know, one thing we do is we have all of our flat fees, which is transparent, makes it easy to understand what things will cost, lot of resources. And, as you said, blog posts and other things, if they just want the general website is law with miller.com I mean, they can always go there if they want to more. Connect up with me one on one. So I offer free consultation. Sit down with you for you know, typically on phone or virtually. They're welcome to come in the office, but we have clients in all 50 states. They can go to strategy meeting com that links right to my calendar. It's an easy way to schedule a consultation and chat one on one. So that's the second way. And the other one is, I'm not overly active. I know we have presence, and I post every once in a while on the other platforms. Primarily, I'm on LinkedIn, just because I like it, because it's more business related. Yeah, if they want to go to meet. Miller.com that will direct it to to my LinkedIn profile, and you can connect up with me there. So general website, law with miller.com if you want to schedule a consultation strategy meeting, calm, and if you want to connect up with me on LinkedIn, going to meet miller.com

Michael Hingson 1:10:16

Well, Devin, this has been fun, and I've learned a lot, and I always like to to feel that I'm learning at least as much as anybody else who listens. So I appreciate your time and all that we've had to talk about today. This has been great. So thank you for doing it, and I want to thank all of you out there for being with us. Love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, i@accessibe.com, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you. Please give us a five star rating wherever you're observing our podcast from. We value those ratings very, very much. And of course, for all of you and Devin you as well. If you know anyone else who want to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please introduce us. We're always looking for more folks who have stories to tell, and that's that's what makes this podcast fun. You never know where stories are coming from. But again, Devin, I want to thank you. This has been great, and I really appreciate you being here with us today.

1:11:14

I've had an awesome time. I definitely appreciate you having me on.

Michael Hingson 1:11:19

Episode 408 – The Unstoppable Power of Human Voice Acting in an AI World with Linda Bearman

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Imagination, storytelling, and the human voice are at the heart of this conversation I shared with voice actor and coach Linda Bearman. We talked about her journey from early acting to decades in voiceover, why audio drama is finding new life, and what it really takes to build a career in a changing industry shaped by home studios and AI. Linda offered honest insight into training, discipline, and the business side of voice work, along with a clear reminder that technology cannot replace lived experience, emotional truth, or imagination. More than anything, this episode is about staying human, staying kind, and following the passion that brings stories to life, no matter how fast the world changes.

Highlights:

00:10 – Hear why sounding natural and emotionally present matters more than performance tricks in voice acting.

02:52 – Learn why audio drama is resurging and what today’s audiences are craving from storytelling again.

10:48 – Understand how voiceover evolved into a true craft and why it demands respect, discipline, and training.

20:17 – Get a clear look at how AI has already changed the voiceover industry and where human voices still hold the edge.

30:18 – Discover why imagination is a muscle that must be trained to bring stories to life through audio alone.

55:22 – Learn why preserving classic radio techniques is essential to developing the next generation of voice actors.

About the Guest:

Linda Bearman has amassed decades of experience in the performing arts beginning as a child actress and continuing into adulthood. Her career was enriched by studies and performances in the US and abroad working with legendary actors from prestigious theatre's including; The Arena Stage (Washington D.C.), The Actors Studio (NYC), The National Theatre of Great Britain and The Old Vic (UK). After obtaining her degree in Acting, Linda continued performing on stage and screen until moving to Los Angeles where she transitioned into TV production working for King World Productions on shows; The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Later, while working for Landmark Productions she was offered a position at the esteemed commercial talent agency, SBV,Inc (Sutton, Barth & Vennari). Becoming a VO agent was a pivotal point in Linda's career as it was there that Linda discovered her passion for voiceover, an art form that perfectly aligned with her acting background and business acumen.

Following seven years at SBV, she relocated to Utah and worked in the casting department of Leucadia Film Corp. while also voicing regional radio and TV commercials. Recognizing the need for a professional full service talent agency in Salt Lake City, she established, co-owned and operated the successful TMG,Inc. (Talent Management Group) in its first decade of business. Her enthusiasm for developing talent led her to become a full-time VO coach, mentoring actors in performance techniques, branding, marketing, and demo production of which several earned industry recognitions. She stays up to date with the latest industry developments and actively shares it with her clients. Linda is honored to serve as a judge for the annual international SOVAS Arts Awards (Society of Voice Arts and Sciences) and delights in performing live recreations of radio shows from the "Golden Age" with REPS (Radio Enthusiasts of Puget Sound) in Seattle, WA each year.

Ways to connect with Linda**:**

LinkedIn-Linda Bearman

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

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Transcription Notes:

Episode 407 – Why Unstoppable Brands Treat Accessibility as a Growth Strategy with Lori Osbourne

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What if your website is quietly turning people away without you ever knowing it? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, Michael Hingson talks with Lori Osbourne, a branding strategist and web accessibility advocate whose personal health journey reshaped how she helps businesses show up online. Lori shares how unclear messaging, weak branding, and inaccessible websites block trust, visibility, and growth. Together, they unpack why accessibility is not just about compliance, but about inclusion, credibility, and better SEO, and how simple changes like clearer messaging, alt text, contrast, and video captions can transform both user experience and business results.

Highlights:

00:01 – Understand why disability is often left out of diversity conversations and why that needs to change

13:56 – Learn how a life-altering health crisis forced a complete reset in career and priorities

27:10 – Discover why a website alone is not enough to establish authority or visibility

34:19 – Learn why unclear messaging is the biggest reason websites fail to convert

44:43 – Understand what website accessibility really means and who it impacts

59:42 – Learn the first step to take if your online presence feels overwhelming

About the Guest:

Lori Osborne, affectionately known as The Authority Amplifier, is a Brand Strategist, Website Consultant, and the founder of BizBolster Web Solutions. With over 25 years in technology and nearly a decade of experience helping coaches, consultants, authors, and speakers build a profitable online presence, Lori is the powerhouse behind The Authority Platform™, a complete done-for-you system designed to transform overwhelm into opportunity.

Her signature branding process, The Authority Blueprint™, helps clients clarify their message, define their visual and verbal identity, and identify what truly sets them apart in their field. She then brings that strategy to life with an authority-building website - strategically crafted on the Duda platform to reflect credibility, connect authentically, and convert consistently - without the headaches of WordPress maintenance or tech confusion.

Unlike agencies that offer cookie-cutter sites or developers who disappear after launch, Lori builds long-term relationships by delivering personalized, high-touch service. Through The Authority Platform™, she combines brand clarity, trust-building web design, lead generation funnels, SEO, accessibility, and sales systems into one cohesive, visibility-driving engine.

Lori is known for her warmth, resilience, and insightfulness, and for making her clients feel fully seen and heard. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels with digital tools that don’t deliver, and finally create a platform that amplifies your voice, authority, and impact, Lori is your strategic partner.

Ways to connect with Lori**:**

https://www.bizbolster.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/loriaosborne/

https://www.facebook.com/bizbolster

https://www.instagram.com/bizbolsterlori

Link to Freebie: https://www.bizbolster.com/vip-visibility-audit

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:17

Well, hello everyone. Welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. I am your host, Michael Hingson, or you can call me Mike, it's fine, and I gave the full title of the podcast for a very specific reason. Where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, typically, diversity people never want to include disabilities in what they discuss or what they do. And if you ask the typical diversity people, what's diversity? They'll talk about race, gender, sexual orientation, and they don't deal with disabilities. But the reality is, and they say that disability isn't a real mindset. Well, Balderdash, it is. Just asked the 25% of America's population, according to the CDC, that has a disability, and they'll tell you that disability is a minority. But the reason I bring it all up is today, we get to talk with Lori Osborne, and she is a person who's been very deeply involved in website development, in branding and coaching, and she is very concerned about and likes to try to help deal with the issue of accessibility on websites. So we're going to have a fun time talking about all of that, much less the platform she uses, as opposed to WordPress, and I'm really curious to hear more about that, because I've my website is a WordPress website, but, but, you know, I think there are so many different ways to deal with things today. We'll, we'll have a fun time. But Lori, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank you

Lori Osbourne 02:56

so much for having me. Mike, I love being here. Cannot wait to talk.

Michael Hingson 03:01

Well, let's do it. Why don't we start by you telling us kind about the early Laurie growing up and all that stuff, and kind of how you got started. Okay, start at the beginning.

Lori Osbourne 03:14

At the beginning. All right. I was born in San Diego. More your neck of the woods. San Diego Naval Hospital, but only got to live in California for two years, which I've always been disappointed about. My my family had my grandfather built a home in La Jolla. So you know, I was I've always been jealous of how my mom got to grow up, but I only got to spend two years there and then I got moved to Norman, Oklahoma, home of the Sooners, never watched football, never went to one football game my entire life.

Michael Hingson 03:51

I've never been to a professional or college football game. My wife had, but I never got to go to a football game. I think it'd be kind of fun to do once, as long as I could still pick it up on the radio and know what's going on.

Lori Osbourne 04:03

There you go. Yeah, I had zero interest in football until I met my current husband in 2011 and he doesn't miss a professional football game, an NFL game. So I have, I have come to embrace it and enjoy the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Kansas City Chiefs. So there you go.

Michael Hingson 04:24

So you're in Florida and you don't root for a Florida team, huh?

Lori Osbourne 04:29

I don't, we won't hold it again, you know. Well, you know, I'm one of those. So I moved from Oklahoma to Colorado to Denver area. So I was a Broncos fan when I lived in Colorado, but that was the days of, oh my gosh. Now my mind is going to completely go blank. This is so embarrassing. The the Great, the greatest Broncos player who is now a general manager, John, oh my gosh. Can think of a it'll come to me. But anyway, he, you know, we. Were actually like, yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Elway. Yes, I was a guest. So we were actually, like, winning Super Bowls when I first moved there, so, you know, and then it went, kind of went. Then I became a Peyton Manning fan, and my husband's from Pennsylvania, and he's like, you can't just change your mind about who you support every time we move. And I'm like, but I can't, yeah, why not? So when we moved to Florida, I

Michael Hingson 05:26

the Jaguars, jaguars, yeah, yeah, they

Lori Osbourne 05:29

just haven't been a great team. And I I watched Mahoney, Mahoney play for Kansas City, and I just fell in love with how he plays and just his style and his leadership, and I just became a Kansas City fan, just because I love watching him. And last season was a little disappointing because he didn't throw as much, but, but, you know, he's, he's amazing, so that's that's my reasoning.

Michael Hingson 06:03

So So you you didn't fall in love with Travis Kelsey and try to go steal him away from Taylor Swift before things got serious?

Lori Osbourne 06:12

No, no, I was already in love with my current husband.

Michael Hingson 06:15

So see, tell him that there are some things and some loves that do transcend location.

Lori Osbourne 06:23

There you go. Yes, absolutely. Well, you know, he's so obsessed with football that we I actually included in our marriage vows that I would support him through his two fantasy football teams and a lifetime of football in my future, because I knew I was marrying football when I married him.

Michael Hingson 06:46

One of the things that spoils me about sports out here, and it's not so much anymore, but it used to be the case is, I think that here in especially southern California, we had the best sports announcers in the business. We had Vin Scully doing baseball, and I think that it'll be a long, long time before anyone comes up to the caliber of Vince Scully. And there, there are things that they do now that that really messed that up. But Vinnie was a was was the best. We had Dick Enberg, who did football and and other people. And Chick Hearn did basketball. Chick hurr had talked so fast that I don't know how he was able to do it, but I learned how to listen fast because I grew up listening to Chick Hearn new basketball. I love it. So, so I got spoiled on sports, listening to those announcers. I keep up with football from a news standpoint, especially when it gets close to the Super Bowl, so I can decide who I'm going to if anybody for for in the Super Bowl when they have it. Yeah, I do kind of like the Rams, because I live out here and I've always kind of liked them, although I was mad at them when they moved to St Louis for a while, but, but still, they're the Rams. I mean, we'll see what they do this year. I think they've got a good coach, but I by no means am a football expert or anything like that. I keep up though.

Lori Osbourne 08:08

Me neither. I, yeah, I kind of joke, you know, my husband will watch like, you know, eight games at once, the red zone or the whatever, and it's flipping around. And I just can't, so I just joke I'm a fourth quarter watcher. On Sunday nights, Monday nights, I'll watch the fourth quarter and because that's where you know if it's gonna happen, that's where it's gonna happen if it's gonna be worth watching.

Michael Hingson 08:30

Yeah, well, I'll be interested to see what happens tomorrow, because the Chargers are playing the chiefs in Brazil.

Lori Osbourne 08:41

Yes, and I don't, I don't even know if we're going to get to watch it, because, you know, the NFL spread out across all these different platforms now, and if you don't have the platform, you're out of luck.

Michael Hingson 08:52

I think it's going to be on TV. It'll be watchable, but it starts at 530 Pacific Time, and I don't quite understand that. If they're doing it live, that would mean it's going to start at nine. Start at 930 in the evening in San Paulo. So I don't know how all that's going to work. We'll see.

Lori Osbourne 09:07

Yeah, yeah, we shall see. Yeah, we're I don't know if we're watching tomorrow nights, but my husband's definitely watching tonight, for sure. Well, I

Michael Hingson 09:15

don't think there are more games on tomorrow other than that one, so maybe he will. And maybe you actually get to focus and just see one game,

Lori Osbourne 09:24

right, right? That's, that's, that's the nice part about the non Sunday games. Usually it's just,

Michael Hingson 09:31

well, so you, so you grew up and you, you only lived in California for two years, and then where did you go?

Lori Osbourne 09:40

I lived in Norman, that's right, until I was 29 I actually found my birth father when I was 23 and moved to Colorado to get to know him and his family.

Michael Hingson 09:55

So you were a diamond.

Lori Osbourne 10:00

Not really. I just, he was just never part of my life. Your mom married someone else, yeah, okay, yeah. I always had. My mom just didn't have my dad. And it's, you know, it's been an interesting experience, because, you know, being in my 20s when I met him, and my mom and I were opposite growing up, and I never understood my personality, because she was quiet and passive and wanted to work in the same job her entire life, and I was the opposite. I was vivacious and loud and aggressive and always wanted to be self employed. Then I met my dad and went, Oh, it explained it all, I'm just like him. It's crazy how the you know the genes work for sure,

Michael Hingson 10:51

but you got to know him, and the relationship was a good one.

Lori Osbourne 10:55

Yeah, yeah, right. We just, he's in Idaho now. We just got back a couple of weeks ago from visiting. I mean, it's been interesting, trying to enter a family, you know, in your 20s is is bizarre. I kind of, I kind of equate it to being an in law, like, I'm not quite all the way in, because I, you know, I didn't grow up with these people. They don't know me. But, yeah, it's been interesting. So where in Idaho, near Coeur d'Alene Sand Point near

Michael Hingson 11:25

standpoint, I have a brother in law who lives in Ketchum, in Sun Valley, and who is an avid skier, and has been an avid skier basically his whole life. Now the real big question is, of course, where is your father when it comes to football,

Lori Osbourne 11:46

my father does not sit still. Okay? That is, that is one way that we are different. He I joke that he'll probably outlive me. I mean, he lives on 14 acres. I think he just, they just sold 40 Acres. But he doesn't. He never sits still. He He's always going, going, going, working on, you know, he had, he had his business, which he sort of still does. But he works on fences or helps with the does something with the horses or the hay or the, you know, it's just it. He works his plan does not I don't think he the TV when we were there was on music the entire time. Yep.

Michael Hingson 12:30

So hardly a person who tends to watch football. Well, that's okay. So you, you grew up in Norman? Did you go to college there or in the area?

Lori Osbourne 12:43

I went for a year and then couldn't figure out how to keep paying for it. I honestly didn't even realize financial aid was a thing. So I started in the workforce and became a recruiter, technical recruiter, pretty early in my career. I did that for 12 years, and then started my own recruiting business and got my degree during that time. So I got a bachelor's degree in business administration, 4.0 average while working. Proud of that, but I was in my 30s, and then I got cancer right after that, had colon cancer at 36 which I blame an 18 year abusive, horrible marriage, I think really led to that, but it pushed me To get out of that horrible abuse of marriage. And then a few years later, I met my current husband, and I am the happiest I've ever been,

Michael Hingson 13:51

but you also were able to, in one way or another, beat the cancer

Lori Osbourne 13:58

I was, yes, it was actually stage one colon cancer. Only had surgery so that one, yeah, didn't even have to have chemo or radiation. And actually, what got me into my current business? I was a when I got divorced, I did this is kind of funny to me. I when I got divorced, I decided I no longer wanted to be straight commission, and because I had gotten a job after after the cancer, and now I'm self employed. And so why? I think I wouldn't want to be straight commission, but it's okay to be self employed, but it's a completely different mindset. You know yourself very much a different mindset. But I was in tech. I moved from recruiting into hands on technology. I did project management, software testing, I looked at websites and helped design websites from a business perspective, but I was never, never a coder, never, you know, did the visual design? Nine and in 2015 I we had just moved to the opposite side of Denver. We had just changed, I had just changed jobs, had a brand new home, and then found out I had a brain tumor.

Michael Hingson 15:15

Oh, gosh, yeah, you're just an attention getting person.

Lori Osbourne 15:19

That's all you. I know. That's it. I just walk around going, yep, that's it. So, yeah. So I, I ended up leaving the job because it was, it was very traumatic. I ended up having two surgeries. They couldn't remove the tumor. It's part of my carotid artery. It's a meningioma. It's benign, but it's part of my carotid artery, and it was causing my left eye to droop, so they went in to get it off the optical nerve and nicked the carotid and caused a brain bleed. And that brain bleed caused that drooping eye to become a half blind eye. So I ended up, for about a year and a half, I had double vision. I also had found out I had a stroke from it, I was having problems with words and forming, you know, the right words. And I had no tolerance for stress for a long time, so there was no way I was going back to project management in the IT world, right? This wasn't so I literally, I spent about a year recovering and just started messing around, going, Okay, well, what can I do with the talents that I have? And I started building a website on Squarespace, and it was called Health Net, like grandma. And it was just talking about my I lost my mother and my grandmother to cancer at 63 both at 63 and then I had gone through what I went through. And I just wanted to share the stories, you know, the what I've learned from a health perspective. And in doing that, went, wow. Why have I not been developing websites the last 20 years? This is what I should be doing. I love this, and I bet other business owners could really use some help doing this. And that's when my business was born.

Michael Hingson 17:20

Wow. How did they discover the brain tumor?

Lori Osbourne 17:26

It started with me falling asleep at my brand new job desk. Was I could not hold my eyes open. I actually thought it was an adrenal reaction to leaving a super high stress job to a very boring job, but it was not. They did all these tests. They put me on thyroid medication, which helped, and then my left eye started drooping, like literally within weeks together and and it was funny, because they they sent me to an eye doctor, and the eye doctor sent me to an eye surgeon, and they wanted to do surgery on it. And I'm like, don't you want to figure out why this is happening? Like, I don't want you to touch my eye until you know why my eye is drooping. And my doctor thought that was the craziest thing she'd ever heard. So she goes, Well, have we done an MRI yet? And I said, No, so they sent me for an MRI that day. And lo and behold, not only do you have a brain tumor, but you have had a stroke. Okay. Gosh, you know, she did not want to share that news, those news with me. She was very embarrassed. Probably, well,

Michael Hingson 18:43

but you need to know, yeah, and clearly you already had demonstrated that you had an analytical mind, and it would be valuable for you to know, because it would help you in dealing with making decisions, or thinking about what decisions to make going forward, right? Yeah, so you did. So you went through the surgeries and all of that, and what, what happened to your your left eye,

Lori Osbourne 19:10

it, it's still mostly blind. I have a sliver of vision that I can't control. So if I go to the eye doctor, they try to get me to look at the chart, and I can't focus it on the chart, and I get very frustrated. I blocked it for the first year. Now my eyes are so it's it's developed its own way of working, so I can't even block it anymore without causing worse headaches than I already have. Bad headaches kind of came out of all of this. So I really just live with it. I live with the headaches, and I ignore it as much as I possibly can and and hope it's improved slightly over. The last 10 years, they told me it would never improve. But, you know, our brains are amazing things, and it's it's trying, but it's still not. I just tell them make the left eye prescription the same as the right eye because it makes no difference. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 20:17

Well, so with, with with all that you've you've dealt with, with, with this clearly, you figured out a way to go forward, and you've, now, I assume, used all that happened to you, and you've analyzed it in some way or another, that you have made some decisions about what you want to do with your life, which is namely the whole brand development and web development and dealing with accessibility, which is pretty cool.

Lori Osbourne 20:51

Yeah, yeah, I am. Once I discovered that passion and the I honestly never realized I had the creative side of me. I knew I had the analytical I knew I had the project management and tech, but once I realized I actually have a very strong creative side, then websites were the way to go. And it's it's really I can be working on a website for four hours straight and feel no pain, and that that alone tells me I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. I love it that much, and I feel like I'm that talented at it.

Michael Hingson 21:30

I think you've made a very interesting observation, and one that I relate to very well, which is working commission is one thing, but working for yourself, which, in some senses, is the same, but it's totally different, and you have to have a different mindset to make it work.

Lori Osbourne 21:48

Oh, absolutely, yes. I mean, I'm I'm not selling a product for someone else. I'm selling myself, and I am the product, and I have to live by my my values and my mission and my why, which is completely different than selling services for someone else, for straight commission.

Michael Hingson 22:12

I have always told my the people who I hired as sales people to analyze and and think about what they do. And one of the things that I did with every person I ever hired was I would say, tell me what you're going to sell. And literally, all but one person said, Oh, we're going to sell the product. This is the product we're selling. This is what it does. But the best sales guy I ever hired, when I asked that question, Said, the only thing I have to sell is myself and my word, and I need you to back me up when I give my word about something,

Michael Hingson 22:50

great answer. It was, it was the actual, it was the answer I was looking for. And I said, well, as long as we communicate, and I know what you're going to say, and that's all about trust, I'm going to back you up. And never had an issue. And in fact, he and I worked very well together, because we figured out how my talents in sales and management could augment and accentuate what he did, so that the two of us could work together. And I think that's that's so important, but you're right. The only thing any really good salesperson has to sell is themselves, and you have to be true to your own attitudes. Yes, yes, which is so

Lori Osbourne 23:33

integrity is everything. I mean, if you especially as a small business owner, I mean, and I'm in a very small community, and I this. I only lived here since 2018 and it's kind of been shocking to me how how a small community works. But if you do it right, everybody knows your name. If you do it wrong, everybody knows your name. Yeah, it's you know when, every time I get a call because the chamber has referred me again. I just smile, and I'm like, Okay, I'm doing it right, you know? And it's, to me, it's all about integrity. If you, if you say you're going to do something, do it, and if you can't do it, say you can't do it, say you can't do right, or say I'm going to figure it out. Yeah, you know, I didn't. I charged very little my first few years, and I always my first few years, I told clients, I don't know what I'm doing yet, so I'm not charging you for the time that I'm learning. I'm going to charge you for the time that I'm actually accomplishing something.

Michael Hingson 24:30

One of the things I always told every again, every salesperson I ever hired is for at least the first year. You're a student. No matter what you think you know and what you know about sales, when you're working with customers, you're a student, ask them questions, really learn from them, because they want you to be successful, even if you don't think they do. And the reality is that, in general, they do want you to be successful, and the more you encourage them to teach you, the better relationship you're going to develop.

Lori Osbourne 24:59

Absolutely. And 100% yes.

Michael Hingson 25:02

So how long ago did you end up having the brain tumor?

Lori Osbourne 25:07

I was diagnosed in August of 2015 So wow, I'm, I'm at exactly 10 years. 10 years. Yeah, I didn't, oh my gosh. September 22 will be my my first surgery dates. There you go. Wow. Right at 10 years

Michael Hingson 25:23

See, I'm glad we we help you remember,

Lori Osbourne 25:27

I can't, I can't believe that was, like, not even on my mind. I mean, it was actually September 17. Was the first surgery, that's right, and it's the same day as my dog's birthday. And we were just talking about my dog's birthday yesterday, but I didn't even think about the tumor. So well, it's all good

Michael Hingson 25:47

a week from next Wednesday. But you know, you you obviously are doing well, well, so how did your your business in the the way you do things and what you do? How did all that change after the surgery, or had you already started down the road of branding and being a branding coach and website development and accessibility?

Lori Osbourne 26:10

No, all of this came as a result of all of it. So it literally just grew with me, as I, you know, transitioned into life again, and being able to function mentally and physically, I would just start, you know, working on a little bit of, you know, a couple of websites. The first website I built was from for a realtor that we worked with. We did three different deals with him in two years. He was this great Scottish guy, great personality, and his website was horrific. And I begged him to let me do it. It was a I think we ended up doing 39 pages total, and just read redid the whole thing. He loved it. A lot of it's still in place 10 years later. But I just, I just started building, and then we moved to the area we are now outside Jacksonville, and I found a local networking group and started meeting people and getting introduced to businesses and just slowly built and learned a little bit at a time, and learned a little bit more. And then it was not actually until last year I realized that I have branding skills and talent that I haven't been promoting. I was using the skills and I was building on brand websites, but I didn't say that, and I didn't recognize it as a separate talent from website development. I kind of thought everybody did that, until I realized that that's not true. So I've been doing it, and a lot of it is just, I the natural, just natural talent for color and almost like designing houses. Like I knew I was really good at designing houses, but I didn't recognize that that translated to websites. And so for last, like, year to 18 months, I've really kind of bought into the brand strategy piece of what I offer.

Michael Hingson 28:19

Well, how did you develop this concept of authority platforms, and what is it?

Lori Osbourne 28:27

So the authority platform is what I'm calling the full package. It kind of started when I got really frustrated with everybody telling me or everybody's an exaggeration, but so many people saying, Oh, you don't need a website. You just need landing pages. And I would try to educate people that landing pages are not enough, but I couldn't put it in the right words, and when I started really looking at it, going, well, landing pages are great, if you have the visibility to get people to the landing page, and if you've built a relationship in a different way, if it's through speaking or through a book or through other types of promotions, then yes, the landing page can help or maybe replace the website. But where that led me was a website alone is also not enough. We need full visibility. We need to be seen in a lot of different ways to establish our authority as experts. So with the authority platform, I'm looking at the brand and understanding the brand, the website, the lead magnet, the funnels, the search engine optimization, and then helping them also have a good CRM to manage all of this, hooking them up with with good speaking coaches or podcast. Opportunities and just looking at it from a full life cycle of being visible and showing that authority online.

Michael Hingson 30:10

And how's that gone over?

Lori Osbourne 30:14

It's, I'm still building it honestly, the website's absolutely I'm I'm really working on building the collaboration pieces for the rest of it to truly say, Yes, I have the authority platform, the branding packages that I'm offering and the branding pieces that I'm doing are making a significant difference in the quality of the websites I'm building, because I come out of it with a custom GPT that they can use, and I can use that really establishes that baseline for the brand and the bringing in their values, bringing in their communication style, and bringing in their ideal client and how to speak to that ideal client. So the GPT is built around all of that, which is perfect when we're building the content for the website. So I would say, you know, we're 75% of the way there to having my true authority platform. But I'm still building, you know, authority building websites every day.

Michael Hingson 31:20

Well, I gather that you don't tend to like to use WordPress. You use Duda as a platform builder and so on. Tell me, I'm curious why and what, and I don't have any any disagreement or or really knowledge to talk intelligently about it. But tell me why you use Duda and what, what it brings.

Lori Osbourne 31:44

So my my challenges with WordPress started with my first client in Florida. They there was a nonprofit. They had no idea what they were doing, and I'm like, I I'm techie. I can go in, I can figure it out, and I could not figure out WordPress, and I got very frustrated with it going, how in the world does anybody else do this? So I kind of stayed away from it for a little while, and I was building on Squarespace for a time, and then I discovered Duda. I consider Duda to be the best of Wix and Squarespace. It's very similar. But the things I don't like about Wix, I don't like about Squarespace, Duda has resolved. It's also very customer oriented and SEO oriented and accessibility oriented. So there's a lot of advantages to the platform. The reason I don't support WordPress is I've had too many, too many people come to me with broken websites. Too many WordPress people do not educate their clients that that you have to update the plugins, and they don't. They just leave them and don't offer to do that for them, and it's it's an unnecessary addition that I don't think most people need for their website. There's plenty of things that we can do and do to that we can do exactly like WordPress without the headaches of that extra tech and plugins breaking and security breaking because the plugins are breaking, and it's it just it's too unnecessary, in my opinion. I tried to support WordPress for about a year and a half, and I found that I was not helping my Duda clients because the WordPress was always so much high maintenance. And those were the websites that were going down, and those are the websites that were having issues where my due to clients, their websites were never down, they never had issues.

Michael Hingson 33:51

But don't need, but don't you, from time to time need to provide any kind of updates to Duda doesn't. Aren't there as the as the whole website evolves, doesn't, don't you need to find ways to evolve what they are and what they do

Lori Osbourne 34:05

on the front end, on the front end, absolutely I mean, but from the back end, from a platform perspective, Duda handles all of that. It's self contained. Got it? I don't have to worry about that. And they're also always adding new features, which is another thing I absolutely love about them there, and I have yet to find, let me rephrase that. I've probably found a couple of things that if I could not duplicate on Duda to match WordPress, it would require code, and I don't code, but I can still achieve the goal of what my clients are looking for. There's nothing that they've said I have to have this that I can't provide. And the offset of not having the worry around the tech is has always been worth it.

Michael Hingson 34:55

So the creators of Duda in the background as. They make updates and changes, they go out to everybody who uses it to create their websites automatically. Is that? Is that what happens?

Lori Osbourne 35:07

Okay, yeah, it's seamless. Yeah, you don't even, you have no idea that there's even updates being done. It's completely seamless.

Michael Hingson 35:15

Yeah, okay, well, I understand that. That makes a lot of sense. What's the one mistake that you find that keeps business owners from really progressing and keeping their websites and them invisible? What's the biggest mistake you see?

Lori Osbourne 35:36

Messaging unclear, messaging which, which really goes back to the brand. If you don't understand your brand, you don't understand your why, and you don't know how to express how you solve problems for your ideal client, let me, let me rephrase. If you don't even know your ideal client is and you're trying to speak to them, a lot of people think they sell to everyone, and when you try to sell to everyone, you sell to no one. And if you are trying to speak to the masses from your website, you're going to lose the people you really want to reach. So it comes down to that, that niching down factor and really understanding your ideal client, so that when they hit your website, they immediately know you understand my problem and you can fix it. And it really comes down to that versus I can fix, you know, I can build a website for anybody. Well, then that makes me no different than a website developer down the street. Then it comes down to a price comparison, and then we're just bidding against each other. So you've gotta, you've gotta what makes you special, and what and and your why is a big part of that. Your values are a big part of that. And speaking the right language and that messaging.

Michael Hingson 37:03

Can you tell me a story of maybe one customer that you worked with where you can demonstrate exactly what you're talking about here and why it made a difference without mentioning customer names, but the story?

Lori Osbourne 37:17

Oh, yeah, um, you know, it's been a while since I did that realtor, but that realtor is still just such a great example, because you the fact that he was from Scotland doesn't necessarily seem significant, but it really does, because, you Know that Scottish accent made him endearing. He was a very professional, good looking guy. And you go out to his website, and it was, I can still see it today. It was like green and this old, funky text, and it, it represented him in no way. And I remember the first thing he told me was, you know, I've got this video where I introduced myself and I went, why in the world is that not on your homepage, like what people need to hear you speak and see you and experience you. He was phenomenal. And we did three deals with him. He was phenomenal at what he did, and that what, you know, if we had just rebuilt his website and just did the video, it would have that alone would have made a huge difference in people knowing who they were working with and how he was different. And another example I can give more recently, I work with a mentor who mentors seven figure coaches on how to work harder, make more money and and do it in less, less investment of your time. And when I took over her WordPress website for for two years, I just kept repeating and rebuilding the same crap, basically. And finally, when I decided to leave WordPress, I said, you know, I really want to start all over. And I realized in that two years, you know, I had not taken the time to really get to know her brand. And when we sat down and really learned what made her special and different, and we were able to capture that in in the website, that the difference in the experience was night and day, you know, before it was just text, and, you know, a little bit of information. She never referred anybody to her website. And now it, you know, opens with a video. She's also a professional speaker. Opens with a video of her speaking. She is very she's a. Ballroom dancer on the side, she's very elite. So we, you know, pulling in things like gold and video, I have a lot of motion on the website with gold moving because it, it, it's that brand of that dancer that, you know, that eliteness of it and it, it's subtle, and it has nothing to do with the messaging side that I just mentioned, but it's still back to the brand and the representing of who you are, who she is, what we're selling, you know, we're selling ourselves.

Michael Hingson 40:33

Yeah, well, websites and website developers put all sorts of things out there and that that's not necessarily a good thing. But what are some signs that a business's online presence don't necessarily match their real life expertise? Because I I believe that people see through people who just sort of talk, and I think that that all too often, you get this reaction, oh, they're just talking that isn't what they really believe or that isn't what they really know. So what are some signs that the online presence doesn't match what they really know and what they really are?

Lori Osbourne 41:15

Part of it is that that genericness, if you if you can't even say who you are serving, then you're obviously the person you're looking at is obviously not clear about their ideal client. If it's not clear who they are serving, and if it's this just generic message of not in these words, but we're the best use us. You know, there's, there's no detail about what makes them different and how they specifically solve your problem. If the website is completely outdated or generic, that may or may not allude to anything but it, it definitely shows that they don't, are not using their website to show their expertise. The other huge thing, I would say, is testimonials. Every website should have reviews. I mean, what better way to sell ourselves than to have someone else say how we're different, how we operate and why we're the why we're the best. That is huge. If it's all about them, as in the person's website you're looking at, if it's not, if I'm, if I'm getting on a website and they're not even acknowledging what's in it for me and how they're going to solve my problems, then I'm not going to have any confidence that they have any idea how to solve my problems. They haven't even they haven't even talked about my problems. They haven't even mentioned my problems. They're just telling me that they're selling me something, and this is how much it costs, and this is what it's going to do. But I but do you get me? Do you know? Do you understand me? I think all those are it's really important that we are speaking to the ideal client in their language about their problem.

Michael Hingson 43:10

I have heard so many times and totally agree with and work to do this myself.

Michael Hingson 43:18

The whole concept of when I'm invited to speak, it's not about me. Yeah, I'm invited to speak, but my job is to enhance, to help to make life as easy as possible for the event organizer, to help the event organizer make this, the whole conference, even better than they thought it would be. And and I have to do that because it's not about me, and it should never be about me as such, right?

Lori Osbourne 43:48

It's also about your audience and your audience, yeah, so that they know you want them to want to know more. Yeah, that's also the purpose of your website to make people want to know more.

Michael Hingson 44:01

Yeah, very true, and it should be that way. And if you're doing it right, you'll also provide more for them to know. Right?

Lori Osbourne 44:15

Absolutely. Well, that would be something else that I would say I I always encourage people to give away as much as possible on their website. It if people know that you really want to help me solve my problems, and you're willing to give me something for free that starts a relationship. And that's really, at the end of the day, that's the point of the website. It's not to sell, it's to start a relationship. It's like the first step of dating. We're not getting married yet. We're dating, and if you're if you're giving away a piece of yourself through a video or a download or even a free course. Course, that's it. That's going to endear the audience to to want to come back for more. And even blogs, great blogs will get people coming back for more. And people always go, Well, you know, if I give everything away, I'm not going to make any money. No, you give away what? What doesn't cost you time, but is giving some knowledge so that they want more, and they know that you you get them, and they can trust, you know, like and trust so they can build that, that base for a relationship.

Michael Hingson 45:32

Yeah, and it, it makes perfect sense. It is all about building trust. And everything that we do is all about building trust, and the more trust you build, the more loyalty you'll create.

Lori Osbourne 45:47

Absolutely, yes, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 45:49

So we've talked about website accessibility. What is website accessibility and why is it something that people really should focus on? Why is it important?

Lori Osbourne 45:59

That feels weird coming from you, Mike,

Michael Hingson 46:03

because I know you are an expert in this, but I preach it, but I preach it all the time, so I want to hear what somebody else has to say, and I want people who are watching and listening to this hear from somebody else other than me. Okay, that's the motivation behind it.

Lori Osbourne 46:18

All right. All right. Well, website accessibility is at its core. It's making the website available and usable for everyone, including those with disabilities. So whether it's blindness or inability to use a mouse or you said it earlier, dyslexic,

Michael Hingson 46:40

epilepsy, any number of things, right?

Lori Osbourne 46:43

So anybody, just like accessibility for a ramp into a store, it's allowing me, from my home, as as a disabled person, to be able to function on your website. And as we know, I believe the stat is 20% of people have some kind of disability. It's also an inclusion. It is a piece of I consider a piece of your marketing, because if you are excluding 20% of the people with your website, why? Why are you doing that? It also builds strong Search Engine Optimization. Because if you look at all of the guidelines for accessibility, they're very similar to the guidelines you need to have in place for good search engine optimization. Google is looking for the exact same things. Yep. So it's it's really just making your website available to everyone

Michael Hingson 47:42

well, and the reality is, well, let me ask this question, rather than me just saying it beyond legal compliance. Why should accessibility be a priority in website design? You've kind of alluded to it already.

Lori Osbourne 47:56

Yeah, part of what I just said, it's including everyone. It's not excluding 20% of your market, and it's building trust, inclusivity and credibility. It's, it's, and it to me, it's showing that you care. It's, it's very bothersome to me when someone says, Well, I probably won't get sued, so I'm not going to worry about it. Okay? But why do you want to not do these basic things so that everyone can access your website? Well?

Michael Hingson 48:33

And also, in reality, it does get back to if you're a website owner, that is, you're a company that has a website, and you recognize that the job of your website is to help people see why you have something they need. The fact of the matter is, do you really want to not make available to 20 or 25% of the population your website, or to put it another way, don't you want to make sure that you are making your information available to everyone? And that's what the real reason for website accessibility is truly all about. The fact of the matter is that it's good business to make your website accessible.

Lori Osbourne 49:24

Absolutely, yes, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 49:26

What are some high impact changes that you think that website owners can make, to make their websites or to have their websites be more accessible, maybe even just some simple things?

Lori Osbourne 49:38

Oh, there are so many simple things. I mean, the easiest thing that so many people miss is adding alt text to images. I mean, it's, and it's one thing I love about Duda, by the way, it they do it with AI and do it for you, and you can edit it. It's so, so wonderful. But it's, it's a simple step. It also is. Great step to even help with SEO, because you can include some keywords there, but that that alt text tells someone that's using a tool that's blind exactly what that image is, and what is the point in putting that image on your website if it's not going to provide any value to those that can't see. I mean that, in my opinion, another thing is the contrast in colors. A lot of people don't understand that contrasting colors has a lot to do with readability, and if you are putting two colors together, I mean, think about it even from a scene person, if you're looking at it and you can't read it. It's not accessible, right? So, you know, have high contrast in the colors of text on anything over it. Don't try to put something over an image that can't be read that just just, don't do it. Skip that. I was just doing this on my website today. I was trying to put an image, and I went, you know what? That's just not going to work. I'm going back to a solid color. It doesn't it's it and it, you know, that's from a business perspective as well. Because even if you're not thinking about accessibility, if someone can't read the text or can't read the button, they're not going to click it. You're not going to read it. They're not going to buy it if they can't read it. So simple little things like that. Those would be the two biggest things I would say. And then just, you know, little additional things like making sure that your website is converting properly to mobile, if it's if it's not, if things are coming off the page, because you didn't bother to look at the mobile side, which is easy to miss on many platforms that can have a huge impact on the scene and those that need the tools or need accessibility pieces that's, you know, commonplace design and very easy thing to fix.

Michael Hingson 52:11

It's been a while since I looked at this website, and I think it's not quite what it used to be, but for a while, my favorite website, absolutely. My favorite website for accessibility was the website of the National Security Agency, nsa.gov,

Michael Hingson 52:31

of all the websites in the entire world. The reason I liked it is that not only did they have all text on images if you were using a screen reader and you moved your cursor over an image, you suddenly got a very detailed description of that image, like you.

Michael Hingson 52:55

You moved your cursor where you used your screen reader to move over the American flag. It would say the American flag on a flagpole hanging in front of the opening to the building of the National Security Agency. Yada yada yada. I mean, it's just everything was there. It was the most amazing website. I don't know that it's that way anymore. I haven't looked at it in a little while, but I was very impressed with how much they did and relative and relevantly and appropriately so to make sure that everything on that website was totally usable. And a lot of people could say, Well, why do I have to do that? And the answer is, you have to do it for the same reason that you want to make your website accessible, if you will, for people who don't happen to have a disability. The reality is, all those things that you put on the website for people who can see them and so on, like pictures and so on, if you don't make those things accessible, you're doing a disservice to a significant amount of the population. Whereas, if you do it all, then while you can look at the picture, I can hear all about it, and that's the way it ought to

Lori Osbourne 54:10

be well. And there's so much I mean to me that is an opportunity to to even go further with the folks that need the screen reader. Because, I mean, when I'm and I mentioned that dude, it does it with AI, but they, they do it too generically. When I go in, I'm doing exactly what you're talking about. I want to, I want to build the presence of the picture. This is who they're doing, who it is from the business, and this is what they're doing, and this is what you know, this offer is talking about that's an extra sales opportunity right there. For those that you know, need the alt text, why not use that?

Michael Hingson 54:49

And also, I'm amazed at how many people may look at pictures and so on and look at words and not really pay attention to them very well, because they just kind of skip over it. So the more you can do to attract people's attention to the right things. Is relevant too. I'm amazed at how many people just gloss over so much.

Lori Osbourne 55:09

Oh, absolutely. Well, you know, this kind of become our society, yeah, short attention span for sure. You know, I want to mention two videos. I really feel like people need videos on their website, especially of themselves, because it helps people get to know you. But you need to have that closed captioning and again, dialog.

Michael Hingson 55:33

You need to have dialog so that a person who can't see the video will also know what the video shows.

Lori Osbourne 55:41

Explain, explain what you mean by that a little bit more.

Michael Hingson 55:44

So you go to a website, and there's a video, and you click it, and you start hearing music, and that's all you hear, even though, on the screen you see a person walking down the street, walking into somebody's store, finding a product they want and buying it. But if you don't have a way to make that information audibly accessible to people who can't see the images and who don't see the videos, then what good is it you haven't made it accessible? Yes, closed captioning works for deaf or hard of hearing people, but again, there's so much more that needs to be done. Wow.

Lori Osbourne 56:25

Thank you for sharing that, Mike. You just gave me more to think about on videos.

Michael Hingson 56:31

One of my favorite commercials to pick on today, and for the longest time, I had no idea at all what it was about. It starts out with music, and somebody says something like, so what do people over 60s show and bring out today? And they talk about love and they talk about something else, and suddenly the sound goes dead, and all you hear for the next 20 seconds or more is this high pitched whistle sound. Ooh, yeah. And I finally got somebody. I finally was in a room with somebody when I heard the beginning of this, and I said, What is it showing? And all it was showing, and what, apparently it is, is a promotion for people getting the RSV vaccination.

Lori Osbourne 57:19

Oh, right. Oh, I do know what commercial you're talking about, yes, but text just goes on the screen.

Michael Hingson 57:26

RSV, RSV, RSV. But there's nothing that says what that is at all, period,

Lori Osbourne 57:33

because they're trying to make the point that you're that your life shuts down when this hits. But yeah, for someone like you, that's completely worthless.

Michael Hingson 57:41

Not only does my life not shut down, my life gets very active, and I want to go off and find those commercial designers and show them what true accessibility really ought to be about. But that's another story. But yeah,

Lori Osbourne 57:53

yeah, exactly, wow. I mean, I think about you every time I see that commercial, those rare times I see commercials,

Michael Hingson 58:05

what's one of the what's one of the myths about branding and websites that you could erase, that you really wish you could race forever?

Lori Osbourne 58:18

I probably told you to ask me that question, and now I'm stumped by how I want to answer it. I think, I think I know where I wanted to go with that. Yes, a lot of people think branding is just colors and fonts, and honestly, when I first started doing it, I thought it was just colors and fonts. And I kind of go, I went into Okay, colors and fonts, and then consistency, okay, we want to make sure we got we're consistent with our colors and fonts across everything that we do that's that's branding, that's visual branding. But real branding is Our Story. Is who we are, what we stand for and who we serve. It's the package of everything around what we're selling, back to selling ourselves and really understanding this package and making that consistent across everything. And consistency is huge, in my opinion, when it comes to branding, if you have a different header image or marketing image on every single thing you do and there's no consistency in the look, then you're not going to be memorable. You. I can't help you see this, Mike, but anyone that does go out to anything of mine, I have a very consistent image that was used to build my logo, and it's on everything that I do. I also wear very bright, colorful glasses. Everything I do is very bright and colorful, and it's memorable when people see me and they see my glasses, it can be three years later and they go. I don't remember your name, but boy, I remember those glasses. You know, it's, it's, and that's part of my branding. When people say, I love your your glasses, I go, thank you. It's part of my branding. Yeah. So it's a, it's an overall everything about you. When people describe me, they usually describe me as bright and colorful, like, that's, that's one of the first things that comes to their their mind, and then they it translates to energy, because they think bright, colorful energy. So it's, you know what branding really is, is, what do people say about you when you're not in the room?

Michael Hingson 1:00:30

Yeah, that's, that's a good that's what it is. Well, if there is a business owner who is in our audience today who feels overwhelmed by their digital presence. What would you suggest is the first step they should take to change that?

Lori Osbourne 1:00:47

Well, the the first thing I would love to see anyone do is sign up for a visibility review or audit with me, so that we can look at your presence and talk about it, and I can give you some very specific suggestions for how to improve your online visibility. If you're wanting to do something on your own and you're you're trying to figure out where to start, sit down and look at first, your your homepage, in your first line of every bit of your marketing and ask yourself, does it say who I serve and how I serve them, and the problems that I solve. Because every ounce of your marketing needs to say that immediately you have less than eight seconds when someone hits your website. And there's all kinds of some people say three, some people say 10s and 15. I just leave it at eight. Do eight or eight or less seconds on your website. So start there is my messaging clear? And then look at your website overall and does it represent me and the message I want people to see. We can go into a whole lot more about it being up to date and everything else, but that's where I would start, right there.

Michael Hingson 1:01:58

So how do people reach out to you to get your help to deal with all of this.

Lori Osbourne 1:02:02

Well, you can obviously go to my website, which is biz bolster.com, B, I, Z, B, O, L, S, T, E, r.com and I believe you will be sharing a link to that visibility audit. Just sign up for that or a free strategy session. But I encourage the visibility audit, because it literally takes about an hour of my time to check out everything about you and then share that with you. So this is an investment that I'm willing to give you to help you all understand how you show up online, and then what to do about

Michael Hingson 1:02:45

it, biz, bolster.com, I hope people will do that, and they can reach out and contact you through that website.

Lori Osbourne 1:02:53

Yes, click on, let's chat, and it gives you all the all the calls that you can sign up for in my calendar, and I would absolutely love to speak to anybody that has questions or wants some direction.

Michael Hingson 1:03:07

Well, cool. Well, I really appreciate you being here today and spending so much time talking about all this, and I hope people will take it to heart. Wherever you are listening. Reach out, biz, bolster.com and get some insights and get some help to improve the website the web world, because only about 3% of all websites are really accessible today, which means there are a whole lot that are not, and there is no real excuse for that being the case. So reach out and

Michael Hingson 1:03:41

you can get all the help that you need. I'd love to hear from you, to hear what you think about today's podcast. Please feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We value your ratings and your reviews a lot, and I but I do want to hear from you. I want to hear what your thoughts are. Also, if you know of anyone who might make a good guest for unstoppable mindset, Lori, including you, would really appreciate you introducing us, because we're always looking for people who have great stories to tell, and today has certainly been one of my favorite podcast recordings in a long time, and that's because we really did have fun, and I think we accomplished a lot and we learned a lot. So I want to thank you, Lori, once again, for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset.

Lori Osbourne 1:04:35

Thank you, Mike. It has definitely been a pleasure. I've enjoyed talking with you a lot.

Michael Hingson 1:04:42

Episode 406 – Building an Unstoppable Body and Mind with Osvaldo Aponte

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when physical strength becomes a lifelong tool for service, resilience, and purpose? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with Osvaldo Aponte, a Puerto Rico–born personal trainer and military veteran whose journey blends discipline, movement, and mental toughness. Osvaldo shares how growing up in a close-knit community shaped his view of strength, how the Army reinforced resilience and leadership, and why fitness must support life rather than control it. From kettlebell training and biomechanics to recovery after a life-altering bike accident, this conversation explores physical capability as a foundation for confidence, service, and long-term well-being. You’ll hear why consistency beats intensity, how strength builds trust in yourself, and what it really means to live with an unstoppable mindset.

Highlights:

00:46 – Learn how growing up in Puerto Rico shaped a lifelong connection to movement, community, and discipline.

08:29 – Hear why joining the military became a gateway to structure, confidence, and opportunity.

14:48 – Discover how early physical preparation made the demands of basic training feel natural.

30:42 – Learn how a near-fatal bike accident forced a clear decision about purpose and priorities.

34:39 – Hear why strength is more than muscle and becomes a mindset for life and service.

53:31 – Discover the long-term habits that make people resilient, adaptable, and truly unstoppable.

About the Guest:

Osvaldo “Os” Aponte is a strength and movement educator, U.S. Army veteran, and lifelong martial artist committed to helping people build resilient bodies and minds through intelligent training. Originally from Puerto Rico and now based in San Diego, Os has worked as a personal trainer since 2005 and currently serves as a Team Leader for StrongFirst, a global school of strength known for its rigorous standards and elite-level instruction. He is also the author of Iron Core Basic Training Pamphlet 10-5**, a deep dive into mastering the one-arm push-up.**

Os blends a rich and diverse background in movement: he’s a former contemporary dancer who toured internationally, a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS), and a credentialed expert in both Z-Health and functional gait analysis. His training approach fuses the art and science of performance—combining hard-earned grit with cutting-edge neuroscience, and traditional strength methods with precision mobility and assessment tools.

At the heart of Os’s work is a passion for helping others unlock their potential, no matter their age or ability. He has taught and led more than 20 official StrongFirst workshops and certification events, and regularly collaborates on podcast, print, and video content for educational platforms. His approach is deeply client-centered, always focused on real-life application, long-term durability, and purposeful, personalized progress.

Os earned his bachelor’s degree from San Diego State University and begins his Master’s in Kinesiology at Point Loma Nazarene University in the fall of 2025. His journey—shaped by military service, cultural pride, academic drive, and a lifetime of movement—is a testament to resilience and reinvention. From the powerlifting platform to the dance stage, he brings a unique perspective to every room he enters. His mission is to empower others to move better, live stronger, and stay in the game—for life.

Ways to connect with Osvaldo**:**

Link to Os’ website, The Iron Core Way

https://www.ironcoreway.com/

Link to Os’ StrongFirst Instructor profile

https://www.strongfirst.com/instructors/united-states/osvaldo-aponte.0013700000NZVD3AAP/

Link to Os’ book on the Strong and Fit Website

https://strongandfit.com/collections/daily-deal/products/iron-core-and-the-four-chambers-by-os-aponte

Link to Os’ Eventbrite workshop schedule

https://www.eventbrite.com/o/osvaldo-aponte-58809282353

Link to New York Times Article

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/12/well/move/kettlebells-weight-training.html?smid=url-share

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:17

Well, hello everyone, and I want to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're glad that you're here, wherever you happen to be. Hope you're having a good day. Today, we get to talk to Osvaldo Aponte, who is a personal trainer. He's a veteran. He offers a lot of, I think, interesting life lessons that we'll get to talk about as we go through today's podcast. But he's a he's a pretty interesting guy, and I'm not going to give it away. So, Osvaldo, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Osvaldo Aponte 01:57

Thank you so much, Michael, it is a pleasure to be here, and I'm looking forward to sharing this conversation with you.

Speaker 1 02:02

Well, I'm glad that that you're here. I'm looking forward to it. You started out in Puerto Rico, and you're now what San Diego,

Osvaldo Aponte 02:08

that's correct, sir. So

Speaker 1 02:12

Osvaldo isn't all that far from where I live, up in Victorville. So we could, if we really had strong arms, we could throw paper airplanes at each other, but, but I might, I might do better at that, because for me, it's all downhill. But you know, nevertheless, well, we're, we're glad you're here. Why don't you tell us a little about the early Osvaldo growing up and all that,

Osvaldo Aponte 02:38

with pleasure. Yeah. See, you know, growing up in Puerto Rico is really special thing, because you really get that small town vibe. And while that's possible in the United States, one thing that I very quickly realized when I started to visit family that lived in the States as a teenager or when I joined the Army, is that there's a big difference of being someone who grows up in a small town versus a large city or a very urbanized type of area. And it goes down to, you know, your the way that you dress, the music that you listen to, even like your values can be affected by this stuff. And so Puerto Rico is 100 miles long, 35 miles wide, 3.7 million people live there. It's pretty dense, and there's a real sense of, like, brotherhood there, you know, people like, I remember being a child and being able to just go outside and play with my friends until the, you know, the street lights come up, and the other parents would look out for you within, you know, the community, you know, and you your parents always knew where You were, and there was a real sense of wholeness, wholesomeness about that that really allowed you to just be a little bit more free and just embrace life in a different way than my counterparts who grew up, perhaps in like, let's say New York City. I remember visiting New York City as a teenager and just being like, wow. Like, this is a very different environment. So that was a really cool part about growing up there. In addition to that, you know, the island really lends itself to being physically active, which I guess is that, you know, a lot of what we're going to talk about today, but you know, one of our favorite things to do was just to start going down the road on a hike and hit a river, you know, hit a swimming hole or something like that. And this was like something that we did on the regular, and it became such a part of our daily lives, you know, like we did it pretty regularly, that as you start to grow up, you maintain this habit of having physical activity be part of your day. So from a very early age, you know, where I was grew up was really already influencing me and pushing me in that direction.

Speaker 1 04:39

Yeah, I I grew up in a small town, actually, about 55 miles west of here, Palmdale, California, and it was pretty rural.

Michael Hingson 04:51

But there, I think people also tended to watch out for each other a fair amount. In my case, I was more of an oddity, so I'm. Um, people didn't know how to deal with me. I rode a bike around the neighborhood, and my parents got phone calls because I was riding a bike around the neighborhood, and people would call and they say, Well, your kid's out riding a bike. And my dad would go, Well, yeah, okay, no, no, we're not talking about the one who can see. We're talking about the blind one. And my dad said, well, so did he? Did he hit anybody? No. Did anybody hit him. No, did he? Did he get hurt and all that? And finally, the neighbors would just hang up because they couldn't deal with the fact that my dad wasn't worried about a blind kid riding a bike. That probably wouldn't have happened nearly as much in Chicago, where I was born and we lived for five years. But I don't, you know, I don't know. I learned to listen, and that's what it was really about. And my parents were willing to be open and let me,

Speaker 1 05:53

kind of stretch and grow. But I think in overall, people were curious, and I think overall, and my brother had a lot of friends, and so I made friends. It worked out pretty well. So I understand what you're saying. Yeah, it certainly is different in in New York City or places like that, where it's such a talk about really dense population, and you may make a few friends, but it's really a lot different.

Osvaldo Aponte 06:21

I think that if you had been in my town, not only were you ridden that bike, but we would have been encouraging to write a some roller skates, skateboard and a few other things, because people were pretty daring that there,

Speaker 1 06:33

yeah, well, and I did roller skate and and all that, I am not there, but I Did ice skate once, and I ice skated for about an hour and a half, but actually fell and sprained my ankle as we were going off the ice at the end of the day. So haven't ice skated since. I thought that that was a little bit different, but I roller skated. I had fun with that. My favorite thing to do, especially when I got into college, was playing darts. I used weights. I love, I love weighted darts. I don't like the little flimsy darts. I like bigger, stronger weighted darts. But my biggest claim to fame is I got three triple 20s on one throw of three darts once. So you know, I know how to play darts.

Osvaldo Aponte 07:18

We have a some darts here that we use. In fact, this last weekend for Labor Day, we had a few friends over, and we use them. We love them. You know, one thing that I like to do with darts, Michael, to share this with you, is to throw both right handed and left handed. And that goes back to my neural training, because it's really good for your brain to be able to do things like both ways.

Speaker 1 07:36

Yeah, I was right handed. I never really did try left handed. I'm sure I could have learned it, but it's been a long time since I played Dart so I'm going to have to get a board. Do it again sometime. I had a nice horsehair dart board. It was great. I love it. Yeah. So when you so you how long did you live in Puerto Rico?

Osvaldo Aponte 07:59

I was 21 when I left. I mean, I visited the United States, like for summers and things like that, to go visit my family. I had an aunt that lived in New York City who I adore. Her name is Elsie, and her son, rubinel. He and I share a lot of like things in life, including being part of the military. But no, we were kind of close in age. I was a little older, but we got along really well, and that's why they would send me to go visit him and, you know, just get the life experience girl, you know, learn a little English and all that stuff. But I was in Puerto Rico until I was 21 and that's when I joined the Army.

Speaker 1 08:31

So, did you go to college after high school?

Osvaldo Aponte 08:35

No, so I went. I went to the army at 21 I was trying to go to go to college, but it was really difficult for me, you know, with like, just the way that I grew up, in my finances and things like that, yeah, wasn't easy. So I ended

Speaker 1 08:49

up, like, so after high school, did you work or what?

Osvaldo Aponte 08:52

Yeah, I worked briefly at multiple jobs. I worked at foot Lacher was one job that I had, another job that I had was in a in a factory that they make gowns for graduation and students. That was a really fun one, because this is, this is a cool story. So they had this really high racks. And sometimes, you know, they would look at the inventory sheet and go like, Oh, you know, we have some of those, but they're all the way up there. And while I was working there, I was like, you know, nimble and good enough with my body where I could climb all the way up and bring this stuff down. And they love that

Speaker 1 09:26

a tall enough person to do that, huh?

Osvaldo Aponte 09:29

Well, more like I could climb like spider man.

Speaker 1 09:32

Okay, so what made you decide to go into the military?

Osvaldo Aponte 09:38

I always had a desire to go because I remember young men that left my town with the military, and then they would come back a few years later, and they just looked so different. They look really fit. They look really sharp. If you were lucky enough to meet one of these guys out of, like, a family party, and they were wearing their, like, Class A uniform, their dress uniform. It was really impressive and cool to see. And then you would sit down and talk to them and start talking to you about, I went to Germany, I went to Korea, I went here, I went there, I went everywhere. And it was just, like, very inviting for a young person to think, like, oh my god, like, I can go and do this, which has a very, you know, kind of like a lot of history to it, you know, my, my my grandfather served in the Korean War. And, you know, there was some history there. And then the recruiters, they would come to school and talk to us, and I always thought, like, man, that would be really cool. And you know, to be honest with you, there are not many ways for a young person from Puerto Rico, at least where I was a young person, to get out of there. You know, it's not like opportunities were just raining down and being tossed at you, like, Hey, you want to travel the world. Let's do this. But that was one that was fairly accessible. And so, you know, between the allure, you know, of the potential awesome life that I could have, like those guys that I met, the recruiters, painting a very rosy picture of the military, even, like commercials on TV, because you know how it is, yeah, like the army makes, like, really cool commercials, you know, directed at the Youth so that we would join and, you know, I got to tell you, Michael, I loved it. I'm so glad that I joined the military.

Speaker 1 11:09

Well, so I'm curious, in general, you describe the environment of Puerto Rico and so on. Do you think it's different today, or is it still pretty much the same for kids growing up there now, I think

Osvaldo Aponte 11:22

it's probably a little bit harder, because opportunities are even more scarce these days. There are a lot of people down there with bachelor's degree, master's degree and even doctor's degree that can't find jobs. And this is why you have such a large population of Puerto Ricans in the United States, because there's just not a whole lot of opportunity. It's a beautiful land, and this is great environment, but, but economically speaking, there are a lot of limitations and obstacles that people have to jump through and or over, and it makes it challenging to stay there.

Speaker 1 11:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, I guess I can understand that, and certainly there have been a lot of challenges over the last few years. Yep, that that doesn't help a lot either, so, but I appreciate what you're saying, and hopefully, over time, things will level out and maybe get a little bit better. But, yeah, it's, it's really difficult when you got so many people in such a small area.

Osvaldo Aponte 12:15

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it, right? Like, just too many people, not enough resources, that's step one.

Speaker 1 12:20

Yeah. Well, so how has your cultural background affected the way you approach training, discipline and service? You think that's had an effect from being from Puerto Rico?

Osvaldo Aponte 12:36

I do. I think that there's a sense of pride in being capable, physically capable, where I come from, in that culture, it starts as even as early and as rudimentary as your uncles, your the male figures, even the male figures in your life, are always encouraging you to stand out for yourself. That's a big deal in my culture, right? And there's a certain sense of physicality that goes with that. But it's not just that, right? It's, you know, like, when you're learning to take, like, stand up for yourself, I think it really instills in you respect for others as well, right? Because that's, there's, that's the other side of that, like coin, it's like, you're not going to insult anyone, but you also are not going to allow anyone to insult you, and so instills discipline. In that sense, it's like, I think we're inclined to act like children, but most of the education that I got from both the male and female figures in my life was to be respectful and to be a figure of strength within the community so that you can be the person that stands between two friends say, Hey guys, like, Let's not do this right now. We don't need to fight. Let's talk it out, or whatever. And that that requires certain level of courage and actual physical presence. If you're a very weak, weak person, you're not going to do that very effectively. You can, but it's probably not the most effective thing. So just from that perspective, is very ingrained in the culture that you know being being a good member of your community means that whenever you have to, you can pick up something heavy and carry it somewhere, or that you can, you know, swim from danger. You know that you can run out of danger, that you can fight your way out of a corner, or something like that. And, you know, crazy as it sounds, it was something that from a very early age would start to get kind of put into us. And then from there, obviously, if you want to maintain that later as you get older, then you must have some kind of like physical practice that will do that. Luckily for us, you know, sports are huge in our in our country, so boxing, baseball, volleyball, basketball, I guess. Now soccer is huge in Puerto Rico. It wasn't when I was there, but it's getting bigger all over, I guess, yeah, I guess, right, like that. We're gonna have it. I think next year, the FIFA World Cup is coming to the United States, which is cool 2026 so you. Yeah, like, you just grow up in a very physical environment no matter what. And then, you know, when you're talking about this poor, more rural towns, you know, we didn't have a car forever, so if you wanted to go anywhere, you have to walk. And that, again, it requires that you have a certain level of resilience and determination, and that you're okay with being sweaty and a little bit tired, you know. And then there's a lot of hills, so you got to do so, you know, sometimes our environments, right? They shape how we turn out. Right? I mean, they say mountain people tend to be a little tougher, you know, so, so I think there was a whole lot of that going around, you know, that that really shapes you into wanting to be a physically fit person or person that that has discipline in order to to accomplish the daily life. Because, you know, can't do it without it.

Speaker 1 15:46

How do you think that that upbringing helped or affected you when you joined the military?

Osvaldo Aponte 15:55

Well, it's almost, it was almost like preparation, right? I remember when I got there, you know, a lot of kids hated doing physical training, where I loved it. I that was my favorite part of basic training, was doing the physical training, the running, the push ups, just all the drills that we learned and when, when we did the obstacle course and basic training, my battle buddy and I ran up after we finished it. We ran up to the drill sergeant and asked him if we could do it again. And he called us crazy and told us that we could.

Speaker 1 16:27

I was gonna say, I'll bet your drill sergeants thought you guys were crazy.

Osvaldo Aponte 16:31

He was, he was like, You guys are crazy, but go ahead whatever, you know. And so that was kind of like the soldier that I was from, you know, from basic training. I just love the physical part of it, because it was the part that I could feel competent in, right, you know? And the one thing that I didn't had was, like, I had a really hard time with English, right? Because up to that point, I could read it, I could hear it and understand it to a certain level, but conversational English in a very stressful environment, like basic training with some regional differences, like you have a sergeant from Louisiana or someone from Georgia or someone from Texas, mostly may mean like Southern states here, but those were the harder accents to discern and and so that was a challenge in itself, right? So for me, you know, having grown up so so close and comfortable with physicality in any situation really had prepared me to be a perfect fit to be a soldier.

Speaker 1 17:27

And how long were you in the military?

Osvaldo Aponte 17:30

Six and a half years. Wow, the June of 1997 through I my last was January 15 of 2004 which happened to be my birthday. Happy birthday. You're out of the military.

Speaker 1 17:47

You said January, 16, 15th, 15th. Okay, well, so what rank Did you exit the military holding I

Osvaldo Aponte 17:56

exited us at e5 promotable, a sergeant. And it was amazing. I loved every minute

Speaker 1 18:02

of it. How come you you left the military?

Osvaldo Aponte 18:07

You know, a lot of the people that I work with, including my superiors, always encouraged me to go to school. They were like, You know what sergeant? You're great at this. I think you can go on to be a First Sergeant. I think you'd be a great drill sergeant one day, but, but it will be a waste of talent if you didn't, like give yourself a chance to attend college. And I did while I was in the military. I tried to attend, like every, you know, not every semester, because sometimes the job is, you know, that's the more important part. So you got to do that. But if I could swing it, I would attend community college and take class there. But it became clear to me that if I really wanted to get a degree, I was going to have to get out and just do that, you know, just go full head head on into that. And so that was part of it. My first, like, four years were awesome. When I did my first re enlistment for another two and a half and I knew that I was going to Korea. I was really excited, because of, you know, Korea is the home of Taekwondo, who is martial art that I grew up practicing. It was, in fact, the first martial art that I ever did. And so the prospect of going there and studying there was, like, pretty cool. And just, you know, going to Asia in general, as a kid from Puerto Rico, that sounded amazing. And then I went there, and I did the assignment. And it was my favorite assignment of all the ones that I had. Korea was my favorite. And then when I came back, I went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the home of the airborne. And that was a different beast altogether. It was, it was a very different army that I came back from Korea too, and something just, you know, kind of clicked in me and said, like, it's time, it's time to go ahead, if you, you know, it's also a matter of time. You know, if you hit 10 years in the Army, basically, you have a choice to make. Like at that point, it's like, and one more enlisted for me would have been about that time, right? Three or four enlistment. And then at that. Point you better stay for life. So it was like, if I'm gonna do it, this is the time to do it. So I did.

Speaker 1 20:06

So you went back to college.

Osvaldo Aponte 20:09

So at that point, when I came home, I came back to California. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to stay here or not, but I ended up staying here and attending San Diego City College, and then they had a transfer program that took me to San Diego State. And you know how that goes? I bought a house, bought a car, met a girl, and now it's, you know, all those years later.

Speaker 1 20:31

So what made you co decide to stay or move to California?

Osvaldo Aponte 20:36

So San Diego was my very first duty station, which is really weird, because San Diego is known to be a naval base, yeah. However, the job that I had in the army that was, it was the designation was 91 Romeo, which is veterinary food inspector. And that job supports all the other branches. They support the Air Force, the Marines, the Navy, the Coast Guard, and we didn't have Space Force back then, no, and, and so I was stationed at Naval base because we were supporting their mission. And you know, one of my loves growing up was skateboarding. And I remember being here and somebody seeing a poster or something I had in the barracks, and somebody was like, Dude, you like skateboarding? I'm like, Dude, I love it. And he goes, like, do you know that? And he started to name off names of all these old skateboarding legends, and they all live, like, up the street in Encinitas, you know, yeah. And so I ended up going to one of my childhood idols shop, Mike McGill, and, you know, bought the board, and I have it framed somewhere in my house. And, you know, he signed a poster for me and bought the shirt, and it was really cool. You know, I just never even imagined that that would be possible. But after spending so much time here, I made a lot of friends. Kind of, you grow a little bit of roots in the community, and then it just seems like an organic and normal thing to just kind of, yeah. Why not? You know.

Speaker 1 21:56

And there you are. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. So what did you get your degree in?

Osvaldo Aponte 22:03

So I got my degree in accounting. Everyone always asked me, like, Oh, so you're a numbers guy. And I'm like, Well, not exactly, like, honestly, Michael, the reason why I got an accounting degree was because I remember thinking, you know, like, if you really want to understand the nuts and bolts of business, like study accounting, and I read that in many articles over two years, you know, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and things like that. But there was one article that I read, and it may have been in a fitness magazine, and it was talking about the longevity of coaches, or personal trainers, which was an emerging field at the time. There were some that were very, very successful, but, you know, the average lifespan for a personal trainer, it's like two years, and I have not been in the industry for 20 so I am a survivor. And you know, I think the advice that I got from the article that said, if you if you want to understand how to be successful with your gym, that you need to have some level of understanding of business, some education in it. And so there is that. There was that angle, right? Like say, Okay, so I'm really good at this stuff. I know it well. You know, nobody has to force me to open up a anatomy book and read it. But am I really going to open up a financial accounting book and learn how to do the books or whatever? So I went that route. That's That was one reason. The other reason was that I really, truly believe that to live a full life, you got to challenge yourself and do things that maybe they're not like the ideal fit for you, but that they would be a good challenge that's attainable, right? Nothing like it's impossible, right? But something that you can do and accomplish, but that will truly challenge you. And I found that that was going to be it, and I was correct. Attending the Charles W landam School of Accountancy at San Diego State was one of the hardest things I've ever done, and I'm so proud of it. I just remember I lived in the library. We were always there, which you're probably familiar with from some of our other conversations so you told me what, what you studied, and, you know, I just remember Friday nights, everybody was like, hey, Ozzy, going out. I'm like, No, I'll be in the library studying, you know, but that's good. I think that kind of, like, that kind of discipline and like, really, like tough kind of, like, environment of learning really shapes you, and it gives you that. It gives you the discipline that's necessary to succeed in life. I feel, you know what I mean. So that was a value added to me in addition to the degree. And so I'm glad that I went that route. It was really hard, but

Speaker 1 24:34

I did it. So what did you do once you got the degree?

Osvaldo Aponte 24:38

Well, the logical thing, at least in my head, was like, Well, you got to get some experience. You can't just have this degree. You can't just have this degree up on the wall. And the truth is, I enjoyed it. I really did, you know, I went out in the field and I applied for so many jobs, and I graduated in 2011 which is was a really bad year to graduate, because there's a economic. Downturn, but jobs were not as really readily available as they had been in even like the last two years. And so finding a job was really hard. And finally, landed a tax internship, which was fantastic. I worked for this very nice gentleman named Charles W Kelly, and he was from West Virginia, and he lived in San Diego most of his life, CPA guy, and just wonderful experience. It was really, really cool. Then I ended up getting a job for a a leasing company. And if you know anything about leases is that they have this very interesting accounting that goes along with it. So I was all excited about that, because I just learned all about lease accounting in school. I wanted to put it to good use, so I went there for a little bit. They ended up joining the Office of the Inspector General, and I got sent to Texas to do that because of the if you're going to travel the country and do inspections, being in Dallas is convenient for flying, right? It's like a big hub. So I went to Dallas for that job, which, you know, I never thought I would, but I really love Dallas. And, you know, that Job was super cool. Then I got recruited to come back to San Diego. Did property accounting here for a little bit. Did construction accounting, did Public Company Accounting, that was with a big insurance broker. That was my favorite one, because from my window in the building, I could see my barracks room that I used to stay at when I was stationed. And I remember when I was at 32nd looking downtown and seeing that building is the Merrill Lynch building. It used to be the Bank of America. Oh no, I'm sorry. It was the Merrill Lynch now it's the Bank of America, and thinking, one day I'm gonna have my accounting degree and I'll be over there working. And you know what? It happened, and

Speaker 1 26:41

that was pretty cool. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Now, when you moved to Texas, were you married by then?

Osvaldo Aponte 26:48

I wasn't, but I was in a very serious relationship, but my wife had gone to grad school, also in West Virginia, in a place called Roanoke. Roanoke, yeah. What is the name of that school? Hollins. Hollins Hollins University. Okay, so there was a really fantastic master's program there that my wife kind of came across. And, you know, I was about to graduate San Diego State, and she was like, you know, what should we do? And I was like, You should totally do it. I was so supportive in her going to grad school, and that meant that we're going to be a part for quite a while, but, but she went, and we know, we didn't put anything on it. We were like, listen, let's, let's just you go, you do your thing, and if you come back and work together again, great. It's not, you know, we're not going to be upset about it. But turns out, she went, came back, met me in Dallas, and then we came to San Diego together.

Speaker 1 27:37

What did she get? Her Master's in

Osvaldo Aponte 27:40

Fine Arts dance, ah, yeah. So she also went to San Diego State, actually, for her undergrad, and when we first met, that's where she was going. And then she went to Hollins for her Master's in Fine Arts with dance, dance concentration.

Speaker 1 27:52

Now, you've done some dancing, right?

27:54

I have,

Speaker 1 27:57

but you don't have it. You don't have a degree in it, but that's okay.

Osvaldo Aponte 28:00

No, I don't Well, I met Erica, who's my wife, in in in the dance company that I dance for, which was called module, a dance collective. And, yeah, I was always impressed with her skills. She was she's such a fine and like, precise mover, and she moves with this the strength and this weight and this precision that I don't see a lot of artists, and I always loved it. And so, you know, at first it was just like, hey, can you teach me this and that? And just always trying to pick her brain on technical things about dancing, because that was a beginner dancer. What the only reason why I got to do this, Michael, to give you a better picture, is because of my martial arts training. So you know, if you're flexible and you can lift girls at that time, at least, you pretty much in the company, as long as you're willing to go do all the rehearsals and all that stuff, which I was and, you know. And to my credit, I trained very hard for those years that I dance. I was taking class all the time. I rehearsed religiously, and everyone laughed at me because I never called it rehearsal. I called it practice. And, you know, it was like the sports terminology and art world, and people were like, What are you doing? I'm like, I'm practicing. I'm like, okay, okay, buddy, but, but, yeah, I really enjoyed it, and that's where I met her.

Speaker 1 29:17

Wow. Well, that's cool. So how long you guys been married now?

Osvaldo Aponte 29:20

So we've been married for nine years, but together for 1919, years, we went together.

Speaker 1 29:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, that's cool. And what does she do now? Does she dance?

Osvaldo Aponte 29:30

She's a dance teacher. Okay, that's cool here in San Diego, and she produces shows. Every once in a while, she'll produce a show and bring it to San Diego. And now we're all, like, international connections and all that. I always give her a hard time about that, like all your fancy friends, but yeah, she's produced some really awesome shows here, like things that have been presented all over the world. And she from time to time, she doesn't have a dance company, per se, but she will put a group together and. Percent work with grants and things like that. So she stays pretty active in the community.

Speaker 1 30:04

Well, somewhere along the line, you switch from doing accounting, I gather, to becoming a full time personal trainer.

Osvaldo Aponte 30:13

So I never really stopped. I was doing personal training while I was going to school, between when I getting out of the army and then getting my degree right. That's how I like, basically work my way through school. And once I went into industry to get that experience that we talked about, I had a very limited practice, but I kept it so I continued to program for a few very special friends, and we affectionately call it the the Herman street fitness club, because that's where we lived when we started the gathering. And we had a lot of equipment. We dedicated our garage space to just be in a gym instead of putting our cars in there. And so we had the small group. It was, you know, my wife and a few of her dance friends, and they also kept going. So I kept programming, getting certifications, always with the thought that one day I'm going to have my own gym, right? I'm going to, when I get out of this accounting thing, go have my own gym. And so I always did it. It wasn't like I had this break and then my personal practice, right? Both an instructor and a practitioner, really blew up during that time, because I had a lot of time on my hands to be able to do what I wanted and finesse my my practice, and so that's what I did. I really just invested a lot of time into and money into education. You know, that's where I got my functional neurology, education, my strength and conditioning stuff. Like, it was really all a plan all along to eventually be a gym owner and do what I'm doing now.

Speaker 1 31:40

So was there a defining moment or something that specifically made the made you take the leap to do it full time?

Osvaldo Aponte 31:48

Yes, and it was actually almost like a leap. So, so I used to have this beautiful bike that I rode all the time, and I rode it with always this intent of getting better. It's like a skill. I'm going to go out there. I'm going to be really good with it. And on one fateful morning, I was almost about to hop back on the highway and head back home, I was almost done with my ride, and I got cut off by a trailer. And so my options were, hit the truck, hit the trailer, potentially hit another biker that I cannot see because I had a blind spot on the oncoming traffic, so I hit the trailer, flew over it, so the leap, there's the LEAP flew over the trailer, landed on my back and bounced off the ground like a ball got thrown into a hospital, I mean, to into an ambulance, because, you know, they were like, you may have internal bleeding. We got to do all kinds of scans and all that stuff. And that was in 2017 and I walked into my boss's office at the time, where I was accounting manager for a construction company, and I just turned in my resignation. And I never went back, because at that point, I was like, All right, like I could have just died, like, a week ago. So if I'm going to do this fitness thing, like full on, have my gym and all that stuff, I better do it now.

Speaker 1 33:06

Well, and obviously I would think the physical conditioning that you had helped you survive and deal with all of that. When the accident happened,

Osvaldo Aponte 33:18

every medical professional that I saw said the same thing. They said, if you weren't as fit as you are, you would have a shattered pelvis and probably a broken spine. Yeah. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 33:33

So talk to me about strength, because clearly you're being in personal trainer and all the things that you've done. You're a very strong guy. What does strength mean to you, not just physically, but emotionally and in your whole makeup?

Osvaldo Aponte 33:48

So I belong to this organization. It's an educational organization that issues kettlebell, barbell and body weight certification. It's called strong first, and they have a really beautiful saying. They're a maxim saying. They said that strength has a higher purpose, and I agree with that wholeheartedly, and it's part of the reason why I feel such pride and purpose by being part of this organization, because that's how we sell the lifestyle, if you will, right? So we know, just from the story that I just shared, that being physically strong can help you during illness. There's a beloved coach within our organization. His name is Brett Jones, and a few years back, he was diagnosed with cancer, and he lost so much weight during the treatment that if he hadn't been as sturdy as he was, he probably wouldn't have made it. So, you know, that's just a, you know, a personal, both personal, right, because my own experience and then somebody that I care deeply about and admire and has been like a mentor to me, and someone that I look up to, but all around I can, I can look and see people that, when afflicted with illness, relied on their fitness in order to just have a little bit of a better quality of life. And. Some case, outright survive these things. So from that perspective, you know, it's hard not to see how fundamental it is. How, let me put it to this. I do not understand how somebody wouldn't be interested in at least a little bit of strength in their own life, with the myriad examples that are out there about people overcoming obstacles because of the strength that they have cultivated over the years, you know? So I think that that's a good starting point for me.

Speaker 1 35:26

So you, you, you clearly take that very seriously. It isn't just physical strength, it is mental strength. It is really a whole mindset that you adopt.

Osvaldo Aponte 35:42

I do believe so. I mean, I can relate this to every major experience, right? So I said, I said the army was really hard, but you know, one thing that made it easy was my my physical fitness. And here's, here's another, when you talk about purpose, right? And what else be beyond just you, but what else can we do for others? So very early on, while I was in the army, people started to pick up on the fact that I really liked fitness. And they were like, hey, private Ponte, would you like to lead PT, which just means, like, you know, you kind of run the physical training session. And I was like, oh my god, I would love that. So they would allow me to do it. And you start to get experience. You need to do more. And they take on more, and they gave you greater groups to work with. But at some point, one of my superiors came to me and said, Hey, at that point, I was a corporal. I said, Corporal Ponte, we have this soldier. They are really great at their job. We love them. They're respectful, they honor the army, but they're having a hard time with their physical fitness, and they're about to get booted out if they don't pass this PT test. Can you help them out? And so that was one of the first, like, real life challenges for me, because it was like, in terms of fitness, because it was like, it's not like, Oh, if I don't lose 10 pounds by my wedding day, I'm not going to feel as great. Okay, that's a good goal, too, but you're talking about somebody that's been over 10 years in the Army, and they're about to get booted because they can't pass a PT test. If you can help that person stay in the army, that's huge. And so I did. And then another one came, and the other one was like, Oh, they need to pass their weight and height standards. Help them do that as well. And so I became, I developed a reputation for being able to being able to do that for other soldiers, and when you do that again, it's just more meaningful, because it's not just that you feel good about what you're doing, but somebody else's life is going to be significantly changed because of the help that you were able to provide in that realm, you know. And how many times in life do we get to do that? I don't know. You know. Like, I don't, I can't tell you a single time when any of my accounting assignments did that for anyone you know, you know, like, they're kind of meaningless in a lot of ways. You know. Like, okay, well, you know, the financials are in you know. But it wasn't like somebody's not going to come and hug you and thank you, you know, because you did the financials well. But if you can help someone stay in the Army because they pass their PD test, or they pass their height and weight standards, that's significant. That's another example that I can share with you in that realm.

Speaker 1 38:15

Yeah, well, and it shows also that you care.

Osvaldo Aponte 38:19

I always have. And I think, you know, earlier, you were asking me about my upbringing, and I think it goes back to that and that small town, you know, just being together, looking out for each other, you know, like when, when I was in the far away from my house, but then my friend's mom would know where I was, and she would look out for me. It's kind of like that, you know, just you help what you can, because it's the right thing to do,

Speaker 1 38:42

yeah, well, and that's that's important. Well, you so when you went into becoming a personal trainer and becoming a trainer and dealing with physical therapy, physical training, not therapy, but physical training, one of the areas that you went into was kettlebell training. What is a kettlebell?

Osvaldo Aponte 39:05

So the kettlebells originated as a counterweight to balance the scales in the markets in Russia, and in between selling produce or other items, the farmers will start to play with them and discover that they could do all these cool little moves. But over time, the moves turned out to be actually kind of beneficial to, you know, maintaining good health, especially like a strong spine, a strong core, just being able to be athletic and strong and things that are not so easily developed. Fast forward many years, and the Russian military had developed a system that combined using the carabell but applying a very specific type of technique that can be compared to hostile Japanese corruption. Karate, okay? So when you think about, you know, something that is very external in nature, in martial arts, right? Because you can make the distinction between, like an internal martial art, like Tai Chi, versus an external martial art, which should be like hostile karate, taekwondo, Muay Thai, all of these arts are more external driven. I It gives you the perfect combination of movement and breath control, which is the very core of what martial arts is. And this is why, in the strength world, people often refer to hostile, credible training as the martial art of strength training, because the focus on the precision of the movement and the combination of the breathing pattern to make it a very powerful, efficient technique that's not just doesn't just do the job, but it also keeps you safe as a practitioner, and it builds your body with all kinds of resilience and Things that we all need and want. And so a little bit of a long winded that's okay to me. That's what the kettlebell is.

Speaker 1 41:07

So what is a kettlebell? What does it look like? So it

Osvaldo Aponte 41:10

looks like a cannon bundle with a handle on, if you think like a cannonball, and then a handle on it. That's basically what it looks like, yep. And so when you here's a really interesting thing, and you'll like this because of your educational background. So when you pick up a dumbbell and you hold it, let's say in front of us, if you were going to press it overhead in the military press, right, the dumbbell is kind of, not kind of, but it is. It sits in the palm of your hand right, somewhat balanced from side to side, right. And then you go overhead, and you can balance it with your center of mass, and you're good to go the cat. To go the kettlebell the way that the technique calls for the grabbing. It sits on your forearm on the outside, so that off center of gravity, it continuously rotates, creating torque in the movement, and you got to fight against that. So it creates an extra challenge for the body that you now have to deal with, and if you can successfully do that, then you get a whole bunch of benefits that the dumbbell just won't give you.

Speaker 1 42:08

How heavy are they kettlebell? Well, traditionally, they

Osvaldo Aponte 42:11

used to be 1624, and 32 kilos, but now they go from eight kilos all the way up to like 5660 kilos.

Speaker 1 42:20

That's pretty heavy, I know.

Osvaldo Aponte 42:24

And I have all of them, Michael, all of them.

Speaker 1 42:27

Well, I wouldn't want a 60 kilo kettlebell dropping on my foot.

Osvaldo Aponte 42:31

No, we just use that for a show. We just put it in the corner. Never use it.

Speaker 1 42:36

Yeah. I mean, that's what, 132 pounds. So that's pretty heavy.

Osvaldo Aponte 42:43

Yeah, yeah, no, sometimes, but you know, practically gentlemen, work with 1624, and 32 kilo. That's pretty, pretty normal. Females usually work 1216, and 20 around that, although nowadays, I mean, I have colleagues within the strong first world that are pressing 32 kilos, no problem. So there's a lot of very strong women out there that can do a lot more. But just generally speaking, general population, that's about the range. And then somewhere like myself, who does this for a living and teaches it and all that, I work between like 16 all the way up to like 40 kilos, regularly. Anything above that. It's a little bit too much for me. Yeah, but, yeah, yeah, but it's fun.

Speaker 1 43:26

I was, I was afraid you were gonna say the the men do 16 and 20 and 32 and the women do 60 and 64 but that's just saying.

Osvaldo Aponte 43:39

I'm sure somewhere out there, somebody's doing, I'm sure

Speaker 1 43:41

there is well. So tell me more about strong. First, what makes you so committed to to being a part of it and staying with it?

Osvaldo Aponte 43:52

So earlier, I shared with you that though you know, they have that maxim that said that strength has a greater purpose. The other aspect of strong first, that I really, really like, because it connects deeply with my martial arts roots and my commitment to discipline and all these things, is that they call themselves the school of strength. So when you're a student and you come through the curriculum, what we're trying to teach you is the the tools, the fundamentals that you can go ahead and apply to any tool, whether that tool may be your own body weight, a kettlebell or a barbell, if you learn the techniques, the principles, excuse me, that we teach within strong first, then you will be able to apply that to anything that requires you to exert yourself, You know, from a strength standpoint, and that's really valuable, versus just, you know, you know, showing you some moves that you know may or may not help you in a different situation, right? Because what you learn is like, what constitute proper posture under load, what is safe, you know? How do you breathe under. Load. I think that's a really important part the breath, just as in dance, as in the martial arts, and then in strength training is paramount. Like it really should be the first thing that we talk about when you get a new student, it's like, let's talk about how we breathe under load. And so with strong first, we are very committed to teaching these principles to the students. And it's very everything is very fundamental in nature. So for example, if you wanted to get certified as a strong first cut about level one instructor, you're required to show us six movements, six movements, and we take three days to teach you those six movements in the certification. Okay, really, it's really too because the last day you're mostly testing, but still, like, that's a lot of time and energy that we're putting towards what seems to be a very simple thing. I mean, how hard is it? Michael, it's just a squat, it's just the press, it's just this, just that. But what I like about our organization is that we take care to go what we like to say, an inch wide but a mile deep in knowledge. We're not concerned with the superficial fancy. Let's get all fancy out there and like, Listen, if you have the fundamentals down, there's always a time and a place for that. You can get super fancy. But what the at the core of it, what we really want to do is share with the student something that they can apply to almost anything. And to do that, it has to be principles based. It has to be digestible in a short amount of time, focusing on very few things that you do really, really well. And that's another part that I really like about it,

Speaker 1 46:37

isn't that, to an extent, also the same sort of concept that people learn in martial arts. I mean, you know, it's all about learning to to control your mind, learning how to use your mind, learning how to be introspective, learning how to to focus. And it sounds like you're doing the same sort of things that people typically will learn in karate or Judo or any of the other martial arts.

Osvaldo Aponte 47:06

I agree with you, and this is, you know, not everyone has the time to go. You know, martial arts, I think, takes a little bit more time, and it might be a little more intimidating, but with this system that we teach in strong first, we can bring that to the table for someone who's short on time. And you know, you ask me things that I like about strong first, let me. Let me give you another angle. So our training protocols oftentimes call for a minimal, minimal time investment out of your day. Because what we want to see more than intensity, it's frequency. We would like to see our students do this thing more regularly, even on a daily basis, to cultivate mobility, strength, endurance, power, right? These physical characteristics that are all very important in life. But when you think about this, like man, like, how am I going to do all that? Well, the answer is very simply, okay, if you make it into digestible little pieces, which we do with our training. And perhaps I should give a more concrete example. We have a program that only calls for two kettlebell movements. In this program, you will do kettlebell swings, which is a ballistic movement, where you project the kettlebell with such force that you make it weightless against gravity, and then we have the grind movement, which is, you're just moving against the weight of the bell. And you know, the complexity of the movements themselves, through a series of I was almost very like, like a martial art, like you've been, you've been referring to, it's very precise and just very defined. And if you're a very busy parent. You know, you're 35 years old, you are about to hit that stretch of career where you're really going to crush it and be the most productive, make the most money. You have kids, you still need to make time to you know, be a good husband, be a good father, be a good brother, a good son, a good all these things. I want fitness to serve you, not the other way, or I don't want you to be a slave to fitness and be in the gym, you know, ridiculous amounts of time. I want to empower you. I want to give you something that you can do minimally, three times a week, four times a week, five times a week, but that allows you to do all those other things that are really important too. Like, you know, enjoy and live your life and cultivate these things in your life. And so that's another ace out of the pocket, if you will. That the strong first school of strength system brings to the table is that the investment that you have to make in it can be quite small. You can make it very complex, right? Like, as this being my job, my routines tend to be a little bit more fancy, but they don't have to be, you know, I can always tap into that simplicity to maintain my health, and I'm not leaving any any money on the table. I'm still getting all the benefits, and that's yet another aspect of it that I absolutely love.

Michael Hingson 49:55

So another thing that I know in reading the. Things that you sent me, that you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about, is the one arm push up. Tell me about that. What heck? That sounds kind of scary, but what the heck is a one arm push up? And you even wrote a book about it, right?

Osvaldo Aponte 50:12

I did. I did. So you know one of our big time instructors, his name is Brett Jones. He's called this exercise. He said that the one arm, one leg, push up is an exercise in full body tension. Now it's, it's, it can be really boring to some people. I can absolutely see why it's such a big deal to me, having grown up with a couple of uncles, one of which did martial arts. And he would show this to me when I was a very young man. And I was just like, wow. Like, how do you do that? Uncle, please show me. Deal Jimmy, please show me. And he went on to teach it to me. And so here's the cool thing. I was, like, eight years old when I did my first one arm push up, you know? And so this is something that as very, very young we can do and then, if we just maintain it through the rest of our life, we all have that skill in order to do it. Michael, it requires an exceptional amount of body control, breath control, and the things that we talked about right that martial arts like discipline and focus and it, it is a great base if you want to build more strength with other tools, like, for example, you want to go and do some dead lifting or overhead pressing, or maybe some more fancy skills, like inverted push ups with no support from the wall, you know, like a gymnast would do, or that kind of skill, you know. But it's a really good test for any young person, or even, you know, adult to see if they can conquer that movement because it's it's quite attainable. It's not impossible. Anybody can do it. It takes a little bit of work and discipline. But therein lies the benefit. This is going to test your your spirit and your your resolve and your patience more than it will test you physically, honestly, because it just takes time. And that's just one of the reasons why I like it so much. But in general, I know that if I can do a one arm, one arm, one leg, push up at any moment, both sides, I know that I am doing a really good job of connecting my lower and upper body with the strength of, you know, my center, you know, my abdominals, my pelvic floor, my diaphragm, my all of that. So it's a very useful move, even though it may seem a little bit like a little bit like a party trick, although it is a party trick, I have to say, I'm not gonna deny that anytime I do it at a party, people are like, that's pretty cool, but, but, but, you know, it really does have a lot of strength benefits that perhaps are not so discernible just at a glance.

Speaker 1 52:37

Well, I can appreciate that. I mean, yeah, I I'm sure you can call it a party trick, because you can do it at parties, and you're going to amaze people. And I assume it is exactly what what you say. It's pushing up with one arm and one leg.

Osvaldo Aponte 52:53

The setup is a little different. So if you can imagine somebody in a push up position, Michael, and then you'll take their legs and split them out a little bit more. Think about one and a half to two times shoulder width. Okay, so you have a broad base now in your legs. From there, you proceed to remove one hand from the ground, and the hand can be placed at the side of the body. The hand can be placed behind the back. You can extend your hand out in front of you. That's a really hard version to do. You take a nice stiff breath into your abdomen, and you brace your abs like drill sergeant hopper is about to come over and kick you in the gut. And then you lower yourself with control and with a forceful exhale, you press into the ground, not breaking that nice line that the body has, and it's vertical to the deck, and you press yourself up, and now you just displace incredible core strength, upper body strength, and just breath control, which is always beautiful to see.

Speaker 1 53:47

So you're doing that with one hand, one hand, and because the other hand is not braced, helping,

Osvaldo Aponte 53:53

no, it's not and then this can also be done with one hand and one leg. So now you have a leg and an arm that are up in the air, and you are only doing it on one on one leg, and that's, that's my favorite variation. That's what's really cool one, wow.

Michael Hingson 54:07

Well, tell me a little bit about resilience and unstoppability from the military and everything that you've done, you've seen a lot of different aspects of resilience. What are the sort of the common threads that you would say people have, that, that you've experienced that have made them resilient or unstoppable, or what are some of the common threads that you see in people who are resilient and unstoppable?

Osvaldo Aponte 54:30

I think that a commitment to learning and growing is something that I see in people that I would describe as resilience. They don't stay put. They're not complacent. They learn one thing, and they devote some time to it, which takes discipline and courage, and then they move on to something else, and they do that, and they continue this throughout life. They're lifelong, lifelong learners. Is one thing that. I would say, and they have a commitment to this growth mentality, where everything it can be treated as a as an opportunity for becoming better. And it's not even always like just, oh, I'm better, but rather, what is the thing that makes us be valuable to those around us? And so for me, and this is not my own idea, this has been said by many people, but whenever you can make yourself useful to others, then that's a good thing. Yes, you never know when you're going to have to tap into this knowledge, right? And so to that, to that extent, you know, maintaining good physical health, which, incidentally, can be a benefit to not just your family but society, because you're a lower cost to people right with the health, you know, cost and things like that. But it's just that having that, that vision, that it's not about next week or next month, I want my efforts to be sustainable for the rest of my life. So it's that mentality of being in a marathon rather than a sprint. While it is occasionally important to be able to sprint, we all know that that's really not a feasible way to go through life. You're going to burn out and crash. Yeah. And so the most resilient of folks that I truly admire have this long term view of life and a commitment to be the best that they can be, not just for themselves or their communities as well, right? Well?

Speaker 1 56:30

And that makes sense. I think that the reality is that all too often people rush into things they don't

Michael Hingson 56:38

look at things in the long run, and that is a problem, because they'll burn out. So So tell me you are going off this fall and starting a master's degree program.

Osvaldo Aponte 56:51

I am this is really funny, but today will be like our our big welcoming, you know, presentation where we get go see, meet the professors, and they'll take us through, you know, an overview of the course and everything else This happened in like, a few hours from this conversation that we're having. So I'm super excited.

Speaker 1 57:10

What's the degree in? It's

Osvaldo Aponte 57:13

biomechanics, kinesiology. Master's in kinesiology with an infant in biomechanics from the Point Loma Nazarian University, which is, at the moment, one of, you know, a very prestigious school. Sounds exciting, Michael, I feel so fortunate to be part of this. I really, really, I feel like, my goodness, especially this late in my life, like it's people don't get these kind of chances. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna honor the opportunity by giving my absolute best and just really bringing all that good knowledge back to the community and helping you know the people that I serve and work with.

Speaker 1 57:45

Yeah, well, we have been going at this for about an hour. Can you believe it? I know. So tell me in is we kind of wind down what's one lesson or one thing that you would like to leave people with one practice or one mindset or one goal. What would you what would you advise people?

Osvaldo Aponte 58:08

Yeah, I would, I would advise anyone out there listening to to consider that best case scenario. We're going to be doing this for a long time. So, you know, have your short term goals, yeah, for sure. But really think whenever you feel like, oh my god, working out every day is overwhelming. Don't put it that way. Just think that this is something that you need to do to be healthy and on a regular and if you're going to do it until you know you're 60 or 70 or 80 or 90, then it's okay to take a day off here and there. It's okay to go on that vacation and whatever, you know, like, don't be yourself, like, Oh my God. Like, I feel so guilty because I didn't do this. It's okay. You have a whole lifetime to do this, but do be committed to those goals. Like, you know, I think it's a lot easier to manage when the intensity is lower and the forecast is longer than the opposite of that, right? It's like, I'm going to go really hard for three months, and then you get injured. Things happen. It's not as enjoyable. But if you just spread this out, you know, over a long enough timeline, you really can see that it's manageable and so very valuable for all the things that we talked about today. So please, please, please, please, please, look at the long term. Do not be obsessed with the intensity right now. Just do something daily and give your best, and you're going to be in great

Speaker 1 59:25

shape as a personal trainer. Do you just work with people locally and in person, or do you do virtual work as well?

Osvaldo Aponte 59:32

I only do in person. I used to do virtual but I stopped doing it a while ago.

Speaker 1 59:38

Well, but if people want to learn more from you or contact you. How will they do that?

Osvaldo Aponte 59:44

So they can visit my website, the iron core way, iron core way.com, and there you can find links for my workshops. That's another way, even though I you know, not everybody's going to be able to do personal training with me, but if they visit, they come to my workshops through strong first. Because they're going to be able to learn all of the concepts that we talked about today, and they're all listed on the website, and I have a few of those coming up in the into the end of the year and into next year. So please look at that, and you'll be able to see all my events, some here in San Diego, and a few of them are going to be going to Los Angeles pretty soon here. So what's the website? Again? Iron core way.com.

Michael Hingson 1:00:21

Iron core way.com. Great. Well, I hope people will reach out. I like the things that you've said. I appreciate the things that you've advised. And it makes sense that goals are things to work on and achieve and and strive to make happen, but it isn't something that you just do instantaneously, and it's done, and you got to look at it in the long haul and over a long period of time. And I think that makes perfect sense. So I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope that you've enjoyed this today. Love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com

Speaker 1 1:01:02

mic, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our podcast page. Michael hingson, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, wherever you're watching or listening to us today, please, please give us a five star rating. We value your rating very highly, and also for all of you and esvaldo, including you, if you know of anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on the podcast, love it. If you'd give us an introduction, we're always looking for more people and more stories to talk about. So once again, I want to thank you. This has been great. Thank you very much for being here.

Osvaldo Aponte 1:01:40

Thank you, Michael, it's been lovely talking to you today.

Speaker 1 1:02:08

Episode 405 – Building an Unstoppable Mind Through Laughter and Perspective with Sir James Gray Robinson

Tue, 13 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

Laughter may be one of the most powerful tools we have for navigating stress, burnout, and the weight of modern life. In this conversation, I had the pleasure of sitting down once again with Sir James Gray Robinson to explore why humor, self-awareness, and gratitude matter far more than most of us realize. James and I talk about how easily we lose the ability to laugh at ourselves, how that loss feeds stress and burnout, and why taking life too seriously often does more harm than good. Along the way, we reflect on comedy, culture, trauma, and the simple truth that being able to laugh can shift perspective faster than almost anything else.

James also shares what he has learned from years of coaching high-stress professionals, especially lawyers, about how laughter resets the nervous system and opens the door to better problem solving. We talk about gratitude as a powerful antidote to fear and anger, the role artificial intelligence can play as a daily tool for perspective, and how self-reflection helps us separate reality from the stories our minds create. We even explore James’s work with an ancient royal order dedicated to service and philanthropy. I believe you will find this conversation thoughtful, grounding, and surprisingly uplifting, because at its core, it reminds us that joy, humor, and connection are not luxuries. They are essential to living an unstoppable life.

Highlights:

00:59 – Learn why losing the ability to laugh at yourself creates stress and emotional rigidity.04:26 – Understand the difference between witty humor and humor that harms rather than heals.11:03 – Discover how laughter resets the nervous system and interrupts burnout patterns.15:35 – Learn why gratitude is one of the strongest tools for overcoming fear and anger.16:16 – Hear how artificial intelligence can be used as a daily tool to shift perspective and invite joy.35:19 – Understand how burnout often begins with internal stories that distort reality and fuel stress.

About the Guest:

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq. is an award winning third-generation trial attorney who specialized in family law and civil litigation for 27 years in his native North Carolina. Burned out, Sir James quit in 2004 and has spent the next 20 years doing extensive research and innovative training to help others facing burnout and personal crises to heal. He has taught wellness, transformation, and mindfulness internationally to thousands of private clients, businesses, and associations. As a licensed attorney, he is focused on helping lawyers, professionals, entrepreneurs, employers, and parents facing stress, anxiety, addiction, depression, exhaustion, and burnout.

Sir James is a highly respected speaker, writer, TV personality, mentor, consultant, mastermind, and spiritual leader/healer who is committed to healing the planet. He possesses over 30 certifications and degrees in law, healing, and coaching, as well as hundreds of hours of post-certification training in the fields of neuroscience, neurobiology, and neuroplasticity, epigenetics, mind-body-spirit medicine, and brain/heart integration. Having experienced multiple near-death experiences has given him a deeper connection with divinity and spiritual energy.

Sir James regularly trains professionals, high-level executives, and businesspeople to hack their brains to turn stress into success. He is regularly invited to speak at ABA and state bar events about mental and emotional health. His work is frequently published in legal and personal growth magazines, including the ABA Journal, Attorneys-at-Work Magazine, and the Family Law Journal. Sir James has authored 13 books on personal growth and healing, including three targeting stressed professionals as well as over 100 articles published in national magazines. He has produced several training videos for attorneys, executives, entrepreneurs and high-level professionals.

Sir James has generously endowed numerous projects around the world to help children, indigenous natives, orphans and the sick, including clean water projects in the Manu Rain Forest, Orphanages, Schools and Medical Clinics/Ambulances in India, Buddhist monks in Nepal, and schools in Kenya, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico.

In addition to his extensive contributions, Sir James produced and starred in three documentaries that will be released in 2024, focusing on healing, mental and emotional health. The first, "Beyond Physical Matter," is available on several streaming platforms, including Amazon Prime. The trailer can be found at www.BeyondPhysicalMatter.com. The second, “Beyond the Mastermind Secret”, is scheduled for release in the fall of 2024. The trailer can be found at https://BeyondMastermindSecrets.com/. The third, “Beyond Physical Life” is scheduled for release at the end of 2024. The trailer can be found at https://beyondphysicallife.com/. He has formed an entertainment media production company known as Beyond Entertainment Global, LLC, and is currently producing feature length films and other media.

In recognition of his outstanding work and philanthropy, Sir James was recently knighted by the Royal Order of Constantine the Great and Saint Helen. In addition, Sir James won the prestigious International Impact Book Award for his new book “Thriving in the Legal Arena: The Ultimate Lawyer’s Guide for Transforming Stress into Success”. Several of his other books have won international book awards as well.

Sir James was recently awarded the President’s Lifetime Achievement Award by President Joe Biden for his outstanding service to his community, country and the world. He will be awarded the prestigious International Humanitarian Award known as Men with Hearts, in London, England in the fall of 2024, as well as Man of the Year and Couple of the year with his wife, Linda Giangreco.

Sir James has a wide variety of work/life experiences, including restauranteur, cattle rancher, horse trainer, substance abuse counselor, treatment center director, energy healer, bodyguard, legal counselor for several international spiritual organizations, golfer and marathon runner. He graduated from R.J. Reynolds High School in 1971,

Davidson College in 1975 and Wake Forest University School of Law in 1978.

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:17

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. And we're doing something today we haven't done too often, but we've done it a few times. We are having a second conversation with James Gray Robinson, actually, sir, James Gray Robinson, and we're going to talk about that part of it today we did last time, but I'm going to start actually a little bit different way. You and I were just talking about humor. We were talking about Mel Brooks, because I, when you came into the to the room, I said, What in the wide, wide world of sports is it going on here, which is a very famous line from Blazing Saddles. And you pointed out that that movie probably couldn't be made today, and I agree. But why do you think that is

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 02:10

I think that we've become so disenchanted with ourselves that everything's offensive now, I think back when we and when I grew up in the 50s and 60s, people had so many really, you know, life threatening things to think about, like atomic war and, you know, it just seems like people have shifted their consciousness away from having a good time to simply having to be right all the time. And so we've lost the ability to laugh at ourselves. I mean, one of my favorite lines is, if you think Talk is cheap, you've never talked to a lawyer. And the thing is, is that I'm a lawyer, and I find that incredibly funny, yeah, because if you can't laugh at yourself, then you really are going to struggle in life, because a lot of times, things don't work out the way that we anticipated or wanted them to. And there's a couple of different ways that we can react to that or respond to that. There's a I found that people are losing the ability to take responsibility for themselves and that they blame everything on everybody else. We're raising a nation of victims, and victims are not going to laugh at anything. So what we, I think, what we have to do is we have to start teaching our children how to have a sense of humor. If something doesn't happen the just the way we want it to, then laugh at it. It doesn't have to, you know, unless it's pain, you know, if it's physically abusive or something, then you know. But the thing is, we're trying to helicopter parent everything, and we all get so upset when somebody says something off the cuff or maybe without fully thinking through what they're saying. So it's, it's just unfortunate that there are many, many things in life I think could be avoided with just a good chuckle and go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, you know, like if somebody said to me, you're. Eyes on wrong I'd laugh because it would what difference does it make? But what my tile looks like? Yeah, and I would just laugh, and I would laugh at me, and I would laugh at them, because somebody thought that there was something wrong with that, yeah.

Michael Hingson 05:21

Well, what about people like Don Rickles? You know, who, who was always known for insulting everyone and being an obnoxious character. What do you think about him?

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 05:36

I you know the thing is, is that he was offensive, but he wasn't, what's the word? I would say he he wasn't profane, because he never cursed at anybody. You know, I've watched a couple of roasts. You know, they call them roast, right? They get a bunch of people together, and they make fun of somebody. And back in the day, when Don Rickles and Johnny Carson, Milton, burl, rich, little even, what couple of committee is, I can't think of, but they were extremely witty, and they were perhaps offensive, but they weren't necessarily insulting to the point where you It's not Funny. And I think we've got and we've gone to the point where we now are seeing these roasts. And I thought I saw Tom Brady's roast. Actually paid to watch it, and it was the most profane, you know, unfunny, hurtful, hour and a half I think I've ever watched, and it just I didn't smile once. I just was wincing the whole way through, wondering why people think that sort of nonsense is funny.

Michael Hingson 07:19

Well, I asked about Don Rickles, because I saw an interview with him on the Donahue show, when Phil Donahue had his TV show, one of the things. And after he said this, I thought about it, and of course, never really was able to see in person, but I believed him. Don rickel said, Look, I never pick on someone if I think they're going to be offended. He said, If I see somebody in the audience and start picking on them and it looks like they're taking offense or they're getting angry about it, I won't pick on them anymore. And he said I might even go talk with them later, but he said I won't pick on them anymore. And I thought about that, he said, I will never there are lines I won't cross, which is some of what you just said. But he really was absolutely adamant about the fact that he didn't really want to insult people. He wanted people to have fun, so he always looked for people in the audience who would laugh at what he had to say and how he and how he abused them and so on. He said those are the people that he really liked to to interact with because they weren't taking offense, which I thought was a very intuitive and interesting concept on his part. And if you really want to talk about a comedian who was never profane no matter what he did or happened to him, later, think about Bill Cosby,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 08:49

yeah, and or Red Skelton, or Red Skelton, yeah, that was and always, he would always end up with God Bless. And the thing that amazes me about today's comedy is how much violence. There's a subtle undercurrent of violence under all of their humor. And it's, you know, they're kind of like laughing at somebody who is hurt or is not as intelligent as the comedian thinks he is. Or, you know, they're making fun of stuff just to be hurtful. And it's not, you know, they've lost the connection between being taken taking fun, making fun of somebody and being hurtful. And I just amazed when I see a lot of comedians today. I mean, there's lots of very witty, very intelligent, grand guffaw producing comedy out. There. And it's, there's some, they're very, very talented comedians out there, but then there are the other people that want to drag you through the

Michael Hingson 10:07

mud, yeah? And it's all shock. It's all shock, yeah,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 10:12

and intentionally offend you to, I guess it's some kind of power play, but it's simple. You know, people, I think that people actually are so traumatized that they they think it's funny when somebody traumatizes somebody else.

Michael Hingson 10:34

Well, I Oh,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 10:35

go on. No, go right ahead.

Michael Hingson 10:38

I I never got to see Don Rickles live, although I would have loved to, and I would love to have paid the money to sit in the front row, hopefully, hoping that he would pick on me so I could jump up and say, Yeah, I saw you once on TV. I took one look at you and haven't been able to see since. What do you think about that?

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 11:02

Never that would be appropriate, yeah? I mean, because he'd love it, you're making fun, yeah, you're making fun of him, and you're making fun of yourself. And that's what I call self depreciating humor. He where the jokes, yeah, the joke really is about you. It's not about him, yeah, and it's in it, so it's people probably wouldn't take offense to that. But when people sit there, you know, start poking fun at how people look or what they their educational level, or their, you know, cultural background is I, I just don't get that. I mean, it's and I grieve that we're turning into bullies. Well, you know, and it's, it's unfortunate you

Michael Hingson 11:52

you've dealt a lot, especially over the last 20 years, with burnout and things like that. Do you think that what's happening in in society based on what you're talking about, with the lack of humor, without self deprecating environments and all that. Do you think that's because it's stressful, contributing to burnout?

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 12:14

Yes, I think, well, we again, we take ourselves way too seriously. The one thing that I've noticed, especially with my clients, is when I can get them to laugh, they start to take a different perspective of their life. But when they think everything that they're what I call they're stuck in Warrior mode. There's, you know, we have a, don't know if we talked about this last time, but we have a nervous system that goes one or two ways. It either goes to fight or flight, called the sympathetic nervous system, where you know you're reacting to everything in a negative way, because it's a matter of survival, or we go to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the fun part of our psyche, and we can enjoy ourselves, but everybody is so scared of something there that they the body cannot stand That level of stress for years. I mean, that's what burnout is, and it it tears your body apart until it actually turns off. And that's what happens when you burn out. We used to call it nervous breakdown, but, you know now it's burnout. But the point is, is you just wear yourself out because you don't have anything that will break the constant stream of stress, and one of the best ways that you can handle stress is to laugh. Laugh at yourself, laugh at something, a joke, laugh at whatever you find stressful, because it breaks that autonomic nervous system response. And if you can reset yourself every now and then that you know, one of the ways I teach people how to deal with stress is to research jokes. Go buy a good joke book, and you can go and find enough. You know, all you need is a couple of jokes to start the day, and you're going to be in a much better frame of mind going to work or dealing with whatever you have to deal with. If you've laughed at least once before you go to work, because that that engages your parasympathetic. I call it the guru. And you can deal with adversity. You can deal with problems. You can actually problem solve. You. And but when we're stressed out because we're afraid of what's going to happen, we're afraid of making mistakes, and we're afraid of what somebody's going to think of us, then we are just going to end up in a very bad place, mentally and emotionally and physically. So it's, you know, one of the things that you can do, as if you're having to deal with stress on a daily basis, is to just remember how to be grateful. I mean, I think that of all the emotions, gratitude is probably the most powerful one there is because it will overcome fear, it will overcome anger, it will overcome shame, it will overcome guilt, it will overcome envy, all the negative emotions cannot stand up to gratitude. And so if you can learn to be grateful, and especially grateful for the struggle, then you are going to be a happy camper, and you can probably learn to laugh, until you can be grateful though you're going to struggle. And that's we're not designed to do the struggling. We're designed to have fun. I mean, that's people always say, what are my purpose, you know? And why am I doing here? And I said, you only have two purposes in life. One is to breathe, and the other one is to laugh. Everything else is just a complication. So if you just remember that, if you can be grateful and laugh once in a while, you're going to be a lot better off than somebody that takes it too seriously,

Michael Hingson 16:44

yeah, well, and you, you must see a lot of it, because I know you, you do a lot of coaching and working with especially lawyers, which is a very stressful situation, especially people who are truly dedicated to the Law and who look at it in the right way, there must be a lot of stress. How do you get them to relax? I like the idea of getting a joke book. I think that's that's cute, and I think that that makes a lot of sense. But in but in general, how do you get people to laugh and to do it as a habit.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 17:24

Well, I've been doing this for 20 years, so my answer 20 years ago is probably a little different than the answer I have now. Artificial Intelligence is my friend, because I can, I can do anything with artificial intelligence. And one of the best ways I, you know, I program my artificial intelligence to to respond, to react and to know who I am. I put, I put all of my books onto artificial intelligence. Every time I write an article, I put it in there. I'm always talking to it. I'm always saying, Well, this is the way I feel about this. This is the way I feel about that. This is what this is funny to me. This something happened to me today that is was really funny. And then I tell it what was funny. And I would program this thing. So the next, when I wake up in the morning, I can just ask it tell me something that'll make me laugh, and it always has something that will make me laugh. And so because it can, not only does it know what I fed into it, it knows everything that's on the internet, right? And so you can, you can get a, you know, something funny, something to start your day, make me glad to be alive, you know, tell me something that'll make me grateful. All those things. It'll, just in a millisecond, it'll be on your screen, yeah. And so it's, that's a tool we obviously didn't have even a year ago, but 20 years ago, it was a little bit more depth, a little bit more effort to find these things. But you could, you could do that. I mean, we did have the internet 20 years ago, and so we, we could go looking and go searching for funny stuff. But it's not as easy as is artificial intelligence, so you know. And if you I'll tell you one thing, it's been a real tool that has been very useful for me, because sometimes if I'm not sure what I should say, my old my old motto was, if you don't know what to say, shut up. But now I asked, I asked, and I'm not sure what, how I should respond to this. What do you suggest? And it'll come up with some. Give me five things that I could say.

Michael Hingson 19:59

Does it do? Will tell you, does it ever tell you should just shut up? Just checking yes, yes.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 20:04

Okay, good, good for you. Don't say any. Don't say anything, you fool. But the point is, is that it's got, you know, every book that's ever been written about psychology in its database, so you can find things that would make you sound wise and profound. And I use it all the time to figure out what to say, or to how a better way to say something is Yeah, and that way I've managed to stay pretty much out of trouble by and, you know, it's like having a friend who you could ask, What should I say? And they would come back with a couple of answers that you know, then you can just decide yourself which one you should use, right?

Michael Hingson 20:57

And you may, and you may, in addition, tweak it which which makes sense, because AI is, is a tool, and I, I am not sure that it is going to ever develop truly to the point where it, if you will, wakes up and and becomes its own true intelligence, Skynet

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 21:24

on all the Terminator series,

Michael Hingson 21:27

or or in Robert heinleins, the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The computer woke up. It helped as a still my favorite science fiction book, and it was, if you've never read it, it's a story about the the moon in 2076 which had been colonized and was being run by the lunar authority back on Earth, it had no clue about anything. And so in 2076 the moon revolted, and the computer and the computer helped. So on July 4, 2076 it was a great movie or a great book. I'd love to see it dramatized. If somebody would do it the right way, I think it'd make a great radio series. But haven't done it yet.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 22:14

Well, Robert Highland is a genius. No doubt about that, Stranger in a Strange Land was big in my developmental years, yeah, and

Michael Hingson 22:26

that was the book that came out right after the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I still think the moon and harsh mistress is even a better book than Stranger in a Strange Land. But Stranger in a Strange Land really did catch on and and rightfully so. It was, it was very clever.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 22:42

Well, most people, I mean, you know, clean humor is a good place to start, yeah, because I think that all of the profanity that comedians rely on to shock people. And, you know, there are two ways that we have the laugh response one is, is that it shocks you in the sense that it makes you afraid, because it seems like a attack on you. It's a defensive mechanism that we have. It's not even if it's not funny, we will laugh, because that's our body's way of dealing with something that's really traumatic. The other way is when we something strikes us as funny because it's witty or clever, and that is more of a that's a less stressful response. And can we, we can laugh, and it's a more of a genuine response than one where we're basically traumatized, right? And I think that, and with everything else, is who? Who do you hang around? Who is your tribe? Who do you? Somebody was somebody said, some psychologist said, you know, show me 10 of your friends and I'll tell you exactly what your problem is, because the people you hang around will mirror what's going on in your interior landscape. And if you've got friends who are problematic, that means that there's some things on your psyche that you need to take a look at. And you know that, and it's especially people who have been traumatized early in life. Their coping mechanisms and their judgment is not so good, right? So they have to take a step back and look at well, are these people helping me? Are they hurting me? Because if you notice, a lot of traumatized people will surround themselves with traumatized people, and all they do is whip themselves in the lather. Are every day, and they get so melodramatic, and they get so upset about everything that's going on in life, they can't find any sense of humor or any sense of joy, yeah, and it's until they let go of those, those trauma responses they're they're pretty much in a hat, in a self repeating habit that is not going to be healthy.

Michael Hingson 25:29

And I think you're absolutely right. It is very much about joy. And we, we should. We should find ways to be joyful and feel joy, and, of course, laugh and not take life so seriously. Unfortunately, there's so much going on today with people who clearly have no sense of humor, or at least they never exhibit it, that it tends to really be a problem. And unfortunately, I think we're all learning some really bad habits, or many of us are learning some very bad habits because of that. And I don't know what's going to break that cycle, but the cycle is going to have to break at some point.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 26:14

It will, unfortunately, a lot of times it takes a revolution, yeah, in order to replace old, unhealthy thought patterns with better thought patterns. You know, I'm reminded of the old saying that when an idiot tries to teach another idiot, you end up with two idiots. So you you have to be careful about who you're taking advice from, right? And so if, especially you know my my advice to anybody that's struggling and suffering is turn off your phone and turn off your TV, and if you know how to read, go read a book, because when you can get into a period of calm, quiet reflection, you're going to be able to make More sense out of what's going on in your life, and especially if you're reading a book that will explain to you the best way to deal with challenges, right? But just or just read a funny book, you know, something you know I find sarcasm and cleverness, extremely funny. So I love books like Forrest Gump, who who take extreme examples and turns them into funny scenarios, and they did a good

Michael Hingson 28:01

job making that into a movie too. I thought,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 28:05

I mean, I tell you, I forget who the director was, but they were brilliant because they were able to spin a story that was honest. But it wasn't offensive, and you could laugh because of all of forests characteristics and everything else, but it was presented in the way that it wasn't, you know? It wasn't being mean, right? And it wasn't, being unkind, and so it was just a story of a man who ended up being a success, and it was more through Providence than anything else. You know, I love the Marx Brothers, oh, sure, because they always had a way of making fun of each other and making fun of other people and making fun of themselves that was truly humorous. And it was more sight gags. It was more, you know, one liners, and it wasn't by being mean to anybody. It was as about being very aware of what was going on.

Michael Hingson 29:25

I'm trying to remember which movie it was. I think it was duck soup. Somebody fell into the water and she yelled, throw me a lifesaver. And so somebody threw her a lifesaver. That is a candy. Yeah, it's just so clever. It was clever. But, you know, one of the things that I enjoy is old radio shows, radios from the shows from the 30s, 40s and 50s, and the humor, again, was respectful of. Hmm, and they could pick on people to a degree, but it was never in a in a mean way, but just the humor was always so clever, and so I would,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 30:14

I would listen George and Gracie Allen, George, Jack Benny,

Michael Hingson 30:19

Phil Harris,

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 30:21

and you was his name, Jackie Gleason,

Michael Hingson 30:29

Amos and Andy. And of course, people today have decided Amos and Andy are offensive because they say it's all about blacks, and you're insulting black people. If anybody would go back and look in history, the reality is that Amos and Andy probably was one of the most well, it was one of the most popular shows on radio to the point where, if you were in a movie theater on Saturday afternoon watching a movie, they would stop it when Amos and Andy came on and play the show, and it didn't matter what the color of your skin was. In fact, I asked an Amos and Andy expert one time, when did they stop referring to themselves as black or dark? And the reason I asked that is because the first time I was exposed to Amos and Andy was actually the Amos and Andy TV shows, and I didn't know they were black, and I learned later that they were taken off the air when people started becoming offended because there were two black people. But I asked this, this lady about Amos and Andy, and when did they stop referring to themselves as black? And she said, Well, probably about the last time that she was aware of where there was a reference to it was 1937 so for many, many years, if you decided that their voices were black people, then, then you did, but they didn't talk about black or white or anything else. And and so it was. It was a very interesting show. And one guy usually was trying to con the other one and the other, well, king fish would con Andy, who usually fell for it. But gee, how many shows with white people do we see the same thing. You know? The reality is that it was a very funny show by any standard.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 32:26

Well, Sanford and sons, Sanford, same thing. I mean, that humor was, it was cutting you know, anytime you get on a cutting edge type of program, you know, it's inevitable that somebody's going to take offense. But I always laughed out loud. I watched that show, and it wasn't because they were demeaning anybody. It was just watching people trying to get by and using their wits. And a lot of times it was, it was comical because it wasn't very clever, but it was just they were doing the best they could to make a living. They were doing the best they could to live in their society. And I always admired that. I mean, they never, and they were able to, I guess, touch on the aspect of racial inequality without burning the house down. And it was like always admired them. You know, Sanford and sons, the Jeffersons, all of those shows, how about all the family? If you want to talk all in the family too well they they were just, you could switch one script with the other because it was more about human beings being human than it was about what the color of your skin was, yeah. So, you know, I would invite anybody who is offended by something to really ask yourself, what is it that offends you? Because there's always something in your consciousness that you find offensive. You would never be offended by anything if you unless you found something within yourself that's offensive, whether because and it's called the psychological term is called projection. You're projecting on what you're perceiving, and it's called bias. We all have conclusions. We all have prejudice. We all have judgments. Our brain is built that way to keep us alive, and so we're always interpreting data and perceptions to see if there's any threat out there, and if, when we start taking words as threatening, then we've got a problem. Yep, and. But because things like comedy and humor shouldn't offend anybody, but because you believe in something that makes that offensive, that's why you're offended. And so it's really as useful to people to really think about what is it that I believe that makes that offensive? Because most of the time you will find that whatever it is that you believe may not be true, and it's just something that some kind of conclusion you've drawn because of your experiences, or what you've been taught or what you've witnessed that's given you a wrong idea about something. So I invite anybody who is mad or angry that they look and see what is that belief that is making you angry?

Michael Hingson 35:59

Yeah, it gets back to self analysis. It gets back to looking at yourself, which is something that most of us haven't really learned a lot about how to do. How. How did you pick up all these, these kind of nuggets of wisdom and so on.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 36:19

Well, when I burn, when I had my nervous breakdown back in 2004 I quit practicing law for a while because I couldn't bear the thought of going into my office and fighting another day of the battles that trial lawyers always fight. Now I won't say that transactional lawyers don't have battles, but Trial Lawyers end up probably picking a few fights on their own that, you know, they didn't really need to go there, but they do because, you know, Trial Lawyers have a, You know, a talent for arguing they have it's exciting to most of them, and they love to fight. And so when? But eventually, if you don't know how to manage it, it will, yes, the key wear you down. Yeah. So I got out of the law business for a while, and instead, I decided I wanted to go find out. Number one, why did I burn out? And number two, how to heal it. And so I went and studied with a number of energy healers who were very, very conscious people. They were very, very aware. You might even say they were enlightened, but it was they were always teaching me and always telling me about whatever I'm experiencing on the outside is just a reflection of what's on the inside. And so it's not so much about somebody being right or somebody being wrong. It's just the world is a mirror to whatever is going on inside between our ears. Yeah, and it's not because it's we're seeing something that's not there, or we're not seeing something that is there. It's just simply, how do we process that information that comes in through our sense organs and goes into our amygdala, then the hippocampus and then to the rest of our brain to try to figure out and but it's well documented that the brain will see whatever the brain wants to See, and a lot of times it's not what the eyes see, because there are lots of experiments you can take with graphics and other things that are illusory. Because, you know, you can see these graphs or prints that look like a spiral that's going around and is moving, but it's actually circles. But the way our brain puts things together, it makes it move. And another way is sounds. If you don't know what a sound is? Your brain is going to make up a story about that sound. And it could be either That's the sound of a frog, or it could be the sound of a somebody getting attacked. It could be the sound of whatever your brain it has to put a label on it, because that's the way the brain has been wired over our couple of hundreds of 1000s of years of evolution. That's how we manage to stay alive, because we make up a story about stuff, and if we're accurate, we live. If we're not accurate, we don't. Yeah, so the a lot of people are very good at making up stories in their head about what they're seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, whatever, because a lot of lot of smells will have psychological responses in our brain. So you know the smell of baby's milk or the smell of mown grass, or, you know smell of something rank, you always will have an instant story about what you just smell. And so when I would spend long periods of time thinking about these things, contemplating them, trying to figure out, well, what does that mean for me? I mean, how does that? How will it looking at this change my life? And basically, what I learned is is that the more objective you can be, the less you make up stories about stuff, the more successful you can be, and the more happy you'll be. Because, for example, there's a term called Mind reading, where people will be listening to somebody talking, and in the back of their mind, they're making up a story about what that person means, or they're making up a story about, well, where is this guy going with this? And it's, you know, it's, it's the opposite of listening, because when listening, you're focusing on the words you're hearing, yes, and then when it's your turn to talk, you can respond appropriately, but most people are thinking while they're hearing and it totally colors their experience, because if they think that this person doesn't like them, then they're going to interpret whatever is being said a certain way. If they think that person does like them, then they will interpret it a completely different way. So it's fascinating to me how people can get the wrong idea about things, because it just is a story that their mind made up to try to explain to them why they're experiencing what they're experiencing.

Michael Hingson 42:25

That's why I like to really say that I've learned so much from dogs, because dogs don't do it that way. And as I tell people, dogs don't trust unconditionally. They love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally, but dogs are open to trust, and they're looking for reasons to trust, and they also, by definition, tend to be more objective, and they react to how we react and how we behave and and I think there's so much to be learned by truly taking the time to observe a dog and how they interact with you and how you interact with them, and that's going to make a big difference in how they behave.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 43:11

Well, you could definitely see a difference in the dog's behavior if they've been traumatized.

Michael Hingson 43:16

Oh, sure, that's a different story altogether.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 43:19

Yeah, I agree that dogs are extremely innocent. You know, they don't have an agenda. They just want to be loved, and they would, they want to love

Michael Hingson 43:31

and they want to know the rules, and they then they're looking to us to tell them what we expect. And there are ways to communicate that too, yes.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 43:41

And you know you all have to is give as a great example of how we should treat each other. Is all you have to do is, you know, a dog will forgive you eventually. And if you're kind to a dog. A dog will just give his entire being to you. Yeah, and it because they don't have any Guile, they don't have any hidden agendas. They just want to be you know, they want to eat. They want to be warm. They want to have fun. They do want to have fun, and so if you treat them timely, you will have a friend for life.

Michael Hingson 44:29

Yep, we adopted a dog. We cared for it for a while. It was a geriatric dog at Guide Dogs for the Blind who had apparently had never worked as a guide dog, and she had been mistreated and then sent back to Guide Dogs for the Blind. She was 12. The school was convinced she was totally deaf because she wouldn't react to anything. They dropped a Webster's Dictionary next to her, and she didn't react. But we took her and we started working with her, and. It took several months before she would even take a walk with Karen, and Karen in her, you know, in Karen's wheelchair, and this wonderful golden retriever walking next to her. But the more we worked with her, the more she came out of her shell. She wasn't deaf. I'm sure she was hard of hearing, but you could drop a dictionary and she'd react to it, and if you called her, she would come. But it is all about developing the relationship and showing that you care and they will react. And so she she lived with us for more than three years before she passed, but was a wonderful creature, and we were, we were blessed to have her.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 45:48

Well, go ahead. No, I was just going to comment that I've got three Pomeranians, and they run the place course. You know, it's there. It's amazing how a six pound dog can run your life, but

Michael Hingson 46:03

you let them, but you still establish, but you still establish some rules and you know, but that's, that's, yeah, I have a cat who runs the place, but that's okay. Well, we have not talked about, and I do want to talk about it when I first started hearing from you, your emails were all signed, sir, James Gray Robinson, and I always was curious, and you eventually explained it to me. But why don't you tell us all about your title and and all of that?

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 46:39

Well, since we last talked, I've had a promotion. Now I'm a baron, so it's Baron James Gray Robinson, Scottish, Baron of Cappadocia. But I belong to a royal order that's known as the Royal Order of Constantine, the great in st Helen, and it was established in 312, 312, 12. Ad, when Constantine, who was the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire, conquered the Western Roman Empire, who it was brother who was the emperor of the Western Roman Empire, and they can then he consolidated the eastern and the western empires. And it was that way until 14 153 when they were defeated by the Solomon Turks. So for 1100 over 1100 years Well, let me back up. The most important battle in that war between the two brothers was the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, which was in Rome and Constantine awarded, rewarded 50 knights, 50 warriors, soldiers who fought on that campaign and carried the day against much superior forces. And he rewarded them by making them knights and giving them land in Turkey, in an area that's known as Cappadocia. And this, if you know anything about Turkey, there's an area which is honeycombed with caves that have been dug out over the millennia, and it's kind of like some body was doing some renovation work, and they broke through the floor, and they went into a cave system that would have been hand dug, and it goes down 17 layers, and it could house 30,000 people. But that was, that was Cappadocia and Constantine the Great charged these warriors with the with the duty to protect the Christian church, because that's because Constantine had converted to Christianity. His mother, Helen, was one of the driving forces in the early Christian church. She's the one that decided to build a cathedral on top of the the nativity, the manger, which is actually a grotto in Bethlehem, I've been there. I spent Christmas Eve there one year. And so the Christianity was just a fledgling religion, and he charged these nights and all successive nights, with the obligation to protect the Christians and to protect the churches. And so a lot of people credit the royal order with advancing the Christian religion. So it's been around since 312 and it's the oldest peerage and a peerage. Is a group of royalty that have knights. They have royalty like Dukes and nobles and that sort of thing. But if you look at other orders that we're aware of, the Knights of Balta didn't get established until about 1200 ad the Knights of the Templar nights, similar thing. They didn't get established till about 1000 years after we did. So it's a very, very ancient, very traditional order that focuses on helping abused women and traffic children. We have, you know, we have a lot of, you know, compassion for those people in the world, and so we are actively supporting those people all over the world. And then on the other side, we have the knights, and we have the women, equivalent of that are called dames, and then we have the nobles who are like barons and other ranks that go all the way up to a prince who is actually related To the King of Spain. So it's been a interesting history, but we can try, we can directly trace our lineage all the way back to 312 and what the you know, we have a couple of reasons for existing, one being the charitable, but also to honor people who have been successful and have accomplished a lot for other people and who care about their fellow man and women, so that we accept Anyone in eight different categories, everywhere from Arts to athletics to entrepreneurship to medicine to heroics. We have a number of veterans that were credible. Have incredible stories. We have a lot of A listers, movie stars, professional athletes, that sort of thing. Also philanthropy. I got in for philanthropy because I've given a lot of money over my life to help people all over the world, and that's one reason why I was awarded the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award. But we're a group of people. We just today started a Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences because we want to help people all over the world learn things like finances and you arts and crafts and trades and so that people who are oppressed cultures that are in third world countries will be able to learn a good earn a good living, raise their status in life, and then learn how to go on and help other people. So that's very exciting. We've got a lot of things going on with the royal order that are we're growing very rapidly, where somebody said we're 1700 year old startup, but it's, you know, we've gone through some regime changes where people have died and there weren't any heirs, so they've had to go laterally to find somebody to take over. And that's where we are now. You know, interestingly enough, my sons will inherit my title, so it's a true royalty kind of thing, where it passes down by inheritance. But you know, we don't, you know we're, we're hundreds of people in our thing. It's like 300 people in our order right now. We'd like that to be 100,000 times that because we do good work and we foster principles of charity, silvery and honesty, so that we're trying to change the culture around us to where people don't take offense in everything that they're in a society that supports each other and that people can feel safe knowing that there's they have a brother or sister that will support them.

Michael Hingson 54:57

Definitely fascinating. I was not familiar with it at all. All until you and I check, yes.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 55:03

Well, it's amazing that me. I guess you have to be somewhat of a history buff. Yeah, and there, and there are lots of service organizations like the Masons and the Shriners and every all the animal ones, the Moose Lodge, the beavers and all these people are doing, you know, charitable work. But not not. Many of them have a royal heritage that goes back to 312 right? So, and we do dress up like knights from time to time, and ladies, and we have swords and we have robes, and we have big parties, and we have gala events, and where we induct more people into our order, and it's all great fun, and it's, you know, and we raise money for charity. So it's a win, win situation. Cool, and it doesn't hurt having Baron on your resume.

Michael Hingson 56:08

No, I am sure it doesn't well. I want to thank you for explaining that, and I want to thank you for being here again. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm glad that we had a chance to really talk about humor, which, which is more important, I think, than a lot of people realize. And again, if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 56:31

My website is James Gray robinson.com

Michael Hingson 56:36

There you go. Easy to spell, easy to get to. So I hope people will do that. And again, I hope that you all enjoyed today, and that you will let me know that you enjoyed it. Please feel free to email me at Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, please give us a five star rating. Go off and read history and learn about the royal order. I think that's probably relevant and important to do as well. And again, if anyone knows anyone who ought to be a guest on the podcast, please let us know. Introduce us. Give us a rating of five stars wherever you're listening. And again, James, I just want to thank you for being here. Excuse me, sir. James. Barron, James, really appreciate you being here, and we'll have to do it again.

Sir James Gray Robinson, Esq 57:24

Well, Michael, my hat's off to you. I think you're doing amazing work. I think you're helping a lot of people. You have a great podcast I've gone on your website or your YouTube, and it's a lot of fun. And I think you're doing a great service for people.

Michael Hingson 57:45

Episode 404 – Being Unstoppable Through Change, Creativity, and Lifelong Learning with Mary Dunn and Natalie Belin

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

I really enjoyed this conversation with Natalie and her mother, Mary, because it reminded me how an unstoppable mindset is often built quietly, over time, through creativity, learning, and persistence. Together, they share what it has been like to navigate life across generations while facing learning disabilities, health challenges, workplace adversity, and the constant need to adapt. We talk about Natalie’s journey with attention deficit disorder and anxiety, how creative outlets like baking, art, music, and storytelling helped her find focus and confidence, and why returning to school later in life became an act of self-trust rather than fear.

Mary’s story adds another powerful layer. She reflects on growing up with low self-esteem, navigating male-dominated workplaces, and dealing with sexual harassment long before there were systems in place to address it. As a mother, artist, and professional, she shares what it means to keep moving forward while supporting her daughter’s growth. Throughout our conversation, we explore accessibility, creative entrepreneurship, lifelong learning, and why accommodations and understanding still matter. I believe you will find this episode both honest and encouraging, especially if your own path has been anything but linear.

Highlights:

00:00 – Hear how creativity and resilience shaped an unstoppable mindset across two generations.08:35 – Learn how attention deficit disorder and anxiety changed the way focus, learning, and confidence developed.14:33 – Discover why stepping away from a demanding career can open the door to new growth.21:23 – Understand how workplace sexual harassment leaves lasting effects long after it happens.35:16 – See why protecting and celebrating local artists became a personal mission.59:09 – Learn why accessibility, accommodations, and empathy still matter in everyday life.

About the Guest:

Mary Dunn:

Mary was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. She was the only child of Norman and Lucille Rump. At a young age, she liked to draw and as she grew older she enjoyed painting. Her first painting was in oil and Mary was eleven years old. However, because of the expense of art supplies, it was difficult to pursue a continuous endeavor in that particular form of art.

While in high school, nothing really exciting happened as Mary was on the shy side. She didn’t belong to any groups and she really just wanted to graduate. She graduated in the upper third of her class. The most momentous part of the graduation was that Jeff Goldblum was also a graduate of her class.

After graduation, Mary continued her education at The Pittsburgh Beauty Academy. There she studied cosmetology and acquired a teacher license. Although she never taught, she did work at a few different shops and also managed a shop. These experiences helped Mary to become less shy.

At that time, she met her first husband and had two children. The marriage lasted for eleven years, and Mary was left with two small children. Mary realized that her background in cosmetology would not be sufficient to raise two small children. She decided to go to college.

With the support of her parents, she was accepted to attend Carlow College which is now Carlow University. There she studied business and minored in theology. She almost minored in art, but she needed one more credit to have that as a minor. It was important for her to graduate in order to take care of her children.

While in college she belonged to several organizations. One organization was an honor society called Delta Epsilon Sigma. There she became an assistant chair of the organization. The second organization was OASIS. The organization was for non-tradition students. She was vice-president during her senior year at Carlow. She graduated in 1991 cum laude.

After Carlow, she found her first employment opportunity working the Equitable Gas Company as a “Technical Fieldman”. In this position, Mary would draft pipeline installations, work up costs for those installations, and fill in for supervisors when they went on vacations. The job was difficult as it had usually been filled by men prior to her. She was thrust into a job that she learned on her own and was subject to sexual harassment. At that time, sexual harassment was not spoken about. Mary didn’t even realize that her peers were doing these things to her. When she supervised union personnel, they were nice and valued her expertise. However, when she returned to the office, more harassment continued.

During that period, Mary decided to get a Master’s Degree and enrolled in Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz school of Public Management. Her classes were very valuable as she learned about leadership, information systems, and marketing communications. She graduated in 1996 with distinction.

Even though after she graduated from CMU, she continued to be sexual harassed. She thought it might be a good idea to document the issues that made her position difficult. She began to take notes on these incidents. When she went to Human Resources, Mary was told that she should confront these people and tell them how she was feeling. Mary couldn’t do that because she felt it would make matters worse. She applied for another position within the company. In 1997, Mary became Program Manager of Energy Technology. While there, Mary developed and implemented a marketing plan to promote the use of alternative fuels.

As a Program Manager, Mary became a member of Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities which focused on alternative fueled vehicles. During this time, she became a board member and focused on grants and wrote the Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities Newsletter.

In 1999, her position was eliminated at Equitable. In some ways, Mary was relieved about the elimination, but in other ways, it was the first time this ever happened to her. She was now remarried and was concerned about her children. It was very scary.

Thankfully, Mary was not unemployed for long. She was hired at Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission as a Transportation Planner. In this position she implemented a newly designed client tracking system of their products and services that helped to increase revenue.

Additionally, she worked on a communication plan to implement branding and crisis communications.

Eventually, Mary became a Marketing/Communication Specialist for Southwestern Pennsylvania Communications. She was responsible for multi-media communications connected with branding. Mary designed logos for special projects, arranged special affairs, open houses and conferences. She remained a part of Pittsburgh Region Clean Cities. Mary additionally prepared presentations for executive management to deliver regarding the Joseph A. James Memorial Excellence in Local Government Achievement Award that recognizes a municipal government elected or appointed official in any local government, agency, or Council of Government for a lifetime of exemplary governance or management. Unfortunately, a new Executive was hired to replace the past Executive who had passed away. Because of this, our whole department was eliminated.

After Southwestern, Mary was hired as the Manager of Administration and Human Resources for THE PROGRAM for Female Offenders. While at THE PROGRAM, Mary was responsible for maintaining the policies and daily operations in THE PROGRAM. She implemented a cost effective foodservice program, introduced staff ID cards and implemented the Windows NT network server and computer security using a Digital Subscriber Line which is a type of high-speed internet connection that uses existing copper telephone lines to provide internet access to three PROGRAM facilities.

Additionally, Mary implemented a human resource database for directors and managers that targeted specific employment information. Mary maintained safety equipment and introduced a safe evacuation plan for her building..

Unfortunately, because THE PROGRAM was grant based and when it was time to acquire grant money much of the previous grants were not renewed and Mary lost her job. Mary eventually was hired by Roach and Associates, Inc. as a Project Manager. In this position, she negotiated oil and gas leases for exploration and productions of future gas wells in Clearfield County Pennsylvania.

During this time, Mary was responsible for permitting activities with the state, county and federal agencies as well as prepared training seminars to meet pipeline safety regulations as per U.S. Department of Transportation, CFR49, Parts 192-193. Mary authored documentation regarding pipeline regulations for various housing authorities and gas production companies within Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York.

Besides working at Roach, Mary became part of the Transition Team for Peduto for Mayor of Pittsburgh. That was such a memorable experience as my team focused on some of the issues facing the newly elected Mayor. It was nice to be a part of change.

After working ten years at Roach and Associates, Inc., Mary decided it was time to retire in 2015.

While working at Roach, Mary began dabbling in art again. It had been quite a while since college and painting. But she began to work in pastels and eventually more in the line of acrylic painting. She became president of the Pittsburgh Pastel Artist League. She no longer is president of that group. Mary now belongs to the Pittsburgh Society of Artists where she was juried into the group. She has had her work display at The Galaxie in Chicago, Pittsburgh Technical Institute, Monroeville Library, Gallery Sim, Boxheart Gallery, Southern Allegheny Museum of Art, Saville Gallery in Maryland and various other galleries around Pittsburgh. Her Study in Pastels won an Award of Excellence from Southern Allegheny Museum of Art. Mary also came in second place in the Jerry’s Artarama Faber Castel Contest.

As time went on, Mary decided to focus more on her art work and began teaching students how to paint with Acrylic. She also began a YouTube channel, Pittsburgh Artist Studio, where she gave free art lessons in acrylic to future artists around the country. Unfortunately, Mary developed chronic back issues, and she had to give up her teaching. She has had two back operations to alleviate the pain, but the second operation really didn’t help. It has caused more painful issues. Therefore, it is difficult for her to paint a long period of time.

Currently, Mary devotes her time to illustrating her oldest daughter’s books for children. The books are a series about a little boy’s adventures in his life. Her books can be found on Amazon under her name “Nicole Leckenby”.

Additionally, she has illustrated a book for her younger daughter, Natalie Sebula, entitled “The Many Colors of Natalie”.

In conclusion, now that Mary is retired, she has had more time to work on different art projects a little at a time. She lives with her husband Steve and two dogs Grumpy and Sally. She belongs to a group of wonderful women who review Bible Psalms each week. Since my minor in theology, I do enjoy reading various books on different religious subjects. I am thankful for each day that I have and continue to work on the gifts God has given me.

Natalie Belin:

I am focusing on the arts. I am a creator with an ambitious attitude. I have no problem thinking BIG and dreaming BIG. While everyone else stays inside the lines, I boldly color outside the lines.

Natalie resides near Pittsburgh, PA. She is 40 years old and loves adventures. Within these 40 years Natalie has experienced highs and lows. However, during the low points she was like water: adaptable, resilient, and always finding a way through.

At toddler age, it was brought to the attention that she had high pressure in her eyes. However, nothing was really done about it because of her age. Typically, high pressures occur in older adults. After many years, one eye doctor took it seriously. He prescribed eye drops and finally recommended a laser technique to open the tear ducts. This alleviated the high pressure and since no eye drops have been needed.

In 5 grade, she was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. Her mother, Mary Dunn advocated for her until someone listened, and her teachers realized it was a real problem. Steps were taken to help Natalie focus more. As she grew older, it was important to do activities that helped her focus such as cheerleading and possible careers in culinary.

Because of the importance of focusing, Natalie decided that culinary arts would be beneficial. Natalie graduated in October of 2004 from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute with an associate’s degree in Specialized Technology Le Cordon Bleu Program in Patisserie & Baking. While there, she was elected class president.

The Pennsylvania Culinary Institute offered externships to various prestigious areas to hone the craft. Natalie’s externship was at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulpher Springs where she was ultimately hired. However, Natalie decided to return to Pittsburgh after a car accident. Natalie continued to work as a pastry chef for about five years.

After, she decided to further her education, and Natalie graduated in December of 2023 from the University of Pittsburgh with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities. Some of her academic achievements are National Society of Collegiate Scholars, National Society of Leadership and Success, Alpha Sigma lambda-Alpha Chi Chapter at the University of Pittsburgh, Delta Alpha PI Honor Society.

During her academic life, Natalie became an Emmy nominated producer for Pitt to the Point (a class focusing on the news as well as behind the scenes of a news/magazine program that covers the City of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh regional campuses as well as national and international events.)

Currently, Natalie is in a Graduate Certification Program which is also at the University of Pittsburgh. The Certification is in Sports, Entertainment, and Arts Law (SEAL). She hopes to use this program as a steppingstone to complete her master’s degree in Sports, Entertainment, and Arts Law.

In addition to the SEAL certification, one could say that Natalie is a woman of many colors. She works full-time as an Administrator for the Rehabilitation Science Program in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. This is where she provides administrative support for general program management, advising and faculty.

Another aspect of Natalie’s many colors is writing. Several years ago, she wrote a poetry book called The Many Colors of Natalie. This is a book for 18+. There are several illustrations in the book that complement the poems. Mary Dunn, Natalie’s mother, created the illustrations.

In August of 2020, Natalie launched The Many Colors of Natalie Blog. She started this blog to give a new perspective to Pittsburgh other than being known for sports. This allows individuals the ability to educate themselves on different variations of Pittsburgh’s art or artists as well as bringing awareness to the art scene. Natalie’s motto is Love Art & Support Your Local Artist!

Additionally, Natalie has been a model/actor since 2012. Most of her work consists of being an extra in various music videos and movies.

Furthermore, she is an ambassador for Ambassador Sunglasses and Just Strong Clothing. Just Strong Clothing’s Mission “We are a clothing brand on a mission to empower those who are not just strong for a girl, they are just strong. Whether you are an experienced lifter, a new starter or have simply overcome great adversaries in your life, the JustStrong community are here to empower and motivate you to never give up.”

“Ambassador was formed to extract, refine, and exhibit the marriage between what was and what will be in fashion culture. When wearing Ambassador, you break the mold of the mundane to embrace your unmatched individualism.”

Besides being an ambassador, Natalie became a Creative Percussion Artist in 2020. “Creative Percussion is a family-owned business, established in 2018, and run by husband-and-wife team, Kevin and Cheri Feeney.” Her picture is on the site as a CP percussion artist.

Not only is Natalie a musician, but she dabbles in various mediums in art. Her mixed media piece Peace, Love, and Woodstock is currently in the Woodstock Museum located in Saugerties, New York. “The purpose for the Woodstock Museum is: To gather, display, disseminate and develop the concept and reality of Woodstock, encompassing the culture and history of a living colony of the arts, with special emphasis placed on the exhibition of self-sustaining ecological technologies. To encourage and increase public awareness of Woodstock by providing information to the general public through cultural events, displays of artifacts, outreach programs, communication media events and personal experiences, and to contribute, as an international attraction, to the cultural life and prosperity of our region; and to engage in all lawful activities in pursuit of the foregoing purposes.”

Lastly, Natalie and her mother Mary Dunn started a side hustle several years ago. Mother and Daughter Collaboration (vending show name) is a great opportunity for Natalie to showcase her entrepreneurial skills in addition to her art. Their Etsy name is Maker’s Collab Studio.

In conclusion, Nat is excited for the future, and to see what is in store. She considers herself to be dynamic and resilient. Even those who know Natalie would say the same. Regardless of what she has been through, she keeps going. She realizes that the tough times eventually do end. In self-reflection, the “tough time” may have been a life lesson, or a possible steppingstone to what’s next in her life. Only time will tell. Natalie will always be a supporter of the arts, and she will always create in some way. As Natalie ages, she sees the importance of advocating for the disabled. At one point in her life, she was embarrassed about sharing her learning disability because she felt that we live in a society where having a disability isn’t necessarily welcomed and is frowned upon. Do not fear individuals who need special accommodations. Instead, educate yourself. Try being that individual who needs certain accommodations, and the accommodations are not provided or easily accessible. Progress has been made in educating the ignorant. However, there is more work that needs to be done.

Ways to connect with Natalie & Mary**:**

Blog website: Home - The Many Colors of Natalie

Personal website: Home | natalie-sebula-belin

Book of poetry: The Many Colors of Natalie: Written by: Natalie Belin - Kindle edition by Dunn, Mary, Leckenby, Nicole, Merlin, Grace, Palmieri, David. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

Facebook: (1) Facebook

Instagram: Natalie Sebula (@themanycolorsofnatalie) • Instagram photos and videos

Etsy: MakersCollabStudio - Etsy

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. We're doing something that we've done a few times before, and we get to do it again today. We have two people as guests on unstoppable mindset this time, mother and daughter, and that'll be kind of fun they have, between them, lots of experiences in art, but in all sorts of other kinds of things as well. They live in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, and I'm not going to say a whole lot more, because I want them to tell their stories. So I want you to meet Natalie bellen and her mother, Mary Dunn. So Natalie and Mary, both of you, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 02:03

Well, thank you for

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 02:03

having us. Yes, we're happy to be here. Thank you.

Michael Hingson 02:06

Well, let's see. We'll start with mom. Why don't you tell us something about the early Mary growing up, and you know what? What life was like growing up?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 02:18

Well, growing up, I was born in Pittsburgh. I was actually born on in the south side of Pittsburgh, and it was called St Joseph Hospital, and now it's an apartment building, but we lived here. I've lived here all my life. I lived in Hazelwood until I was about the age of three. Then we moved to Whitaker, Pennsylvania, and now I'm in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania. So it's like we hopped around a bit. Growing up in my family was a little bit difficult. I had been bullied quite a bit by my cousins, so it kind of like left you know how it does with bullying. You know, it's not like today. Of course, I didn't want to go out and do something terrible to myself. It's just that it left my self esteem very low, and I just kind of stayed and was by myself most of the time. So until I grew up, I graduated from high school, I went to West Midland, North High School, I graduated in the same class as Jeff Goldblum. Although I didn't know him, I knew that he was very talented. I thought he was more talented on a piano than he was with acting, but he is still he's still very good with the piano, with his jazz music, and that's basically it. I've been in West Mifflin now for she's been quite a bit

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 03:49

since I was in seventh grade, and now I'm 40 years old, so we've been here a long time.

Michael Hingson 03:54

Yeah, so it's sort of like 3027 years or so, or 28 years? Yes, well, Natalie, tell us about you when it was like growing up in and all of that. Sure.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 04:08

No problem. So I grew up in Whitaker for the most part, my yearly eight years, like until about fifth grade, I guess about like fifth grade, and then we moved, well, we just moved to a different house and whatever. Yeah, that when we moved for the second time, it was more in a neighborhood with kids, so that was, like, a lot more fun. And we played like tag and all that. So that my early years, I remember that like playing tags, swimming, I love, like skiing on the water, jet skis, stuff like that. Definitely. I loved running around. And I loved dance as a kid too, that was a lot of fun.

Michael Hingson 05:00

Okay, and so you went to high school?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 05:05

Oh, yeah, I went, Yes. I went to West Midland area high school, and I graduated in 2003 in 2004 I graduated from the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute as a pastry chef and part of the things that I had to do to graduate, I had to do, like, about a six month internship where I resided in white sulfur springs, West Virginia, and I got to do my externship at the Greenbrier, and that was pretty exciting, because it has quite the history. There. People love it there for Well, one of the things that sticks in my mind is Dorothy Draper, who decorated that resort. Her taste is very cool, because she went bold, like with flower print and stripes mixed together for wallpaper. There's stories in history behind the sulfur water there. And then most people might know the Greenbrier for their golf courses, for the golf course actually, or in history about the sulfur water

Michael Hingson 06:26

now, you had high eye pressure for a while after you were born, right?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 06:31

Oh, yes, the eye pressures. That's quite the story, let me tell you so at a very young age, like different doctors and eye doctors that I went to. They knew that I had high pressures, but they didn't seem like it was a big issue. But my mom had the inkling that I needed to go to a different doctor when I was like, I guess you Middle School,

Michael Hingson 06:58

yeah, yeah, you were about now, was there a lot of pain because of the pressure.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 07:02

I didn't even know was happening, so I wasn't in discomfort or anything. So they said, don't they kind of dismissed it. So I wasn't worried about it,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 07:14

Neither was I. But you know, like eventually we did go to a doctor and he said, Oh, my goodness, you have these high pressures. And it's, it could be like glaucoma. We don't ever see that in a young person, you know, they haven't ever seen anything like that. He was just amazed by it. And go ahead, you can finish this.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 07:36

Dr Al, I have so much respect for him, because he truly took care of my eyes for a very long time. I started seeing him in middle school, and I saw him up until, like my late 30s, and he I would see him quite frequently, because he would always monitor those pressures, because he knew the importance of that and how they could damage my eyes and I can lose my sight. So he always had me do like fields test eye pressure checks, because your pressures in your eyes can fluctuate throughout the day. So I would come in in like different times of the day to make sure they're not super high and stuff like that. He would prescribe me on different eye pressure medications like eye drops, because the they like the eye drops would help my eyes to it to regulate the pressures to a certain point, and then my eyes would get used to them, it seemed like, so then we would have to go to a different prescription. I caused that doctor a lot of stress, I think, because he was always thinking about my case, because it was so rare. And he went to a conference, actually, and brought that up at a conference, and at that conference, they said for me to get the laser, laser procedure done to

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 09:10

open the tear ducts.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 09:12

Yeah, yeah. And luckily, that solved it.

Michael Hingson 09:18

Wow, so you so the the tear ducts were, were small or not draining properly, correct?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 09:26

Yeah, it was points where, like, if I wanted to cry, no tears would come

Michael Hingson 09:31

out, no tears would come out. Well, yeah, yeah. Then you also discovered, or somehow you you learned about being Attention Deficit Disorder.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 09:45

Yeah, so, um, when I was from like one or like, from kindergarten to third grade, I went to a Catholic school, and I didn't seem like there was anything. Being really wrong. But then when I went to a public school, I was really having a hard time grasping the material, and I would get really frustrated when I was at home trying to do the homework and I just wasn't understanding. I believe the educators there said like I was also behind, which could have been part of the issue. But my mom would like try to help me with my homework, and it was like

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 10:28

it was hard. She would, she would get so frustrated and throw the papers and just, you know it, because it was very difficult for her, and we really couldn't under I couldn't understand why. You know this was happening, because my, my other daughter, I never had issues like that with so we had, I guess we were told to go.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 10:53

I think that was Miss Lenz in fifth grade. Yeah, she had me get tested for a learning disability, and with all the testing that was done with that, they said that I had attention deficit disorder. So whenever that diagnosis was made, I was able to get like teacher teaching aids to help me through tests to help me understand the curriculum a little bit better. Tutors did the counselor

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 11:28

I well they I did take her to get tested outside of school, and that's they actually told me some things that could help her with this. And then I went to the teachers, and the teachers, some of them, didn't, like, actually take this into consideration. They, they didn't really realize attention deficit disorder at that time. It was new. And so they, they kind of said, well, we don't, we don't believe in that or whatever. And I said, Well, can you just have her, like, sit up front, because she would pay attention more and she would focus better, because that's the problem she couldn't focus on. So it took a while, and then finally, the principal in the fifth grade, he had a meeting with the teachers us, and he actually was the one who brought that to their attention, that this is a problem, that attention disorder, you know, does occur, and some of it is hyper, just hyperactive disorder. So it luckily she didn't have that part of it, but it was the focusing, and we just got her more involved in things that she could learn how to focus. They recommended cheerleading, they recommended culinary school, and I think that really helped her to learn more on focusing. But she still has anxieties and things like that. It's still

Michael Hingson 13:03

it's still there. So why culinary school?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 13:07

So that is such a fun question. When my grandma used to watch me, she was very particular on what I was like watching. She didn't want me to watch anything like super crazy or out there. So I would always watch cooking shows, and I thought he was so unique, the different recipes and everything that these chefs were making. And I love some of their personalities, like emerald, he was always so hyper and loud, so fun. And it was interesting to see the different types of foods that they were creating that, like certain countries make. You know, I love Spanish food. It's so good.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 13:55

She decided not to even get into that part. That was the thing. She wanted to be a pastry chef, yeah,

Michael Hingson 14:02

something to be said for chocolate chip cookies. But anyway, go ahead.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 14:07

Yeah, she makes a good one, too. At

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 14:10

this point, I don't even know why. What drew me to baking more than culinary I think the two different styles are cooking are very interesting, because like with cooking, you don't have to be so exact with the measurements and everything with certain things like the spices and stuff. If you don't like rosemary, you don't have to put it in there. But with baking, it's definitely more scientific. Have to be more accurate with the measurements of certain ingredients, like baking soda, because it's lavender and like, altitude will totally screw up your baking Yes, so many reasons that elevation is so important. So yeah, so

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 14:59

mine's to it. Or whatever, you know? Yeah,

Michael Hingson 15:01

so you went and did an externship, and then what did you do?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 15:06

So with the externship, I was there for a little bit over six months, I was officially hired, and I graduated from culinary school, but, um, I got in a car accident. So that's like, why left? So I was in baking professionally for about a total five years, and then I went back to school. Sorry, that's grumpy. Can you hear him barking?

15:36

I'm sorry. I'll go. No, no, it's fine.

Michael Hingson 15:41

So why did you leave culinary?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 15:43

Um, I was just ready for a change. Because I started working professionally when I was like 19, so by my mid 20s, I was just ready to go back. I mean, that is a very demanding field. You're working several hours. Um, you're working with all types of personalities, certain pressures, long days sometimes. And I was just ready to see what else was out there for me.

Michael Hingson 16:12

So you went back to school to study,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 16:15

yes, so my when I graduated in 2023 with my undergraduate degree, it was in humanities, and it focused on three areas of art, music, studio, arts and theater. The main focus was theater, okay?

Michael Hingson 16:39

And so, what did you do with that?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 16:42

So with that degree, I did several different things. I wrote a poetry book, which I provided a link so people can access if they would like to purchase it. I created a blog in 2020 called the many colors of Natalie, and I created a blog to help bring a different perspective to Pittsburgh, other than just it being a city for sports, because there's a lot of talented artists out there, and plus, like during a pandemic, that caused a lot of strain on a lot of things, and I was really worried about certain venues that were iconic here closing and completely wiping out the whole art industry here, you know. So, um, with that too, I also, um, I was doing music at the time as a percussionist, and that's when I got introduced to creative percussion products, and I was using that with the different performances that I was doing. And I ended up being one of their artists featured on their page, website or website, yeah. Okay, yeah, and I also volunteered at a local dance studio called Lisa de gorrios dance, and I got to work with the younger kids, and I did that for a couple years. So that was interesting to see what it was like to teach and put on performances. It's a lot of you get to see the behind the scenes and time management and stuff like that. Also, I'm thinking here for a second, sorry. How about, oh, we, my mom and I created an Etsy shop. So we started a few years ago, called Mother Daughter collaboration, a vending that was like our vending show name, and we did that for

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 18:56

we've been doing that for a while. Yeah, we, we put different products up. I kind of tend to do my artwork, and she puts up some things also in art, we have, we have interesting things like CD, telephone, covers, cases, purses, you know. And we're working on a new product now to to put on to the Etsy shop this year. We didn't do many vending shows. I had surgery last last year on my back, and I had a hard time recovering because it was pretty expensive. So we're hoping to get that going again this year, or towards the end of the year, when the Christmas shows start happening,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 19:47

we did, um, create an Etsy shop called makers collab studio, and we were focusing more on that this year. Um, so we do have, like, a variety of different products. Um. Um, which I also provided the link to the Etsy shop. If anybody wants to check out our products and what we have, that'd be great if you stop checked out that.

Michael Hingson 20:11

Yeah, my late my late wife, was a quilter and tried to run an Etsy shop, but people didn't want to pay any kind of real prices for handmade quilts, because they just thought that quilts should be, like, 50 or $75 and that just wasn't realistic.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 20:30

But, well, that's, that's the trouble. What we're seeing also, yeah, we do, I do, like, we do t shirts and things like that too. But people it. I don't think people realize what's behind the whole process. No, or they don't care. No, you know, I mean, there's a lot involved as far as your equipment. When it was covid, I was, well, I'm retired, but I was working part time, and I was able to, you know, get what is it, you know, workers, whatever, yeah, you know, yes. And with that money, I actually bought like things to do, T shirts, like the heat press and different parts to like a cricket that we can do things with. And so, you know, like the things that you know, you still have to buy supplies, even with my artwork, it's so expensive anymore, when I first started back in, you know, when my kids grew up and they were on their own, where I really focused on it, and I can't believe the expense of it. You know, it's just, it's everything's expensive these days. So, yeah, really watch what you're doing and how you approach it too. You know, you can't spend a lot of money on things. We don't have, like, a whole backlog of products. I mean, we just do a few things and hope that the things that we make are sellers, you know,

Michael Hingson 22:05

yeah, well, and I hope it, it can is more successful for you going forward. That's a useful thing. You You've done a lot Mary with with art over the years, but you've also had other, other kinds of jobs where you've worked for some pretty large companies, and you've been reading your bio, you faced some sexual harassment issues and things like that, haven't you?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 22:29

Yes, yes, that was difficult boy, and I didn't realize that at the time I went to college late in life because I was getting divorced and I needed a job that I could take care of my family, my girls, and so I decided to go to college and my my mom and dad watched my kids while I went to school, which was nice. And the first job I had was with the gas company here, and I was called a technical Fieldman. And what I would do is, like, I would draw pipeline installations and the and sometimes I would fill in as a supervisor. When I filled in first as a supervisor, it was great. I mean, the guys were decent. We always came to a conclusion. I always trusted what they're you know what they would say about pipeline? Because I knew nothing about pipeline. It was all new to me. But when I would go back to the office, it was, it was just like crazy things that would happen. I mean, I won't go into detail, and I started writing these things down because I thought this just doesn't seem right, that these people are saying these things to me or doing these things to me. I had a nice little book of all these incidents that happened, and I went to the HR department, and they wanted me to confront these people in my office, to tell them how I felt. Well, that, to me, would have made everything worse, because that's just that, you know, kind of work environment. So luckily, I was, I was promoted into a job that lasted two years, and then my job was eliminated. So that was my first, my first thing with that was the only time I really had sexual harassment that was really bad. I went on to another which was the program for female Well, I worked for a university for a while, and then I went into the program for female offenders, which was really interesting work. I enjoyed that it was like people that were out on that needed to, that were like drug addicts and and they were looking for a new way. They had been in jail and this incarcerated, and they came into this. Program they had that was part of their incarceration or parole. They had to do this, this program, and that was so interesting. I mean, it was just heartfelt, because you just saw these people that were trying so hard to make a good life for themselves and not to go back to their original way of living. And unfortunately, that was all grant money. And that job ended also so that, you know, and I was a transportation planner, I did a lot of things, and then I ended up going back into the gas industry. I worked for an engineer, and we were working in the production side of everything. So he had drove to you wells, and we had leases, and I took care of those. And I liked that job for about 10 years. I stayed there, and then I I retired. I was getting tired of it at that point.

Michael Hingson 26:02

Yeah. Why was your first why was your first job at the original gas company eliminated? Or when you were promoted and you said it was eliminated, yeah?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 26:10

Well, that's what I like to know why it was eliminated. I think sometimes that job was just to keep me quiet. That's how I felt. I mean, I, I they, they knew that I was upset and that I didn't like what was happening. And I think it was just to keep me quiet, and they realized that that job wasn't going to last, but it was a marketing job. We were using different ways to use gas, alternative fuel vehicles, fuel cells, you know. So it was an interesting job, too, but it it didn't really have the supervisor we had was not really a person that pushed the product, you know. So that could have been the reason, too, that they eliminated a lot of that. Yeah, so I wasn't the only one that went I mean, there was another person in that at that time, and eventually that whole department was eliminated. Now that gas company, they sold all that off, and another gas company took it over and equitable. Still is EQT here, and they work, I think at this point, they work with the leases and things like that, and horizontal drilling, they call it.

Michael Hingson 27:38

So now that you're retired, what do you do?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 27:41

Well, for a while there,

Michael Hingson 27:44

in addition to Etsy, yeah, for

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 27:47

a while, I was actually doing hair. I was my first, my first, I guess, employment type, or whatever. I went to beauty school, and I became a cosmetologist, and I also became a teacher in cosmetology. So when I first became all that the money wasn't so great. I worked my first job. I was so excited I had this job because I thought I was going to be making millions. You know, they they really pump you up in in beauty school that you're going to really succeed and you're going to make this money. Well, my first job, I worked over 40 hours at that job, and I only got $15 in my first pay. It was like we had to stay there the whole time until everyone was finished working. So the girls that had their clientele that they worked the whole day and into the evening, like till eight o'clock. Maybe we had to stay till eight o'clock. Even though I didn't have anybody to do. I might have had one person that day, yeah, so that that wasn't too I just worked at that for a few years, and then I decided to leave and take care of my family. Yeah, well, that that I went back to it when I retired, and it had changed significantly, making pretty good money. I was only working three days a week, and I did pretty well. But then my back. I had the issues with my back, and I couldn't go back to it, which really upset me. I really love that job.

Michael Hingson 29:29

Well, things happen.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 29:31

Yeah, it does. You know, I'm happy not to stay at home. I figured now that I'm actually 73 years old now, so I think I I should retire

Michael Hingson 29:47

and enjoy my life a little. Well. So Natalie, you graduated in 2023 and so then what did you start to do? And what are you doing now?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 29:57

So what I'm doing now is I'm. Still focusing on the Etsy shop, but I also got into a graduate certificate program, and this certificate is in sports entertainment and arts law, and I really hope to use this program as a stepping stone to complete my master's degree in the sports entertainment and arts law program.

Michael Hingson 30:25

What exactly is a graduate certification program, as opposed to a master's degree?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 30:32

So that's a great question. So the certificate program is like a newer program, and it's like the only one in the world, I'm pretty sure, that focuses on sports, entertainment and art. So it's like a newer, more modern type of learning program. And this certificate is a great stepping stone, and for me to check it out before I actually go in to the master's program. This is, like, my second week, and I love it so far, and all these classes that I'm doing, and if I keep my grades up and everything, will apply to the master's program if I get in.

Michael Hingson 31:15

Okay, well, so

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 31:20

less credits than, like, what you would need for a master's program, and it's less I don't need a textbook. I have these things called nutshells, where I'm pretty sure, like, I'll be studying different types of cases or something like that through that. So it's like online stuff.

Michael Hingson 31:43

The Okay? And how long do you think it will take you to complete that

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 31:49

the certification program should be about a year, and it's all online, okay?

Michael Hingson 31:55

And how, how long have you been doing it so far? Just two weeks. Oh, so next August, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the hope is then you can use that to go forward and actually work toward getting a master's degree. Which, which sounds pretty cool, yeah, for sure. What do you want to do with it once you get a master's degree? Well, like

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 32:20

all those points like sports entertainment and arts, I think is Pittsburgh is a great city to represent all of those. And I hope to help represent like clients, maybe do like to protect their works and them as an artist. And I would like to hopefully get into paralegal work. That's what I'm focusing on right now.

Michael Hingson 32:47

So is school pretty much full time for you these days?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 32:51

No, it's still part time, and that's what I like love about this program, because, like all week, you'll be doing 10 hours outside of so I still work full time as an administrator in the SHRS program, and I am the administrator for Rehabilitation Science. So yeah, it's great to have like, bosses and everything that support me in my educational journey, because that makes my life a lot easier too.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 33:26

Yeah, that's some great bosses.

Michael Hingson 33:29

Well, it's good to have some people who tend to be a little bit more supportive. It helps the psyche when you get to do that. Yes, yeah.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 33:39

Because the one thing that I noticed with this program, it is definitely more manageable, because, like the undergrad program, I did enjoy the process. For most parts, some of it was really challenging. But the undergraduate program, it was really hard for me to get late night classes. Most of those classes that I had to take were I had to be in person, so like late classes were pretty hard to get, but my bosses allowed me to take earlier classes so I could help finish the program faster, but I just had to make up that time. Right?

Michael Hingson 34:28

When did you discover that you had artistic talent?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 34:32

Um, I don't know if I ever really discovered that I had the talent, but I was very passionate at a young age, like when my mom was going back to school, I always loved watching her paint, because she had like the painting classes. I always thought so I like sit on the floor and watch her paint. And at a very young age, I was in the dance class. Do you remember the name? A France Dance School of Dance, France School of Dance. And I love dance class so much. I remember one time the dance school was closed because of a holiday, and I was, like, so upset, like, I didn't believe, like, the dance school was closed and I didn't understand, like, why I wasn't allowed to go. So they called the school and it went straight to, like, the answering machine so they could prove, like, it was closed and nobody was there. I was like, ready to show up.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 35:30

She wanted to go, yeah. She was just about three or four when she was taking the dance classes at that time. Yeah. But then it became on, you know that they both the kids were involved, but I couldn't afford it anymore.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 35:45

So dance is very expensive. Yeah?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 35:48

Well, you know, like, at that time too, I was going to school, and I didn't have much of a salary, and I was living with my parents, so, I mean, and they were retired, so it was, like, very tight. Yeah, right.

Michael Hingson 36:04

Well, it nice to have an enthusiastic student, you know,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 36:13

so true. Well,

Michael Hingson 36:15

so you've created the many colors of Natalie blog, tell me about that.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 36:22

So I reach out to different artists that were that are located in Pittsburgh or at one time, working or living in Pittsburgh. So this is like musicians, photographers, actors and they, I I create questions for them, for them to answer in their own words, like advice that they would give, or funny stories that they had while working in the field. And that's that's the main point of the blog, because I want it to be a resource for people and for them to also see, like, why that genre is cool. And I think another reason that motivated me to create that blog is some people just don't see an importance to art, and I find that so offensive. Like, yeah, so I just wanted it to be as an educational type thing as well.

Michael Hingson 37:28

How long has the blog been visible?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 37:33

So it's been visible for about five, six years now, five years, yeah, and I did over like 50 some posts.

Michael Hingson 37:45

Do you do that with consistency? Or So do you have one, like, every week or every three weeks, or every month, or something like that? Or how does that work?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 37:53

So when I first started, I was consistent with the posts I don't ever leave my blog, like, not active for like a year. Like, I always try to post something, but it's a little more challenging to do a post. Like, every month, whenever I'm working, going to school, volunteering for different things, running the Etsy shopper, vending so I had to cut it back a little bit because that is just me running it.

Michael Hingson 38:30

So you've also created a mixed media piece. First of all, what is a mixed media piece?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 38:35

You want to explain

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 38:36

the mixed media? Oh, well, a mixed media is like different mediums. It could be paint, it could be pictures, and it's posted on a board, a canvas, or whatever it can be in a journal. You know, you just use various types of mediums. It could be using lace, it could be using fabric, it could be using, like I said, pictures, paper, and they call it mixed media. So she decided she wanted to create a mixed media. I had a huge canvas that was given to me. It was like 36 by 36 giant. It was huge, and I knew I couldn't do anything on that, because I don't paint big. I like to paint on smaller canvas, like an eight and a half by 11, or eight and a half by 14. So she, she decided she wanted to use that Canvas for something. But you go ahead and tell them.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 39:38

So, um, whenever Woodstock had their 50th anniversary, and I believe that was around 2019 I had the opportunity to go to yaska's Farm and camp where the original campers from the very first Woodstock would stay in that. Campsite was like, right next to this yaska farms. So I took some pictures of it, like me with the yaska farm house. And so it was very inspirational to go to that because I was doing research on what Woodstock was, the original Woodstock. And what that was about, I talked to Uber drivers that were actually at the original Woodstock. Jimi Hendrix is one of my favorite musicians, and for him to not be there, I was like, so sad. Very sad. So with all the education experience. I needed to release that. And I took my mom, let me have that canvas, and like I created a mixed media giant collage, and I got that into the Woodstock Museum in Socrates, New York.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 41:01

Wow, it's actually there now,

Michael Hingson 41:04

yep. How long has it been there?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 41:07

I believe got that in there? Yeah, about two years.

Michael Hingson 41:13

Wow. So it's kind of almost a permanent piece there.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 41:17

I hope so. I hope they keep it there for sure. What?

Michael Hingson 41:21

What prompted them to be interested in having it there.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 41:25

So I that piece was so giant, and I loved how it turned out, and I wanted that more than just in my house, my art pieces are very close to me, because that's like my soul and my work, and I want it out there to somebody who cares about it. So I reached out to Shelly nation, Nathan, because they, I believe, are the owners of the Woodstock Museum, and they were more than happy to have it. I had it shipped out there. And then, whenever the season was to reopen the museum, I went out there and visited it. And it's a very great it's a very cool place.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 42:10

Recommend, yeah, she, she was interviewed by them, also, right?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 42:14

Oh, yeah, we did go on a radio station. And that was also a cool experience, because I was never on a radio show at that time. Cool.

Michael Hingson 42:25

Well, that's pretty exciting. I have not been to the Woodstock Museum, so that might be something to explore at some point when I get get back there next that'd

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 42:35

be great. Yeah,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 42:37

all those things like, you know, like I grew up during that period, of course, I didn't go to the Woodstock. Original Woodstock wouldn't let me do that. I was only 16 at the time, and but I mean, you know, like, like looking back at that and and seeing how all those people were there, and not nothing terrible happened, you know, I mean, hundreds of 1000s of people, and nobody got hurt. Well, they might have passed out, maybe from things, but nobody was, like, shot or killed or and like today. I mean, you can't you're so afraid to do anything today, you don't know what's going to happen. And it just was a different time. And the musicians that were there. I mean, that music was is still good today. You know, it's it, it hasn't faded. And I wonder sometimes about today's music, if it will continue to be popular in years to come, or if it's just going to fade out. You know, we won't know that, and so well I won't be here, probably

Michael Hingson 43:44

we won't know for a while anyway, yes, but I did hear on a radio station a rebroadcast of a lot of the Woodstock concerts that was kind of

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 43:56

fun. Yes, yes.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 44:00

Sorry I didn't mean to cut you. Go ahead. Go ahead. When I was talking to like the Uber drivers and stuff like that, and people who were at the original Woodstock, it seems like they were reliving that experience when they were telling the stories. I mean, it was great.

Michael Hingson 44:15

Yeah. Well, you play creative percussion. First of all, what is pre creative percussion?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 44:23

So I actually have that written in some notes, what it actually is. So do you mind if I read off my notes?

Michael Hingson 44:30

You're welcome to however you want to answer, perfect.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 44:33

So I was asked to be a creative percussion artist in 2020 and creative percussion is a family owned business established in 2018 and run by husband and wife team, Kevin and Sherry Feeney. They're great. I've had the opportunity to talk to them very much a couple of times, and my pictures also on the site. Um. Uh, under like my stage name now is a Bulla. So if you scroll down spell that it's S, E, B as a boy, u as in unicorn, L, L as in Len and a is an apple.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 45:16

Okay, what types of things, kinds

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 45:18

of there's various types of shakers that I played because of various bands that I was in, I was the percussionist, so I played tambourine and stuff. But like, they have uniquely shaped shakers, like there's the hatch shakers, which I love them. They had a baseball shaker, and these little golf ball shakers, and they all carry different sounds, and they really blended differently with the type of song that I was playing was playing, yeah, so it's cool,

Michael Hingson 45:53

yeah, so interesting. So you you play them as part of being with a band, or what

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 46:01

for the most part, yeah, sometimes there was an acoustic band or just like a full band, and either way, I tried to have those pieces blend into the song. What I didn't learn when I was doing that is and an acoustic you really have to be on your game, because, like, if you mess up, like, people are gonna hear it more than if you're in a full band. So, yeah, right.

Michael Hingson 46:38

So you do you still do that? Do you still play

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 46:42

at this time? I don't, um, just because I wanted to focus on other things, so I took a step back from that.

Michael Hingson 46:51

Do you think you'll do more of it in the future, or

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 46:56

possibly, but like, that's how I am. I kind of just like, experience it, do it until I'm ready to move on to something else.

Michael Hingson 47:04

So you flit, you flip from thing to thing, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 47:10

So, like, if you ever follow me, you might just see, like, me evolving and just trying other things.

Michael Hingson 47:19

Well, you're adventurous.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 47:22

Yes, I love adventure.

Michael Hingson 47:25

Nothing wrong with having an adventure in the world and getting to really look at things. So what are you doing now if you're not doing creative percussion and so on?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 47:38

Well, for the last couple months, I was helping my mom recover from like the back surgery. And then I was I was focusing on my blog, just really paying attention to that, getting certain interviews, and then schooling, getting ready to go into the certificate program.

Michael Hingson 48:05

So you think you're gonna go ahead

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 48:09

and I'm setting up the Etsy shop.

Michael Hingson 48:13

So you're pretty excited about seal, the sports entertainment, art and law.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 48:19

Yes, I'm very excited about that. I was very excited to get into the program. The professors are great. The whole programs like really good. The people involved in it, they seemed, they seem really organized and let me know what I need to do to get into the program. And they are really nice. If I have a question, they're happy to answer it. I love the curriculum, so I hope you go, Well,

Michael Hingson 48:46

do you experience anything any more dealing with like attention deficit? Oh, 100% it still creeps up, huh?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 48:55

Well, it's more anxiety than anything. But like this program, I think, is to help calm my anxiety with just different things that are set up. And like, how responsive the professors are and how nice they are. But my goodness, when I was in my undergraduate program, like I was really pushing myself, and I would like, of like, when 2020, came around in the pandemic, I needed to talk to my doctor and get on meds, like I could no longer not do that without meds.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 49:29

Yes, she was, she was struggling. It was tough. Yeah. I mean, when I went for my Bachelor's, I I I wasn't working. She was working. When I went for my master's, I was working, but, and I know how hard that is, you know, trying to balance things, especially I was working at equitable at the time, and the things that I was going through and being, you know, filling in for supervisors was I. I was on call, like, 24 hours a day, and it, you know, like that was, I can see how difficult it is to do both. It's just, I know what she was going through there, and she goes through it, but she did well. She graduated sigma, sigma cum laude.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 50:17

Yeah, I did get some honorary, like accolades for like, whenever I graduated. So that was pretty exciting, because the hard work did pay off.

Michael Hingson 50:29

What do you think about studying and attending classes virtually as opposed to physically being in the room? Hybrid learning?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 50:38

Some people may have an issue with that, but I personally, cause I was working full time and it was hard for me to get later classes, I preferred the online learning, but I understand, like some of the classes really did need me to be there, like the theater classes, and I was okay with that. I don't mind either, either or, but it just seems like online learning is more manageable. For me, it

Michael Hingson 51:08

takes more discipline to to stick with it and focus on it, as opposed to being in the classroom.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 51:14

Um, yeah, I agree, but I think which, which is not a negative thing, by the way. Oh, yeah, no, no, no, I totally understand, but I think, um, I forget what I was going with that.

Michael Hingson 51:26

Sorry. Well, we were talking about the fact that more discipline dealing with,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 51:33

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's right, thank you. It's just, um, I think if you truly want it, you're gonna put forth the effort in anything. You know, it's may not always be enjoyable, but like, if you want it, you'll put through it. You'll push through it, like with high school, my mom knows, just like from elementary to high school, like that curriculum, I was just not feeling it, but I knew I had to stick it out. I wanted to be a high school dropout. I voiced that many of times, but like, I knew if I wanted to get to culinary school, I had to really focus on my academics through then and just try to push through and just do it, do what I had to do to graduate.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 52:19

Yeah, it's such a different environment to high school, I believe, you know, like I found that I really enjoyed college. I enjoyed my subjects. They went fast. The classes went fast. It was fast paced, but it was an I learned more. I you know, I think that slowness of the way that they do things in in the high school, it takes them like three weeks to get through one chapter, you know, and so it, it just, it just made it a big difference. And I, I wished I could continue to go to school. I think I was a really good student.

Michael Hingson 52:59

I think one of the things about college is, and I've talked to several people who agree, is, you certainly learn from the courses that you take, but College offers so much more with with with the extracurricular activities, with the interaction with people, with The greater responsibility. College offers so many more life lessons if you take advantage of it, that really makes it cool. And I, I always enjoyed college. I liked it a lot.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 53:29

Yeah, yeah, I did too, I think with some of my challenges and frustrations, not only with my learning disability, but like the fact that their curriculum that I would would have been interested in, which is not offered, like there was certain languages that were offered and they didn't have Italian, and I would have learned love to have learned that because I'm part Italian, and I just always take an interest In the Italian culture. So in like, the reading things like I've noticed, like, when I was younger, I didn't really care for reading that much, but what helped me get into reading is, like murder mysteries, because they always kept me engaged and focused and curious. And most of the murder mysteries that I've read, they're real page turners, because you want to know who got, who did the mystery.

Michael Hingson 54:24

What are some of your who are some of your favorite authors?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 54:28

So poetry wise, I love shell Silverstein because I was introduced to him in his early age. Yes, I loved him. I still do. I read them from time to

Michael Hingson 54:42

time Where the Sidewalk Ends. You know, how about murder mysteries?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 54:53

For murder mysteries, I can't, I don't have, like, a favorite author, like on top of. My head right now. Um, just because, like, I just like, if I so, you know how I pick my murder mysteries by how the cover is designed. That's how I pick my wine bottles for gifts, too, by the label design. If I take interest in the cover or the label, I want to try it. There you go.

Michael Hingson 55:23

Well, you've done some work and studying as an actor. What kind of work have you done as an actor?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 55:28

Sure, so, um, I'll usually take pretty much any opportunity that I apply for it and get it. I mostly do, like extra work, meaning, like, I show up, I get to, like, get costumes and stuff like that, and I don't have to memorize any lines. And I love that. Just trying to memorize lines, I can and will do it, but it's just, it just wasn't for me during the last few years, because of school and everything, it was very hard for me to take the time to do like the memorization, because I was memorizing lines for class too. So I just didn't want I just wanted the experience and to see what it's like to move around on set, take direction and stuff like that.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 56:24

I mean that pit, pit to the point. Oh,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 56:26

yeah. So if you don't mind, is it okay if I bring up pit to the point? Sure. Okay. So I have some notes on pick to the point. That was a great experience, one of the classes that I really wanted to take while I was in college was a news class, and I got the opportunity to take Pitt to the point, and that was such a great experience, because the professor, he really set the tone of What it was like to be in like a news room, and I love that, and I got the chance to be work in different areas, like in front of the camera and behind the camera, and it's a class that focuses on the news as well as Behind the Scenes of a news magazine program that covers the city of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh, and some of the University of Pittsburgh regional campuses, as well as national and international events. And one of the things that our professor mentioned at the time, Kevin Smith, he said, we can submit some of the works that you do during the semester for an Emmy nomination. So, um, one of the things that I worked on, we got selected, and I got to take my mom to the Emmys.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 58:02

We went to the Emmys. It was the Emmys for the news, news people

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 58:09

in hers was on, it was the Irish it was an Irish store story,

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 58:15

most No, it was like an actual Irish store, like store, their products came from Ireland, like the owners go to Ireland, these different things, and then bring they get them back. And that was such a cool experience, like doing that story, because they worked with ally, and she was the one in front of the camera. She is such like a strong person to be in front of the camera. She's so talented at such a young age, and

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 58:46

you're you were the editor, producer, she was the producer, and unfortunately, she didn't win the Emmy, but it was a good experience. I mean, sure, nominated and where that was out in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, yeah, we have in there. Yeah, that was like a three hour trip for us to drive. And it was just exciting, you know, you see all the news people and you know that are there. And it was just really nice, really nice.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 59:17

Kelly fry is one of my favorite news anchors of all time.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 59:21

She's no longer a news anchor. Unfortunately, we didn't see her there, but we did see, oh, what was her name? Oh, my goodness, she had she was just beautiful. And, you know, it just like, it was just nice. It was just really nice.

Michael Hingson 59:40

Well, Daisy, we haven't talked a lot about it, but I'd be curious as we we get close to the end of this, clearly, your attention deficit disorder is a disability, and that's the I assume, the learning disability that you have.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 59:58

Yeah, and. Um, some anxiety

Michael Hingson 1:00:01

and some anxiety. What do you hope for the future? As far as accommodations for persons with disabilities?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 1:00:09

I just really hope now there's like 2025 I hope people get a better understanding of to like, not fear people who have disabilities, and just don't be so ignorant to certain things in commentary when you're talking to somebody. And I hope like certain accommodations are a lot easier, especially for people who are wheelchair bound like any they need to be able to access certain things. My one friend has a lot of health issues, and she's not really able to go to New York because she can't walk long periods. So if she was to have a scooter there, she wouldn't be able to do it. Yeah. So I just hope things are a lot more accessible and also not as costly to put those things in.

Michael Hingson 1:01:04

Yeah, I know New York is actually trying to make most of the subway system accessible, which is a major undertaking because a lot of those stations are designed in such a way that accessibility is going to be really hard, but their plan is to do it, so we'll see what happens. Well, I want to thank you both for being here. This has been very enjoyable. I really appreciate it. And clearly unstoppability is something that applies to you guys, which I think is really great. Do you have any kind of final thoughts that you want to share?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 1:01:42

Well, as far as disabilities, people do have to be open minded to the fact that people have these issues. And also, I'm so glad that it finally, with the sexual harassment, that it is coming to a point. I mean, it might be overkill at times, but there, it's there for a reason. It's time. Yes, it is. It's it has an effect on a person. It might not have an effect at the time, but years later, it does have an effect. And I tend to be a little bit cautious with things, and if somebody says something the wrong way, I don't like it. And I might, you know, I might not be a pleasant person, you know, you just, I put up with that for so long, and I figured, and I didn't realize what was happening. And now I, you know, like so I'm glad things are changing there, even if it's a slow change, it's changing.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 1:02:46

Natalie, do you have any thoughts? Yeah, sure. I just hope I do recognize that things are changing. I just hope people truly get the accommodations that they need to make think life easier for them, because I want somebody to put who doesn't have disabilities to put themselves in a person that needs accommodations, because that stuff needs to be there. Yeah, well,

Michael Hingson 1:03:13

I want to thank you both for being here, and we've got the photos and everything of your book cover and so on. Those will all go in the show notes. So I hope people will go to the Woodstock museum. And you know, if people want to reach out to you in any way, how do they do that?

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 1:03:31

So they can email me at Natalie bellen, N, a T, yes, sure. No, go ahead. N, a T, A L, I, E, B, E, L, i n7.

Michael Hingson 1:03:43

Hundred@gmail.com Okay, great. Well, then I want to thank you both for being here, and I want to thank all of you out there who have been with us today in the audience, we appreciate it. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael, H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love it. If you'd give us a five star rating for the podcast episode today, we value that very highly. If any of you know anyone who ought to be a guest. Natalie and Mary, you as well. If you know anybody else who you think ought to be a guest and who has stories to tell, we'd love to hear from them. Please introduce us. We would appreciate it a great deal. But again, I just want to thank you both for being here. This has been great. Thank you for having us.

Natalie Belin & Mary Dunn 1:04:39

Michael, thank you. Yes. Thank you.

Michael Hingson 1:04:46

Episode 403 – An Unstoppable Approach to Leadership, Trust, and Team Growth with Greg Hess

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0000

What if the toughest moments in your life were preparing you to lead better, serve deeper, and live with more purpose? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with Greg Hess, known to many as Coach Hess, for a wide-ranging conversation about leadership, resilience, trust, and what it really means to help others grow.

Greg shares lessons shaped by a lifetime of coaching athletes, leading business teams, surviving pancreatic cancer, and building companies rooted in service and inclusion. We talk about why humor matters, how trust is built in real life, and why great leaders stop focusing on control and start focusing on growth. Along the way, Greg reflects on teamwork, diversity, vision, and the mindset shifts that turn adversity into opportunity. I believe you will find this conversation practical, honest, and deeply encouraging.

Highlights:

00:10 – Hear how Greg Hess’s early life and love of sports shaped his leadership values.

04:04 – Learn why humor and laughter are essential tools for reducing stress and building connection.

11:59 – Discover how chasing the right learning curve redirected Greg’s career path.

18:27 – Understand how a pancreatic cancer diagnosis reshaped Greg’s purpose and priorities.

31:32 – Hear how reframing adversity builds lasting resilience.

56:22 – Learn the mindset shift leaders need to grow people and strengthen teams.

About the Guest:

Amazon Best-Selling Author | Award-Winning Business Coach | Voted Best Coach in Katy, TX

Greg Hess—widely known as Coach Hess—is a celebrated mentor, author, and leader whose journey from athletic excellence to business mastery spans decades and continents. A graduate of the University of Calgary (1978), he captained the basketball team, earned All-Conference honors, and later competed against legends like John Stockton and Dennis Rodman. His coaching career began in the high school ranks and evolved to the collegiate level, where he led programs with distinction and managed high-profile events like Magic Johnson’s basketball camps. During this time, he also earned his MBA from California Lutheran University in just 18 months.

Transitioning from sports to business in the early '90s, Coach Hess embarked on a solo bicycle tour from Jasper, Alberta to Thousand Oaks, California—symbolizing a personal and professional reinvention. He went on to lead teams and divisions across multiple industries, ultimately becoming Chief Advisor for Cloud Services at Halliburton. Despite his corporate success, he was always “Coach” at heart—known for inspiring teams, shaping strategy, and unlocking human potential.

In 2015, a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer became a pivotal moment. Surviving and recovering from the disease renewed his commitment to purpose. He left the corporate world to build the Coach Hess brand—dedicated to transforming lives through coaching. Today, Coach Hess is recognized as a Best Coach in Katy, TX and an Amazon Best-Selling Author, known for helping entrepreneurs, professionals, and teams achieve breakthrough results.

Coach Hess is the author of:

Peak Experiences
Breaking the Business Code
Achieving Peak Performance: The Entrepreneur’s Journey

He resides in Houston, Texas with his wife Karen and continues to empower clients across the globe through one-on-one coaching, strategic planning workshops, and his Empower Your Team program.

Ways to connect with Greg**:**

Email: coach@coachhess.comWebsite: www.CoachHess.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachhess

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachHessSuccess

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coachhess_official/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone. I am Michael Hinkson. Your host for unstoppable mindset. And today we get to enter, well, I won't say interview, because it's really more of a conversation. We get to have a conversation with Greg. Hess better known as coach Hess and we'll have to learn more about that, but he has accomplished a lot in the world over the past 70 or so years. He's a best selling author. He's a business coach. He's done a number of things. He's managed magic Johnson's basketball camps, and, my gosh, I don't know what all, but he does, and he's going to tell us. So Coach, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad that we have a chance to be with you today.

Greg Hess 02:07

I'm honored to be here. Michael, thank you very much, and it's just a pleasure to be a part of your program and the unstoppable mindset. Thank you for having me.

Michael Hingson 02:17

Well, we're glad you're here and looking forward to having a lot of fun. Why don't we start? I love to start with tell us about kind of the early Greg growing up and all that stuff.

Greg Hess 02:30

Oh boy, yeah, I was awfully fortunate, I think, to have a couple of parents that were paying attention to me, I guess. You know, as I grew up, at the same time they were growing up my my father was a Marine returned from the Korean War, and I was born shortly after that, and he worked for Westinghouse Electric as a nuclear engineer. We lived in Southern California for a while, but I was pretty much raised in Idaho, small town called Pocatello, Idaho, and Idaho State Universities there and I, I found a love for sports. I was, you know, again, I was very fortunate to be able to be kind of coordinated and do well with baseball, football, basketball, of course, with the sports that we tend to do. But yeah, I had a lot of fun doing that and growing up, you know, under a, you know, the son of a Marine is kind of like being the son of a Marine. I guess, in a way, there was certain ways you had to function and, you know, and morals and values that you carried forward and pride and doing good work that I learned through, through my youth. And so, you know, right, being raised in Idaho was a real great experience. How so well, a very open space. I mean, in those days, you know, we see kids today and kids being brought up. I think one of the things that often is missing, that was not missing for me as a youth, is that we would get together as a group in the neighborhood, and we'd figure out the rules of the game. We'd figure out whatever we were playing, whether it was basketball or, you know, kick the can or you name it, but we would organize ourselves and have a great time doing that as a community in our neighborhood, and as kids, we learn to be leaders and kind of organize ourselves. Today, that is not the case. And so I think so many kids are built into, you know, the parents are helicopter, and all the kids to all the events and non stop going, going, going. And I think we're losing that leadership potential of just organizing and planning a little bit which I was fortunate to have that experience, and I think it had a big influence on how I grew up and built built into the leader that I believe I am today.

Michael Hingson 04:52

I had a conversation with someone earlier today on another podcast episode, and one of the observations. Sense that he made is that we don't laugh at ourselves today. We don't have humor today. Everything is taken so seriously we don't laugh, and the result of that is that we become very stressed out.

Greg Hess 05:15

Yeah, well, if you can't laugh at yourself, you know, but as far as I know, you've got a large background in your sales world and so on. But I found that in working with people, to to get them to be clients or to be a part of my world, is that if they can laugh with me, or I can laugh with them, or we can get them laughing, there's a high tendency of conversion and them wanting to work with you. There's just something about relationships and be able to laugh with people. I think that draw us closer in a different way, and I agree it's missing. How do we make that happen more often? Tell more jokes or what?

Michael Hingson 05:51

Well, one of the things that he suggests, and he's a coach, a business coach, also he he tells people, turn off the TV, unplug your phone, go read a book. And he said, especially, go buy a joke book. Just find some ways to make yourself laugh. And he spends a lot of time talking to people about humor and laughter. And the whole idea is to deal with getting rid of stress, and if you can laugh, you're going to be a whole lot less stressful.

Greg Hess 06:23

There's something that you just feel so good after a good laugh, you know, I mean, guy, I feel that way sometimes after a good cry. You know, when I'm I tend to, you know, like Bambi comes on, and I know what happens to that little fawn, or whatever, the mother and I can't, you know, but cry during the credits. What's up with that?

Michael Hingson 06:45

Well, and my wife was a teacher. My late wife was a teacher for 10 years, and she read Old Yeller. And eventually it got to the point where she had to have somebody else read the part of the book where, where yeller gets killed. Oh, yeah. Remember that book? Well, I do too. I like it was a great it's a great book and a great movie. Well, you know, talk about humor, and I think it's really important that we laugh at ourselves, too. And you mentioned Westinghouse, I have a Westinghouse story, so I'll tell it. I sold a lot of products to Westinghouse, and one day I was getting ready to travel back there, the first time I went back to meet the folks in Pittsburgh, and I had also received an order, and they said this order has to be here. It's got to get it's urgent, so we did all the right things. And I even went out to the loading dock the day before I left for Westinghouse, because that was the day it was supposed to ship. And I even touched the boxes, and the shipping guy said, these are them. They're labeled. They're ready to go. So I left the next morning, went to Westinghouse, and the following day, I met the people who I had worked with over the years, and I had even told them I saw the I saw the pack, the packages on the dock, and when they didn't come in, and I was on an airplane, so I didn't Know this. They called and they spoke to somebody else at at the company, and they said the boxes aren't here, and they're supposed to be here, and and she's in, the lady said, I'll check on it. And they said, Well, Mike said he saw him on the dock, and she burst out laughing because she knew. And they said, What are you laughing at? And he said, he saw him on the dock. You know, he's blind, don't you? And so when I got there, when I got there, they had and it wasn't fun, but, well, not totally, because what happened was that the President decided to intercept the boxes and send it to somebody else who he thought was more important, more important than Westinghouse. I have a problem with that. But anyway, so they shipped out, and they got there the day I arrived, so they had arrived a day late. Well, that was okay, but of course, they lectured me, you didn't see him on the dock. I said, No, no, no, you don't understand, and this is what you have to think about. Yeah, I didn't tell you I was blind. Why should I the definition of to see in the dictionary is to perceive you don't have to use your eyes to see things. You know, that's the problem with you. Light dependent people. You got to see everything with your eyes. Well, I don't have to, and they were on the dock, and anyway, we had a lot of fun with it, but I have, but you got to have humor, and we've got to not take things so seriously. I agree with what we talked about earlier, with with this other guest. It's it really is important to to not take life so seriously that you can't have some fun. And I agree that. There are serious times, but still, you got to have fun.

Greg Hess 10:02

Yeah, no kidding. Well, I've got a short story for you. Maybe it fits in with that. That one of the things I did when I I'll give a little background on this. I, I was a basketball coach and school teacher for 14 years, and had an opportunity to take over an assistant coach job at California Lutheran University. And I was able to choose whatever I wanted to in terms of doing graduate work. And so I said, you know, and I'd always been a bike rider. So I decided to ride my bike from up from Jasper, Alberta, all the way down to 1000 Oaks California on a solo bike ride, which was going to be a big event, but I wanted to think about what I really wanted to do. And, you know, I loved riding, and I thought was a good time to do that tour, so I did it. And so I'm riding down the coast, and once I got into California, there's a bunch of big redwoods there and so on, yeah, and I had, I set up my camp. You know, every night I camped out. I was totally solo. I didn't have any support, and so I put up my tent and everything. And here a guy came in, big, tall guy, a German guy, and he had ski poles sticking out of the back of his backpack, you know, he set up camp, and we're talking that evening. And I had, you know, sitting around the fire. I said, Look, his name was Axel. I said, Hey, Axel, what's up with the ski poles? And he says, Well, I was up in Alaska and, you know, and I was climbing around in glaciers or whatever, and when I started to ride here, they're pretty light. I just take them with me. And I'm thinking, that's crazy. I mean, you're thinking every ounce, every ounce matters when you're riding those long distances. Anyway, the story goes on. Next morning, I get on my bike, and I head down the road, and, you know, I go for a day, I don't see sea axle or anything, but the next morning, I'm can't stop at a place around Modesto California, something, whether a cafe, and I'm sitting in the cafe, and there's, probably, it's a place where a lot of cyclists hang out. So there was, like, 20 or 30 cycles leaning against the building, and I showed up with, you know, kind of a bit of an anomaly. I'd ridden a long time, probably 1500 miles or so at that point in 15 days, and these people were all kind of talking to me and so on. Well, then all sudden, I look up why I'm eating breakfast, and here goes the ski poles down the road. And I went, Oh my gosh, that's got to be him. So I jump up out of my chair, and I run out, and I yell, hey Axel. Hey Axel, loud as I could. And he stops and starts coming back. And then I look back at the cafe, and all these people have their faces up on the windows, kind of looking like, oh, what's going to happen? And they thought that I was saying, mistakenly, Hey, asshole, oh gosh,

Michael Hingson 12:46

well, hopefully you straighten that out somehow. Immediately.

Greg Hess 12:50

We had a great time and a nice breakfast and moved on. But what an experience. Yeah, sometimes we cross up on our communications. People don't quite get what's going on, they're taking things too seriously, maybe, huh?

Michael Hingson 13:03

Oh, yeah, we always, sometimes hear what we want to hear. Well, so what did you get your college degree in?

Greg Hess 13:10

Originally? My first Yeah, well, I'd love the question my first degree. I had a bachelor of education for years, but then I went on, and then I had my choice here of graduate work, right? And, you know, I looked at education, I thought, gosh, you know, if I answered committee on every test, I'll probably pass. I said, I need something more than this. So I in the bike ride, what I what I came to a conclusion was that the command line being DOS command line was the way we were computing. Yeah, that time in the 90s, we were moving into something we call graphical user interface, of course, now it's the way we live in so many ways. And I thought, you know, that's the curve. I'm going to chase that. And so I did an MBA in business process re engineering at Cal Lu, and knocked that off in 18 months, where I had a lot of great experiences learning, you know, being an assistant coach, and got to do some of magic Johnson's camps for him while I was there, California. Lutheran University's campus is where the Cowboys used to do their training camp, right? So they had very nice facilities, and so putting on camps like that and stuff were a good thing. And fairly close to the LA scene, of course, 1000 Oaks, right? You know that area?

Michael Hingson 14:25

Oh, I do, yeah, I do. I do pretty well, yeah. So, so you, you, you're always involved in doing coaching. That was just one of the things. When you started to get involved in sports, in addition to playing them, you found that coaching was a useful thing for you to do. Absolutely.

Greg Hess 14:45

I loved it. I loved the game. I love to see people grow. And yeah, it was just a thrill to be a part of it. I got published a few times, and some of the things that I did within it, but it was mostly. Right, being able to change a community. Let me share this with you. When I went to West Lake Village High School, this was a very, very wealthy area, I had, like Frankie avalon's kid in my class and stuff. And, you know, I'm riding bike every day, so these kids are driving up in Mercedes and BMW parking lot. And as I looked around the school and saw and we build a basketball and I needed to build more pride, I think in the in the community, I felt was important part of me as the head coach, they kind of think that the head coach of their basketball program, I think, is more important than the mayor. I never could figure that one out, but that was where I was

Michael Hingson 15:37

spend some time in North Carolina, around Raleigh, Durham, you'll understand,

Greg Hess 15:41

yeah, yeah, I get that. So Kentucky, yeah, yeah, yeah, big basketball places, yeah. So what I concluded, and I'd worked before in building, working with Special Olympics, and I thought, You know what we can do with this school, is we can have a special olympics tournament, because I got to know the people in LA County that were running, especially in Ventura County, and we brought them together, and we ran a tournament, and we had a tournament of, I don't know, maybe 24 teams in total. It was a big deal, and it was really great to get the community together, because part of my program was that I kind of expected everybody, you know, pretty strong expectation, so to say, of 20 hours of community service. If you're in our basketball program, you got to have some way, whether it's with your church or whatever, I want to recognize that you're you're out there doing something for the community. And of course, I set this Special Olympics event up so that everybody had the opportunity to do that. And what a change it made on the community. What a change it made on the school. Yeah, it was great for the Special Olympians, and then they had a blast. But it was the kids that now were part of our program, the athletes that had special skills, so to say, in their world, all of a sudden realized that the world was a different place, and it made a big difference in the community. People supported us in a different way. I was just really proud to have that as kind of a feather in my calf for being there and recognizing that and doing it was great.

Michael Hingson 17:08

So cool. And now, where are you now? I'm in West Houston. That's right, you're in Houston now. So yeah, Katie, Texas area. Yeah, you've moved around well, so you, you started coaching. And how long did you? Did you do that?

Greg Hess 17:30

Well, I coached for 14 years in basketball, right? And then I went into business after I graduated my MBA, and I chased the learning curve. Michael, of that learning curve I talked about a few minutes ago. You know, it was the graphical user interface and the compute and how all that was going to affect us going forward. And I continued to chase that learning curve, and had all kinds of roles and positions in the process, and they paid me a little more money as I went along. It was great. Ended up being the chief advisor for cloud services at Halliburton. Yeah, so I was an upstream guy, if you know that, I mean seismic data, and where we're storing seismic data now, the transition was going, I'm not putting that in the cloud. You kidding me? That proprietary data? Of course, today we know how we exist, but in those days, we had to, you know, build little separate silos to carry the data and deliver it accordingly for the geophysicists and people to make the decision on the drill bit. So we did really well at that in that role. Or I did really well and the team that I had just what did fantastic. You know, I was real proud I just got when I was having my 70th birthday party, I invited one of the individuals on that team, guy named Will Rivera. And will ended up going to Google after he'd worked us in there. I talked him into, or kind of convinced him so to say, or pushed him, however you do that in coaching. Coached him into getting an MBA, and then he's gone on and he tells me, You better be sitting down, coach. When he talked to him a couple days ago, I just got my PhD from George Washington University in AI technology, and I just turned inside out with happiness. It was so thrilling to hear that you know somebody you'd worked with. But while I was at Halliburton, I got diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Michael, and so that's what changed me into where I am today, as a transition and transformation.

Michael Hingson 19:21

Well, how did that happen? Because I know usually people say pancreatic cancer is pretty undetectable. How did it happen that you were fortunate enough to get it diagnosed? It obviously, what might have been a somewhat early age or early early

Greg Hess 19:35

time, kind of a miracle, I guess. You know. I mean, I was traveling to my niece's high school graduation in Helena, Montana. And when we were returning back to Houston, we flew through Denver, and I was suffering from some very serious a fib. Was going up 200 beats a minute, and, you know, down to 100 and it was, it was all. Over the place. And I got the plane. I wasn't feeling well, of course, and they put me on a gurney. And next thing you know, I'm on the way the hospital. And, you know, they were getting ready for an embolotic, nimbalism potential, those type of things. And, and I went to the hospital, they're testing everything out, getting, you know, saying, Well, before we put your put the shock paddles on your on your heart to get back, we better do a CAT scan. And so they CAT scan me, and came back from the CAT scan and said, Well, you know what, there's no blood clot issues, but this mass in your pancreas is a concern. And so that was the discovery of that. And 14 days from that point, I had had surgery. And you know, there was no guarantees even at that point, even though we, you know, we knew we were early that, you know, I had to get things in order. And I was told to put things in order, a little bit going into it. But miracles upon miracles, they got it all. I came away with a drainage situation where they drained my pancreas for almost six months. It was a terrible pancreatic fluids, not good stuff. It really eats up your skin, and it was bad news. But here I am, you know, and when I came away from that, a lot of people thought I was going to die because I heard pancreatic cancer, and I got messages from people that were absolutely powerful in the difference I'd made in their life by being a coach and a mentor and helping them along in their life, and I realized that the big guy upstairs saved me for a reason, and I made my put my stake in the ground, and said, You know what? I'm going to do this the best I can, and that's what I've been doing for the last eight years.

Michael Hingson 21:32

So what caused the afib?

Greg Hess 21:35

Yeah, not sure. Okay, so when they came, I became the clipboard kid a little bit, you know. Because what the assumption was is that as soon as I came out of surgery, and they took this tumor out of me, because I was in a fib, throughout all of surgery, AFib went away. And they're thinking now, the stress of a tumor could be based on the, you know, it's a stress disease, or so on the a fib, there could be high correlation. And so they started looking into that, and I think they still are. But you know, if you got a fib, maybe we should look for tumors somewhere else is the potential they were thinking. And, yeah, that,

Michael Hingson 22:14

but removing the tumor, when you tumor was removed, the AFib went away. Yeah, wow,

Greg Hess 22:22

yeah, disappeared. Wow, yeah.

Michael Hingson 22:26

I had someone who came on the podcast some time ago, and he had a an interesting story. He was at a bar one night. Everything was fine, and suddenly he had this incredible pain down in his his testicles. Actually went to the hospital to discover that he had very serious prostate cancer, and had no clue that that was even in the system until the pain and and so. But even so, they got it early enough that, or was in such a place where they got it and he's fine.

Greg Hess 23:07

Wow, whoa. Well, stuff they do with medicine these days, the heart and everything else. I mean, it's just fantastic. I I recently got a new hip put in, and it's been like a new lease on life for me. Michael, I am, I'm golfing like I did 10 years ago, and I'm, you know, able to ride my bike and not limp around, you know, and with just pain every time I stepped and it's just so fantastic. I'm so grateful for that technology and what they can do with that.

Michael Hingson 23:36

Well, I went through heart valve replacement earlier this year, and I had had a physical 20 years ago or or more, and they, they said, as part of it, we did an EKG or an echo cardiogram. And he said, You got a slightly leaky heart valve. It may never amount to anything, but it might well. It finally did, apparently. And so we went in and they, they orthoscopically went in and they replaced the valve. So it was really cool. It took an hour, and we were all done, no open heart surgery or anything, which was great. And, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I feel a whole lot better

Greg Hess 24:13

that you do does a lot. Yeah, it's fantastic. Well, making that commitment to coaching was a big deal for me, but, you know, it, it's brought me more joy and happiness. And, you know, I just, I'll share with you in terms of the why situation for me. When I came away from that, I started thinking about, why am I, kind of, you know, a lot of what's behind what you're what you're doing, and what brings you joy? And I went back to when I was eight years old. I remember dribbling the ball down the basketball court, making a fake, threw a pass over to one of my buddies. They scored the layup, and we won the game. That moment, at that time, passing and being a part of sharing with someone else, and growing as a group, and kind of feeling a joy, is what I continued to probably for. To all my life. You know, you think about success, and it's how much money you make and how much this and whatever else we were in certain points of our life. I look back on all this and go, you know, when I had real happiness, and what mattered to me is when I was bringing joy to others by giving assist in whatever. And so I'm at home now, and it's a shame I didn't understand that at 60 until I was 62 years old, but I'm very focused, and I know that's what brings me joy, so that's what I like to do, and that's what I do.

Michael Hingson 25:30

I know for me, I have the honor and the joy of being a speaker and traveling to so many places and speaking and so on. And one of the things that I tell people, and I'm sure they don't believe it until they experience it for themselves, is this isn't about me. I'm not in it for me. I am in it to help you to do what I can to make your event better. When I travel somewhere to speak, I'm a guest, and my job is to make your life as easy as possible and not complicated. And I'm I know that there are a lot of people who don't necessarily buy that, until it actually happens. And I go there and and it all goes very successfully, but people, you know today, were so cynical about so many things, it's just hard to convince people.

Greg Hess 26:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, I know you're speaking over 100 times a year these days. I think that's that's a lot of work, a lot of getting around

Michael Hingson 26:27

it's fun to speak, so I enjoy it. Well, how did you get involved in doing things like managing the Magic Johnson camps?

Greg Hess 26:37

Well, because I was doing my MBA and I was part of the basketball program at Cal Lu, you know, working under Mike Dunlap. It just he needed a little bit of organization on how to do the business management side of it. And I got involved with that. I had a lunch with magic, and then it was, well, gee, why don't you help us coordinate all our camps or all our station work? And so I was fortunate enough to be able to do that for him. I'll just share a couple things from that that I remember really well. One of the things that magic just kind of, I don't know, patted me on the back, like I'm a superstar in a way. And you remember that from a guy like magic, I put everybody's name on the side of their shoe when they register. Have 100 kids in the camp, but everybody's name is on the right side of their shoe. And magic saw that, and he realized being a leader, that he is, that he could use his name and working, you know, their name by looking there, how powerful that was for him to be more connected in which he wants to be. That's the kind of guy he was. So that was one thing, just the idea of name. Now, obviously, as a teacher, I've always kind of done the name thing, and I know that's important, but, you know, I second thing that's really cool with the magic camp is that the idea of camaraderie and kind of tradition and bringing things together every morning we'd be sitting in the gym, magic could do a little story, you know, kind of tell everybody something that would inspire him, you know, from his past and so on. But each group had their own sound off. Michael, so if he pointed at your group, it would be like, or whatever it was. Each group had a different type of sound, and every once in a while we'd use it and point it kind of be a motivator. And I never really put two and two together until the last day of the camp on Friday. Magic says, When I point to your group, make your sound. And so he starts pointing to all the different groups. And it turns out to be Michigan State Spartans fight song to the tee. Figured that out. It was just fantastic. It gives me chills just telling you about it now, remembering how powerful was when everybody kind of came together. Now, you being a speaker, I'm sure you felt those things when you bring everybody together, and it all hits hard, but that was, that was one I remember.

Michael Hingson 28:50

Well, wow, that's pretty funny, cute, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, he has always been a leader, and it's very clear that he was, and I remember the days it was Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird.

Greg Hess 29:10

Yeah, yeah. Well, when he came to LA you know, they had Kareem and Byron Scott, a whole bunch of senior players, and he came in as a 19 year old rookie, and by the end of that year, he was leading that team. Yeah, he was the guy driving the ship all the time, and he loved to give those assists. He was a great guy for that.

Michael Hingson 29:30

And that's really the issue, is that as a as a real leader, it wasn't all about him at all. It was about how he could enhance the team. And I've always felt that way. And I you know, when I hire people, I always told them, I figure you convince me that you can do the job that I hired you to do. I'm not going to be your boss and boss you around. What I want to do is to work with you and figure out how the talents that I have can complement the talents that you have so that we can. Enhance and make you more successful than you otherwise would be. Some people got it, and unfortunately, all too many people didn't, and they ended up not being nearly as successful. But the people who got it and who I had the joy to work with and really enhance what they did, and obviously they helped me as well, but we they were more successful, and that was what was really important.

Greg Hess 30:24

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. It's not about controlling, about growing. I mean, people grow, grow, grow, and, you know, helping them certainly. There's a reason. There's no I in team, right? And we've heard that in many times before. It's all about the group, group, pulling together. And what a lot of fun to have working in all throughout my life, in pulling teams together and seeing that happen. You know, one plus one equals three. I guess we call it synergy, that type of thinking,

Michael Hingson 30:56

Yeah, well, you've faced a lot of adversity. Is, is the pancreatic cancer, maybe the answer to this, but what? What's a situation where you've really faced a lot of adversity and how it changed your life? You know you had to overcome major adversity, and you know what you learned from it?

Greg Hess 31:16

Sure, I think being 100% honest and transparent. I'd say I went through a divorce in my life, and I think that was the most difficult thing I've gone through, you know, times where I'm talking to myself and being crazy and thinking stupid things and whatever. And I think the adversity that you learn and the resilience that you learn as you go, hey, I can move forward. I can go forward. And when you you see the light on the other side, and you start to create what's what's new and different for you, and be able to kind of leave the pain, but keep the happiness that connects from behind and go forward. I think that was a big part of that. But having resilience and transforming from whatever the event might be, obviously, pancreatic cancer, I talked about a transformation there. Anytime we kind of change things that I think the unstoppable mindset is really, you know what's within this program is about understanding that opportunities come from challenges. When we've got problems, we can turn them into opportunities. And so the adversity and the resilience that I think I'd like to try to learn and build and be a part of and helping people is taking what you see as a problem and changing your mindset into making it an opportunity.

Michael Hingson 32:40

Yeah, yeah. Well, you've obviously had things that guided you. You had a good sense of vision and so on. And I talked a lot about, don't let your sight get in the way of your vision. But how's a good sense of vision guided you when necessarily the path wasn't totally obvious to you, have you had situations like that? Absolutely.

Greg Hess 33:03

And I think the whole whole I write about it in my book in peak experiences, about having vision in terms of your future self, your future, think where you're going, visualize how that's going to happen. Certainly, as a basketball player, I would play the whole game before the game ever happened by visualizing it and getting it in my mind as to how it was going to happen. I do that with golf today. I'll look at every hole and I'll visualize what that vision is that I want to have in terms of getting it done. Now, when I have a vision where things kind of don't match up and I have to change that on the fly. Well, that's okay, you know that that's just part of life. And I think having resilience, because things don't always go your way, that's for sure. But the mindset you have around what happens when they don't go your way, you know, is big. My as a coach, as a business coach today, every one of my clients write a three, three month or 90 day plan every quarter that gets down to what their personal goal is, their must have goal. And then another kind of which is all about getting vision in place to start putting in actual tactical strategies to make all of that happen for the 90 day period. And that's a big part, I think, of kind of establishing the vision in you got to look in front of us what's going to happen, and we can control it if we have a good feel of it, you know, for ourselves, and get the lives and fulfillment we want out of life. I think, yeah,

Michael Hingson 34:39

you've clearly been pretty resilient in a lot of ways, and you continue to exhibit it. What kinds of practices and processes have you developed that help you keep resilience personally and professionally?

Greg Hess 34:54

I think one of them for sure is that I've I've lived a life where I've spent you. I'm going to say five out of seven days where I will do a serious type of workout. And right now bike riding. I'll ride several days a week, and, you know, get in 10 to 15 miles, not a lot, but, I mean, I've done but keeping the physical, physical being in the time, just to come down the time to think about what you're doing, and at the same time, for me, it's having a physical activity while I'm doing that, but it's a wind down time. I also do meditation. Every morning. I spend 15 minutes more or less doing affirmations associated to meditation, and that's really helped me get focused in my day. Basically, I look at my calendar and I have a little talk with every one of the things that are on my calendar about how I'm setting my day, you know? And that's my affirmation time. But yeah, those time things, I think report having habits that keep you resilient, and I think physical health has been important for me, and it's really helped me in a lot of ways at the same time, bringing my mind to, I think, accepting, in a transition of learning a little bit accepting the platinum rule, rather than the golden rule, I got to do unto others as they'd like to be treated by me. I don't need to treat people like they'd like to like I'd like to be treated. I need to treat them how they'd like to be treated by me, because they're not me, and I've had to learn that over time, better and better as I've got older. And how important that is?

Michael Hingson 36:33

Well, yeah, undoubtedly, undoubtedly so. And I think that we, we don't put enough effort into thinking about, how does the other person really want to be treated? We again, it gets back, maybe in to a degree, in to our discussion about humor earlier we are we're so much into what is it all about for me, and we don't look at the other person, and the excuse is, well, they're not looking out for me. Why should I look out for them?

Greg Hess 37:07

You know, one of the biggest breakthroughs I've had is working with a couple that own a business and Insurance Agency, and the they were doing okay when I started, when they've done much better. And you know, it's besides the story. The big part of the story is how they adjusted and adapted, and that she I think you're probably familiar with disc and I think most people that will be listening on the podcast are but D is a high D, dominant kind of person that likes to win and probably doesn't have a lot of time for the other people's feelings. Let's just put it that way to somebody that's a very high seed is very interested in the technology and everything else. And the two of them were having some challenges, you know, and and once we got the understanding of each other through looking at their disc profiles, all of a sudden things cleared up, a whole, whole bunch. And since then, they've just been a pinnacle of growth between the two of them. And it was just as simple as getting an understanding of going, you know, I got to look at it through your eyes, rather than my eyes. When it comes to being a leader in this company and how sure I'm still going to be demanding, still I'm going to be the I'm not going to apologize about it, but what I got him to do is carry a Q tip in his pocket, and so every time she got on him, kind of in the Bossy way. He just took out, pulled out the Q tip, and I said, that stands for quit taking it personal. Don't you love it?

Michael Hingson 38:29

Yeah, well, and it's so important that we learn to communicate better. And I'm sure that had a lot to do with what happened with them. They started communicating better, yeah, yeah. Do you ever watch Do you ever watch a TV show on the Food Network channel? I haven't watched it for a while. Restaurant impossible.

Greg Hess 38:51

Oh, restaurant impossible. Yeah, I think is that guy?

Michael Hingson 38:55

No, that's not guy. It's my Michael. I'm blanking out

Greg Hess 39:00

whatever. He goes in and fixes up a restaurant.

Michael Hingson 39:03

He fixes up restaurants, yeah, and there was one show where that exact sort of thing was going on that people were not communicating, and some of the people relatives were about to leave, and so on. And he got them to really talk and be honest with each other, and it just cleared the whole thing up.

Greg Hess 39:25

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing how that works.

Michael Hingson 39:28

He's He's just so good at at analyzing situations like that. And I think that's one of the things that mostly we don't learn to do individually, much less collectively, is we don't work at being very introspective. So we don't analyze what we do and why what we do works or doesn't work, or how we could improve it. We don't take the time every day to do that, which is so unfortunate.

Greg Hess 39:54

Oh boy, yeah, that continuous improvement Kaizen, all of that type of world. Critical to getting better, you know. And again, that comes back, I think, a little bit to mindset and saying, Hey, I'm gonna but also systems. I mean, I've always got systems in place that go, let's go back and look at that, and how, what can we do better? And if you keep doing it every time, you know, in a certain period, things get a lot better, and you have very fine tuning, and that's how you get distinguished businesses. I think, yeah,

Michael Hingson 40:27

yeah, it's all about it's all about working together. So go ahead, I

Greg Hess 40:31

was working with a guy at Disney, or guy had been at Disney, and he was talking about how they do touch point analysis for every every place that a customer could possibly touch anything in whatever happens in their environment, and how they analyze that on a, I think it was a monthly, or even at least a quarterly basis, where they go through the whole park and do an analysis on that. How can we make it better?

Michael Hingson 40:55

Yeah, and I'm sure a lot of that goes back to Walt having a great influence. I wonder if they're doing as much of that as they used to.

Greg Hess 41:04

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know, yeah, because it's getting pretty big and times change. Hopefully, culture Go ahead. I was gonna say a cultural perspective. I just thought of something I'd share with you that when I went into West Lake Village High School as a basketball coach, I walked into the gym and there was a lot of very tall I mean, it's a very competitive team and a competitive school, 611, six, nine kids, you know, that are only 16 years old. And I looked around and I realized that I'm kid from Canada here, you know, I gotta figure out how to make this all work in a quick, fast, in a hurry way. And I thought these kids were a little more interested in looking good than rather being good. And I think I'd been around enough basketball to see that and know that. And so I just developed a whole philosophy called psycho D right on the spot almost, which meant that we were going to build a culture around trying to hold teams under a common goal of 50 points, common goal, goal for successful teams. And so we had this. I started to lay that out as this is the way this program is going to work, guys and son of a gun, if we didn't send five of those guys onto division one full rides. And I don't think they would have got that if they you know, every college coach loves a kid who can play defense. Yeah, that's what we prided ourselves in. And, of course, the band got into it, the cheerleaders got into it, the whole thing. Of course, they bring in that special olympics thing, and that's part of that whole culture. Guess what? I mean, we exploded for the really powerful culture of of a good thing going on. I think you got to find that rallying point for all companies and groups that you work with. Don't you to kind of have that strong culture? Obviously, you have a very huge culture around your your world.

Michael Hingson 42:54

Well, try and it's all about again, enhancing other people, and I want to do what I can do, but it's all about enhancing and helping others as well. Yeah. How about trust? I mean, that's very important in leadership. I'm sure you would, you would agree with that, whereas trust been a major part of things that you do, and what's an example of a place where trust really made all the difference in leadership and in endeavor that you were involved with?

Greg Hess 43:29

Yeah, so often, clients that I've had probably don't have the they don't have the same knowledge and background in certain areas of you know, we all have to help each other and growing and having them to trust in terms of knowing their numbers and sharing with me what their previous six month P and L, or year to date, P and L, that kind of thing, so that I can take that profit and loss and build out a pro forma and build where we're going with the business. There's an element of trust that you have to have to give somebody all your numbers like that, and I'm asking for it on my first coaching session. And so how do I get that trust that quickly? I'm not sure exactly. It seems to work well for me. One of the things that I focus on in understanding people when I first meet and start to work with them is that by asking a simple question, I'll ask them something like, how was your weekend? And by their response, I can get a good bit of an idea whether I need to get to get them to trust me before they like me, or whether they get to get them to like me before they trust me. And if the response is, had a great weekend without any social response at all connected to it, then I know that I've got to get those people to trust me, and so I've got to present myself in a way that's very much under trust, where another the response might be. Had a great weekend, went out golfing with my buddies. Soon as I hear with the now I know I need to get that person to like. Me before they trust me. And so that's a skill set that I've developed, I think, and just recognizing who I'm trying and building trust. But it's critical. And once, once you trust somebody, and you'd show and they, you don't give them reason to not trust you, you know, you show up on time, you do all the right things. It gets pretty strong. Yeah, it doesn't take but, you know, five or six positive, that's what the guy said he's going to do. He's done it, and he's on top of it to start trusting people. I think, Well,

Michael Hingson 45:31

I think that that trust is all around us. And, you know, we we keep hearing about people don't trust each other, and there's no trust anymore in the world. I think there's a lot of trust in the world. The issue isn't really a lack of trust totally. It's more we're not open to trust because we think everyone is out to get us. And unfortunately, there are all too many ways and times that that's been proven that people haven't earned our trust, and maybe we trusted someone, and we got burned for it, and so we we shut down, which we shouldn't do, but, but the reality is that trust is all around us. I mean, we trust that the internet is going to keep this conversation going for a while. I shouldn't say that, because now we're going to disappear, right? But, but, trust is really all around us, and one of the things that I tell people regularly is, look, I want to trust and I want people to trust me. If I find that I am giving my trust to someone and they don't reciprocate or they take advantage of it. That tells me something, and I won't deal with that person anymore, but I'm not going to give up on the idea of trust, because trust is so important, and I think most people really want to trust and I think that they do want to have trusting relationships.

Greg Hess 47:02

Yeah, totally agree with you on that, you know. And when it's one of those things, when you know you have it, you don't have to talk about it, you just have it, you know, it's there, right?

Michael Hingson 47:16

Yeah, and then, well, it's, it's like, I talk about, well, in the book that I wrote last year, live, it was published last year, live like a guide dog. Guide Dogs do love unconditionally, I'm absolutely certain about that, but they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between them and us, unless there's something that is just completely traumatized them, which isn't usually the case, they're open to trust, and they want to trust and they want to develop trusting relationships. They want us to be the pack leaders. They know we're supposed to be able to do that. They want to know what we expect of them. But they're open to trust, and even so, when I'm working with like a new guide dog. I think it takes close to a year to really develop a full, complete, two way trusting relationship, so that we really essentially know what each other's thinking. But when you get that relationship, it's second to none.

Greg Hess 48:15

Yeah, isn't that interesting? How long were you with Rosella? Before the event,

Michael Hingson 48:21

Rosella and I were together. Let's see we Oh, what was it? It was February or May. No, it was the November of 1999 so it was good two year. Good two years. Yeah, wow, yeah. So, you know, we we knew each other. And you know, even so, I know that in that in any kind of a stressful situation, and even not in a stressful situation, my job is to make sure that I'm transmitting competence and trust to Roselle, or now to Alamo. And the idea is that on September 11, I all the way down the stairs just continue to praise her, what a good job. You're doing a great job. And it was important, because I needed her to know first of all that I was okay, because she had to sense all of the concern that people had. None of us knew what was going on on the stairwell, but we knew that something was going on, and we figured out an airplane hit the building because we smelled jet fuel, but we didn't know the details, but clearly something was going on, so I needed to send her the message, I'm okay, and I'm with you and trust you and all that. And the result of that was that she continued to be okay, and if suddenly she were to suddenly behave in a manner that I didn't expect, then that would tell me that there's something different and something unusual that's going on that I have to look for. But we didn't have to have that, fortunately, which was great. It's. About trust, and it's all about developing a two way trust, yeah,

Greg Hess 50:05

yeah, amazing. Well, and it's funny how, when you say trust, when in a situation where trust is lost, it's not so easily repaired, no,

Michael Hingson 50:16

you know, yeah. And if it's really lost, it's because somebody's done something to betray the trust, unless somebody misinterprets, in which case you've got to communicate and get that, that that confidence level back, which can be done too.

Greg Hess 50:33

Yeah, yeah. Important to be tuned and tuned into that,

Michael Hingson 50:40

but it is important to really work to develop trust. And as I said, I think most people want to, but they're more often than not, they're just gun shy, so you have to really work at developing the trust. But if you can do it, what a relationship you get with people.

Greg Hess 50:57

Circumstances, you know, and situational analysis change the level of trust, of course, in so many ways. And some people are trusting people where they shouldn't, you know, and in the right in the wrong environment. Sometimes you know, you have to be aware. I think people are fearful of that. I mean, just even in our electronic world, the scammers and those people you gotta, we get, we get one or two of those, you know, messages every day, probably people trying to get you to open a bank account or something on them. Better be aware. Don't want to be losing all your money. Yeah, but it's not to have trust, right?

Michael Hingson 51:41

Yeah, it's one we got to work on well, so you you support the whole concept of diversity, and how has embracing diversity of people, perspectives or ideas unlocked new opportunities for you and the people you work with.

Greg Hess 52:00

I got a great story for you on that. Michael A when I got into this coaching business, one of the one of the clients I was lucky enough to secure was a group called shredding on the go. And so the mother was kind of running the show, but her son was the president, and kind of the one that was in charge of the company. Now he's wheelchair, 100% wheelchair bound, nonverbal, very, very, I don't remember the exact name, but I mean very, very restrictive. And so what she figured out in time was his young is that he could actually take paper and like putting paper into a shredder. So she grew the idea of saying, Gosh, something James can do, we can build a business. This, this kid's, you know, gonna, I'm gonna get behind this and start to develop it. And so she did, and we created, she had created a company. She only had two employees when she hired me, but we went out and recruited and ended up growing it up to about 20 employees, and we had all the shredders set up so that the paper and all of our delivery and so on. And we promoted that company and supporting these people and making real money for real jobs that you know they were doing. So it was all, you know, basically all disabled autism to, you name it. And it was just a great experience. And so we took that show to the road. And so when we had Earth Day, I'd go out and we'd have a big event, and then everybody would come in and contribute to that and be a part of growing that company. Eventually, we got to the company to the point where the mother was worried about the the owner, the son's health was getting, you know, his life expectancy is beyond it, and she didn't want to have this company and still be running and when he wasn't there. And so we worked out a way to sell the company to a shredding company, of course, and they loved the the client. We had over 50 clients going, and they ended up making quite a bit of money that they put back into helping people with disabilities. So it was just a great cycle and a great opportunity to do that and give people an opportunity. I got to be their business coach, and what a lot of fun I included myself in the shredding I was involved with all parts of the company, and at one point, what a lot of fun I had with everybody.

Michael Hingson 54:22

Yeah, yeah. There's something to be said for really learning what other people do in a company and learning the jobs. I think that's important. It's not that you're going to do it every day, but you need to develop that level of understanding.

Greg Hess 54:37

Michael, you'll love this. Our best Shredder was blind. She did more than anybody, and she was blind. People go, you can't be doing that when you're What do you mean? She had it figured out. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 54:48

What's the deal? Yeah, no, Shredder doesn't overheat, you know? But that's another step, yeah. So what's an example you've worked with a lot of teams. And so on. What's an example where a collaborative effort really created something and caused something to be able to be done that otherwise wouldn't have happened? Right?

Greg Hess 55:10

Well, I referred back real quickly to the psycho D thing, where he had a common goal, common pride in taking it, and we just were on it. And I think that was a really, really transformational kind of thing to make everybody better as one whole area in a team. Now that's probably the first thing that comes to mind. I think the the idea of bringing the team together, you know, and really getting them to all work as one is that everybody has to understand everybody else's action plan. What's their plan? What is their vision? Where are they going in terms of, you know, playing basketball, to whether you're on the sales team, whether you're on the marketing team, or whatever part of the business you're in, do you have an action plan? And you can openly show that, and you feel like you're 100% participating in the group's common goal. I can't over emphasize an element of a common goal. I think, in team building, whatever that may be, you know, typically, the companies I'm working with now, we try to change it up every quarter, and we shoot quarter by quarter to a common goal that we all and then we build our plans to reach and achieve that for each individual within a company. And it works really well in building teams. And it's a lot of fun when everything comes together. You know, example of how a team, once you built that, and the team's there, and then you run into adversity, we have a team of five people that are selling insurance, basically, and one of them lost her father unexpectedly and very hard, Hispanic, Hispanic background, and just devastating to her and to her mother and everything. Well, we've got a machine going in terms of work. And so what happened is everybody else picked up her piece, and all did the parts and got behind her and supported her. And it took her about five months to go through her morning phase, and she's come back, and now she's going to be our top employee. Now going forward, it's just amazing how everybody rallied around her. We were worried about her. She comes back, and she's stronger than ever, and she'd had her time, and it was just nice to see the team of a group of company kind of treat somebody like family. That's a good thing.

Michael Hingson 57:30

That's cool. What a great story. What mindset shift Do you think entrepreneurs and leaders really need to undergo in order to be successful.

Greg Hess 57:45

Boy, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about the idea of looking through it, through other people's eyes, right? And then as a leader, you know, the same thing you were mentioning earlier, Michael, was that you draw the strength out of the people, rather than demand kind of what you want them to do in order to get things done, it's build them up as people. And I think that that's a critical piece in in growing people and getting that whole element of leadership in place. Yeah, what was the other part of that question? Again, let me give you another piece of that, because I think of some Go ahead. Yeah. I was just remember, what did you ask me again, I want to make sure I'm right

Michael Hingson 58:28

from your books and coaching work. The question was, what kind of mindset shift Do you think that entrepreneurs and leaders have to adopt?

Greg Hess 58:39

Yeah, yeah. So that's one part of the mindset, but the big one is recognizing that it's a growth world that we need to look at how we can grow our company, how we can grow individuals, how we can all get better and continuous improvement. And I think that is an example of taking a problem and recognizing as an opportunity. And that's part of the mindset right there that you got to have. I got a big problem here. How are we going to make that so that we're we're way better from that problem each time it happens and keep improving?

Michael Hingson 59:10

Yeah, that makes sense. Well, if you could leave everyone who's listening and watching this today with one key principle that would help them live and lead with an unstoppable mindset. What would that be? What, what? What advice do you have?

Greg Hess 59:30

Yeah, my advice is make sure you understand your passion and what, what your purpose is, and have a strong, strong desire to make that happen. Otherwise, it's not really a purpose, is it? And then be true to yourself. Be true to yourself in terms of what you spend your time on, what you do, in terms of reaching that purpose. It's to be the best grandparent there you can be in the world. Go get it done, but make sure you're spending time to grandkids. Don't just talk it so talks cheap and action matters. You know, and I think, figure out where you're spending your time and make sure that fits in with what you really want to gather happen in your life and fulfilling it.

Michael Hingson 1:00:09

Well, I like that talks cheap and action matters. That's it. Yeah, I tell that. I tell that to my cat all the time when she doesn't care. But cats are like that? Well, we all know that dogs have Masters, but cats have staff, so she's a great kitty. That's good. It's a wonderful kitty. And I'm glad that she's in my life, and we get to visit with her every day too. So it works out well, and she and the Dog get along. So, you know, you can't do better than that. That's a good thing. Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely super. I we've I think we've talked a lot, and I've learned a lot, and I hope other people have too, and I think you've had a lot of good insights. If people would like to reach out to you and maybe use your services as a coach or whatever, how do they do that?

Greg Hess 1:01:00

Well, my website is coach, hess.com

Michael Hingson 1:01:06

H, E, S, S,

Greg Hess 1:01:07

yeah, C, O, A, C, H, H, E, S, s.com, that's my website. You can get a hold of me at coach. At coach, hess.com that's my email. Love to hear from you, and certainly I'm all over LinkedIn. My YouTube channel is desk of coach s. Got a bunch of YouTubes up there and on and on. You know, all through the social media, you can look me up and find me under Coach. Coach S, is my brand Cool?

Michael Hingson 1:01:38

Well, that it's a well worth it brand for people to go interact with, and I hope people will so Oh, I appreciate that. Well, I want to thank you all for listening and watching us today. Reach out to coach Hess, I'd love to hear from you. Love to hear what you think of today's episode. So please give us an email at Michael H i, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, wherever you're monitoring our podcast, please give us a five star rating. We value it. And if you know anyone who might be a good guest to come on and tell their story, please introduce us. We're always looking for more people to come on and and chat with us. Coach you as well. If you know anyone, I'm sure you must love to to get more people. Now, if you could get Magic Johnson, that'd be super but that's probably a little tougher, but it'd be, it'd be fun. Any, anyone that you feel we ought to chat with, I would appreciate it. But again, I want to just thank you for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful.

Greg Hess 1:02:41

Thank you, Michael, it's an honor to be here.

Michael Hingson 1:02:48

Episode 402 – How to Make Your Marketing Investment Unstoppable with Sacha Awaa

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 10:51:15 -0000

What if most marketing struggles have nothing to do with tactics and everything to do with clarity? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with marketing strategist and global entrepreneur Sacha Awaa to explore why so many small businesses waste money on marketing that never works.

Sacha shares how growing up across cultures shaped her approach to strategy, leadership, and customer connection. We talk about why understanding your audience matters more than any tool, how AI is changing speed to market without replacing human judgment, and why marketing should be treated as an investment rather than an expense. You’ll hear practical insights on audits, go-to-market strategy, process building, and leadership decisions that help businesses grow with intention instead of noise. I believe you will find this conversation both grounding and useful as you think about how to build something sustainable in a crowded marketplace.

Highlights:

00:09 – Hear how growing up across cultures shaped a broader view of leadership, communication, and business.10:11 – Learn why AI improves speed to market but still requires human judgment to work well.12:13 – Discover why not truly understanding your audience is the biggest reason marketing fails.19:22 – Understand what marketing strategy actually means beyond tactics, tools, and trends.27:51 – See what small businesses can borrow from enterprise companies without losing agility.46:09 – Learn why strong leaders know when to step back and let the right people lead.

About the Guest:

Sacha Awaa is a marketing strategist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of My Marketer Mentors, a fast-growing community designed to help small business owners cut through the noise and succeed with marketing that actually works. With a unique ability to blend creativity and data, Sacha has guided startups and small businesses in turning limited budgets into measurable results.

Her career has been driven by a passion for helping entrepreneurs avoid costly mistakes, drawing on insights from both Fortune 500 playbooks and scrappy startup strategies. Through workshops, mentorship, and one-on-one guidance, she empowers business owners to find clarity in today’s overwhelming marketing landscape.

Sacha’s own journey reflects the intersection of design thinking and strategic planning—leveraging both sides of the brain to unlock powerful growth. She believes that marketing isn’t just about selling products, but about building authentic communities, which inspired her to create a peer-led space where entrepreneurs can learn from and support each other.

Whether she’s breaking down practical go-to-market frameworks, rethinking outdated marketing tactics, or sharing her personal story of resilience and innovation, Sacha brings both warmth and wisdom to the small business world.

Ways to connect with Sacha:

www.mymarketermentors.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachaawwa/https://www.instagram.com/uncomplicate__it/https://www.linkedin.com/in/sachaawwa/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone, and I want to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset today. I your host Michael hingson gets a chance to talk with Sacha Awa, who is a marketing professional. She's going to tell us a lot about that I know, and she's a marketing strategist in general. She's an entrepreneur, and she's co founder of whoop I lost it there, my marketer my marketer mentors. So we'll learn about that as we go forward, if I don't get tongue tied anyway, Sasha, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Sacha Awaa 02:05

Yes, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. Well, why

Michael Hingson 02:08

don't we start? I love to do this to have you start by talking maybe about the early Sasha, growing up, and just telling us a little about you. Yeah.

Sacha Awaa 02:18

So I was born in Dallas, Texas, where my middle eastern dad and my European, Swedish mother collided. And then I grew up in the Middle East and migrated my way down south, down to the US, really, to attend college, where both of my parents went, and I have since stayed and been here. So I am sort of a, a, I guess, a global citizen in the sense that, you know, I, I, I travel a lot to my parents hometown and countries as well as, you know, have a base here in South Florida in the United States. And it's just really great to, you know, have that connection across the board, and I think it truly helps with work just, you know, working alongside and coming from different parts of the world,

Michael Hingson 03:09

what do you think about the fact that you have lived in various parts of the world, and how that has really shaped the way you view working with people and viewing the job that you do.

Sacha Awaa 03:22

Well, I think that when you are sort of that global citizen, and I think a lot of you know, my generation is having lived all over, it really creates that sense of truly understanding and being able to connect with folks all over just, you know, really the nuances of culture and you know, really how things sort of function and work in their in their country, and really being able to adapt it so it's not just, and I have clients globally. And you know, some clients are some, some people are like, Oh my gosh, it's so hard to do business in X country, or so on and so forth. And I think you just, you adapt, and you, as long as you're open to understanding how other people work and how they get things done, then I think it's a great fit for you to for you to be, for you to be doing that.

Michael Hingson 04:11

Yeah, I think it's so important to have a broader perspective than so many of us do. I also think that, and know that traveling around the US, there are a lot of different kinds of attitudes and cultures, if you will, in different parts of the country, which is really cool, this country is large enough that it has that but then traveling to other countries has also allowed me to gain a broader perspective, which is why I asked the question. Because I agree with you. I think that there's so much to be gained by seeing and experiencing various parts of the world. Yes, it broadens your horizons in so many ways.

Sacha Awaa 04:49

Yes, in so many ways. I couldn't agree more. Yeah,

Michael Hingson 04:53

which is, which is really cool. So, so how long did you live in the Middle East?

Sacha Awaa 05:00

I was in the middle east from when I was four months until I was, how should I say, until I was 16, and then came here for boarding school, and then later continued on and lived here. So it hasn't, it's, you know, I've probably spent a majority of my life in the US. But I think what's interesting is when you grow up at a young age, anywhere you really get into really having that foundation and that makes you who you are.

Michael Hingson 05:34

Yeah, yeah. Well, how, why did you come back to the US when you were 16, or how did that work out?

Sacha Awaa 05:43

I came for the purpose of education.

Michael Hingson 05:46

Yeah, your parents were all in favor of that.

05:49

Yes, that's where they went to school. So they

Michael Hingson 05:52

wanted you to get that that sense as well. I mean, you've certainly had 16 years almost of learning and so on in the Middle East, but it must have been quite a big difference coming to the US.

Sacha Awaa 06:07

Yes, it was, but yeah, of course. I mean, it's when you're when you're at the tender age of 16. Yeah, you know, coming here and migrating anywhere away from your family, especially long distance, even though you're probably like, banging your fists on the wall and saying, I can't wait to leave home. You then have a rude awakening when that happens.

Michael Hingson 06:28

Mm, hmm. Well, so are you so your parents still in the Middle East? Or how does that work?

Sacha Awaa 06:36

No, my parents are. Well, they're between the Middle East, Europe and the US as well. They're all over Flin around, huh? Yeah. And they continue to do so well,

Michael Hingson 06:48

which gives them a broader set of horizons about things. But they they do come and visit daughter occasionally, I gather,

Sacha Awaa 06:57

yes, they do. And they come and they stay for two to three months at a time. So it's

07:01

great. Well, that's cool.

Michael Hingson 07:04

And so what languages do you speak?

Sacha Awaa 07:08

I speak both Swedish, English and Arabic.

Michael Hingson 07:12

Okay, wow. So what? What prompted Swedish as part of it?

Sacha Awaa 07:18

What prompted Swedish as part of it, my mother is Swedish.

Michael Hingson 07:22

Oh, that's true. You said she was, didn't, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, cool. So, so that gives you, certainly a plethora so next you have to learn an Asian language, and then you're going to really have a number of continents. Much less you could do Africa.

07:39

Yes, exactly.

Michael Hingson 07:42

But that's, that's cool. So where did you go to college?

Sacha Awaa 07:45

I went to American University in Washington, DC.

Michael Hingson 07:48

Ah, okay, what did you study marketing, I assume.

Sacha Awaa 07:52

No, actually, I studied, I studied graphic design. I mean, I eventually worked for advertising agency, but I was on the design side. Okay?

Michael Hingson 08:02

And then you graduated. Did you get an advanced degree or just a bachelor's just a bachelor's degree that was enough to get you going, Yes. What did you do after you You graduated?

Sacha Awaa 08:17

What did I do after I graduated? I worked in, I worked in two advertising agencies. I worked in a much smaller one that, you know, when you live in Washington, DC, you either work for the government or you have government contracts. Yeah, yeah. So I worked with government contracts and advertising agency backgrounds

Michael Hingson 08:40

cool and you, you liked it.

Sacha Awaa 08:46

I did. I worked as a graphic designer for about four years, and I switched over leaving graphic design because I just felt that it was really hard to be creative under pressure.

Michael Hingson 09:01

Yeah. Well, yeah, but as you transitioned into doing more marketing things, that's pretty creative under pressure, isn't it? Yeah.

Sacha Awaa 09:12

I mean, I guess marketing in general is just a lot of pressure to begin with,

Michael Hingson 09:17

yeah, but still, but you, you certainly seem to do okay with it all.

Sacha Awaa 09:26

I Yeah, and I think it's I'm always up for a good challenge.

Michael Hingson 09:31

When did you go out and start your own company?

Sacha Awaa 09:36

Started my own company, if you'd imagine, I graduated in 2003 and then I worked all throughout the years, and then I started my own company in 2022

Michael Hingson 09:46

oh so. Post somewhat, post pandemic,

Sacha Awaa 09:50

somewhat in the midst of why did

Michael Hingson 09:54

you decide to start your own company rather than just continuing to work for others?

Sacha Awaa 10:00

I wanted to break the shackles and basically have my own freedom.

Michael Hingson 10:08

And it's working out for you. Okay,

Sacha Awaa 10:10

yeah. I mean, starting anything is tough, right?

Michael Hingson 10:13

Yeah, yeah. But you like being an entrepreneur. I do. I love it. So what do you do in your own company? Maybe, what do you do different? Or what do you do that you didn't do when you work for others? Yeah, I think

Sacha Awaa 10:30

everything that I learned in terms of working for other companies was really just, you know, my bottom line and focus is ensuring that small business owners and entrepreneurs survive and thrive in this environment, of, how should I say, survive and thrive in the environment, of, of what it's like to build a business these days. It's no longer that American dream in the 40s, 50s and 60s and the 70s, really. That made that was so much easier. I think the AI boom is making things a lot easier. To start a company again, but it's just, you know, it it's a different time, right? So owning any kind of business is a struggle.

Michael Hingson 11:13

Why is AI making it easier? AI is

Sacha Awaa 11:17

making it easier because AI has created platforms that can build a website in Six Minutes or Less versus, you know, I don't know, you know, I mean, it's, it's very, it's very different, you know, so, and I think it's, it's really speed and agility is what it is. It's speed and agility to market. You know, yeah,

Michael Hingson 11:45

well, and with AI and all of it, it does. Do you find that it still makes mistakes, or that it may be a better way to put it, rather than it still makes mistakes? Maybe a better way to say it is that even with AI, you need to go in and tweak whatever it does so that it really comes out more like what you're specifically looking for. Yes, yeah, yes, yeah, because AI is great, but it isn't you, and it never will be. It's going to work at times to get closer to what you are, but still being able to go in and and tweak it is probably a very helpful thing 100% so that that makes a lot of sense. Yes, so you have been working now at this company. Talk about being under pressure, I mean now, but it's, it's, it's a self imposed pressure, so it's really not the same as what you would experience working for someone else, right? Correct, yeah. So Correct, yeah. So it's not really the same kind of pressure, not at all. You can make the pressure what you want it to be. Oh, yeah. Well, so what are the most common mistakes that you see small businesses making that you when, when you start to talk with them about marketing so on, what are the what are the mistakes that they usually make?

Sacha Awaa 13:18

Oh, the it's, it's not necessarily mistakes that they make. I think it's just the lack of education of what people understand marketing truly is to really, then be able to develop out, you know what that could look like, right? Or you know how it would work for them. So it's just really, not truly understanding, you know, where they are in their business, maybe even doing the work of, you know, digging into, you know, who their customer audience is, and so on and so forth. So it really then becomes a struggle as to, you know, creating creating content for them to connect with. How should I say their audience? Because they have maybe a message that doesn't make sense to their audience, because they really haven't dug into the mindset. So I think really to answer your question, the biggest mistake that that small business owners make, and this is what I push all the time, is ensuring that you do the work of understanding who your audience is and connecting your product and service to that.

Michael Hingson 14:28

So when you asked me, before we started about what the audience is like, and I said, it's really a general, pretty eclectic audience because of the way we do the podcast, that must have drove you crazy.

14:38

No, not at all,

Sacha Awaa 14:40

because I think that in a medium like this is different, right? I mean, you probably deliver, you probably deliver a lot of content that makes sense for for a lot of people. And so, you know, I think that that that works in so many ways. Oh, so, in essence, kind of do understand who you're. Audiences in a way,

Michael Hingson 15:01

yeah, well, as much as we can. But the other part about it is that in this podcast, having different kinds of guests with different kinds of messages, like yesterday, I talked with two people who are very religious and faith based. And I'm sure that there are people who aren't going to be interested in that, who listen to our podcast, they might listen to it. I hope they will, just because I think it's good to always hear other perspectives. But I do understand that sometimes people in the audience will listen to one thing and they won't listen to someone else and what they do, and I think that's perfectly okay, yes, because the kind of medium that we have exactly so I my background has has been since 1979 in sales. Okay, of course, we work very closely with marketing, and there's a lot of overlap and all that, but in looking at the people that you work with and so on, can you give us a story of maybe a company or someone who really overspent on a marketing campaign that they really didn't need to spend so much on their or a tactic where they just overspend without getting any real results.

Sacha Awaa 16:27

That happens when there's a lack of understanding of, you know, jumping into something just because you think the world has told you that that's what you need, or, you know, you've been told, you know, this is what you should be doing. So in that sense, it makes it very hard because of the simple fact that they don't really they jump into making a mistake when it's not the right time for their business. And most of these sort of marketing agencies that are out there kind of focused on a one track setup so they don't really it then becomes a bad marriage. If that makes sense, you're meeting the you're meeting the client. You're connect a client is being connected to an agency at the wrong time, and it's it's just not where they should be as a as a business.

Michael Hingson 17:26

So a company starts doing something in a particular way because someone told them to do it that way, but they don't get results. Then what happens?

Sacha Awaa 17:36

Then they think marketing sucks, and that's the majority of who comes to me, you know, yeah.

Michael Hingson 17:42

So when that happens, what do you do?

Sacha Awaa 17:46

I have to rehabilitate them back into understanding that marketing does actually work. And that's when I build out my whole process and explain to them like, this is, this is how it actually works, you know, you just it wasn't the fault of, you know, the the business that you were working with. It was just the simple fault that you weren't ready and they didn't guide you in the manner that they should have.

Michael Hingson 18:15

How do people take that, when you, when you, when you say that to them?

Sacha Awaa 18:20

I wish I had met you, you know, before this happened. Because sometimes, you know, dependent, there can be a lot of money that's wasted, right? So, and that's really what the struggle is, and so, but then it automatically gains trust because they know that I'm not here to, you know, to just rip them off and tell them I'm going to TEDx your business and so on and so forth, when I'm actually really going to, you know, support them getting to where they need to get to. Have you

Michael Hingson 18:58

had situations where you started working with a company, and you you thought you understood what was going on, but then when you started a campaign, it didn't work either, and you had to punt, as it were.

Sacha Awaa 19:10

Well, I always tell them, you know, we have to test and learn, and that's what marketing is all about. So it's going through those motions, and they have to be open for it, but what I do when I test and learn is that I don't throw money out. I make sure I dip our toes in very cautiously to then, you know, make sure that we build accordingly.

19:33

Yeah, yeah. It is. It

Michael Hingson 19:37

isn't an exact science, as it were, but it is certainly something that, when you understand it, you know, you know generally how to proceed. And there's a lot of Troy that has to go on. And so it's not magic. But by the same token, it is a process, yes, and I think most people don't really understand. Marketing, they don't understand exactly what it is that you really do that helps companies grow. And maybe that's a way to ask that question. So what? What really, when it comes down to it, is marketing, and what do you do?

Sacha Awaa 20:16

Yeah, so think of I'm a strategic I'm a marketing strategist, whereby I really look at a company in terms of what products and services they've created, who they've created for, and then how do we go to market, and where do we find their audiences at a high impact, low cost? So that's essentially what I do, is maximize their dollars spent just based on making sure that their foundation is in a good place. Have I confused you even more?

Michael Hingson 20:45

No, no, not at all. Okay, good, but, but I understand it. So yeah. And I think that that it, it really is important for people to be aware that, that it is all about trying to, well, in a lot of senses, you're educating the people you work with, but through and with them, you're also educating the rest of the world about what these people have to offer, and showing that it's a valuable thing and and that's something that, Again, that's what marketing really is all

21:20

about, yes, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 21:24

And so it's important to understand that it is a that it is a give and take. It is a process, and it doesn't happen all at once. One of my favorite examples still continues to be, and you're probably familiar with the case was it back in 1984 when somebody put poison in one bottle of Tylenol and yes, and within a day, the president of the company jumped out in front of it and said, We're going to take every bottle off the shelf until we Make sure that everything is really clean. What a marketing campaign by definition. That really was because he was he was building trust, but he was also solving a problem. But I think the most important part of it still is that he was building trust. And I'm just amazed at how many people haven't learned from that. And when they experience a crisis, they they hide rather than learning how to get out in front of it. Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. How do you deal with that?

Sacha Awaa 22:32

Um, I don't know. Sometimes I ask myself why I didn't get a degree in psychology as a second major?

Michael Hingson 22:39

Yeah. Yeah, it is. It is amazing. But, well, you got to do what you got to do?

22:49

Yeah? Absolutely, right.

Michael Hingson 22:52

So what's the first thing that a company should do to make sure that their marketing dollars are really being well spent,

Sacha Awaa 23:02

make sure that their marketing dollars are being well spent. And it really goes back to the foundation, ensuring that they really know what their mission and their vision and who they're actually talking to, because if they're creating content that is is not aligned with the pain point of who their audience is, then you've completely missed the beat.

Michael Hingson 23:22

And I'm assuming that you find a lot of people who haven't really thought nearly enough about their vision and their mission, and who haven't really learned to understand what their audience

23:32

is. Oh yeah, 100%

Michael Hingson 23:36

so what do you do to fix that?

Sacha Awaa 23:39

What do I do to fix that, um, that's when I go through my, my, my three part process, in the sense of, I really take a look at, what's the word I'm looking for, understanding, you know, again, like the foundation, I come in and I do an audit, and I really look into, you know, the details of, you know, how they've set up, how they haven't set up, what they've been doing, you know, that hasn't worked for them, and so on and so forth, and really moving through that process, you know,

Michael Hingson 24:17

yeah, Do you? Do you find that you often surprise customers because they thought they knew what they were doing, they thought they understood their mission and their audience, and oh,

24:30

they do all the time.

24:32

They're just surprised,

Sacha Awaa 24:33

yeah, I mean, they definitely think that they know what they're talking about, you know? And sometimes it's it's difficult to to unpack that, you know, with clients, but it works out in the end,

Michael Hingson 24:49

yeah, it's all about education and teaching, and as long as they're willing to learn, which is, of course, part of the issue. Have you had some people that no matter what you tell them, they just refuse to. Buy into what they really need to do to improve,

Sacha Awaa 25:04

to try and see if I can make sure that when we're having the initial setup, to ensure that, you know, it's a good fit for both of us that we, we, we make sure that, you know, in general, it's a good fit, right? And so I tend to, I tend to try and hope to have that interview process that that makes it work in the end, right? So, more than not, I'm, I'm pretty I'm pretty accurate with it. But of course, you know, we can always make mistakes, and I have, you know, I have yet to, to let go of a client. But you know, sometimes you have to, you have to allow the client to to, you know, to guide you. But then, you know, I always am Frank in the beginning that, you know, this is what we're going to be working with. This is what we're set up to do so on and so forth. And, you know, if there's pushback, I feel it in the beginning, you know, and I tell them how I work, and they tell me how they work, and we just hope that it becomes a good marriage.

Michael Hingson 26:23

Ultimately, it's all about education. And I gather, since you said you've never had to really let go of a client that you've you've been successful at working out some sort of an educational process between the two of you. Yes, because that's really what it's what it's all about. Yeah, I'm assuming that you've learned things along the way too.

Sacha Awaa 26:49

I definitely have learned things along the way. Yes.

Michael Hingson 26:53

Do you find that sometimes customers, or a customer of yours really did know more of what they were talking about than you thought? And you had to adapt.

Sacha Awaa 27:03

Those are a blessing when they when, when they have that. So I'm always open for that, and I think that that's great when they've done the work, you know, yeah,

Michael Hingson 27:16

but they've obviously done something that brought them to you, because they were or they felt they were missing something, I assume, yes. So again, it's, it's a learning experience, and I think that's so important, that that that we all learn. I know for me in sales, I figure I learned from every customer that I have ever had, and whenever I hired someone, I told them, at least, especially at least for the first year, you need to think of yourself as a student. Your customers want to teach you. They want you to be successful, as long as you develop a mutual trust and in and ultimately, you have to be a student to understand them, and let them teach you what they do, and so on. Then you go from there,

Sacha Awaa 28:07

100% 100% I couldn't agree more,

Michael Hingson 28:11

and it's so important to do that, and it makes for a much better arrangement all the way around. When that happens, doesn't

28:18

it? Yes, it does

Michael Hingson 28:22

so fortune 500 companies tend to have strategies they've used, and that's probably what brought them to the point where they became fortune 500 companies. But what are some of the strategies, maybe, that they have, that smaller companies can adapt to? Well, it's

Sacha Awaa 28:41

interesting that you asked that you asked that because I worked for a fortune 1000 company. I mean, I worked for the New York Times, and what I really have been excited about leaving them and going into the startup world is the simple fact that enterprises have processes and systems in place that startups don't. And that's what's so interesting, is that, you know, while a startup is beautiful chaos and they have more speed and agility to get to market, they just don't have the process, the practice of the processes in place to really be organized to get to market. So that was really one thing that I brought into, into the system, to be able to help support

Michael Hingson 29:30

so for example, what are some of those

Sacha Awaa 29:34

processes, you know, creating road maps, go to market strategies, you know, digging into systems. And what really tends to happen at startups, it's just like, go, go, go, go, go, just get market. You know,

Michael Hingson 29:50

that doesn't work necessarily at all, because even if you're successful, if you don't have a system in place, do you. Really end up figuring out what it was that made you successful?

30:04

Yes, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 30:07

So there is, there's a lot of value in in putting processes in place in terms of documenting what you do. Yes, and documentation is a very key part of it, I would think, yes. Because if you do that, then people, or you, when you go back and look at it, can say, Oh, this is what I did, and this is this worked. So we ought to continue that process, yes,

30:37

for sure, for sure, for sure.

Michael Hingson 30:41

So the other part about it is, though, that some of these processes may may cost a bunch of money. How do they implement some of these without breaking the bank?

Sacha Awaa 30:55

How do they without breaking the bank? In

Michael Hingson 30:57

other words, it's going to cost to put processes in place. How do you convince business people, or how do they realize they can do it without losing all their money and just getting a marketing plan going?

Sacha Awaa 31:13

I hope that they get in touch with, you know, somebody like me that can really help them through that process and really just, you know, guide them along the way and and support them in that sense, right? So it's a risk listen like with everything that you take in life, with any a vendor that you work with, with any support system that you have, it's a risk that you take to ensure that you know, it is, it is a it is a good marriage at the end of the day. That's why, when I sign up with clients, I ensure that, you know, I guide them along the way to, you know, support what they're doing, understanding that, you know, they may be bootstrapped from a budget standpoint, so it's going in slowly, giving them a proof point that, you know, hey, this is working. And then moving from there,

Michael Hingson 32:07

yeah, so you have checkpoints along the way so that they can see that they're making progress.

32:13

Yes, exactly, yeah.

Michael Hingson 32:16

And then, by doing that, they gain more confidence. Yes. But it is, it is just, it is a process, and marketing is a process. And we, we all need to really understand that.

32:34

Yes, I

Sacha Awaa 32:35

completely agree, you know, but it's an exciting thing, and if clients start to stop, start, stop, to look at it as a line item, but rather an investment. They will, they will see the difference in that.

Michael Hingson 32:50

Yeah, that's really the key. It's an investment, and they need to recognize that. And yeah, I'm sure that's part of what you have to teach. Yes, people take that pretty well?

Sacha Awaa 33:03

Um, it's not that they take it well immediately. They have to, they have to adapt to it. And, you know, it's, it's once they see that it works, then, then they can feel comfortable about it. You know?

Michael Hingson 33:19

Yeah, yes. So can you share a story where a small business applied, maybe the large business approach to branding and so on and experience growth?

33:38

Let's see that question again.

Michael Hingson 33:40

Can you share a story where a small company applied a big brand approach and did see growth,

Sacha Awaa 33:51

where they applied a big brand approach and they did see growth when you say brand? Are you talking about changing logos, like all that kind of stuff.

Michael Hingson 34:02

Well, I don't know that's why. I was wondering if you had a story where somebody looked at a major company and they said, Well, we like what these people are doing. We're going to try to apply that to our business. And they did it with your help, and they were successful.

Sacha Awaa 34:22

Um, so, like, so, as I mentioned, like, logos and stuff like that. Okay, that what you mean, like, from a brand. I just want to make sure I understand what you mean by, well, brand,

Michael Hingson 34:36

I'm I'm open. That's why I wanted to get your sense of so big companies are successful for one reason or another, and so I was looking for maybe a story about a smaller company that adopted what a bigger company was doing, and found that they really were able to experience growth because of adopting whatever it was that they did.

Sacha Awaa 34:59

Yes. Yes, so Well, I think that the audit is the most important part in the beginning, and it's focusing on that audit to ensure that they're in the right place for growth, and that's why we do that work, to make sure that we set them up for success, right? And that, to me, is extremely important, because if that work isn't done, then, then it can be set up to fail. You know,

Michael Hingson 35:34

when you say audit, you mean what?

Sacha Awaa 35:38

So I look at their their previous marketing history. I look at their mission, their vision. I really dig into who they think is their ideal customer profile. And then, lo and behold, we find out that there's a multitude of different customer profiles that they haven't even thought to look out for, you know?

Michael Hingson 35:57

And so then your job is to help guide them to bring some of those other customer potentials into what they do.

36:05

Yes, exactly.

Michael Hingson 36:09

So when you're helping a company develop a strong go to mention go to market strategy, what are some of the key elements that you you put in place and that you you you invoke

Sacha Awaa 36:24

the key elements that I put in place, it really goes back to really doing the work on who their customer is. Because a lot of, like I said, it goes back to the beginning of what you asked me, What's the biggest mistake? The biggest mistake is that they don't really, truly uncover who they're targeting. They really, they really don't, you know, a lot of companies don't, even enterprise companies don't.

Michael Hingson 36:44

So what is the process that you use to get people to recognize and put process, put procedures in place to really experience growth, so that you discover that they don't know their their customer base, for example, like they should, or the way they're they're speaking to their customer base, isn't necessarily the best way to do it. What are, what are some of the procedures and the processes that you actually put in place that help move them forward in a positive way? Yeah.

Sacha Awaa 37:18

So you know, when, when we look into the audit. You know, we we really get their content in a good place. We really tighten up their mission. We tighten up their vision. We really expand on who their customer profile is. We make sure that all of their marketing tech is connected so that they can track a lead in through the funnel, from from from the lead to the final sale. And that's that's really important, you know. So that's really, that's really where we start. And then whatever we uncover from the, how should I say, from the audit, then we start to put, and every business is different. And then we really start to put implement and implementations in place to build from, and that becomes the ground up.

Michael Hingson 38:09

And how, how long do you typically work with a company? They come to you and they have a problem or whatever, is there kind of any sort of average amount of time that you end up spending with them, or is it a kind of ongoing relationship that lasts a long time?

Sacha Awaa 38:26

Project Based clients, and then I have clients that are sort of, you know, have been with me since day one. Marketing never stops. So as long as clients understand that, then, you know, we keep moving. It's the heartbeat of every company, right?

Michael Hingson 38:47

So you continue to work with them, and you continue to create and run their marketing campaigns. Yes. How many people do you have in your company?

Sacha Awaa 38:58

Um, I am a solopreneur, and I contract people depending on the clients that I bring in. So I also help with other solopreneurs. So that's, that's how I have managed to to make it work, because it will be difficult to keep people on staff if I don't have work for them, right? Yeah, right.

Michael Hingson 39:16

Yeah, right. But, but you bring people in so that works out. Well, do you have customers outside the US, or is it primarily in the US?

39:28

They're global.

Michael Hingson 39:29

They're global, okay, yeah, yeah, the value of video conferencing, right?

39:36

Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Michael Hingson 39:40

So say the pandemic has helped in in fixing some things anyway, or enhancing some things,

39:46

I think so,

Michael Hingson 39:49

yeah, I know zoom has become a lot better because of the pandemic as a video conferencing tool. Yes, it's more accessible than most. Which is which is really pretty good.

40:00

But, yes,

Michael Hingson 40:03

but it's, I think that that we're, we're seeing the value of it. Do you, which brings up a question a little bit away from marketing, but how do you think that the entire working world is, is changing? Do you think that there, there are a number of companies that are recognizing more the value of hybrid work, whereas people can spend some of their time working at home, as opposed to just having to come into an office every day. Or do you think we're really falling back on just being in the office all the time?

Sacha Awaa 40:38

Some people want to go back into the office. I think that they missed the point of of the hybridness of being able to, you know, to connect with people that I really give somebody the opportunity overseas, that can really support them. So I think a majority of people pre covid were maybe not as open. And I think they're, they're very much open to it now,

Michael Hingson 41:05

and so you're seeing more people work in a more hybrid way, exactly, yeah, I I'm glad to hear that. I think it's, it's so important. I think that we're seeing that, that workers are happier when they they are in an environment that they're really comfortable in. And the reality is, while offices are great and there's a lot of value and people spending time with each other in the office, that doesn't work all the time or shouldn't work. Yeah, it's true, so it's nice to see some changes that that will help that, yes, exactly, does AI help all that in any way?

Sacha Awaa 41:51

Oh, I mean, there, there are some things that AI can help with. But, I mean, from a connect to, it's, it's really maybe platforms that help you connect, that help you get, you know, the job done that maybe assimilate you being together, you know, and and, you know, brainstorming and so on and so forth, right, right?

42:11

So, what

Michael Hingson 42:14

do you think about the people who say that AI is going to take away so many jobs?

Sacha Awaa 42:19

I don't think that it's going to take away so many jobs. I think the people that focus on jumping on the bandwagon of AI and ensuring that they make their job a lot better with AI are the ones that are going to survive with AI. Yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 42:36

We had someone on the podcast about a year ago, who pointed out that AI will never take away anyone's job. It's people that will take away jobs and they'll give to AI without finding other opportunities for the people who are potentially being displaced. But in reality, that AI still is not going to do everything that a person can do. So

Sacha Awaa 43:03

you Yeah, there's going to be things that AI can never do. And I think that that is great, you know? I mean, I think people are going to look more for authenticity than, you know, focusing on what is not real, right? I think, I think, you know, people are so scared that it's going to backlash. I actually think that it's going to showcase that we, we need things. We need certain things, right? Yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 43:44

Well, and I've talked about it here, but one of my favorite interesting things about AI is, when I first started hearing about it, I was talking to a couple of teachers who said that, well, AI is just going to make life really difficult because students are just going to let AI write their papers, and students aren't going to learn anything. And and I asked, What are you going to do about that? Well, what can we do? We we're working on programs so that we can try to figure out whether AI wrote the speech or the or the paper, or they wrote the paper. And that got me thinking, and I finally realized what a wonderful opportunity AI is providing. So you assign a paper for a class of students, and the students go off and do their papers. A lot of them may use AI to do the paper, but if you're concerned about whether they've really learned from the experience. The way to handle it is let everyone turn their papers in, then take a day and let the students in the class each have like a minute, get them up in front of the class and say, now defend your paper. You'll find out very quickly who knows what?

Sacha Awaa 44:58

Yeah, it's. True, and they are saying that more people that are using AI, it's actually like hurting their brain from becoming creative, right?

Michael Hingson 45:09

Well, I I use AI, but I use AI to perhaps come up with some ideas that I hadn't thought of, but I still create the article or create the paper, because the only way to do it, I think AI is great at coming up with some possibilities that maybe we didn't think of. But yeah, it still needs to be us that does it.

45:31

I completely agree. I couldn't agree more, yeah, and that works. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Michael Hingson 45:40

So when, when startups start launching and doing things, what are some of the common mistakes that they make?

Sacha Awaa 45:56

They rush to get to market, and they don't do the foundational work that we chatted about, and then that can really, that can really have a major pushback on them.

Michael Hingson 46:13

Are there others that you can think of? There are other things that companies ought to do that they don't

Sacha Awaa 46:21

organizational, creating project plans. But it's at its core, you know? I mean, if they, if they rush to get somewhere, and it doesn't turn out to work in the end, it's because, you know, they haven't done the work to really ensure that they're in a good place before they start spending money. You know,

Michael Hingson 46:47

companies need to to have leaders and visionaries. How would you define a leader?

46:54

How would I define a leader?

Sacha Awaa 46:58

Well, that's a little bit of a loaded question. I would define a leader who understands that they are as strong as who they bring on to support the growth of the company and their ability to know when to take a step back, because they're the founders, and to allow whoever they brought on to help them grow. If that makes sense, it does, yeah, because a lot of the times people hire somebody and they're and they just do the work for them, but it's like, why have you hired them? You know,

Michael Hingson 47:43

I think that one of the key attributes of any leader is to know when as to learn your people and know when to step back and let somebody else take the lead because they happen to have more of a talent to do a particular thing than you do 100% I think that is so crucial, because so many leaders

48:06

don't do that. Yep, I completely agree.

Sacha Awaa 48:12

They don't. They don't do that at all, you know?

Michael Hingson 48:15

Yeah, I you know. And there's a big difference between being a leader and being a boss.

48:22

Yes, absolutely. And

Michael Hingson 48:24

I, you know, I always tell every person that I ever hired, my job is not to boss you around. You convinced me that you could do the job we're hiring you for, but my job is to use my talents to help you be more successful, and you and I need to figure out how to make that work. How do we use each other's talents to do the things that you need to be successful?

48:48

Yes, exactly.

Michael Hingson 48:51

I don't think that all that many people tend to do that, and they really should.

48:56

Yes, yes. I couldn't agree more.

Michael Hingson 49:01

Well, there are a lot of tools and tactics available that people can use. How do you decide to use what in a particular stage of growth or to help people move forward?

Sacha Awaa 49:14

It really is just dependent on, on, on their business and their industry and that's what makes it unique to just to focus on, you know, because the same industry could, should, just could have different needs, right? So it's, it's understanding what their needs are that you then assign that to particular tools that help them with growth and so on and so forth.

Michael Hingson 49:43

Yeah, that that clearly makes sense. So there's a lot of noise and lot of distractions in marketing. How do you recommend cutting through the noise and focusing on what really matters in any given situation? Um,

Sacha Awaa 50:06

what really matters in any given situation?

Michael Hingson 50:10

So there's, again, there's there. There's so many ways to get distracted. How do you how do you help to keep people focused on the job at hand, whatever that is to to ignore distractions and focus.

Sacha Awaa 50:27

So I guess distractions can come in many different packages. So it's really understanding how those distractions are and what they mean to the company. So just depending on them on that. It's, it's, it's really offering up whether that distraction is important, you know what I'm saying, or if it is, you know, something that is just something to bypass, or if it's noise, so it's really kind of analyzing the worth of spending time and effort on it.

Michael Hingson 51:05

How do you get people to get past focusing on those distractions, though? So I mean, you're right and all that you've said, but how do you get people to to recognize what they really need to do in any given situation? Um,

Sacha Awaa 51:23

it's really the analysis of of throwing back data to them. So it's like, okay, so this is a distraction. What does this mean to the company? You know, how can we leverage this or not leverage this? Does it make sense, or are we wasting time focusing on think it's just reasoning, right? It's logical reasoning with any type of distraction, whether it's business or personal.

Michael Hingson 51:48

Yeah, I know for me, when I worked for a company a number of years ago, I was the first person into the office, because I sold to the east coast from California. So I was in the office by six, and I had two to three hours that I could focus on doing all the phone calls and the other things that I needed to do, because it was nine o'clock on the East Coast, and I started to observe after a while, not so much for me, but when other people started to arrive, they spend time chatting and all sorts of stuff like that. And sometimes I would get interrupted, and it slowed things down. But people chatted and didn't focus as much for quite a while on whatever it is that their job responsibilities required them to do. Yeah, and of course, that's a distraction. It's an interesting distraction of just communications. But still, I never saw that. The company did a lot to get people to really focus. They did some things. They put some procedures in place, for example, where you could see how many phone calls you made in a given day. Yes, some people took that to heart, but a lot of people didn't, and the bottom line is they continue to be distracted.

Sacha Awaa 53:14

Yes, it's true, but I think, I think then what, what that what that becomes, it's, it's the personal characteristic.

53:26

Yeah, they have to solve for

Michael Hingson 53:30

that they didn't have to solve for. But if you were the leader of a company where you saw some people who were doing that, what would you do? How do you get them to understand,

Sacha Awaa 53:44

how do I get them to understand

Michael Hingson 53:46

that they need to focus? And how do you help them focus?

Sacha Awaa 53:51

I think that's out of my paycheck. Hopefully they have a psychologist back

Michael Hingson 53:56

to getting that degree again, right?

Sacha Awaa 53:59

Yeah, you know, I mean, like, there's only so much that I can do honestly, you know,

54:06

yeah, yeah,

Sacha Awaa 54:11

there really is only so much that I can do in the arena of supporting people, You know,

54:17

right, yeah.

Michael Hingson 54:20

So if you encounter an overwhelmed business owner who's trying to create a clear marketing path to do something and they feel overwhelmed, what kind of advice would you give them

Sacha Awaa 54:39

that it's natural to feel overwhelmed,

Michael Hingson 54:44

and but, but they feel overwhelmed. How do you deal? How do you fix that again?

Sacha Awaa 54:50

I mean, I'm somebody that focuses on marketing, so it would be, it would be out of my, my core scope, to be honest. You know? I mean, I just. You know, I can talk them through a certain amount of things, but like, you know, I mean, I can't really change somebody's personality, and it's either, you know, I can guide them in one direction as to, like, what is going to hurt or make or break their company. But I'm not an organizational psychologist. I think that that would be a really good question for an organizational psychologist versus a marketer,

55:21

okay, you know, yeah.

Michael Hingson 55:24

Well, if people want to reach out to you and engage you in terms of your services and so on, how do they do that?

Sacha Awaa 55:32

Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. It is Sasha Awa. And then can you spell that S, A, C is in Charlie H A, and then the last name is a W, W, A, and my website is S A M, as in Mary G, as in George H Q, so headquarters.com

Michael Hingson 55:52

so it's S A M, G, H Q, H

55:57

Q, exactly.com. Yes.

Michael Hingson 56:02

And they can reach out to you through the website, and, of course, on LinkedIn and so on.

56:06

Yes, exactly. Well, we've

Michael Hingson 56:09

been doing this a while, but do you have any kind of final words of wisdom and things that you want to say to the audience here to get them thinking and maybe reach out to you? Yeah, yeah.

Sacha Awaa 56:20

I think, you know, marketing isn't as complicated as it's made out to be. It is. It is loud and noisy. But you know, there are, there are marketers that are here to support you on complicated and to really support your growth. So really lean on them and and and trust in the process

Michael Hingson 56:46

and through that, they'll grow exactly well. Sasha Sacha, I want to thank you very much for being with us today. This has been a lot of fun, and I appreciate it, and I appreciate your time. And I urge all of you to when you're thinking about marketing and growing your business, Satya is a person who can help with that clearly. So hopefully you'll reach out. I'd love to hear from you. Love to hear your thoughts about today. Feel free to reach out to me. At Michael H i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you and get your thoughts and for all of you and such as you as well, if you know anyone else who might ought to be a guest on our podcast, love to get introductions to people and wherever you're observing the podcast today, Please give us a five star rating. We really value your ratings. We value your thoughts and your your ratings and your opinions are what keep us going. So we really appreciate you giving us those and for you again. Sacha, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun. So thank you.

57:58

Thank you so much. Michael. I really appreciate it.

Michael Hingson 58:06

Episode 401 – Unstoppable Calm: How Fear of Judgment Really Holds You Back with Carlos Garcia

Tue, 30 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Fear of judgment can quietly shape how you show up, even when you are capable, prepared, and driven. In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I talk with Carlos Garcia, an attorney, Army Reserve JAG officer, certified Army Master Resilience Trainer, and high performance coach who helps people move past fear and into purposeful action. Carlos shares his path from growing up in Simi Valley to serving as a trial defense counsel in high pressure legal settings, and how his own fear of rejection once led him to stay quiet, second guess himself, and avoid opportunities. That struggle pushed him to study resilience, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, and to test those lessons through intense physical and mental challenges that reshaped how he shows up under pressure.

Together, we explore why fear of other people’s opinions feels so powerful, how the brain exaggerates threats, and why growth requires planned exposure to discomfort. We talk about preparation versus worry, training your mind before the crisis hits, and why small wins matter more than people realize. I also share lessons from September 11 and from my book Live Like a Guide Dog, connecting mindset, preparation, and courage when it matters most. Carlos’s guiding idea runs through the entire conversation. Get calm so you can think clearly. Get bold so you can act with intention. Get after it so progress actually happens. If fear of judgment, public speaking, or stepping outside your comfort zone has been holding you back, this episode offers practical insight and encouragement to move forward with confidence.

Highlights:

00:58 – Learn how early success can still create fear of judgment and quiet self doubt.

06:14 – Discover why exposing yourself to discomfort breaks fear predictions that rarely come true.

08:29 – Understand how preparation builds calm before pressure ever hits.

16:28 – Learn how to use stress as energy instead of letting it trigger avoidance.

25:23 – Discover why reflection turns mistakes into growth instead of shame.

52:04 – Learn why getting calm must come before bold action and real progress.

About the Guest:

Carlos is an attorney, certified Army Master Resilience Trainer, Army reserve JAG officer, and high-performance coach for smart, driven people. He’s spent over a decade navigating high-stakes environments, from adversarial legal settings fighting for soldiers as a trial defense counsel to the frontlines of resilience training with soldiers and leaders. It all began in 2011 in Washington, DC, where high-stress, high-judgment, and constant pressure came with the territory.

But behind the business attire and confident façade was a harsh reality: a fear of rejection that kept him second-guessing, staying quiet, people-pleasing, and missing out on opportunities he knew he wanted. For years, he avoided rocking the boat, held back in meetings, and lived for external validation. The result? He was invisible in rooms where he should’ve been leading, stuck on a path that didn’t feel like his, and missing out on the roles, relationships, and rewards he worked so hard for.

Then, he decided to rewrite the script. He dove into resilience training, went deep into neuroscience, psychology, ancient philosophy, and anything that could help him (and others like me) reject the fear of, well, rejection. That journey led him to the U.S. Army Resilience program, where he got certified to teach soldiers and leaders how to face judgment, stress, and adversity head-on.

It led him on a path of continuous testing and personal experimentation—at work, in ultra running, and in combat sports including Brazilian jiu jitsu and judo. And eventually, he created True Progress Lab to bring those same principles to leaders who are ready to step up.

His motto:

Get calm—clarity starts there.

Get bold—stability fuels courage.

Get after it—progress demands action.

Ways to connect with Carlos**:**

Website: http://trueprogresslab.com

Newsletter: http://trueprogresslab.com/newsletter

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/iamjcarlosg/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trueprogresslab/

X: https://x.com/TrueProgressLab

hello@trueprogresslab.com

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:17

Well, hello everyone, wherever you happen to be, I want to tell you that I am your host, Michael Hinkson, and here we are with unstoppable mindset, and we are talking today with Carlos Garcia, who is a an attorney. He's a resilience trainer, he's a lot of things. He worked for jag for a while. Never did see him on the TV show, though, but that's probably good. But anyway, we're going to talk about his life, his world, what he's doing, why he does what he does, and all those sorts of things. So I don't want to give you a lot of information, because I want him to provide it all. So we'll just start this way. Carlos, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.

Carlos Garcia 02:06

Thank you for having me. Michael,

Michael Hingson 02:09

well, I love to always start this way. Why don't you tell us about the early Carlos growing up and some of those things. Ah.

Carlos Garcia 02:18

So I grew up in a small valley called Simi Valley, California. It was once dubbed the safest city in the country back in 2001 I believe it was from the new New York Times article, or an LA Times article. And I grew up there. My childhood home was there. And my dad humble beginnings, truck driver, my mom was a stay at home mom, and was a really, one of those kids that did really well in school. Growing up, I got good grades. I have that analytical mindset, always trying to be organized and structured. And, you know, I went to school at different schools, and I realized that after a while I started not being able to I came to an impasse, essentially, where I had this feeling of being an imposter that haunted me throughout school, through college, through Law School, even as an early attorney and I realized that this feeling of not being good enough, it was really an amplification of something deeper, which I came to learn was something called fear of judgment, or fear of people's opinions. Sometimes there's an acronym for it, called fopo fewer people's opinions, because there's this quote that I like to talk about from this 20th century psychologist. His name is Alfred Adler. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he has an awesome quote that was very eye opening for me. And he once said that all problems are interpersonal problems. In other words, if there weren't people around you, you wouldn't have this feeling of being inadequate to begin with, right? In other words, it's this fear of being judged. It's this fear of negative evaluation, being in the spotlight, all eyeballs on you that creates this fear. And so this was my problem, right? And through time and personal experimentation and research, I needed to figure out a way in terms of how to break from this, because it was really holding me back. In many ways. It created inside of me this avoidance, almost a habit of avoidance, this and it just turned into my personality. I would avoid opportunities wherever I'd be in the spotlight, and so through that, I needed to sort of rebuild myself. Eventually I created true profit. Progress lab to share the insights that I learned and the experiences that I learned, because it's, it's it's an awful feeling to know that you're ambitious and you know you're qualified for things, but you just don't have, you know, there's this impasse, this this fear that that stops you from going after it, right, getting after it, going after those opportunities. So that's sort of a little bit of little bit of my background. Well, what I'm curious about,

Michael Hingson 05:33

I'm always fascinated to talk about fear in so many ways. But why is it that so many people have this fear of other people's opinions. Why is it that we have, and I'm going to deliberately put it this way, but why have we learned that? Because it seems to me, it's probably more of a learned behavior than anything else, because we can also unlearn it. But why? Why is it that we tend to, all too often face that and we're afraid of whatever people think.

Carlos Garcia 06:05

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with our past. It's a learned experience where we something happened to us in the past, and then that fear starts to generalize itself, and then it shows up in different ways in our lives. And so what happens is that we generalize that fear, and then, because the mind has a way to perceive threats, and often it perceives it perceives threats in an exaggerated manner. And so what that does is it keeps us in that safe zone, right? So what I have found in my experience is that I needed to train my mind, specifically my amygdala, right, that that fight or flight response, I needed to train that and teach it that there is nothing to fear from the get Go from the beginning, and that the worst case scenario thought that we're having, that those those those overthinking thoughts that we're going through, thinking that that worst case scenario is going to happen, I needed to violate that prediction, right? There's something in exposure therapy called violating your fear prediction, which means you have to go into the thing that's causing you anxiety, and then see if that prediction that you're having before stepping into that event, see if it actually happens. And most of the time it doesn't happen. So therefore you're training your mind and teaching it that there's nothing to fear, and if it does happen, you're still going to survive, you're still going to be breathing, you're going to be okay, right? And that's something that, that I do at true progress lab is, is using this form of exposure therapy, which teaches people like you have to desensitize yourself to these stressors.

Michael Hingson 07:56

Yeah, I, you know, I've talked a lot about fear, especially in the last few years, but certainly since September 11, when when I escaped from Tower One. And as I tell people, it took a long time for me to realize that the reason that I was able to function after the plane hit the building was that a mindset kicked in because I knew what to do to to escape the buildings, and that a mindset kicked in that caused me to be able to function and not fear everything that comes along, and especially since the pandemic hit, I've been studying a lot more about this and wrote a book entitled live like a guide dog that talks about fear from the standpoint of what I've learned from working with eight guide dogs and my wife's service dog. And one of the things that comes up in discussions in that book, that we all often talk about here is that, in fact, most as you point out, everything that we fear isn't going to come to pass anyway. And the the other aspect of that is that we worry about everything under the sun. We are always doing what if about every single thing. And the reality is more than 90% of the things that we what if we don't really have any control over, but we don't separate ourselves from them. And so the result is that we just continue to worry about them. And I know one of the things that I learned on September 11 is, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can. We had no control over the World Trade Center happening, events happening, but we absolutely have control over how we deal with it.

Carlos Garcia 09:38

Yeah, yeah. And the point about what you mentioned that when the towers hit, you knew what to do like this. This mindset kicked in, right? And that made me think about being proactive. In terms of we have this habit of waiting for things to happen to us instead of being proactive. Taking proactive responsibility. So what that means in practice is what I learned about my life is that I needed to stop letting things happen to me and start taking a more proactive measure in terms of training for the things that are bothering me, or training for things that were causing anxiety inside of me, so that when I needed to do the real thing, you just act right, just like you said, your mindset just kicked in. You knew what to do, and that is probably because you've trained that in a proactive manner, and so that when the thing actually happens, you know what to do. And that's that's what I needed to so you need to, you need to train outside so that when the real thing happens, you know what to do. You're not waiting for things to happen. You're taking a proactive measure, you know.

Michael Hingson 10:50

Yeah, I understand. Here's a question, are you familiar with the term and the industry business continuity a little bit. All right, so, yeah, business continuity, or people who practice it, are the people they call themselves, the what if people, and their job is to really focus on in in their businesses that they're working in, or they're contracted to, either way, but in their businesses, their job is to look for different kinds of things that could be emergencies, and put in place the systems that will be able to keep the business going if there is an emergency or if those things occur. So they're they're doing a lot of what ifing, if you will, to say, well, what if this happens? What do we do in the business? What if that happens? And in fact, the company that I do work with, accessibe, has been doing a fair amount of business continuity. I've not been directly involved with it, but they've been doing it over in Israel because of all the things that are going on over there. And what if? What if their attacks? What if servers go down? How does the company keep going in the US and so on? What's really interesting to me is these people, and I'd be curious to get your take on it, but these people do that, but they're clearly not fearful. They're they're anticipating and putting things in place, but I've not ever heard that they're afraid. Why is that? Why is that?

Carlos Garcia 12:30

Yeah, that makes me think about this. This quote from Seneca, who's a stoic philosopher, and he said, The man lost his children, you too can lose yours. The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive. So it's about visualizing worst case scenarios and even taking a next step which is more advanced is living out the worst case scenario. It kind of goes in line with desensitizing yourself to the stressor, right by envisioning it. Because, as you may know, when you visualize things, it's almost like doing an actual rep, right, right? So when you visualize it, when you think about it, you take away it's, it's complete power over you, because you've thought about the situation and then you've actually made me taken the next step of actually formulating an action plan about it, so you're less anxious about, Okay, what if this happens? Then I actually, I could actually maybe have an action plan in terms of what I need to do next, you know? So it's a way to create distance, I think, between the fear and what may may or may not happen, right?

Michael Hingson 13:41

Well, yeah. And the reality is that with most people, we What if everything to death, but we're doing it out of fear as opposed to out of planning. And as you point out, when you're doing it as part of creating a plan or as part of truly anticipating potential, then you've taken away the stressor part, right?

Carlos Garcia 14:05

Yeah, there is a big difference between just saying what if and having those scatter, scatter thoughts and replaying the what ifs in your mind, versus okay, this is a negative or potentially worst case scenario thought I'm having. So is it true? What can I do to plan? You know, we have there's the technique we call we we call rational optimism, which is from this psychologist. He's known as the father of psychology. His name is Martin Seligman. You may have heard of him, what he calls a learned optimism, and essentially is putting your thoughts that you're having in your mind, putting them against the wall and acting like an objective fact finding detective and trying to figure out, okay, are these thoughts that I'm having? Are they actually true? Like, what's the evidence for these thoughts? What's the evidence against these thoughts? Right? And it's kind of to your point about the. You know, worst case scenario. Okay, is this worst case scenario? Could it actually happen? Or am I just really exaggerating, you know, and being intentional about that, I think, is important. It's difficult, because when you're in the heat of passion, your mind is going nuts, and you need to have those techniques in your back pocket to kind of come down to reality and say, Okay, what am I? Am I exaggerating? Here? Am I thinking things that are just not true, right?

Michael Hingson 15:35

Well, clearly, I think no one ever thought or not enough to put it into put a plan into action. But no one ever thought that somebody would fly a large aircraft totally loaded with jet fuel into a building of the World Trade Center or into the Pentagon until somebody did. And so was that a failure on someone's part, I'm, I'm not sure that it is or was, but also, having seen it happen, it also then created, I think, more of a mindset to work harder, to try to anticipate potentialities.

Carlos Garcia 16:20

Yeah, yeah, I think that's very true. Because, I mean, I can't imagine being this in that situation that you were in, but yeah, more of a reason to really think of think outside the box in terms of what could potentially happen, right? And again, I think it goes back to just being proactive and and being intentional about those things.

Michael Hingson 16:45

We spend so much time teaching people to fear so many things and fear them in a in a negative way. I don't have any problem with people having a a fear, a respectful fear of one thing or another. But the issue is, if you fear it and let that fear overwhelm you, or like, I like to say, blind you, that's a different situation. I think there's, there's no problem with the point of being afraid or having a fear. I don't want to say being afraid, but having a fear of something, but you use that fear to help you focus and to help you be more aware of what goes on around you. That's a whole different animal than just being afraid and then letting that fear overwhelm you.

Carlos Garcia 17:38

Yeah, for sure. I think some nerves are good, some, some fear is good, because you need it to perform too. It's, it's, it's positive energy. If you, if you see it as positive energy, then you can use it to your advantage. But if you, if you see fear in a way that makes you defensive and you see it as a threat, then it's not positive energy. Now you're in that, that fight or flight mode, and you're you're thinking, Okay, I need to protect my ego, or I need to protect myself against this perceived threat. And there's a big difference in terms of how you see that, how you see fear, if you see fear as a good thing, like, you know, this mindset stress is enhancing mindset. If you see stress as as a good thing, in terms of using it to your advantage to perform better, then you're going to perform better. If you see it as a negative thing, then you're going to make it you're going to try to make it go away. But I think you shouldn't try to make stress or anxiety go away, because I think you should get stronger despite the stress, because you are, you're going to get stronger, right? They're always going to be problems and challenges, and as you grow, you're going to build businesses, or you're going to have more difficult conversations. You're going to be exposed to more things you can't hide under a rock, right? You're going to be the more exposed you are to things, the more potential stress there's going to be. So making stress go away is not a smart strategy for me. I think I need to become comfortable in the uncomfortable. You know, we either get stronger, we or we don't get stronger, right?

Michael Hingson 19:22

Well, and I certainly don't expect everyone to become Mr. Spock and have no emotions. We're not going to be Vulcans, but I think that we all can learn to be a whole lot more analytical. We all can learn to exercise a lot more control over our lives. And again, that's an area where we do have control. We may not be able to control what happens to us, some unexpected thing might occur, like, you know, anything from losing a job to a fire that comes in your neighborhood or whatever, but we do have control, again over how we deal with it, and. I think that's the big issue. How do we get people in general to become more analytical, to become more aware that they have to really study themselves and teach themselves how to deal with fear? Because I don't, I don't think, well, we don't teach that generally, and kids don't grow up learning that, and one of my favorite examples of fear and all that is I listen to the weather forecast every day. And my gosh, those people, those weather people, are never satisfied. It's too hot, it's too cold. Well, it's a good day today, but there are clouds, there are always butts, there are always things that cause people to react and that that doesn't contribute to us learning anything positive or productive, to overcome fear.

Carlos Garcia 20:50

Yeah, yeah, there's always on the news. You, you turn on the news, and it's always this FOMO fear of missing out, or this, this mind, just try, because it's such a good marketing technique to keep you in this. You know, this is, this is what's going to happen if you, if you don't do this, this is what's going to happen if you do that right? And I think it takes studying a little bit of marketing to see what's what's trying to deceive you and what's not trying to deceive you. I think I've learned that over the years. And running my business is seeing when people are trying to scare you and when they're not trying to scare you. But on a on another point that you said about how can we become more analytical with fear? I think it starts with being in simmering, in the in the fear, in the anxiety and again, teaching your mind that it's okay, like it's gonna be okay, right? Because if you can't get to a certain, you know, if you're, if you're, say you're different levels of discomfort, say, one being the lowest stress discomfort level, and 10 being, you know, you're panicking basically, right? If you're going into a situation and you're like, at a level seven or six, anything above six, you're not going to really be able to use that, that that thinking part of your brain, because you're going to be in that fight or flight mode. So you first need to relax yourself. You're you need to, like, quiet your amygdala, that part of the brain that is making you all tense and defensive. And then once you do that, then you you allow room to Okay. Now I can maybe start thinking about thinking on my feet. Now I can maybe start being creative using my intuition, smiling, right, showing up as my best self. But you can't do any of that if you're not, if you're if you're all stressed out, right, if your discomfort level is so high. So I would say the first thing is, is learning how to become comfortable in the uncomfortable. And then you can start to whip out some nice, interesting, intelligent ideas with your mind, right?

Michael Hingson 23:04

How do you teach people to do that?

Carlos Garcia 23:06

Yeah, that's a great question. So we work backwards. So first we identify what is the thing that's causing, causing the anxiety? Because we found that it's always this, the specific situation, but not so much the situation. It's the fact that you're in the spotlight that there are eyeballs on you, right? So when there are eyeballs on you, it can be in different situations. Maybe it could be at networking events. Maybe it could be during delivery presentations or deliveries. It could be doing like an investor pitch before you know, a Shark Tank, for example, or being in a meeting with senior leadership and having to speak up and and there being potential conflict. So these could be situate potential situations. Then you got to work backwards and and see, okay, how can I train for these situations outside of the workplace where the stakes are not so high, and train for that with realistic stress levels, so that I feel stress and I know what it's like to be in these situations, and then so that when I become comfortable, then I can take that new experience and wisdom into the workplace. I know what it's like to be in those situations. I know how to manage my thoughts and emotions. I know what to tell myself. I know how to communicate. You take all that knowledge into the workplace so that you can shine in the workplace, right? It's just like Olympians or the Special Forces community. You know, Navy SEALs, Special Forces in the army, that's how they train. Their training is much more difficult than the actual mission, and that's intentional. That's on purpose, so that when it's time to shine, they can shine Same, same approach we take. You know, you train hard outside of the workplace, so that you bring that new. Build Confidence into the workplace. You don't want to do that necessarily in the workplace, right? Because the stakes are higher. You need to perform. You know your bosses may not be as empathetic or understanding. You know there may not be that psychological safety that that people are looking for. You know you can't wait for psychological safety to show up for you to then shine. You have to. You have to learn to shine it. You know, in the absence of of that,

Michael Hingson 25:32

one of the things that I've advocated and advocate and live like a guide dog is it would be very helpful to take time at the end of the day. We need to learn to be more introspective anyway, but to take the time when you're starting to fall asleep, when you get in bed, to think about what happened today, what worked, what didn't work. I never use the term failure because I don't think that that negative connotation really helps. But you can talk about what worked, what didn't work. Why didn't something work like you expected it to, and then carry that to what were you afraid of? What what caused you fear? And what can you do to overcome that, or even with what worked really well today, and how might I even make it better next time. But if you really ask yourself those questions, I also think that most all of us truly have the answers within us, if we would but learn to listen for them.

Carlos Garcia 26:32

Yeah, that's that's such a that's such a great point, Michael, we need to create that space and that time after situations or events or experiences where we can actually reflect and ask those important questions, because it's about, okay, what am I asking myself the right questions so that I can then, then it starts triggering some thoughts, and it starts triggering some reflection in terms of, okay, am I actually learning something out of this experience? You know? And like you said, I mean, it's not, it's not failure. You know, in the military, we have something called AAR after action review, right? Every training mission or actual mission, we ask very similar questions to the questions you just asked, you know, what went well, what didn't go so well? What could we do better next time? Simple questions, but very effective, right? Yeah, you got to keep things simple. Keep it simple silly, right? Yeah. And you know, it's not, it's not failure, it's learning. There's no There's no progress. Until you know I had, I had to learn how to to fail. And learning how to fail is understanding that, like you said, you know, it's there is no failure, right? The failure is about learning, not not keeping in a persona, or keeping an image or or wanting certain individuals to think of you in a certain Limelight or way, right? It's about becoming comfortable with a failure, and you know you'll have less hesitation with it. You'll start taking more imperfect action, because you understand that, you know failure is is learning, not about proving things to people you know, and I think, you know, I've had a hard time with that, is trying to and it's so exhausting, too, right? When you're trying to uphold an image of yourself, it's exhausting because you shouldn't focus on upholding an image of of a certain image of yourself. You should focus on learning. You should focus on on making mistakes and learning from them, like you said, and then asking those, those important questions, right? So that you can reflect on that.

Michael Hingson 28:57

One of the things that I used to say all the time, and I've talked about it here on the podcast before, but is I used to say I'm my own worst critic when I would record my speeches and I want to listen to them to hear what I did and didn't do and so on. And I always made the comment as justification for it, I'm my own worst critic. And only in the last couple years, only in the last year actually, have I learned that's not the right thing to say, because it's such a negative thing. But rather, I'm my own best teacher, because, in reality, I'm the only person who can truly teach me anything and get me to learn. Other people can provide information, but only I can truly assimilate it. And the reality is, I'm my own best teacher. You're your own best teacher. And when we work to truly learn from our experiences, we'll move forward.

Carlos Garcia 29:50

Yeah, yeah, we tend to be really hard on ourselves, right? And, you know, like you, I found that I. Needed to learn how to be kinder to myself and not picking everything apart and having this perfectionist mindset. Right? Often we say, Oh, we're, you know, we take pride in being a perfectionist, but often, I found that perfectionism is just a disguise for going back to fear of being judged, right? And so what happens is that we over prepare, we overthink, we fear making mistakes, and we call ourselves a perfectionist, but perfectionism is really a disguise for that. So think being kinder, yeah, being Condor, I think is

Michael Hingson 30:43

and there are times to beat up on yourself if you don't, if you don't learn from the mistake, if you go and do the same thing over and over again, then you somewhere along the line, have to slap yourself upside the head and go. Wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Because I know it's not right. Why am I continuing to do it? I'm not catching on to something here.

Carlos Garcia 31:05

Yeah, no, that's true for sure. Yeah, you have to slap yourself if you make the same mistakes.

Michael Hingson 31:11

Yeah, if you just don't change. And again, it's all about becoming wise enough to make changes when there's a need to do it, to not only eliminate the fear, but to be able to progress and do something in a much more positive way. And I think every time we figure that out and we do it, we should celebrate and absolutely should celebrate it. We should be joyful that we figured this out. We don't make that mistake again, we won't make that mistake again, or rather than a mistake, we just won't operate that way. We're going to change the way we do it.

Carlos Garcia 31:48

Yeah, I think that's such an important point of celebrating your tiny wins and rewarding yourself, even not, you know, taking yourself out to a restaurant, but just making a note of it almost I actually have a log for things that I've overcome, you know, I call it my proof list, and it's just a simple log with dates of events, of things that I overcame or I succeeded in. And they could be small things, you know, like doing a presentation in front of this group of people, or, you know, winning this competition, or even participating in a competition. And, you know, reviewing that and reminding my mind that, okay, I've done these things. You know, I should have reasons to celebrate, because the mind is so fragile we forget things. You know, we're so busy with work, we're busy doing other things that if you don't schedule a time to remind yourself of the things that you overcame and the things that you your accomplishment, they're just going to fizzle away. You know? They're going to fizzle out again. Forget about them. So I think that's that's something I've been doing for the past several years

Michael Hingson 33:01

well, you you went through a period where you had a lot of these fears and so on. And what really caused you to change and grow and take a different tack to what you you were doing, because I know you were a Jag and a lawyer for for 10 years and so on, but yet some of these fears were existing in your mind, what did you do?

Carlos Garcia 33:24

Yeah, it was an accumulation, I think, of things, and a time that I took to reflect on my life and realize that I was just avoiding there were great opportunities that I was being given, and I was avoiding those opportunities or making illogical excuses for why I shouldn't stretch myself or take advantage of them. Work related, non work related. And, you know, I just said enough was enough. I can't be doing this, you know. And I started taking a stand. I think it starts. I think it starts with reflection, you know, realizing there's a problem. And then the second thing for me was getting a little bit angry, a little bit angry, a little bit aggressive, because you need, I think anger could is a very powerful emotion if you can channel it in the right way. And for me, it was anger at myself in terms of why I was missing out on these, on these things. And then I realized, okay, things needed to change. And I started, like many other people start they start reading, they start researching, they start experimenting with things. I started doing a lot of physical training. I learned that moving the body and stressing the body is a powerful way to learn how to manage your thoughts and your negative emotions, because if you think about it, what are the things that ultimately derail us? They're our emotions. Right that get the best of us, fear, anxiety, stress, frustration, boredom, anger, these things, they make us avoid things, avoid opportunities, or they make us quit early. And I learned that stressing my body through rigorous physical exercise, whether it's ultra endurance running or combat sports, it's these things. There are these activities, are are vehicles or or arenas where you can intentionally train your mind to learn how to IE, learn how to manage those negative thoughts and emotions so that they don't control your decision making, so they don't control your actions, so that you're taking the right actions despite not feeling a certain way Right, yeah, because I had a bad habit of of letting my emotions dictate my actions, you know, I don't feel like doing this today, or I'm too scared to do that, and therefore not doing it right, versus okay, I feel this way, but in spite of feeling this way, I'm still going to do it. And you know, I learned that through learning techniques on how to manage my thoughts and emotions right. And then the other important piece was the mental conditioning, like the example I just gave you with recreating your environment, the things that cause you anxiety, and then replicating that outside the workplace, and then bringing that new experience and Confidence into the workplace, right? Things like things like that.

Michael Hingson 36:43

You know, I know it's me, but I am so amazed that one of the top fears that people have is a fear of public speaking, and I still don't understand really why. Of course, I'm coming from a place of knowledge, and I know, for example, that audiences really want speakers to succeed unless you know, unless they truly view you as the enemy, which they do with politicians and things like that, but mostly especially in the speaking arena, I think audiences want people to succeed. They want to hear what you have to say, but so many people are afraid to go out and speak.

Carlos Garcia 37:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in my experience, it's a fear of being humiliated, a fear of failing in public, right? We have these worst case scenario thoughts that we're going to mess up, and that controls our thinking, Yeah, and so what I found is that you need to live out your worst case scenario and realize that it's gonna be okay, right? It's gonna be okay, and then practicing so we have something called intentional embarrassment or intentional humiliation, where you put yourself in potentially embarrassing situations where you feel that emotion because you need to become desensitized to it. You need to expose yourself to it, because it's going to happen. You don't want it to happen when you're speaking in front of a group of people, right? You want to know what it feels like, so that when you're in front of a group of people, you're not going to you're not going to break you're going to be like, Okay, I felt this before. Not a big deal. I know how to reroute myself and get back on track, right? And you know it also comes from this notion of taking yourself too seriously, right? Are you there to put up a image, to uphold an image of yourself? Are you there to provide value to people right before you step on stage, like, what's your purpose? Right? If you're thinking about you, you you and not about okay, how can I contribute? How can I help people? How can I bring value that's going to mess you up too? Right? Sure, so being so externally focused instead of, or not externally focused, but being so internally focus, instead of focusing on, you know, how you can contribute, right?

Michael Hingson 39:05

And the other part of it is that you may even on stage mess up, and again, if it happens, what do you do about it? I've been pretty fortunate to be able to speak and not really had a lot of problems with that, but I know that, having worked in radio for a while and made a couple of mistakes on the air, the best thing to do is to laugh at yourself and learn to move forward. And I've observed a number of people. I think probably one of the best examples is Johnny Carson, who, for many years on The Tonight Show, did all sorts of things, including, I know, sometimes messed up and made fun of himself, and knew how to move on and turn what was potentially an embarrassing situation into a positive thing, and bring the audience with you. And I think those are all pretty. Preparations that we all need to learn to make.

Carlos Garcia 40:02

Yeah, that's, that's an awesome point laughing at yourself and owning your mistakes. You're owning your flaws. It's so powerful because you're not letting the audience do it. You're doing it yourself, right? You're owning, you're allowing yourself to make mistakes and laugh at yourself. And that has a way of taking, you know, owning it, right? It has, it has a way of creating power in you and taking the power away from other people who may make fun of you. They can't make fun of you because you've already made fun of yourself, right? And, or you join them, or you join them, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, I think that's a great, a great strategy, laugh at yourself, yeah,

Michael Hingson 40:43

and that gets back to what you were saying earlier. Don't take yourself too seriously. And all too often we do that. But the reality is, and as I tell people who come on this podcast, the only rule is you got to have fun. And I want people to have fun. I want people to have interesting content to talk about. We certainly do here. But at the same time, I want people to enjoy themselves and to relax and to have fun, because it's so much more important to do that.

Carlos Garcia 41:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm a recovering stiff take myself too seriously kind of guy, you know, I'm still, still recovering from that, and in my profession too, it's, it can get very stiff, you know, attorneys can get very stiff. And, you know, that's one of the causes of burnout, because you're trying to uphold this image, and so you're overworking yourself to the ground, or you're taking more work than you should be taking. And what happens is you burn out, right? Yeah, from all this, from this core concept of wanting people to like you, yeah, wanting to be disliked, you know, not wanting to be judged by people, people pleasing, right? It all comes from that, right?

Michael Hingson 42:00

Well, you were a JAG officer and so on. How long did you do that? Yeah.

Carlos Garcia 42:04

So I commissioned in 2016 of August. August. 2016 into the army JAG corps reserve. So we have an active component and a reserve component. So I commissioned as an officer into the Reserve component. But I've been on active duty. I've gone on active duty tours. I've mobilized in different different places in the US and overseas as well. I've been doing this since 2016 and most recently. So you have different positions in the JAG corps, and I'm a I work in TDs, which is stands for trial defense service, so it's defending soldiers who've been charged with adverse actions, charged with crimes, and I represent them essentially on the military side. So it's it's a lot of fun. It's very fulfilling. I love it. I've been doing TDs, and you can do different areas of law in in the JAG corps. But I love TDs. I love the, you know, representing the underdog, because, because it is the underdog, it's the government, the prosecutor on the military side. You have the paralegals on the military side. You have all the personnel on the military side, and the military right against the TDS lawyer, jag lawyer, and and the client and the resources that we have. And I like this idea of representing the underdog. It's it's very fulfilling for me.

Michael Hingson 43:35

So I assume you win some cases.

Carlos Garcia 43:38

Yeah, yeah. I win some cases I lose. Some cases, it just depends on what the evidence is. But it really is a lot about humanizing the soldier, learning about who they are, as a person, as an individual, where they come from in the world. What are their aspirations in the military, why they joined the military? What happened? You know, really humanizing and providing context, because the judges, they don't really know the individual, you know, they just see a piece of paper and a charge, right? And so it's, it's our job to paint a picture of of who this person is, and he's a human. Everybody you know makes mistakes. You know leaders make everybody leaders make mistakes. Non leaders make mistakes.

Michael Hingson 44:38

So I love it. So what is true progress labs? Let's get to that.

Carlos Garcia 44:45

True progress lab is the organization I started some years ago, as I was saying, and I help people learn how to become calm. In situations that stress themselves, or they get stressed out, and then after they learn how to become in those situations, they can then become bold in those situations and get after it right, seize the opportunities that they want to seize. And I help both individuals and I go into organizations and do workshops, resilience and leadership workshops. And it comes a lot from my personal experience. And then when I became an army resilience trainer on the army side, where I coach leaders and soldiers at jag attorneys on on resilience, very similar topics on how to manage stress and build resilience in the workplace. It's a program we have in the army that was built several years ago. It's a train the trainer program so people soldiers, such as myself, they get trained in resilience training, and then we go back into our unit, and we train those concepts and principles in our respective units and help help other soldiers, other leaders, develop resilience. And a lot of what I learned there, I infused into true progress lab, because I realized, you know, like myself, I liked a lot of resilience, and the army Resilience Program taught me a lot, and it's, it's, it's definitely something that I never thought I would be doing, because, you know, I went to law school, and now I'm, I'm a resilience coach, right?

Michael Hingson 46:39

So what does that mean? Exactly when? What is resilience, and how do you teach it?

Carlos Garcia 46:45

Yeah, resilience is I define as the ability to bounce back, but not just bounce back, and not just be flexible, right in spite of challenge or adversity or uncertainty, but be able to thrive despite it right to be able to use adversity as a stepping stone to get stronger and go after those big opportunities, and the way we train it is very similar to what I described some moments ago, which is about creating identity, expanding experiences that build the kind of evidence and proof that you are that person that can get through these difficult feats, that you can get through these difficult challenges. And it's about stacking those pieces of evidence so that you can actually go after those big opportunities, so that you can actually shoot high, so that you can actually shine when it counts in the workplace. Yeah, and we do that through the physical conditioning and the mental conditioning that I was describing earlier, and learning how to manage your thoughts. You know, like we give these techniques on on managing your emotions and thoughts, these emotion and nervous system regulation protocol, because you need that, right? Because you're gonna, you're gonna fail. You're gonna, you know, it's not all roses, it's you're gonna, you're gonna go through these experiences and challenges. You're gonna, you're gonna fail. But that's what makes you resilient, right? Is learning how to learning how to get back up despite the failure. And if you don't know how to do that, you're gonna stay on the ground. You don't want you don't want to stay on the ground. You want to be able to know what to tell yourself so you can get back and and try again, right?

Michael Hingson 48:31

And of course, it's all about it's not so much the whole word failure, as it is learning to deal with mistakes, but but you do have to learn resilience. You do have to learn to to bounce back, and we all should do more of that than we probably do. And I realize there are a lot of different kinds of personalities, and some people will do it more easily than others, but again, there's so much that we don't train, for example, children growing up that it would be so, so good if we spent more time doing some of these things with our kids. But unfortunately, we didn't learn it either, and that that doesn't help the process,

Carlos Garcia 49:10

for sure. Yeah, there is a concept that sticks with me from this psychologist. Her name is Angela Duckworth, and she has a concept that she describes she calls people who haven't really learned how to fail, fragile perfects. And basically it's this notion that you have really smart kids, or people are very talented and they're used to winning all the time. But when they fail, they don't know how to fail, because they've never failed, and so when they fail, they have a difficult time getting back up, right? And so that's why, you know, I'm all about creating, being proactive in terms of creating those stretch experiences or those challenging experiences for yourself, so that you callus your your mind. So that you learn how to be res, because you need because you're going to have failures in life, right? And if you're not used to failing, it's going to be, it's going to be very difficult for you. You're going to have all these Ivy League degrees, but you're not going to know what to do when, when things get bad.

Michael Hingson 50:18

Yeah, you're not going to learn what the real world is truly all about, correct?

Carlos Garcia 50:23

And so it's going to get bad, yeah?

Michael Hingson 50:26

Well, so you coach people all over the world. You don't just coach people in the military.

Carlos Garcia 50:34

No, on the military side, I'm an Army resilience trainer. So that's only the military, but true progress lab is civilian, and it's in the US, so we do one on one coaching, but I also do workshops inside of organizations, law firms and tech companies, on resilience, on how to build resilience, and some leadership training as well. But it's a lot of it has to do with resilience.

Michael Hingson 51:02

So what are your clients biggest struggles? When they come to you?

Carlos Garcia 51:07

There are a lot of symptoms that we find, and it depends highly on on who they are. You know, if it's a leadership team or if it's like a smaller team, but it runs the gap. But the common themes that we've seen are dysfunctions within teams. Dysfunctions within teams. That's number one, and number two is not knowing how to handle the pressure. And as a result of not knowing how to handle the pressure, there are a lot of mistakes that are being made there. There's a lot of blaming that is that is being done, and that causes more team dysfunction. So it's almost like, like a vicious cycle, right? So one of the things I like to do is because when I do these workshops, people want to see, they want to see, okay, how do we build a how do we build a good team? How do I become a good leader? But it's, it always starts with, we find a common theme starting with the person, right? It's the leader themselves, in terms of not knowing how to manage themselves, their internal state, because they want to handle teams, but first they need to learn how to handle themselves. So we like to start with personal resilience, like, how do you manage yourself? How do you manage your thoughts, your emotions, your nervous system when you're in high stress situations? And then from there we start. Okay, now I can think a little clearer. Now let me see more objectively what is actually going on here, because we go in there and people are thinking something, but then they realize that, after they learn how to manage their thoughts and emotion their nervous system, they have a clear picture of what's actually going on. So that's very eye opening.

Michael Hingson 53:03

One of the things that you said part of it already, but you say get calm. Get bold and get after it. What do you mean by that?

Carlos Garcia 53:11

Yeah, get calm is about learning how to manage your thoughts and emotions and nervous system when you're in a high pressure situation, becoming comfortable in the uncomfortable becoming okay with having eyeballs on you, like you said earlier, right when you're doing your presentations, you you've learned not to really have a problem with it, right? Because after you learn that, then you can actually create room to start taking risks, to start being bolder. You can't be bold if you're not having the the foundation of competence and competent and confidence. Once you have that foundation and you're calm when it's stressful, then you then you allow the space for risk taking, for smiling more, for not seeing challenges as threats, but seeing challenges is challenges. And after you do that, then you can actually get after it. Then you can actually go after those bigger opportunities. It works in that in that order, I have found, in my experience, not the other way around. How do you

Michael Hingson 54:16

help people learn that process? Get calm, get bold, get after it.

Carlos Garcia 54:21

Yeah, so we do it through the physical conditioning. We do it through the mental conditioning. We do it through learning more about what it is that you want. So something that I learned years ago from this psychologist. His name is, I can't think of him, but he wrote a book leading with character, Jim, I can't remember. His first name is Jim Lauer, and he wrote a book called leading with character. And in that book, I learned that every leader, every person, should have an ethos, a personal ethos, a personal constitution. And what that is is just like a. Country has their own constitution. Each human being should have their constitution of values, of clarity on their mission, clarity on their vision, clarity on what they want their legacy to be about. Once you have that you're much, you have more clarity on what you need to be focusing, on what you need to be prioritizing. And I find, and I have found, that that has really helped me stay focused on the right things and not let the external world modify my decisions and actions. That's a key component of helping people get calm and bold and get after because you need to know what you need to be focusing on in the first place, right? And then building, stacking that evidence, stacking that proof that you are that person, right by doing these hard things, these identity expanding experiences. And then once you have expanded that, that level of comfort in the uncomfortable, then you are allowed to then seize those opportunities, take advantage of those opportunities, because you've created that, you've built that

Michael Hingson 56:05

right well. And again, I think one of the really important parts of all of this to keep your own sanity and so on is that you don't take yourself too seriously, and you you really work to to work with people and help people, but you've learned not to stress out, and you've learned that it's important for you to set a role model and an example for the people you work with, and that you coach

Carlos Garcia 56:33

Yes, because we take part of not taking yourself so seriously, as you may know, Michael is not relying on job titles, not relying on status symbols, not relying on color belts, because we're not just one job title, we're not our job, we're not a status we are a Growing organism. We are always growing. We're always learning. And so if you think in that way, yeah, you're not going to take yourself too seriously, right? You're not going to you're not going to fix yourself on on identifying yourself as this persona or that job title or that leadership position, because you're in a constant state of growth and learning. And with that mindset comes a mindset of knowing that you shouldn't be so stiff and take yourself so seriously because it's not going to help you get outside your comfort zone when you need to get out your comfort zone and grow, right, right?

Michael Hingson 57:39

What do you say to someone who says, Well, I really don't need to learn anymore. I really know all that I need to know. Yeah, I bet you've heard that before.

Carlos Garcia 57:48

Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, you have people like that who don't really want to stretch themselves, you know, and that's perfectly fine. I mean, you don't need to read more books if you don't want to, you don't need to stretch yourself. But there's going to be a opportunity that's going to show up and you're going to not know how to take advantage of it, because you decided to be have that mindset, right? Yeah? So, yeah, I found that I need to be in I need to be always stretching myself. Because if I it's your comfort zone is, it is like a drug. You're it's very you. You get attached to it, you get addicted to it, and it's very hard to let go of your of your comfort zone. I have found, you know, and I was like that for years. It was very difficult for me, so I had to create momentum and build a routine of continuous friction in my life, so that I learned to be comfortable when there is discomfort, because if you're always too comfortable, then you're not. It becomes more difficult to jump out and seize that opportunity, because you've been in your comfort, comfort zones for so long that you're not, you don't, you don't want to do it. Your instinct is to avoid or to hesitate, right, right?

Michael Hingson 59:08

What would you say to someone who comes to you and says, you know, I'm just continuing to have problems. I've tried all sorts of things and I've just given up. What do you say to them?

Carlos Garcia 59:18

You've given up? Okay, well, I can't help you if you've given up, but I would say you have to, you have to stress, stress test yourself. You have to, you know, learning knowledge doesn't really do much you have calming techniques doesn't really do much if you're not creating the type of identity, expanding experiences that that teaches you about yourself, about what you're made of, right? That's why people do all these crazy things. That's why people run 200 miles, because it's a way of learning how to it's a way of learning about yourself, and that's how you stop letting fear control you, how you get bold and get after. Is by creating experiences, not just reading books about it, you know, and and learning about it, but doing it right. So there's this, there's this. I just want to say there's this quote from this stoic philosopher. Is his name is mucelonius Rufus, and he gives two examples that that stuck with me. To illustrate this point, he gives the example of two doctors, right? One of them, you know, talks about medical matters, but has never really actually cared for sick people. The other doctor, though, isn't really able to talk about medical stuff, and he stumbles even when he tries to talk. But he's cared for sick people, right? Who would you rather choose as your doctor? And he gives another example of sailing. One has sailed many times, and the other knows the theory behind sailing, right? He's just read books about it, but he's never really sailed before. He's never been in the sea sailing boats. Which would you rather choose, right as your pilot? So yeah, in other words, you don't acquire strength, courage, mental toughness, which, which you need to build that resilience? Right? By realizing that things that people fear shouldn't be feared, but by practicing being fearless. Yeah, right.

Michael Hingson 1:01:29

Well, I know we had a guest on the podcast not too awfully long ago who made a very interesting point, and that is that you can read a lot of things in books, and you can get a lot of information. And we were talking about and the whole concept that I had of the mindset kicked in on September 11, and his point was, but that's different than actually having the knowledge, because the knowledge is really the power, and the knowledge allowed the mindset to kick in and for you to be able to function. And I thought about that, and he's absolutely right. Information is lovely, only to a point, but if you can't truly internalize it and make it work, then it's then it's not going to right,

Carlos Garcia 1:02:14

yeah, yeah, go ahead. No, just say you have to apply that knowledge and pressure situations, because you're not going to remember it if you haven't practiced it, right? It's like a martial artist who watches videos of kicks, but if he's never really tried the kicks when it's time to fight, it's not going to just suddenly pop up in his mind, right? You need, you need to internalize it like, like you just said,

Michael Hingson 1:02:37

Well, if people want to reach out to you, and I hope they will, how can they do that?

Carlos Garcia 1:02:42

Yeah, so I have a website, true progress lab, calm. And then if anybody has any questions, you can email me at hello at true progress lab, calm. And then I'm also on social media. My social media handle on most social media platforms is true progress

Michael Hingson 1:02:59

lab, so it's singular lab, right? True. Progress lab, correct.com. And social media handle is to progress lab, well, that's, that's great. Well, I'm sorry we didn't get to meet your daughter. We we had an introductory call, folks, and when we did, she was in the room, so it's kind of fun to talk to her. Yeah, she's two, which she's very, very vocal. Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has absolutely been a lot of fun, and I'm glad that we got to do all of this, and I hope people will reach out to you. I certainly would appreciate it if all of you out there observing the podcast, would reach out to me. I'd love to know your thoughts. Love to know what you think of today. You can reach me. At Michael, H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear your thoughts. Love to get your opinions and wherever you're watching or listening to the podcast. I hope that you will give us a five star review on the podcast. We value your ratings and your thoughts very highly, so please do that. In addition, if you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, would love to have introductions, so please have them reach out to me. That would be great. And Carlos you as well. If you've got any thoughts, I'm always looking for people and more people to meet and so on. But this has been really wonderful, and I want to thank you once more for being here and being with us for the last hour. Thank you very much, Michael, it's been a pleasure.

Michael Hingson 1:04:40

Episode 400 – Faith, Perspective, and an Unstoppable Life Beyond Broadcast News with John and Val Clark

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when a lifetime in broadcast news meets faith, purpose, and a desire to share hope instead of headlines? In this milestone episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with John and Val Clark, hosts of The Clark Report, to talk about life after the newsroom, marriage, service, and seeing the world through a biblical lens. John reflects on more than four decades in television news and the emotional weight of covering tragedy, while Val shares her journey as a teacher, volunteer, and financial coach helping families regain control of their money. Together, we explore retirement, resilience, faith, and why focusing on what you can control is key to living with less fear and more intention. This is a thoughtful conversation about perspective, purpose, and building an Unstoppable mindset grounded in hope.

Highlights:

00:10 – Hear why John and Val shifted from reporting the news to sharing hope through a faith-based podcast.

07:38 – Learn how decades of early-morning news work shaped resilience, discipline, and perspective.

12:36 – Discover how focusing on what you can control helps reduce fear in moments of crisis.

26:04 – Learn how budgeting from a biblical perspective can help people regain financial stability.

39:19 – Hear how The Clark Report chooses topics that bring faith and hope into today’s headlines.

52:36 – Understand how communication, compromise, and shared purpose strengthen marriage and teamwork.

About the Guest:

John and Val Blanding Clark are the producers and co-hosts of The Clark Report, a weekly faith-based podcast that looks at current headlines from a biblical perspective. John and Val have been married 39 years. They currently live in central North Carolina and have two adult children.

John is a recently retired news broadcaster with more than four decades of experience. He retired last December after serving as morning news anchor for the ABC-TV station in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina, a post he held for 32 years. During his broadcasting career John covered it all: political races, weather emergencies, crime and punishment, human interest stories, and even a few celebrity interviews. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Penn State University, and is currently pursuing a Master’s in Biblical Exposition from Liberty University. John is a native of Philadelphia.

Val Blanding Clark is a native of Wilmington, North Carolina, and is a former elementary school teacher. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. Since leaving the teaching profession, Val has volunteered countless hours for various non-profits, including serving many years in PTA leadership and as a charity fundraiser. She is also a trained Budget Coach with Crown Financial Ministries, assisting families and individuals in getting their household finances under control. In addition, Val is a longtime blogger, posting regularly online about Christian living.

John and Val have both served as Sunday School teachers, Marriage Mentors, and volunteers for many church outreach projects in the community. Additionally, John has served as a church Deacon and Elder.

You can check out their new podcast, The Clark Report, on YouTube and Spotify, or go to their website, TheClarkReport.com. They drop a new episode each Wednesday.

Ways to connect with John and Val**:**

Webpage: TheClarkReport.com

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet, and we're not going to probably deal a whole lot today with inclusion or diversity, because we get to deal with the unexpected, whatever that is. Our guests today are John and Val Clark, who have their own podcast called The Clark report. It's a faith based podcast. And actually, they found me and asked if I would be on their podcast. And I agreed. And then, of course, I sprung on them the fact that now they have to come on unstoppable mindset. And here they are. They're in North Carolina, and so we're doing this across country. It's amazing what you can do with the speed of light communications, as opposed to having to use covered wagons back in the day, as it were. But anyway, we Yeah, but we're really glad that both of you are here. So John and Val, thank you for being here and for agreeing to come on and and for conversing with us today.

Speaker 1 02:23

Michael, thank you for having us on the program. Thank you for having it was a quid pro quo,

Michael Hingson 02:28

yeah, well, you know, and as long as it's fun, as I tell people, the only rule about being on unstoppable mindset is you got to have fun, or you can't come on the podcast. So, you know, you'll have to force yourself, sounds good. So anyway, we usually only have one person. A few times we've had more than one person. So today we get to talk with both of you, and I'm going to do what I usually do, and ask each of you to start by telling us a little bit about the early ones of you, so like the early John and the early Val growing up, who wants to go first?

Speaker 1 03:05

Well, let me just say first that, because you have two of us, that means we get double pay.

Michael Hingson 03:09

You do you get you? Do you absolutely do have your have your people. Call my people,

03:15

right? We'll do Yeah.

John and Val Clark 03:17

Well, since I started out, I was born and raised in the on the coast of North Carolina, and grew up, you know, kind of small town girl type of thing.

Michael Hingson 03:29

What town? Wilmington? Oh, Wilmington, yeah.

John and Val Clark 03:34

So we were used to hurricanes and all that. They call it hurricane alley, alley and something like that. Lot of hurricanes come through there and but anyway, grew up there, went to school there, went to college there, University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and graduated with a degree in elementary education, and taught for a few years. So just kind of a lot of traditional family upbringing, that sort of thing. And one brother, one sister, hi, that's about it.

Michael Hingson 04:11

So there. So you're not anywhere. You're not anywhere near Mitford, North Carolina, huh?

John and Val Clark 04:17

No, I don't know that. You don't Medford.

Michael Hingson 04:20

Oh, it's a great series of books. It's a myth. It's a mythical town. It's not on the coast, but, oh, okay, it's a great series of books. You would, you guys would enjoy them.

Speaker 1 04:30

Oh, all right. Mitford, is it set in modern times?

Michael Hingson 04:34

Yeah, okay. Jan, Karen wrote them. They're, they're really, great. You guys should, you should read them. They're really They're wonderful books.

John and Val Clark 04:42

Where is it set? As far as the is it middle of the state mountains?

Michael Hingson 04:46

I think it's more in the mountains as I recall.

John and Val Clark 04:49

Okay, all right, we've got it all there

Michael Hingson 04:53

you go. All right. John, your turn.

Speaker 1 04:56

Well, I was born and raised in a log cabin. No, Philadelphia,

Michael Hingson 05:03

you walked 12 miles to return three cents once. Yeah, I know

Speaker 1 05:07

that's right. They called me Honest John, but didn't stick. I was born and raised in Philadelphia and went to Penn State University, and after graduating with a degree in journalism, I took my first job in Fayetteville, North Carolina, working for radio stations, news department, small news department. I was there for just a little over a year, and then started working for ticket station in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I met my bride Val and from there few years, to Nashville, Tennessee, for a few years, and then the last 30 some years here in the Raleigh, Durham area of North Carolina, working for a TV station

Michael Hingson 05:52

I retired. You work for the ABC affiliate, as I recall, that's correct. Yes, wow. So did any of the people from Good Morning America ever come through and say hello to you?

Speaker 1 06:04

Oh, yes, uh huh. And we had a situation at my last station where every day virtually, we would talk to someone from Good Morning America. So ginger Z, the meteorologist to them, they would talk about what's coming up on Good Morning America, yeah, exchange jokes and things like that. So yeah, but they would come by for promotional shoots and things like that. That was a lot

Michael Hingson 06:27

of fun. Yeah, man, I have not met any of them. I wish I had been able to, but it was, of course, after September 11 and ginger wasn't there, but Charlie Gibson, Diane Sawyer. We almost met Diane Sawyer because we were in New Jersey looking at homes when we were moving back there, and she was coming by one of the houses that we were looking at to use it, possibly for some sort of a news thing that they were doing as a backdrop. But we just missed her, so we didn't get to to actually meet her. I think that would have been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 07:05

Oh yeah, yeah, she's a semi retired now. She still does, she

Michael Hingson 07:09

still does things she's She just has been doing a special on Bruce Willis and the whole, the whole thing, and his wife and so on. So yeah, that's that's been pretty good. So yeah, she, she keeps at it. Barbara Walters is a little bit more retired.

07:29

You might say that, but

Michael Hingson 07:31

she, she shows up every so often.

07:34

Well on video, she shows up, yes,

Michael Hingson 07:36

yeah, more on video than anything else. Well. So how long ago did you retire? December of last year. Oh my gosh. So you're newly retired.

07:48

Yes, enjoying it thoroughly.

Michael Hingson 07:51

So what do you guys do in your retirement? You do a podcast. But what else?

John and Val Clark 07:57

Well, I've been for many, many years just doing volunteer work through school, in the community at church. So I do a lot of volunteer work personally,

Speaker 1 08:06

and I've increased some of my volunteer activities at my church. And I'm also starting to, I've not starting to. I am taking courses toward a master's degree in Biblical Exposition, online sitting in classrooms,

Michael Hingson 08:24

right? What church do you guys go to? Providence?

Speaker 1 08:29

Church, Providence, Baptist Church. Here. Okay,

Michael Hingson 08:33

cool. Well, that keeps you busy, yes, yeah, well, so John, for you in all the time that you worked in the news media and all of that. What was the biggest challenge that you ever had working all those years in news?

Speaker 1 08:49

Well, it was 43 years total in news broadcasting. The biggest challenge actually, was my schedule, because for the last 32 years, I was the morning news co anchor, which required me to get up about two in the morning and to get into the office at 330 the office of the studio. We were live on the air starting at 4:30am and we went to seven o'clock, and then they extended and we went to eight o'clock. So that was that. And just you have to be perky and upbeat and good morning, and you know, you like, I've been up for 10 hours, and I'm perfectly fine. Actually, I got three hours to sleep the night before. So yeah, that was the biggest challenge, the physical nature of that schedule, and trying to get enough sleep in and trying to look like I wasn't a zombie on TV?

Michael Hingson 09:43

I think the person that I keep thinking of who must have really had a tough time was Aaron Brown with CNN on September 11, because he was the main guy that reported all day. But also Peter Jennings on. And on ABC, of course, he had given up smoking, and after September 11, he started smoking again, and then eventually died of lung cancer, which is so sad. What a great reporter he was,

Speaker 1 10:13

yes, and I remember that story about Peter Jennings having given up smoking and then starting it right back up again after that horrific event, and it's a shame, as you say,

Michael Hingson 10:26

what was it like for you on September 11? What, what kinds of things did you have to do in terms of dealing with the news and all that? Or were you, were you exposed much? Because really the the network did most of it, I would assume,

Speaker 1 10:41

yeah, when you have huge stories of that nature, the network takes over. And basically, for the first few hours, we're just sitting back and watching along with everybody else, and then we are trying to figure out the local angles. We have, any people in our area who are connected to that event, September 11, or a hurricane somewhere, a tornado or, God forbid, a mass shooting somewhere. Do we have any local people connected to it? Do we have people in our area who can be experts to talk about that? So that's what we were doing. But the first few hours, it was just watching what Charlie Gibson and Diane Sawyer and the rest of the ABC people were doing on that particular morning, and it stunned us, like everybody else,

Michael Hingson 11:28

yeah, and understandably so, I, I love to tell people that when the planes hit the building, one of the very first things that I did, well, we got, we had, I had a colleague with me, and I got him to take our guests to the stairs, and I said, don't let them take the elevators, because he had already seen fire above us, and I knew what the emergency evacuation procedures were, and I knew that in the case of an emergency, especially where there's fire, don't take elevators, which was a smart move, but he was taking our guests to the Elevator or to the stairs. So I called my wife and actually woke her up and said there was an explosion or something, and we're leaving the complex. Of course, she wanted to know more, and I didn't have any more to tell her. But as I love to tell people that call took place, because I've seen the phone bill at 847, in the morning, scooped Charlie Gibson and Good Morning America by eight minutes and didn't get a Pulitzer or anything for it. So disappointed.

12:27

It happens, Michael,

Michael Hingson 12:31

but no, I know, you know, people had to make sense of it. I do have a recording of a news report from an ABC radio affiliate. And I think now I don't remember what state it was in, go back and look, but it was the very first report from the affiliate about the World Trade Center being hit by an airplane. And it was, it was still, like, about eight or seven or eight minutes out from the time it actually hit, before the news got to anyone, you know. And so it is, it is one of those things. It's just crazy. But you know, then, of course, everyone was able to pick up on it. Then of course, tower two collapsed. And I've talked to so many people who say we had heard about it. We turned on the TV, and when tower two was hit, we just thought it was a movie. We didn't realize it was the other tower being hit all over, you know, for the first time.

Speaker 1 13:37

Yeah, it was. It's surreal watching it, I can't imagine what it was like for you, going through it and those 1000s of other people.

Michael Hingson 13:46

Well, actually, in a sense, it was, it wasn't a problem for me, because I going down the stairs and so on, was very focused on encouraging Roselle, my guide dog, to work and to do a good job and praising her and so on. And that's part of the value of the team. My job was to let her know I was okay, and that was important to me, because if she reacted at any time in a way I didn't expect, that would give me a clue that there's something going on that I have to pay attention to that's out of the ordinary, but if she just behaved and reacted like she normally would, all the way down the stairs, which is what happened, then I knew everything was was going to be okay, and so I focused so much on her and other things, there were A couple of times that people panicked on the stairs. David Frank, my colleague who had flown in to be part of the seminars that we were going to be doing that day to teach our reseller partners how to sell our products. David at about the 50th floor, panicked, and he said, Mike, we die. We're not going to make it out of here. And I just snapped at him as. Sharply as I could. It was very deliberate. Stop it. David, if Rosell and I can go down these stairs, so can you. And he told me later that that brought him out of his funk. And what he did was, he said, I want to walk a floor below you on the stairs and shout up what I see on the stairs. And he said, is that okay? And I said, Sure, if that's what you got to do. So he started shouting up instead of floor below me. So we got to I was the 45th floor, and he was at the 44th floor, and he says, Hey, I'm at the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is not stopping. The reason I mention it is because what David did by shouting up to me was he became a voice for anyone who could hear him, a voice that said that somewhere on the stairs, somebody was okay, and he always sounded okay. So he had to help keep lots of people from panicking as we went down the stairs, which is one of the stories that just doesn't get told very often. That's amazing. Yeah, he did a he did a really cool thing. So Val, you taught school. What was your biggest challenge as a teacher? My wife was a teacher for 10 years, and she taught primarily, well, the lower grades, but third grade, but she taught some others as well. But she was a teacher for 10 years. Wow.

John and Val Clark 16:22

I also taught third grade at one point and fourth, third, fourth and fifth. And the grades that I prefer, because they're a little older and can do a little more, and they're fun. Group, age group. My biggest challenge, though, teaching is such a hard job, because you have to try to meet so many different needs, so many students at different ability levels. They've got all the requirements from the administration, and you got parents and everybody's expectations, and it's just a lot to a lot of needs have to be met. So I hats off to all those who get through it. I did it for a few years before stopping to stay home after we had our children,

Michael Hingson 17:09

my wife eventually retired, in part because she frankly got tired of dealing with parents like one day she always had agreements with her kids when they were going to have a party, if you get your work done, we can have the party. Is that okay? Everybody agree to that? Everybody agrees to it. Well, one day they were going to have a Valentine's Day party, but they had to get some work done, and the kids were goofing off. The parents were all outside getting chicks because the party wasn't starting. And eventually the kids got their work done and the party started, but one of the parents went off and complained to the principal, and so the principal called Karen in and and said, What's the deal here? And and he knew Karen, so he really knew. And she said, Well, I had an agreement with the kids that the party would start when they got their work done and they were goofing off and they weren't listening, they weren't doing what they were supposed to do, and we didn't start the party until they got their jobs done and they got their work done, so teaching the kids responsibility and so on. You know, the parent wasn't very happy, but she, I guess she had, well, she had it. Well, she had to deal with it because was the way it is. But you know, the bottom line is that parents can be a challenge. I have a niece who's teaching pre K right now. She's, I'm kind of in agreement with her. The school district has brought pre kindergarten into the school district, and so she's teaching three and four year olds, and she said that is really hard because they don't listen. Some of them are our children with special needs that make it even harder, but she said they just don't listen to anything she she had been teaching kindergarten until she did pre K. She'd love to go back to kindergarten, but she says, I don't want to leave this classroom to go to another classroom, because this classroom is the one she's had for so long.

John and Val Clark 19:09

It's a challenge. I mean, That's putting it mildly, but it really is. I don't miss it personally.

Michael Hingson 19:16

Yeah, I have a secondary teaching credential. I got my teaching credential while I was getting my master's degree, and I and I appreciate teaching. I love teaching, and I think that there are times that all of us are teachers in one way or another. But it is, it is a challenge. I'm really amazed at people who never learn really to observe. I went to a book club meeting once people had read my book thunder dog, which was the story of being in the World Trade Center and so on. And I was assured when I walked in, everybody's read the book and they want to talk about it, and I opened it for questions in the first. Question was, well, what were you even doing in the World Trade Center? Gee, I thought you read the book. It's amazing. I didn't say that. I just answered the question. But, yeah,

20:12

so it goes. So it goes. It does,

Michael Hingson 20:16

but, but, you know, we we deal with it.

20:21

We do indeed, we do indeed.

Michael Hingson 20:24

Well, I hear you, so I'm assuming, John, you don't miss the the news business very much. You like retirement.

Speaker 1 20:35

I miss the people I worked with because when we weren't on the air or during commercial breaks, or video store was on sometimes, you know, we would cut up a bit and tell jokes and inside jokes, and it was a fun group over the course of my time there. But the hustle and bustle of the news itself is really something that I don't miss, and I to be quite honest, I'm not watching as much of it as I was when I was in the work world, and I kind of like it that way. I'm not saying that people should not watch the news. They should stay informed, but I just needed to take a break from it after all the years that I did it,

Michael Hingson 21:18

well, there's so much craziness on the news nowadays anyway, I mean everything from all the the gun violence and so on and just all the things that are going on, it's got to be really tough for news people to deal with all that, and sometimes deal with it with a straight face, true, True.

Speaker 1 21:40

And most of the time when I came home, I would leave it at work. Most of the time, there were times when it just stuck with me. And I hated in particular, stories that dealt with child abuse or babies being hurt, or things like that. Or, you know, a child is out with his mother on the street, and gunshots erupt by two idiots who were shooting at each other, and the child gets hit, and now the child is para those stories always stayed with me and impacted me, and sometimes I had trouble going to sleep at night.

Michael Hingson 22:20

Yeah, especially when you knew you had to get up the next day and go right back to it. True.

Speaker 1 22:28

True. Another challenge I would have would be breaking news when you're put on the air. You know, beating on for a newscast is one thing you're on at 430 or on at 12 o'clock or 6pm but when there is breaking news and you have to break into programming to cover it, for example, there was a there'll be a report that there's a jet, passenger jet that is coming into the airport, and they have signaled that there's an emergency on board. And so they scramble the fire department and the ambulances to the airport, and they say, We want you on the air, the your supervisors to talk about what we see, because we'll have a camera up. Several cameras were rushing our reporters to the scene to get this plane as it's making an emergency landing. And so you, and if you're lucky enough, you have a co anchor at the time, and you have to ad lib what you're watching and seeing, and you don't have a lot of information, right? So you end up repeating things over and over. And then in your earpiece, one of the producers will tell you that the model of the plane, or where it came from, or how many passengers were on board, and so you're repeating this information. And then inside you're hoping and praying that this plane lands safely.

Michael Hingson 23:52

I can appreciate that. I think the thing that that I find the most frustrating with the news out here is when there is an earthquake, and we're really pretty well constructed, so we don't, you know, have death and so on. But gee, even with a three and a four on the Richter scale, Quake, they come on and they talk for an hour or more, and they mostly, mostly are saying the same thing, and nothing else is happening, but they just keep talking about the same old thing, and it seems like sometimes there's a little bit of overkill when they do that. And at the same time, one of the things that happens out here is with like the ABC affiliate, they have the helicopter up in the air following emergency police chases and so on. And they do the police chases, they finally get the person. But if you don't happen to be there watching it when they get the person, you never hear about it the next day, which is always very frustrating, which is kind of strange.

Speaker 1 24:58

Well, those videos and. They're always from California. Seems like those police, they show up on YouTube and on social media, and they're always fascinating to watch and and I can see why they cut in the program to do that sure turn away from it once it's how is this going to end? Are they gonna catch this guy?

Michael Hingson 25:21

Yeah, and and, and they very, frankly, don't repeat themselves very often, so it's not the videos, but, but what is so amazing? They spend so much time reporting it, and the next day, there's nothing on the news about it at all. That's what's really kind of bizarre, in a way.

Speaker 1 25:40

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But you're right.

Michael Hingson 25:43

They're, they're kind of addicting. It's, it's amazing to see these videos just continue to happen.

Speaker 1 25:52

I saw one video, I think it was from California. We were watching at the station on one of the closed circuit things that wasn't going out on the air where we were, but in the station, we could see it, somebody had stolen a Winnebago or in one of those large mobile home things and eating police on a chase with that. How are you going to get away in a mobile home in a Winnebago? Of course, they got stopped, but it was that was the most bizarre. But, well, I guess OJ was probably the most bizarre. Oh, that was really bizarre. We were one was a strange one too.

Michael Hingson 26:28

We were at the, I think, the San Diego fair. The night that the OJ Chase took place. We got in our car, we were driving home, and they were, they were the people were all on reporting about OJ and all that, and it's not like he was going overly fast or anything like that, but it was really weird, and they eventually caught him. But even, even they had the way they were talking about it was, What a weird situation, and it was

27:01

absolutely sure,

Michael Hingson 27:03

go figure. Well, so Val you also do work helping people with budgets and so on. How did you get involved in being a budget coach?

John and Val Clark 27:14

Well, after our son and daughter graduate from high school, I was looking for something else to do, and this opportunity came up to be a volunteer with an organization called crown financial ministries. It's a they help people with their budgets, but from a biblical perspective, biblical teachings and they it's basic budgeting, but it's really helpful for a lot of people, and since I had come through being in debt myself before, I really felt like I could understand when people were in financial trouble or I was having trouble with their budget, so I could lend a sympathetic ear, but just sort of, you know, have patience and work with them to get their act together, so to speak.

Michael Hingson 28:07

Yeah, in like 1987 88 Karen and I had a time when we were in debt and the income wasn't great, and we had been reading Catherine Marshall, books you're familiar with. Catherine Marshall, her husband, Peter Marshall, was the chaplain of the US Senate for a while, but she wrote a number of books about different faith things, and she wrote a story about a guy named Mueller who was in debt, and he was told you should declare bankruptcy, and he didn't, and he worked very hard to get out of of being in debt, and did. And then started teaching other people to do it. And we were actually told by someone, you should declare bankruptcy because you're perfect for it, and we chose not to, and it worked, you know. And so I very much appreciate the faith based realities of it. It's going

John and Val Clark 29:08

to try to pay your debts. We can. And even if it takes a while, I would tell people, you know, you didn't get into all this overnight. So it may take a little while to get out of it, but it'll come.

Michael Hingson 29:20

You can work at it, and there are things you can do, make temporary

John and Val Clark 29:24

sacrifices, and then have that hope for that day when you will be in a better situation.

29:32

She even tries to keep me on a budget. That's

Michael Hingson 29:35

how's that working for you?

29:38

She's a stern task master.

Michael Hingson 29:44

Yeah, she doesn't let you sign the checkbook. She doesn't let you sign the checks, huh?

John and Val Clark 29:48

Most people don't want to talk about their money issues. It's not a pleasant subject. Usually, yeah,

Michael Hingson 29:55

it can be a challenge. On the other hand, you know, we when we. Moved down here from the Bay Area. I was speaking full time, and there were times that speaking was not bringing in quite enough income, and we had to do some living off of credit cards. But Karen coordinated all that very well. And I think one of the best things that I like right now is credit with credit cards all being paid off and so on. I can tell the system when the credit card bill comes in, just pay it off completely. Wow, that's great, yeah. And so I won't say it keeps the temptation away, because I'm not even tempted. But, you know, it just makes it so much more convenient. She passed away in 2022 and everything was was straightened by then. We were married 40 years, and as I tell people, she's monitoring so I got to behave myself. Otherwise I'm going to hear about it. But I I've been doing all the banking and so on, of course, now, and I love the fact that I can have automatic payments, and I just say, pay off the balance every month, yes. And that works out so well. And then I get everything electronically. And mostly the material is pretty accessible, so that helps. It didn't always used to be that way, and that's one of the things that working with banks and working with other organizations and getting them to understand the need and the crucial need to be inclusive and make things accessible. But it's working, and we're getting there. We're slowly getting there. There are things that still aren't but we're getting there.

John and Val Clark 31:41

Yes, good, good to hear.

Speaker 1 31:43

Michael. Have a question for you who are a keynote, keynote speaker, and you travel the country making speeches, did you have training as a speaker? Did you Toastmasters or anything like that?

Michael Hingson 31:58

I attended some Toastmasters meetings, but I never was able to consistently be able to do it. I think the best way though to answer the question is that the training, I did have some training, I'll get to that after September 11, but mostly I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and I learned that the best sales people are people who can tell stories. The best sales people tell stories they they want to get you to personally relate to them and personally relate and you need to help them personally relate to what your situation is. And so I learned all about telling stories to illustrate different points. And then also, for a number of years, I participated in a church program. It's an ecumenical program, but it's sponsored originally, well it is by the Methodist Church. It's called the walk to Emmaus. Have you heard of that? I have not. It's a program. It's it's not bringing people to the Christian faith. It's a short course in Christianity to teach people how to be leaders. And the the whole premise is that after the crucifixion, some people were walking on the road to Emmaus, and this guy comes up, and they end up talking, and they all go to to break bread together. And at that point, he reveals that he's really Jesus. And the whole walk to Emmaus is a three day program, or four day program, essentially, that takes people through a lot of the Christian precepts to teach how to be a good faith based leader, which is really pretty cool. I am sure there are Emmaus programs around Raleigh.

Speaker 1 33:54

Durham, probably so walk them to walk to Emmaus stories in the Bible, by the way, that that from the Gospel of Luke Correct,

Michael Hingson 34:06

yeah, and, and that's where they it's an outgrowth of a Catholic program called crucio, but it, but it's a it's a good program. And so I, I was lay director one year, and that helped with speaking. But after September 11, when people started calling because the media got our story and said, we'd like you to come and talk to us and tell us lessons we should learn and so on, I did start to get a little bit of work from from a speaker coach who did help. One of the things that someone, some people, wanted me to do was to write my speeches and read them, and I found out very quickly that didn't work. It didn't work for me for a variety of reasons. In school, I had learned a lot about extemporaneous speaking, and I knew. That there are way too many people, and I've heard some of them who just read speeches, who just pair it what's on a piece of paper, or they it's all on a slide, but they still read the slides, and they're turning around and looking at the slides and then turning back to the audience, but but they're there. You could tell that it's all being read and they're not connecting with the audience, and I learned that one of the things that I needed to do was to connect, really connect with the audience. So I don't read speeches, and I've had situations where I've actually had to completely redraft a speech in a few moments because a speaker's bureau that brought me in to speak somewhere, told me what the organization was about, and clearly they hadn't done their homework, because the organization I was speaking to wasn't about anything like what they were talking about. I had to change, you know, literally on a dime, but I learned to do that, and I learned that my best approach to speaking is is is do my best to find out as much as I can personally ahead of time, but I now know when I'm telling my story. For example, I know what people will react to, and so if I make a statement that I expect people to be able to have an intake of breath to, or that causes them to focus and get quieter. If they're doing that, then I know I'm connecting. And if they're not, then I have to figure out what what it is while I'm speaking to be able to connect with them. But I've learned all that, and I've now been speaking for almost 23, and three quarters years, so it it's a process.

Speaker 1 36:40

Well, I've seen some of your videos of you speaking publicly, and you hold folks in rapt attention. So folks audience, if you're looking for somebody who will be a good keynoter, Michael is the guy that you should call, because he is excellent. And not only is he compelling, but and Michael, you can pay me about this later.

Michael Hingson 37:04

But not only is he Well, triple your salary,

Speaker 1 37:07

yes, that's that would be, that would be good, but he has good information and inspirational anecdotes and information that you need to process if you have any concerns about your own life, and you make people feel so good after you've been through such a horrible situation, Michael, that people feel better for having heard you speak well.

Michael Hingson 37:36

Thank you. I hope so, because I think my job is to help inspire people, and now with a whole generation of people who have no personal experience of the World Trade Center at all, my job is to emotionally take them into the building with me and describe things in a, in a in a positive way, but describe things so that they are in The building with me, walking down the stairs with me, and then coming out the other end. And I do that because, in part, we have a whole generation that isn't familiar with the World Trade Center except just some sort of historic event. But even people who were alive and who remember it again, think about the fact that for most people, the World Trade Center was only as big as the photographs they see in newspapers or the size of their TV screen. And so it's although they they've got memories, it still is not something that most people relate to all that well. And what I need to do is to help people relate in some positive way to it. And I learned you read thunder dog, didn't you? Or have you

Speaker 1 38:46

have not read it yet? Okay? Well,

Michael Hingson 38:50

in Thunder dog, I talk about running away from tower two as it was collapsing, because we were very close to it. And one of the things that occurred was that as as the building was coming down and David ran, he was gone, and I caught up with him, but, but he was gone, and I turned and was running back the way we came. It's not to be the right way to go. The first thing I said was, God, I can't believe that you had us come out of a building just to have it fall on us. And when I said that to myself, I immediately heard in my head a voice as clearly as the audience hears me, and as you hear me, it said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Rosella and the rest will take care of itself. And I had this absolute certainty that we would be okay if we worked together, which is what we had been doing. And that mantra, if you will, has stuck with me very well. We worry about so many things that we don't have any control over, and all that does is builds fear, and so that's one of the reasons we wrote last year live like a guide dog, which is my third book. It's all about learning to control fear and learning to recognize deal with the things. You really have control over and don't worry about the rest of it. It doesn't mean don't be aware, but don't worry about it, because there's nothing you can do to control it anyway.

Speaker 1 40:09

Absolutely, that's true, and that's sound biblical advice, because that's what sure God tells us.

Michael Hingson 40:16

Well, sure, absolutely. Well, tell me about the podcast, what caused you guys to decide that you wanted to to have the Clark report and actually start a podcast? What? What was the genesis of all of that?

John and Val Clark 40:30

Well, many years ago, many years ago, we know we would watch the news and see how the stories were presented, and we felt a lot of the perspective was left out, which was more of a biblical perspective, something that gives people hope. You just hear bad news, bad news, but where's the hope? And we just wanted to do something. We brought the news headlines forth, but from a biblical perspective. So we had to wait for John to retire, of course, and so we've been waiting a long time to be able to do this. So we're glad we're blessed to be able to do it.

Speaker 1 41:06

Now, you know, Michael, I tell folks that for 40 some years, I told the bad news, and now I'd like to tell the good news with this next phase of my life, and that good news is what we find in God's word

Michael Hingson 41:20

well, and you know, it's high time we start hearing good news and and again, even the news that people would normally view as being bad. Again, it's what you can and can't control. And so if you can present that in a way to help people move forward, that's always a good thing. It's true.

Speaker 1 41:42

Yes, we spoke recently with one of the people from Samaritan's Purse, who was down in Texas, where they had all that flooding recently, and this tragic case and the worlds who perished in the flooding, and we asked him, What do you say to people? And he had been to any number of tragedies when they asked why, and you don't really want to give a person an answer to explain everything. They just want to be they want you to listen to their story, and they want you to care and show you care, and a hug, a smile, all those things make a difference. They're not really looking for an explanation, so to speak. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 42:30

And unfortunately, some people say, Well, you're not giving answers. You're not explaining anything that, in part, is, at least in part, of what faith is about and the the reality is, why do you have to have specific answers to everything when you really need to figure it out for yourself? Because we can't give answers all the time. People need to learn and discover

Speaker 1 42:59

yes and your situation where you heard the voice of God telling you what to do. I mean, you go through that situation again, but after you went through it and you heard the voice of God, I'm sure you were solidified in your faith, you know. But God's there. He's in I don't understand everything that's on, but I don't have to understand everything. I just need to understand that he is there and I am in his hands ultimately

Michael Hingson 43:26

Well, and that's really it, which is why I very much today, consistently tell people, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on what you can and learn what that is, and let the rest take care of itself.

43:42

That's true. Excellent advice.

Michael Hingson 43:45

It is. It is so hard to get people to do that, but again, you'll be a whole lot less fearful. That doesn't mean that if things happen, you're not going to be afraid. But what we do need to do is to learn that we can control that fear and not let it overwhelm us or, as I put it, blind us. What we need to do is to learn how to use that fear to be a very powerful motivator and a very powerful mechanism to help us stay focused.

Speaker 1 44:15

I heard someone say once that worry is a down payment on a problem you may never have

Michael Hingson 44:21

and probably won't have, I mean, because we more than 90% of what we're afraid of never happens. Yes, now there's a an endeavor. There's a part of business called business continuity, and I spoke at a conference relating to that last year, and the people who are in that business describe themselves as the what if people. They're the people that plan for emergencies. They plan for all of the things that could happen, and they're the ones that think about, what do we do in different situations? But the other part of it is they're not doing. It Out of fear. They're doing it because they know that they need to keep the businesses running, and that's part of the whole issue that we all can learn to do that if we try.

Speaker 1 45:10

So we know a lady, in fact, we interviewed her for our podcast, and she has been through a number of health challenges, everything, ever since she was a child, and she wrote a blog or a post some years back about changing your thought patterns from what if to even if, mm hmm, and even if I go through this, God is still with me. He hasn't abandoned me, and he still is on the throne.

Michael Hingson 45:44

Yeah, and again, it's all a matter of putting it in perspective. So how do you choose what topics to cover? How do you find your guests and how do you choose what you want to cover?

John and Val Clark 45:58

Well, we look at the current headlines. And then we see how that needs what we believe to be told with a biblical perspective to it. And then we seek out guests from just people we see on TV or online or or know of and that know how to speak to that topic from a biblical perspective?

Speaker 1 46:24

Yeah, we've now. We started back in July, so it's still relatively new. We do a weekly thing, and we've talked about, for example, anxiety. How do you fight anxiety? What about anger issues? What's the best way to control our anger. You know, the Bible says Be angry and sin not we talked about the wars that Israel is going through right now, and what's it like to be there. Things have calmed down quite a bit since a few weeks ago, when we talked to this lady in Israel. We did a podcast that just dropped today on marriage, and we talked to one of the nation's leading researchers on marriage, and he has some very interesting findings about the consequences, for example, of waiting longer to get married and saying, you know, I want to build up my career first, and then I'll do this. But that has consequences. And he's found that people who are married, they they have, are more financially stable. They tell researchers that they're happier, they have better romantic and sex lives, and all the things that the media and the talking about pop culture speaks against. You know, married people are boring and they don't really have a lot of fun and all that. Well, when you do the actual research and the surveys, you find that they're actually having more fun and more enjoyment of life than those who are single.

John and Val Clark 47:48

And we interviewed a couple that were married. Has they have been married for 65 years? Yes, a long time.

Michael Hingson 47:57

You guys have been married for a little while,

John and Val Clark 48:00

39 years. I years, so I

48:04

robbed the cradle, right?

Michael Hingson 48:08

I love to tell people that so did my wife, because she was a year older than I was, but I but I also say that I taught her everything she knows. So, you know, yeah, she was in a wheelchair her whole life, and so I love to tell people she had the cutest wheels in town, but, but I hear what you're saying. Did this person give any idea of kind of maybe, what the ideal age was for for people to get married, based on his research, research was

Speaker 1 48:43

mid 20s, when, I think he said mid 20s, yeah, and now is the average age is, I think, 30, when? When that happens? You know, people are different, and people have different personalities and what have you. But just when you have your own identity and you've established yourself, it's harder sometimes to mesh those two together. And of course, if you want to have children, the longer you wait to get married, the fewer you're likely to have.

John and Val Clark 49:12

Yeah, and he said that attitude of, you know, we versus me. Think of it as a we versus together. The more you can think of yourself, you know, your one unit, just like the Bible says to to become one flesh, and you have to think like that, not it's all about me,

Speaker 1 49:27

which is so different than what the world teaches you about it's all about me. I'm number one.

Michael Hingson 49:34

We got married at ages 32 and 33 but as we we tell people we were and both of us were looking for the right person. It wasn't that we were against getting married younger or career, but we both were waiting for the right person to come along, and knew that that would happen, and then when it did, we met in January of 19. 82 and by June, we were talking a fair amount. And I actually took a trip to Hawaii to do some selling over there. And I took my parents with me. And at that time, Karen was a travel agent, so she did our ticketing, and I started calling her twice a day from Hawaii, and that's where it really started. So we I proposed in July, as it were, and we got married in November of 1982 but we knew that the marriage was going to last, because the wedding was supposed to start at four o'clock, and it didn't start until the quarter after four, because well over half the church wasn't there. Over half the church wasn't there. And at 12, after four, the doors opened, and this huge crowd came in. And so we were able to start, and we asked later someone, Well, where was everybody while they were outside in their cars waiting for the end of the USC Notre Dame game? Oh, and I want to point out that Karen being a USC grad, well, she graduated. He did her master's work at USC, we won, so God was on our side,

51:14

and that's the key to a good marriage, right?

Michael Hingson 51:16

That's right, God being on your side always helps. It was Bailey's great. It was a it's a fun story, but, you know, it is interesting. I'm not surprised that he says the mid 20s. I watched something on 60 minutes a couple of weeks ago about frozen embryo and frozen eggs and and talking about, the longer you wait, the harder it gets.

Speaker 1 51:42

Yeah, yeah. And you have a situation where he was talking about marriage rates and birth rates have plunged in Western nations like Japan and South Korea, where it's not it's well below replacement stage. And you have elderly people who have never been married, and they are, many of them dying of loneliness, yeah,

Michael Hingson 52:10

well, you know, and I was married for 40 years, and I know that what I'm not going to do is move on from Karen, I move forward, and I make a distinction between those two, because if I move on, then I'm going to be looking for other things and all that. But I'm going to move forward, because I'm going to keep her in my memory and so on. And she, she's got a 40 year part in my marriage, my life, so of course, I'm going to think about her. And what a what a wonderful set of 40 years of memories, there is

Speaker 1 52:41

and you were married, just was it a few weeks after you met?

Michael Hingson 52:47

No, it was a few months. But it wasn't that long.

52:50

Okay, okay,

John and Val Clark 52:52

so we were married after about seven and a half months, yeah,

52:56

about right after we met. It's about

Michael Hingson 53:00

what it was with. We met in January and got married in November, so 11 months, but same thing, but we knew what we wanted, and the right person came along, and clearly that was was a good thing. And people say, Well, how can you marry a person in a wheelchair? And my response was, it worked out really well. She read, I pushed. Worked out well.

53:22

I Well, she sounds like a special lady, yeah,

Michael Hingson 53:25

oh, she was brand is so you know, how do you all do when you're working on the podcast? You guys are married and all that, and I'm sure you're a good team. But what's it like working as husband and wife on the podcast

John and Val Clark 53:42

was it's a different type of relationship, but still blending all those years of marriage together, we have challenges.

Speaker 1 53:51

Yeah, we have we both have strong personalities. We both know what we want, what we don't want, and it's a matter of compromise, and sometimes I think she's wrong, and sometimes she thinks I'm wrong, but we both have the same common goal in mind, that we want to do something that honors the Lord and will be a benefit to people. We want to give people the help and hope that we believe God's Word provides through His Son, Jesus.

John and Val Clark 54:18

And we've been wanting to do this for so long. So, you know, you make the compromise, yeah, and make it work. And how do you do that? You do a lot of praying. It can't be just me against you again, just as we were saying, it's gotta be we not

Michael Hingson 54:34

a me. And so I'm assuming that also means there's a lot of talking, yes, yes, a lot of talk, and that's the key. I mean, praying is, is is great, but the two of you have to communicate. So talking is clearly key.

John and Val Clark 54:49

Definitely, you have to speak up to say what you think. But also, you know, you gotta be considerate of the other person, right,

Michael Hingson 54:58

right? It's all. All about communication. Got

Speaker 1 55:01

you got two sinful people, and I'm not talking specifically about Val being sinful, but, but who put their lives together, and you're going to have disagreements and little friction from time to time, but we have the common goal, yeah.

John and Val Clark 55:22

Fun. It's good that when we see the products come out, or hear people say that they enjoyed the podcast, yeah, they got something out of it, yeah. So it's great.

Michael Hingson 55:32

Well, and that's what's really cool. I didn't ask you. How did you guys meet?

Speaker 1 55:38

Well, in Wilmington, North Carolina, that was school, teaching at school, and I was a news broadcaster. And as part of a being a news broadcaster, you are required, or strongly suggested that you make public appearances in different places. You speak to church groups and school kids and civic groups, and we at our particular TV station were going out to different elementary schools to talk to the kids in an auditorium setting about the importance of wearing their seat belts. This is back in the mid 80s. And so I was assigned one school, and someone had told me, If I ever got to go to a particular school, I need to look up Val Blanding, because maybe you two could be together. I think you'd make a good match. So when I looked at the schools, I found that I was not assigned to her particular school, so I switched with the sports guy. I ended up at her school. After I finished talking to the kids in the auditorium about the importance of seat belts, I went up to one, I said, Do you know where a val Blanding is? And she pointed out Val, and I walked over to her, and that's how they met. So I think

John and Val Clark 56:49

that student who pointed me out to him,

Michael Hingson 56:54

Oh, yeah. And so Was it love at first sight?

John and Val Clark 57:01

I say it was obviously liked him. He I invited him back to do another story, something with my class specifically. And he did come back.

Speaker 1 57:12

I came back. Yeah, I could tell the very first meeting was very brief, maybe a 1520 seconds, because she was working trying to, you know, herd her kids and get them back to the classroom. And I'm passing through,

John and Val Clark 57:25

and I wasn't supposed to be socializing anyways, because I was working, yeah, and so.

Speaker 1 57:29

But during that 1520 seconds, she gave me a smile, and she gave me an indication that she wouldn't mind seeing me again buy

John and Val Clark 57:37

them back to do another story. That's how it started.

Michael Hingson 57:40

Well, there you go. And it worked. Yes, well, that's really cool. In 39 years, so you guys are doing well, so next year it will be Wow, big four. Oh the big four. Oh. So back to 1986 to 2026 that's pretty cool. Well, if you had the opportunity to view to interview and talk with anyone on the podcast, who would you like to get? What kind of what are some of the guests you'd really love to get?

58:13

Well, very Michael hangs it on. So who else do we

Michael Hingson 58:16

need? Oh, listen to him.

Speaker 1 58:19

Actually hasn't aired yet, but we'll, we'll put that on September 3 and September 10, our interview with Michael. Yeah, for me, you know, I was thinking actor Denzel Washington, because not only is he, you know, an Academy Award winning actor, he's been in some some of my favorite movies, but he's also someone who has spoken openly about his faith, and you dealing with that and use that and manage that in Hollywood, I'd love to hear the inside situation about that.

John and Val Clark 58:53

Yeah, he's been married in time, and I could go with that. I'd say the same thing. That would be great.

Speaker 1 58:59

Denzel Washington would be so Denzel, if you're watching right now, to have you on the podcast, and I think Michael probably would too. That'd be fun.

Michael Hingson 59:07

Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, they're, they're a number of people who I think would be be fun to have on the podcast. And so I, I believe everybody has stories to tell, and so it's my job to try to help bring the stories out and and help people show the rest of us that we all can be more unstoppable than we think we are, because we tend to usually underrate ourselves. We we sell ourselves way too short anyway, much less dealing with faith.

Speaker 1 59:42

And how did you Well, I know how you got started. I mean, after September 11 with this particular niche and trying to motivate people to that they are unstoppable, and they do sell themselves short too often. And I know you must get an excellent response when you. To speak to groups and situations like that.

Michael Hingson 1:00:04

Four years ago, I began work with a company called accessibe, and they asked if I would do a podcast, because I was looking at doing a podcast to try to help generate funds, and instead, they hired me, but they said they wanted a podcast. And I said, What do you want? And they said, Well, we really don't care. What we want is something to show the world that we're a part of it. And so I started unstoppable mindset, and it's been going ever since. And at the end of August, the 29th of August, tomorrow, we'll publish episode 366 since we began in August of 20 Oh, 21 wow. Yeah, we went to two episodes a week when we got visible in LinkedIn, and a lot of people have asked to come on. So it's, it's been a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 1:00:57

Well, you're an excellent host. I mean, you just, it's very comfortable talking with Yeah,

Michael Hingson 1:01:02

that's true. Well, if people want to reach out to you, come on the podcast or or learn about budgets or whatever. How do they do that?

Speaker 1 1:01:12

Clark at the Clark anymore? Well, if you go to the email, is Clark, no. Eon Clark. My parents couldn't afford the E Clark at the Clark report.com is our email, and we have a website called the Clark report.com

John and Val Clark 1:01:30

so Clark at the Clark report.com to communicate with us.

Speaker 1 1:01:34

Yes, that will be good, or just hit us up on social media. We're on X Facebook, not so much. Instagram, so LinkedIn,

Michael Hingson 1:01:45

LinkedIn, yeah. Well, great. Have you guys, between you at all written any books or anything yet?

1:01:54

I have not, no. Have not written any books.

Michael Hingson 1:01:56

Well, that's something to think about. Down the line. Probably you can make a book out of some of the podcast episodes, once you have enough to do it,

Speaker 1 1:02:04

that's true. That's good. Love to think about that good idea we

Michael Hingson 1:02:07

are well, I want to thank you for being with us today. This has absolutely been enjoyable, and I'm glad that we had a chance to chat. And as I've always said, this is a conversation, so we all contributed, but I think this is a wonderful episode, and I really appreciate your time being here, and we're anxious to hear more of what goes on on the Clark report, by all means. And I want to thank the rest of you for listening and watching us today. Thank you for being here and being a great audience. Love to hear from you. Feel free to email me at Michael H I M, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, Michael H i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and hingson is h, I N, G, S o, n, wherever you're observing our podcast, please Give us a five star rating. We love your reviews. We appreciate you talking about us and hopefully saying nice things. We really want to hear your thoughts. And if any of you, including you, John and Val, know of anyone who ought to be a guest or you think ought to come on unstoppable mindset, we're always looking for more. Folks would really appreciate your ideas and your thoughts, and now we're all going to have to go out and look for Denzel Washington, by all means. But I want to, I do want to thank you all again for being here. This has been absolutely a joy, and I appreciate your time. Thank you

Speaker 1 1:03:36

for having us. Thank you for having us, and thank you for all you do, Michael, just inspiring people and advocating for those who have disabilities and challenges and just who are tireless in what you do.

Michael Hingson 1:03:53

Episode 399 – The Unstoppable Truth About Book Marketing and Media with Mickey Mickelson

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when curiosity, resilience, and storytelling collide over a lifetime of building What does it really take to build an Unstoppable career in publishing without shortcuts or hype? In this episode, I sit down with publicist Mickey Mickelson to talk about the real work behind book promotion, author branding, and long-term visibility. Mickey shares his journey from banking into publishing, how Creative Edge grew from one client to over one hundred, and why most authors misunderstand marketing, social media, and publicity. We explore why relationships matter more than bestseller lists, how authors limit themselves by staying inside their genre, and why professionalism is non-negotiable in media. This conversation is a practical look at what it takes to build trust, credibility, and an Unstoppable presence in today’s publishing world.

Highlights:

00:09 – Hear why relationships, not hype, sit at the core of an Unstoppable publishing career.03:56 – Learn how real-world work experience shaped a practical approach to marketing and publicity.05:33 – Discover how Creative Edge was built around connection, vision, and long-term thinking.10:29 – Understand what publicists actually look for before agreeing to represent an author.12:16 – See why traditional publishing myths still hold authors back today.16:37 – Learn why social media presence directly impacts the success of media opportunities.21:09 – Understand how authors limit themselves by focusing only on genre.27:08 – Hear why professionalism and follow-through matter more than talent alone.39:28 – Learn why books do not stop being marketable after six months.54:09 – Discover what authors can do right now to build stronger branding and visibility.

About the Guest:

Mickey Mikkelson is the founder of Creative Edge Publicity.

Mickey graduated from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology with a Marketing Diploma in 1996.

In 2006, he began his work in the literary and bookseller industry as the Special Events Manager for Chapters/Indigo, Canada’s largest bookstore chain, in St. Albert, Alberta. In 2015, he formed Creative Edge Publicity, an aggressive publicity firm that specializes in advocating for both the traditional and independent artist.

Since founding Creative Edge, Mickey has signed some of the top talents in the literary industry, including multiple award-winning authors, New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors, and successful indie authors, many of whom have become international bestselling authors while working within the Creative Edge brand.

Creative Edge was also listed at the Publicist Of The Year for 2024 by USA Global TV and works in tandem representing a number of authors with the award-winning social media and book marketing firm, Abundantly Social located in Houston TX.

Ways to connect with Mickey**:**

Website: Creative Edge Publicity - Home

Facebook: (19) Facebook

Instagram: Instagram

LinkedIn: Creative Edge | LinkedIn

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, hi everyone. I am your host, Mike hingson, and you are now monitoring unstoppable mindset. Our podcast goes on twice a week, and today we get to have a wonderful guest who I've gotten to know over the past few years. His name is Mickey Mickelson. He is a publicist, and he'll tell us more about that. He's been a publicist now for, what, 1011, years, so it's been a while and and he does all sorts of constructive things, and I'm sure we'll get to talk about a lot of that as we go forward. Me being an author, he and I have worked together, and I've enjoyed that as much as anything. So anyway, Mickey, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Mickey Mickelson 02:06

Thank you so much, Michael, it's a pleasure to be here, and I just appreciate the opportunity.

Michael Hingson 02:12

And I should tell you that Mickey is up in Canada, and we've just been complaining, or he has more than I because he said, in a couple of months, we're recording this in August. In a couple of months, he says it's going to be very cold up there, and right now down here, it's going to get up to 108 degrees Fahrenheit today. So wow, lovely weather, no matter what they say. So there's always something about the weather to talk about, I guess. Well, why don't we start as is always fun to do, why don't you tell us kind of about the early Mickey growing up and all that

Mickey Mickelson 02:46

early Mickey growing up? Sure, only child broken home. Traveled a lot to different cities from grade one to grade seven. I was probably in four different cities overall. Had an insane love for comic books. Had a wonderful love for pets, which is still stayed true today. Always had a dog or a cat in the house, and just one of those things, you know, going back and forth between mom and dad and figuring life out while enjoying fantasies of the comic book world to invest him.

Michael Hingson 03:22

So, yeah, so they were divorced, and you went between them, huh?

Mickey Mickelson 03:27

Pretty much, but that's okay. They they both. They both love me and couldn't make it work. But that's, you know, it is what it is. Every challenge reaps a benefit in your lifetime. So, yeah,

03:40

how did you discover that?

Mickey Mickelson 03:43

Trial and error, to be honest, have I made a lot of mistakes overall, absolutely, but you learn from them, you grow from them, and then you just move on with your life. So everything that you do, it builds something else to what you can capture and be successful with.

Michael Hingson 04:00

So, yeah, so you, you kept going back and forth between them, went to school? Did you go to college?

Mickey Mickelson 04:09

I didn't go to college. Initially, after high school. I didn't complete high school as a kid, but I learned the hard way that after working for a year in restaurants and dishwashers and stuff that it's not what I wanted to do, so I worked for a full year, finished my high school through continuing education, then I saved for college myself, didn't get a loan for it, and completed about a marketing diploma from the northern Alberta's Technology with no loans outstanding.

Michael Hingson 04:41

So, yeah, how did you? How did you pay for it? You obviously worked.

Mickey Mickelson 04:45

I worked for a full year to save for a while, lived with my mom and paid for all the schooling myself.

Michael Hingson 04:54

So you got a degree in marketing, diploma, not a degree, a diploma in marketing. Okay? Okay with technology school? Yeah, right, okay, well, that's fine. Then what did you do with it?

Mickey Mickelson 05:07

Worked a little bit, and then got into the financial industry. I was a banker for about 12 years, account executive for a corporate company for about 12 years overall. And then I formed my company, which I'm doing now, as you know. So, yeah, what?

Michael Hingson 05:27

What made you go from, well, from originally doing marketing kinds of things into banking? What? Why the switch

Mickey Mickelson 05:39

I worked at Indigo, which is the largest bookstore chain in Canada, for about two years, setting up special events and stuff. And then, when I was in the corporate world on the road, six days a week, visiting credit union to Grady and talking with CEOs and lenders about banking systems and banking solutions, one of my co workers published a book, and so her name was Miranda, oh. And so I offered to help her get the word out about the book. We had so much fun. Michael, we did eight, eight stores within, I think, a 10 day basis in March of 2015 and she did all these signings, and I got some outreach for her from the media perspective, not knowing anything, but we had so much fun that I decided to start a little company, and that was in March of 2015 by August, I'd signed 36 clients, and so creative edge was born, and now we have over 100 so it's crazy.

Michael Hingson 06:40

How did you come up with the name creative edge for the name of the company?

Mickey Mickelson 06:44

My nine year old autistic daughter picked it out, as well as our logo, which is two puzzle pieces connecting, basically stating you're connecting everything from from authors and networking. And so that was what happened there, and it was very so that's what stemmed from. One puzzle piece is blue, one puzzle piece is white, and it's all connection together. Cool.

Michael Hingson 07:14

Well, how did you end up going into banking 12 years before that,

Mickey Mickelson 07:19

I was working for enterprise, rent a car in a assistant manager position. And in Lloydminster, where I live, and RBC, which was one of our accounts, their manager, asked me if I would consider trying the banking world. And that's how that started. So that's that's how that all worked out.

Michael Hingson 07:40

What did you think of being in banking? And I asked that because a couple of days ago, we had someone on as a guest who was talking about the fact that he did a lot of of work in the banking world for a while, but he realized that that was kind of draining him. And is, as he said, he was successful at work, but not much of anything else, because he put so much effort into it that he missed the rest of life.

Mickey Mickelson 08:05

There's a lot of stress to banking. You're obviously in charge of people's money. You're obviously in charge of people making financial decisions. And then there's the whole targeted aspect about sales focus. So there's a lot of stress to it. Did I enjoy networking and meeting people and all that I definitely did? Would I go back to it? Probably not at this stage. It's just too high stress for what you do, and I prefer to work with creatives rather than the whole numbers aspects. So that's why I do what I do now.

Michael Hingson 08:38

Yes, kind of limiting from in the banking world to do a lot of creativity, because only a few people really do that, unless you do creative financing, which could get you in a lot of trouble later on. Absolutely.

Mickey Mickelson 08:54

I mean, could I go back to banking? I have enough experience, I could, but I don't want to. I enjoy what I'm doing now.

Michael Hingson 09:00

So well, there's a lot of a lot of truth to that, and there's a lot of value in doing what you enjoy doing. It's not nearly as much of a job if you really enjoy it, and you go to work every day and you don't even necessarily even view it as work.

Mickey Mickelson 09:20

I It's a good point. I get to work with over 100 of the most talented literary people. You being one of them in this industry, and I get to do it on a daily basis. I wouldn't trade my life for anything right now is based on all the dynamics of what I do every single day. So, yeah,

Michael Hingson 09:49

well, and again, that that counts for a lot because you you're much more committed to what you really like to do, which, which helps a lot. Yeah. So do you work out of an office or from home? Do you have a staff? How does all that work?

Mickey Mickelson 10:06

I work from home, actually, and it's not set hours. There's probably more hours in the day that I put through than ever. I don't have a staff, although my my my daughter will be joining me starting next month to learn the ropes. So I'm excited about that

Michael Hingson 10:23

is that your autistic daughter, it is

Mickey Mickelson 10:25

all right. Well, that's cool. Yeah, she's gonna even learn the publicity Dane and do some press releases and reach out to some media with my direction and things like that. So, well, that's kind of cool, I think. So hopefully everyone else feels the same way, we'll find out.

Michael Hingson 10:41

Nice to have somebody who works with you, who you know 100% Yeah, so that that helps a lot. But I'm, I'm glad it's I'm glad it works out. I'm glad she's going to join you. That'll be kind of fun.

Mickey Mickelson 10:55

Yeah, I think so. I mean, there I've had like affiliates in the past. I've tried to try to figure out what I do, and some of them couldn't figure that out. I do have a business affiliate partner, as you know, in Houston, Texas, and we worked all together as well. But my daughter, coming aboard is hopefully going to be a game changer, and she'll learn some valuable career stuff, and at the same time, get to work with her dad. What's wrong with that? Nothing.

Michael Hingson 11:21

Yeah, that's as good as it gets. And you can't, can't complain about that, no. So you started creative edge in 2015 and as you said, you've grown to have over 100 people. What? What do you look for when you're signing creative people,

Mickey Mickelson 11:40

people who have a vision of what they want to do, people who don't expect to be on the New York Times bestseller list the first week, people who are grounded, people who are not as concerned about reach as they are getting opportunities. And really people who know initially or have an idea of what they want to do with their books. This, this whole publicity client relationship, as as you well know, Michael, we work together for years. It's it requires work, and it requires acquires relationships, not only from the media perspective, but with each other. And so anybody I sign has to be in tune with that. That's all.

Michael Hingson 12:26

Have you found people that talked a good line but you decided either to not sign or who later you decided really didn't fit the model of what you're looking for?

Mickey Mickelson 12:38

That's happened a number of times. Yeah, yeah, because you can't, you can't find out everything in an hour long interview about each other, to be honest. And sometimes it works. Most of the time it works and it's a direct fit, sometimes it turns out to not be a fit. So you just shake hands and call it a day.

Michael Hingson 13:02

Well, and, and that's fair, and there's, there's times that you got to do that. How do you think the whole publishing world has changed, say, over the past 20 years or so? Because clearly, there have been a lot of changes. And, and people keep saying there are a lot of changes. What kind of changes do you think you've experienced or encountered from publishers and so on in, let's say, the last 2025, years.

Mickey Mickelson 13:27

I think there's a mindset with the publishing world that, and this is going, from an indie author standpoint, is that everybody and their dogs want to be published by the traditional publishers, because then they don't have to market their books, which is a complete fallacy. Actually, it's actually the opposite, because even if you are with a big publisher, ie Penguin, for example, for one their in house publicists are very good at what they do, but they're only going to work on the book for three months, and you still have to market it after the fact. So what do you do after that? If you have no experience marketing the book, how are you going to do that? And the other issue is, there's so many writers now who have put out books like there's millions of books being published a year, and the media are being bombarded by everybody asking for opportunities, asking for interviews, asking for reviews, all of that, and they have to make selective judgments as to what they're going to carry and cover. So it's really, really important, from a writer's standpoint, that whatever you're doing is of high quality, because it's not, it's going to show up eventually, and then you're not going to gain coverage. That's the difference that we have now compared to 20 years ago.

Michael Hingson 14:46

Do you think that publishers do less marketing overall now, though, than they used to, or do you think that's really changed?

Mickey Mickelson 14:54

I don't think it's changed. I just think that people weren't educated about it. I think that. The Big Four specifically, they do a lot of social media blitzes. They do coverage overall, but it's limited in scope. They're going to focus on a new release, because that's what they have to do with so many projects they have. They're not going to focus on the audiobook. They're not going to focus on the trade paperback book. They're not going to focus on the backlist bugs. They're not going to do any of that because that's not what their mantra is. Their focus is on the book at the time of release. That's what their focus is. And some writers who were in the 1% of their highest level are going to get that attention, and the mid, mid card or the lower level writers publish with those firms aren't going to get as much attention. It's just dynamics, yeah.

Michael Hingson 15:46

Well, popular. There you are, right. I guess I'm kind of, in a sense, the exception to the rule, since in its first week out back in 2011 thunder dog did get on the New York Times bestseller list. Of course, it was published a month before the 10th anniversary of September 11, which counts for something. But still we do and always have done a lot of marketing of thunderdog, one of the things I've been very blessed with is we've gotten over, I think now, 1600 reviews on Amazon and so on for thunderdog from people who've read it. And reviews count for a lot, don't they

Mickey Mickelson 16:35

absolutely but I mean, in your case, Michael, with your story, it's definitely a moving story of like, you want to talk obstacles. You you had the biggest obstacle and you went through that. It's incredible what you did. So it makes sense that the book would have the success that it had, right?

16:53

So, yeah, I think, I think though,

Michael Hingson 16:58

Thomas Nelson did some things early on. They certainly exposed it to Kirkus, which is the company that writes for publishers and libraries and so on, and does review books. And they they did other things, and Amazon recognized the value of it and bought a bunch of copies so that that helped make it more visible. But still, I do understand what you're saying. And I, you know, I guess, what I do wonder, from a marketing standpoint, is, how effective do you think social media really is to marketing today? Because I know, when talking with Tyndale house about live like a guide dog, they say, basically, the marketing they do is all on social media. And it just seems to me, there is more to marketing than just social media.

Mickey Mickelson 17:48

You have to have a large presence on social media to make interviews effective. Yeah, it's the same, same token. If you don't have a strong social media presence, any interviews I book a client for is not going to have the effect that the client is looking for in terms of promotion, branding or sales, yeah, because no one sees it outside of friends and family, there has to be a combination of both those things in order for something, especially now in this day and age, yeah, in order for something to work, I mean, I met a writer two months ago who said, Mickey, I like you. I want to work with you, but I'm not going to do any social media. I'm like, Okay, well, we can still work together if you want, but don't expect any traction then. Well, I'm just gonna reach out to the people I know and do that, but I'm not on Facebook. Michael, you should be, because Facebook is still the largest social media outlet out there. Yeah. And if you don't have that presence, who's gonna see your interviews

Michael Hingson 18:58

so well? And we created an author page on Facebook for me, and we even created in a thunder dog page. And we actually have a Roselle 911 guide dog Facebook page. So Roselle gets her share of hits. I'm sure

Mickey Mickelson 19:16

she does. I'm sure she does. Michael, it's important to have social media presence, yeah, along with along with the interviews and everything else that you're doing, you have to have both to be successful.

Michael Hingson 19:27

I haven't done much on Instagram, nor Tiktok, because neither of those are really accessible. So me interacting with those is a real challenge.

Speaker 1 19:36

No, I understand that completely, and

Michael Hingson 19:39

they're not really fixing it, and Facebook is actually doing some things that make it a little bit less accessible than it has been in the past, but it is still usable, and so it's fun. So it's it's, it is important to have that social media presence. And the reality is, any author who want. To have their book be visible, has to be a good marketer. There's just no way around it. And they can expect, and shouldn't expect, you to do all the work. They have to do a lot of the work. You can advise you can help, but they still have to do it 100%

Mickey Mickelson 20:16

they have to help themselves. I can't wave a magic wand. Darn. All this stuff and expect no work from the other side and to be effective. It just doesn't work

Michael Hingson 20:27

that way. Hate it when that happens.

Mickey Mickelson 20:34

Well, yeah, what it is, I guess. But yeah,

Michael Hingson 20:37

it is. It's okay. But in a in a really good working world, it's a team effort, because there are a lot of things that you do, and there are a lot of things that you can do, as you just pointed out, to advise authors, but authors have to take that advice and and make it work.

Mickey Mickelson 20:56

That's right 100%

Michael Hingson 20:59

and for me, I know it helps to have a dog around. No question. When we go do public speaking events and sell books, I always tie guide dog down to the front of the table where we're selling books. And I tell people, if you buy books, you can pet the dog. Of course, anybody who wants to pet him is really welcome to but it is fun to tease them. And the other thing I do during speeches is I tell people that you got to come and buy books because Alamo has just told me that we're running low on kibbles and you don't want him to starve, do you? It's a lot of fun. Of course it would be no story's been great well and and he loves the attention. So you can't do better than that.

Mickey Mickelson 21:49

That's right, exactly, 100%

Michael Hingson 21:52

but it is, but it is true that that authors have to market and and need to learn to do that.

Mickey Mickelson 22:00

They do and they don't. They shouldn't second guess things, and they shouldn't just focus on their genre and expect results. There's so many things out beyond that that a person can do to have success. So yeah,

Michael Hingson 22:15

well, you say they have to go beyond their genre. What do you mean by that?

Mickey Mickelson 22:20

Well, a lot of writers will write a horror book or a thriller book, and they'll they'll say, Well, we have to pitch it to only those specific areas, and you don't. You can have success pitching it on a general sense. You can have success finding outlets that will will focus on you and build your resume up, which is what we're doing. We're building a media resume. That's what we're doing. And so the ones that pigeon and hold themselves into it has to be science fiction or has to be horror. It has to be this in order to be successful. They're actually limiting themselves in terms of opportunities and reach.

Michael Hingson 22:57

When thunder dog was published and it started going into bookstores like Barnes and Noble and so on, and even Thomas Nelson said that they're going to put it in the animal section. And I'm not opposed to anything, but I said, Well, why? It's really an inspirational book. It's about my experiences and so on. In the World Trade Center, they said, Yeah, but there are a lot of people who love animals, and going in the animal section at least as part of what we do is really important. And they were right. And today, I see it more often than not in animal sections of bookstores, but I do, I do find it elsewhere, but it definitely is in the animal section. And I'm sure live like a guide dog is also,

Mickey Mickelson 23:42

well, there's so many, and we're talking about this right now. Michael, with you specifically, we're booking you with all kinds of pet podcasts, because they want to hear your story. Yeah, so it's another way to leverage your your branding.

Michael Hingson 23:54

The only thing that's the only thing that's disappointing about that is they want to talk to me. They don't want to talk to Alamo.

Mickey Mickelson 24:02

Well, maybe we can bring it up,

Michael Hingson 24:05

see where that gets you.

24:08

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Michael Hingson 24:11

Well, and, and it's and it's fair, it's appropriate, because the reality is, that's where it is. And we have in both books a lot of good lessons that people can take to heart about their own animals, their own dogs and cats, for that matter, but, but you know they can take to heart whether they do is another story. I've heard so many people say, Oh, my dog could never do what your dog does. My dog would never be that calm. And my response generally is, and how much do you set the rules? How much do you really interact with your dog to let the dog know what you want and want and what to expect? And there are ways to do that without slapping the dog and saying no and all that, but people don't do that,

Mickey Mickelson 24:58

and how would they know they were never. That position. So how will they know what the dog can or can't do?

Michael Hingson 25:03

Yeah, and how would the dogs know what you expect exactly? Nope, 100% so it works out. But you know, one of these days, if somebody wants to talk to Alamo, I'll give them the opportunity. I'm not sure how far they're yet, but you know,

Mickey Mickelson 25:19

that'll be a press release and a half we'll enjoy sending out.

Michael Hingson 25:22

Yeah, wouldn't it, though, exactly, but it is, it is cool. Well, so it's, it is true that that it's important to really look at all aspects of a book when it's published and what you do with it. And so you've got now over 100 clients. What mostly do you do for them as a publicist today?

Mickey Mickelson 25:48

Oh, all kinds of crazy things. I set up press releases. I set up radio, TV, podcast interviews, guest posts in magazines, book reviews. Give them interview advice, have discussions around branding, pivoting, doing all kinds of different stuff, and wearing different hats and and and catering to everybody's different personalities. So there's a lot, but I love it, and I enjoy it, and I wouldn't change a thing with that.

Michael Hingson 26:22

So, yeah, what kind of exposure Have you had, or what kind of work have you done with arranging any kind of book tours? I mean, you know, you hear from the very famous people, they're on this tour and so on. Do you ever get involved in that?

Mickey Mickelson 26:36

I'm actually doing a western Canada, slash, I guess, almost a national tour right now, with an author. His name is Sebastian de Castel. He's a highly acclaimed fantasy author, and we set up 2022, tour dates across Canada and a couple in the States as well. So yeah,

Michael Hingson 27:00

well, we haven't done a book tour yet. We'll have to work on that sometime.

Mickey Mickelson 27:03

We can try that for sure. Now, this works, now that I know it works.

Michael Hingson 27:08

Well, we did a little one when thunder dog was published, Thomas Nelson had me go to a few things. I appeared on a CNN show on the 700 club, and a couple things. It wasn't huge, but, but it was relevant, and it worked. And now I think next year is going to be interesting, because it is the 25th anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorist attack. So that might be a really good opportunity to do all sorts of things. Marketing wise, I know when I'm when I'm reaching out to explore speaking events. Now I mentioned the the fact that next year is the 25th anniversary, because it means that people are going to be paying more attention, especially if they get to experience somebody who was there. It's just going to be different than than in previous years or in following years.

Mickey Mickelson 27:59

No 100% and we will definitely do some stuff around that. Mike, yeah, it'll be fun.

Michael Hingson 28:04

Yep, agreed. It's just one of the things that's all about marketing, though. So for you, what's the most stressful part of what you do besides having a dog do a press interview? For you,

Mickey Mickelson 28:19

the most stressful piece is managing everything every day and ensuring that clients are happy and they're getting coverage, but also understanding that it's not always going to be mainstream coverage that they get based on opportunities and just all of those kind of things. Yeah, and the other thing that drives me nuts, and my clients going to HATE me for saying this, but I'm going to bring it up, is I can't stand no shows. They drive me to no end. That is my bane of my existence, when a client no shows on an opportunity or contacts a media outlet without CC me and saying they can't be there for that day. That's the thing that drives me batty the most. Yeah, it just is.

Michael Hingson 29:14

I know when I arrange interviews with people to either do an intro call about coming on a podcast or doing a podcast that's mostly at the intro call level, and people don't show up. And one of the things is, I always have them do the scheduling for a couple of reasons. I want them to schedule it when it's convenient for them, which is the biggest issue. And we had one this morning. The guy approached me an email and said that he would be a great guest, and here's why, and all that. And I saw I sent him the letter, and I said, schedule it, and I'm glad to do it. And he never appeared. Now probably about half the time, there are legitimate reasons. There was a health issue or something, and. You know, one we had a few weeks ago, there were storms and the Internet wasn't working, but that was okay. We got through it. But the fact is that there are some that just don't show up. And I agree with you, that is extremely frustrating.

Mickey Mickelson 30:17

Well, take your branding and your career seriously, and if you're going to book something, unless there's a major disaster in your world, if you book something and you've picked your schedule for it, be there, yeah, or let your publicist know that you're not going to be there, so he can pivot and and make different arrangements for that Sure, and that's fair, right? That's the part that drives me. And now you're going to events. I'm sorry, Michael, but that's the part that baffles me. The mode most is a client. Something comes up, whether it's emergency or something else comes up, and then they take it upon those cells to reach out to the media outlet themselves, not CC me, and then the media media person contacts me and asks me, what's going on? Yeah, well, it doesn't. It shouldn't work that way, to be honest. Yeah, I need to be the focal point of all that stuff.

Michael Hingson 31:15

So that's why, when I schedule times with people and I put something on my computer and file it. I always, not only put the person's name or whatever, but I say things like from Mickey, so I also know and remember that you're part of it.

Mickey Mickelson 31:32

Thank you for that. I appreciate that

Michael Hingson 31:35

because and I've gotten into a great habit of making sure that when I get any kind of an email or deal with any kind of correspondences, immediately, I will put all relevant things in the computer, including making sure if it's my responsibility to do something, to have a calendar invite or a calendar reminder, because I know that it's so easy for things to slip. So I really make sure about that. And again, when people schedule themselves for for me, and that's fine, a lot of people do that if, if they can't show up and they email me, no problem. At least I know what's happening, and it can free up time. But when they just don't show up at all that does get to be a frustration. And I hear what you're saying that is a very not nice thing to do.

Mickey Mickelson 32:26

Well, it's unprofessional, first and foremost. And with our team, specifically, anything anyone does directly and directly affects everybody else as well. Yeah, yeah. So that's why I'm so anal about that. But I mean, I mean, that's the one area within this position of what I do that I'm not really enjoying the most. Yeah, fantastic.

Michael Hingson 32:48

Well, things, things happen, and you appreciate it, but still, people could do it the right way, and it makes more sense, and it's the courteous thing to do, and, and I love it when people email me and say, can't make it. I'm going to reschedule. That's okay. And I've had a couple people who have scheduled a time and even a week before, they email and say, got to change it. This came up, or I'm not going to be around, or I just need to change it, and that's fine, whatever, and they go ahead and change it. And so I've had one person who did that, like, four or five times, and I wondered if they really existed. No, I knew. I knew they did, but it's still fun. Did this person really exist? But eventually we got to do it, and got to laugh about all the delays. But that's okay. That's perfectly okay.

Mickey Mickelson 33:42

Well, ways too, right? It goes both ways, like, even with the media outlet, if they're the ones that know show, then there's a conversation made on that side too. Yeah, respect both sides,

Speaker 1 33:51

right, right? Yeah, it's fair.

Michael Hingson 33:55

And it's, it's the way it ought to work, and it's, and it's not just in the publicist and publishing world. It's, it's the right thing to do in anything in business or anything in personal life, that you do, you got to be courteous with people.

Mickey Mickelson 34:09

Hunter, absolutely you do. You have to treat people as you want to

Michael Hingson 34:13

be treated right. It's exactly right. And that's, that's the way to do it. So the other aspect of it is, what do you enjoy most about being a publicist and what you do?

Mickey Mickelson 34:24

The conversations I get to have every day with media, with clients, overall, the bragging rights when I can say that I work with multiple New York Times bestsellers. You being one of them, Michael, the doors that open with that, the stature aspect of the fact that I am a publicist, and I get to work with all these wonderful people and do all these things. It's, it's invigorating, and it's, it's so rewarding to do that every day. It's just, I can't even fathom the excitement I get when I get someone on a medium show. A large show, or just to get a review for someone who never had that before, and they're so gracious about it, and they can't believe it's happened. Yeah, it's I can't even fathom what that feels like or explain it, because it's just such an enjoyable aspect to what I do.

Michael Hingson 35:16

Of course, now for you, if I come back in a couple of months and ask that question, I would certainly hope that the response would be, I get to have my daughter work with me,

Mickey Mickelson 35:28

just just, just making sure you know what the rules are going to be. That hasn't happened yet, though, but no, I say a couple months, yes, of course. I'm excited to have her learn my ropes. I'm excited that she wants to take an active interest. That's cool. It's really cool

Michael Hingson 35:46

that you get to that is, that is cool. So you're married,

Mickey Mickelson 35:51

not I'm I'm getting divorced. Oh,

Michael Hingson 35:53

that's too bad. No, that's okay. Well, it's no fun. Acknowledge so it is, well, still, I guess things happen. They do. My wife and I were married 40 years, and then she passed. So couldn't really call that a divorce, but as I tell people, whatever's going on, she's somewhere, and she monitors me, so I got to be a good kid and behave

Mickey Mickelson 36:16

me and my ex wife are good friends, and we co parent really well. And it was, it was a, it was a good breakup overall, actually.

Michael Hingson 36:24

Well, as long as, you know, I think one of the important things, as long as you guys are still good friends, we are, yeah, and you got a daughter who's interested in your lives, and that's great. That's really good. We're lucky that way. Yeah, just the one daughter,

36:40

only one

Michael Hingson 36:41

that's enough. It's more than enough. Yeah, I'm amazed at the people who have 10, 1214, kids. My gosh. How do they do that? But I guess that works for some people too.

Mickey Mickelson 36:54

Our daughter has autism, she has ADHD. She has a learning disability. She had depression for a while. She had anxiety, there was a lot of things that happened, but the really good thing about it is, yes, the divorce was not nice, but it worked out in the end. Our kids went through it. She discovered books through all this. Result of that, she's hopefully going to establish a career for herself, and I get to lead her through that. So there's nothing wrong with that.

Michael Hingson 37:25

So do you still read about it? So do you still read comic books? I do. I never was able to get into comic books, mainly because they're not accessible. So, you know, it's a

Mickey Mickelson 37:38

but I love radio books as well, but I still have a love for the comic book industry.

Michael Hingson 37:42

Oh yeah. Well, I love comedy on radio and so on. And there have been a couple of people who've tried to make recorded, accessible comics, to some degree. There used to be a guy in Los Angeles on the Clear Channel radio station KFI when I was young, in the six, seven, in eight year old range. On Sunday morning, there was a guy called the funny paper man, and was actually a guy named David Starling, who later went to another radio station to do classical music. But he took the Los Angeles Times every week he and others, and they dramatized every comic in the paper for an hour. They had all the comics, and he read them, and they they acted them out, and they had great sound effects. It was so much fun. That's awesome. Yeah, I missed it's great. I still miss the funny paper. Man, that was such a fun show. Yeah, no, of course, theoretically, LaGuardia read the comics for kids back in New York when he was mayor years ago. But I'd love to hear more audio comics. I think it would be fun to be able to hear some of the comic books today and and also just deal with the newspapers. I have not read comics and newspapers in a long time, so I don't even know if they're good quality anymore, but whatever

Mickey Mickelson 39:12

comic books have helped me out of a lot of stuff, helped me deal with a lot of stuff, helped me escape from reality when I needed to it. Just, it was beneficial.

Speaker 1 39:24

It was like, what? What's your favorite comic book character, Batman? Ah, okay, yeah, Batman, for sure. Batman, Batman.

Michael Hingson 39:35

Yes, did you? Did you have a good relationship also with Superman.

Mickey Mickelson 39:42

Not as much. Superman's okay, too, but I'm definitely a Batman fanatic. And green Lacher and I like him,

Michael Hingson 39:51

oh, Green Lantern, yeah, yeah. The in the radio, golden days of radio, as it were, in the late 40s and so on. They. Had Superman and Batman was a regular daily Batman and Robin were regular characters on Superman. That was kind of fun.

Mickey Mickelson 40:09

That's cool. That's really cool. Yeah, they've always been tied those three characters, right? Yeah, Superman specifically. So, I mean, they're DC is big too.

40:18

So, yeah, who works?

Michael Hingson 40:23

So here's a question. You sort of alluded to it earlier. When books are published, the publishers really only pay attention to them for like three to six months. Why is that? Why is the shelf life really so short?

Mickey Mickelson 40:38

That's the mindset within the publishing world that you can only promote a book for three to six months, and then they have other projects they have to work on. So but we've developed a system where we continually market a book until the media tells us it's no longer marketable. So I've had people on magazine covers for books that are year and a half old. We've gotten publisher weekly reviews for books that were published two years ago. We've effectively relaunched several titles in several aspects, and some of those indie authors have become international bestsellers as a result of our of our efforts, we don't give up until we're told to give up. And from a marketing standpoint, we're not really focusing our marketing, per se, on the books anyways, focusing our marketing and our branding around the individual people they bring to the table as a whole. So I mean, as you're fully aware, Michael, did we market thunder dog for you when you signed with us? Sure? We did, sure. But we also marketed everything else that you bring to the table, which allowed us to be successful as successful marketing your other books along with thunderdog. Yeah. So that's why we do things. Whereas the publishers will focus on the book, we focus on the individuals. And there's a big difference there, but

Michael Hingson 42:06

it makes a lot of sense, and it's, it's appropriate to do, and it it really brings more of a personality to each book and each person that you talk with, when people get to know the person who wrote the book, in addition to the book itself, makes a big difference,

Mickey Mickelson 42:25

exactly so traditional media, radio, TV, podcasts, magazines, all of that is designed to provide exposure for the individual. The Sales start when you start placing advertising campaigns, social media campaigns around the book, right? And when you encompass both those things, it's it's a much better system and program and portfolio overall. That's what we're trying to do.

Michael Hingson 42:53

So when you do a book tour like the one that you're doing for the person in Canada, yeah, who pays for that. How does that work?

Mickey Mickelson 43:02

The publisher pays for the events that they set up. So for example, he's going to New York, and they're flying him there. But in all actuality, for all the Alberta, Vancouver, Saskatchewan dates, the author is actually paying for himself,

Speaker 1 43:24

okay, yeah, well, but there's a great reward that comes out of that.

Mickey Mickelson 43:30

There should be. We're getting enough traction social media wise that there should be, we'll find out at the end of the tour. But Sebastian is very excited about it. When he originally asked me to set this up. He was thinking only three or four or five dates. Well, we have now over 20 So

Michael Hingson 43:48

and, and it's, it's, and he's expecting, obviously, a lot to come from that's, that's what you should get.

Mickey Mickelson 43:58

Well, it's an experiment, and if you don't do things like this, you're not going to get anything. So you might as well try it and see what happens. Right? Yeah, all you can do is try Exactly, yeah, but I've done book tours like this before, and they've been successful. So yeah,

Michael Hingson 44:14

that's cool. So what's the one thing that you can point to that told you are going to be successful with creative edge and being a publicist,

Mickey Mickelson 44:25

just the outreach. When I started, I mean, I went from one writer in March to like, over 30 in August, wow. And we were getting media connections. We were building relationships. I signed a couple of bigger name authors, which I didn't think I was ready for. You being one of them. I'll be candid with you. And it's worked. It's been successful. We have three New York Times bestsellers. You being one of them. We have multiple USA Today bestsellers. I'm a sole publishers for six ball press publishers. It's been very, very successful, and it's all about networking, all about community, and all about affiliation. And what's wrong with that? Nothing wrong with that.

Michael Hingson 45:13

So how many of your authors have interviewed you on and had a conversation with you on a podcast?

Mickey Mickelson 45:19

My authors? I think you're probably maybe the third one. Have I been on other podcasts? Oh, sure, absolutely. But I haven't done this kind of thing very, very

Speaker 1 45:31

often, to be honest. Well, we gotta, we gotta get everybody to put you to work.

Mickey Mickelson 45:37

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So thank you for this.

Michael Hingson 45:42

No, it's, it's a lot of fun, and it's a way to get to know each other, which is, which is also a very good

Mickey Mickelson 45:47

thing, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 45:51

So tell me more about your your relationship with the folks in Texas, in Houston.

Mickey Mickelson 45:58

So the girl's name is Amy revischandran, she's just outside of Houston, Texas. She's the owner of abundantly social, which is an award winning book marketing and social media firm. We share a number of clients together. I get them interviews. She shares the links across her reach of about two and a half million on social media. And we do this, we do stuff together, we talk every day, we we outline what to do, and she does a social media aspect and the book campaign aspect, and I get the interview aspect. And it's a two pronged attack that works very, very, very, very, well.

Michael Hingson 46:43

How'd you guys meet? How'd that work out?

Mickey Mickelson 46:47

She has a show called author talk, which she was advertising for, guests for, and I met her three years ago, and we talked, and she offered to book some of my people on her show. And then she told me that she was a publicist, and then I got a little bit guarded about that, but then she said she promised not to take any my people. Next thing you know, we become like the best of friends, and I could not imagine my business life without her.

Michael Hingson 47:12

Now, it's great when somebody has enough ethics to do it the right way.

Mickey Mickelson 47:18

Yes, yes. And we respect each other, and we respect our boundaries, and in all honesty, we work very, very, very well together, well.

Michael Hingson 47:29

And if each of you write your own books, then the other one of you can be the publicist for them.

Mickey Mickelson 47:35

If we decide to write books, I'm not sure that that's in our car. It's either one of us, but yeah, but still, rather promote my my clients instead of write my own book.

Michael Hingson 47:45

Yeah, it's everybody has their gifts, and that's what's really kind of important, is to really deal with your own gifts, and which makes it so cool, yes, but I don't know. I'm trying to remember. I'm not sure if I've been on author talk,

Mickey Mickelson 48:01

have I you were reviewed two years ago?

Michael Hingson 48:05

Oh my gosh, such a long time ago? Yeah, maybe we should do it again. It's been two years. So that's before I live like a guide dog.

Mickey Mickelson 48:13

I think we were actively promoting thunder dog at that time.

Michael Hingson 48:15

Yeah? Well, if she, if she likes repeat customers at all, let me know. It'd be fun. I will talk to her, but, but still, yeah, it sounded familiar, and I thought maybe I had but I couldn't remember when or what I've slept since then. So, you know, things happen. We all have my clothes. Oh, good point. That's That's true. So what do you want to see in the coming years, what are you? What's an area where you want to get more visibility or do more work, or enhance the company?

Mickey Mickelson 48:48

I think, Well, number one, I want to get my kid up and running, and I want her to develop strengths around this, so that if she decides that the publicity veins the way she wants to go, or if she wants to take over for me, should I retire someday? She can do that. That's the first thing. And then secondly, from a reach standpoint, for all of my clients, I do want to look at more book tour type stuff and bookstore leveraging and library events and and event management. From that aspect, I think this tour with Sebastian is going to open up a lot of doors. Should it be successful? And I think it will be, and I want to be able to do that with with more of our clients, because I think it's another area that we really haven't provided a lot of focus on, but I think it's an area that it'll allow us to all grow as individuals and as a company, to do well.

Michael Hingson 49:51

And that makes a lot of sense, and it is, it is something that has to certainly help the process along. And so hopefully you'll. Be successful at it, and we'll grow the company. Do you want the company to grow? And maybe that's an unfair question, because you could define growth in so many different ways.

Mickey Mickelson 50:11

I want the company to grow in the right way, meaning that we're signing and representing high quality people who know what they want to do, who are open to collaborating and having a relationship with me to do that. I want it to grow in that aspect and build out our professional mandate and image overall. That's what I want to happen overall. If we're simply just going to sign people, to sign people because there's money I'm not interested in that. That's not what I want to do moving forward. I want to represent people who want to be represented in the right way and be professional around that.

Michael Hingson 50:59

Do you have a particular genre that you like more than any other, and focus on in any way more on one type of genre, one type of book, than any other,

Mickey Mickelson 51:14

not not from a business standpoint. I mean, my personal what I prefer reading are horror and fantasy books. I love those two genres, but I don't fall into the trap, or I don't want to fall into the trap of just simply providing more focus to those areas, because that's what my my personal love is. I tend to represent, or I tend to promote based on the personalities of the team I have in front of me, and based on what they're looking to do and and how ingrained I have in terms of relationship with them. It's hard because I have so many clients that I do represent, but at the same time, certain clients only want certain things, so it's easier I can leverage that and get those things done, and then with the clients who want more from that, we can pivot and do that as well, but but from a personal standpoint, when I do read, if I do read books, it is fantasy and horror that I'm I'm reading.

Michael Hingson 52:16

So here's the real question. Now, do you have any comic book writers that you represent so far,

Mickey Mickelson 52:23

I used to and I actually have one. His name is Chris Dan Mead. He runs a radio show called Radio of horror, and he's done a couple of vampire type comic related materials. He's actually doing a Kickstarter right now on a on a title called Lata, type of thing, so but is my focus on comic books? I have the contacts, but it's not a major focus for me.

Michael Hingson 52:54

Yeah, yeah. Well, and comic books, especially the more famous ones have their own mechanisms that are promoting them so well, like marble and so on, that that it's kind of really, I don't know how, how helpful it would be if you promoted them anyway, all you might get something out of it, but, but still, they're already doing so much.

Mickey Mickelson 53:16

You see, DC and Marvel are marketing, yeah,

53:20

yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 53:22

And they're, and they're doing so well at it they are. So it's fun. So you must read Stephen King from time to time.

Mickey Mickelson 53:31

I like Stephen King. My favorite horror writer. May he rest in peace, is actually Peter Straub, and he's, he was such a nice man, and ghost story is such a good book, and he's just very, very talented. So he's my he wouldn't be my go to he's my favorite writer overall. To be honest,

Michael Hingson 53:50

I am amazed, though, that people like Stephen King and Peter and others come up with such incredible plots. I don't know where they come from.

Mickey Mickelson 53:59

I have no idea. I mean, I don't even know how they think. Yeah, it's mind

Michael Hingson 54:06

blowing to me. I read Stephen King's the entire Dark Tower series, and I just kept wondering, Where did you get all that stuff?

Mickey Mickelson 54:15

Made it up in his head. He knew. Yeah, right. I mean, there's indies that do that too. They just don't, they don't get the recognition that Stephen King does. But happens, yeah,

Michael Hingson 54:26

it was, it was an excellent series. It was well worth the read. Probably one of my favorite authors, more science fiction than horror, is Robert Heinlein. Oh yeah, who's written so many wonderful science you know, the late Robert Heinlein, but who wrote so many wonderful books. And I also like detective books. I've been a great Nero wolf fan Rex Stout for years. And I like those kinds of books because they're puzzles, and it's always fun to see if you can figure out what they did. And. How that how the crime went down?

Mickey Mickelson 55:03

Yeah, thrillers are good too. I just it's not money. They're good so, yeah,

Michael Hingson 55:11

well, in the world of publicity, what can authors do to have more success?

Mickey Mickelson 55:18

Improve their branding, make sure they're doing professional headshots. Make sure their books are edited properly, make sure they have a decent book cover, and then be open to doing all kinds of opportunities, and not just focusing on the genre that they wrote in. Try to build your media resume. That's what is needed. The more opportunities you have in your resume, the easier it's going to be to get you out there into the world. Yeah, and then, and then, with that, work on your social media and try to get as much social media presence as you possibly can, because with that, all of those things will be of benefit overall.

Michael Hingson 56:01

Yeah, you got to put forth the effort, and if you do, it will pay off. It may not pay off in your immediate timeframe, but it will pay off.

Mickey Mickelson 56:12

It will but it's work. And the problem is is the people, like the writers, who don't have success, don't realize the level of work that this all this is, it's a lot of work, and you have to be able to want to do it.

Michael Hingson 56:29

Well, the other part about it is they don't realize how much work somebody did that brought that other somebody, the successes that they had. That's right, and and the reality is, it is all about work, which is okay, that's what makes it fun. It's an adventure.

Mickey Mickelson 56:45

I get up at 4am every single day, and I go to bed at midnight every day. Wow. And most of the time I'm doing stuff for clients. It's true.

Michael Hingson 57:00

I've got to have more than four hours of sleep a night, but that's okay.

Mickey Mickelson 57:03

I've been doing it for over 10 years. I'm used to it. Yeah, I understand. You got to love what you do, but you have to love what you do. That's the difference. Yeah, I don't see what I do is actual work. I see it as a passion.

57:17

There's a difference. And

Michael Hingson 57:19

in reality, it is a passion, and there is a difference by any standard, that's right, and you got to enjoy what you what you do. Well, if you could go back and tell your younger self something, which also may be something that you'll tell your daughter, but if you had the chance to go back and tell your younger self something, what would it be? What would you want to teach him?

Mickey Mickelson 57:41

Do not look past potential opportunities and work as hard as you can to be a success in doing that, I wasn't a good, good student. I didn't take school seriously. I thought I knew everything, and when I didn't complete high school and I got into the work world and realized, where am I going, what am I doing, and then saving money to pay for college and all that stuff, it was an awakening moment. And I mean, it's no it was an awakening moment that I could even use now with the writers I work with, like you wrote this book, embrace the moment and don't let anything tell you you can't do this or don't get defeatist. Just do it and do it with pride. Do it with honor and do it with professionalism.

Speaker 1 58:42

But do it? Do it anyways?

Michael Hingson 58:45

Yeah. Well, no, I appreciate that, and it makes a lot of sense, because it it really helps define your character, which is what we're what we're really talking about exactly.

Mickey Mickelson 58:58

I mean, when my daughter starts working with me. Am I going to be the big bad employer? Yeah, a little bit, because I'm going to expect certain things to happen, and I'll train her to do that. But if she's going to work with me, then she's going to work and she's going to do things the right way, yeah, otherwise, there's no point in doing it.

Michael Hingson 59:22

But you know what the right way is, and you get to be the teacher and help her understand what the right way is, and that's the big issue, exactly which is so cool. Well, why don't I have to check in later and see how it all goes, but I'll bet she does really well with you.

Mickey Mickelson 59:42

Oh, I'm sure she will. She loves books. She loves them.

Michael Hingson 59:46

Yeah, I really enjoy reading a lot. I try to read as much as I can. And for me, one of the things I do is I you, I have a number of audio books, and to get exercise. Eyes, especially in the hotter part of summer and the colder part of winter. In our house, we have a big island that separates the family room from the kitchen, and I'll just walk around the island and do laps, and I can get 10, 15,000 steps a day in there. I just put a book on and read the book while I'm walking, which is so much fun.

Mickey Mickelson 1:00:18

Well, there you go. That's awesome.

Michael Hingson 1:00:21

I get to read and I get to walk. Which is, which is good, that's perfect. Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been so much fun. I'm glad we did it, and we'll we'll have to do it some more.

Mickey Mickelson 1:00:34

Thank you, Michael, so much for everything, and I just appreciate you and your support.

Michael Hingson 1:00:39

Well, thank you, and I appreciate all that you do and all the insights that you brought us today. And for those of you listening, I hope you enjoyed it. And if people want to reach out to you, Mickey, how do they do that?

Mickey Mickelson 1:00:51

They can go to my website, www, dot creative edge services, or they can email me at Mickey, dot creative edge@gmail.com

Michael Hingson 1:01:00

so the website, again, is WWW dot creative edge that services, dot services, that's dot, dash services, dash services that's correct. So there's no.com at the end, or no.com Okay, so creative edge, dash services, that's right. Cool. Well, again, thank you, and I want to thank you all for listening. I'd love to hear what you think of today's podcast, and love to get your your input. We always value what people say, so feel free to email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com so that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and we'd love it if you would recommend other people who could be guests on unstoppable mindset, we're always looking for people. So Mickey, you as well, always looking for folks. So don't hesitate. Mickey knows that already. He's helped us find a number of guests, which I really value a lot. But wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We value it, and we hope that you'll be back next time to hear more on unstoppable mindset. We're going to be here, and we're going to have a lot of fun. So again, Mickey, I just want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun. Thank you again. You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Episode 398 – Growing an Unstoppable Brand Through Trust and Storytelling with Nick Francis

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when curiosity, resilience, and storytelling collide over a lifetime of building something meaningful? In this episode, I welcome Nick Francis, founder and CEO of Casual Films, for a thoughtful conversation about leadership, presence, and what it takes to keep going when the work gets heavy. Nick’s journey began with a stint at BBC News and a bold 9,000-mile rally from London to Mongolia in a Mini Cooper, a spirit of adventure that still fuels how he approaches business and life today.

We talk about how that early experience shaped Casual into a global branded storytelling company with studios across five continents, and what it really means to lead a creative organization at scale. Nick shares insights from growing the company internationally, expanding into Southeast Asia, and staying grounded while producing hundreds of projects each year. Along the way, we explore why emotionally resonant storytelling matters, how trust and preparation beat panic, and why presence with family, health, and purpose keeps leaders steady in uncertain times. This conversation is about building an Unstoppable life by focusing on what matters most, using creativity to connect people, and choosing clarity and resilience in a world full of noise.

Highlights:

00:01:30 – Learn how early challenges shape resilience and long-term drive.

00:06:20 – Discover why focusing on your role creates calm under pressure.

00:10:50 – Learn how to protect attention in a nonstop world.

00:18:25 – Understand what global growth teaches about leadership.

00:26:00 – Learn why leading with trust changes relationships.

00:45:55 – Discover how movement and presence restore clarity.

About the Guest:

Nick Francis is the founder and CEO of Casual, a global production group that blends human storytelling, business know-how, and creativity turbo-charged by AI.

Named the UK’s number one brand video production company for five years, Casual delivers nearly 1,000 projects annually for world-class brands like Adobe, Amazon, BMW, Hilton, HSBC, and P\&G. The adventurous spirit behind its first production – a 9,000-mile journey from London to Mongolia in an old Mini – continues to drive Casual’s growth across offices in London, New York, LA, San Francisco, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong and Greater China.

Nick previously worked for BBC News and is widely recognised for his expertise in video storytelling, brand building, and corporate communications. He is the founding director of the Casual Films Academy, a charity helping young filmmakers develop skills by producing films for charitable organisations. He is also the author of ‘The New Fire: Harness the Power of Video for Your Business' and a passionate advocate for emotionally resonant, behaviorally grounded storytelling. Nick lives in San Francisco, California, with his family.

Ways to connect with Nick**:**

Website: https://www.casualfilms.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@casual_global

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/casualglobal/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CasualFilms/

Nick’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickfrancisfilm/

Casual’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/casual-films-international/

Beyond Casual - LinkedIn Newsletter: https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=6924458968031395840

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hello everyone. I am your host, Mike hingson, that's kind of funny. We'll talk about that in a second, but this is unstoppable mindset. And our guest today is Nick Francis, and what we're going to talk about is the fact that people used to always ask me, well, they would call me Mr. Kingston, and it took me, as I just told Nick a master's degree in physics in 10 years to realize that if I said Mike hingson, that's why they said Mr. Kingston. So was either say Mike hingson or Michael hingson. Well, Michael hingson is a lot easier to say than Mike hingson, but I don't really care Mike or Michael, as long as it's not late for dinner. Whatever works. Yeah. Well, Nick, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're

Nick Francis 02:04

here. Thanks, Mike. It's great to be here.

Michael Hingson 02:08

So Nick is a marketing kind of guy. He's got a company called casual that we'll hear about. Originally from England, I believe, and now lives in San Francisco. We were talking about the weather in San Francisco, as opposed to down here in Victorville. A little bit earlier. We're going to have a heat wave today and and he doesn't have that up there, but you know, well, things, things change over time. But anyway, we're glad you're here. And thanks, Mike. Really looking forward to it. Tell us about the early Nick growing up and all that sort of stuff, just to get us started.

Nick Francis 02:43

That's a good question. I grew up in London, in in Richmond, which is southwest London. It's a at the time, it wasn't anything like as kind of, it's become quite kind of shishi, I think back in the day, because it's on the west of London. The pollution from the city used to flow east and so, like all the kind of well to do people, in fact, there used to be a, there used to be a palace in Richmond. It's where Queen Elizabeth died, the first Queen Elizabeth, that is. And, yeah, you know, I grew up it was, you know, there's a lot of rugby played around there. I played rugby for my local rugby club from a very young age, and we went sailing on the south coast. It was, it was great, really. And then, you know, unfortunately, when I was 10 years old, my my dad died. He had had a very powerful job at the BBC, and then he ran the British Council, which is the overseas wing of the Arts Council, so promoting, I guess, British soft power around the world, going and opening art galleries and going to ballet in Moscow and all sorts. So he had an incredible life and worked incredibly hard. And you know, that has brought me all sorts of privileges, I think, when I was a kid. But, you know, unfortunately, age 10 that all ended. And you know, losing a parent at that age is such a sort of fundamental, kind of shaking of your foundations. You know, you when you're a kid, you feel like a, you're going to live forever, and B, the things that are happening around you are going to last forever. And so, you know, you know, my mom was amazing, of course, and, you know, and in time, I got a new stepdad, and all the rest of it. But you know, that kind of shaped a lot of my a lot of my youth, really. And, yeah, I mean, Grief is a funny thing, and it's funny the way it manifests itself as you grow. But yeah. So I grew up there. I went to school in the Midlands, near where my stepdad lived, and then University of Newcastle, which is up in the north of England, where it rains a lot. It's where it's where Newcastle Football Club is based. And you know is that is absolutely at the center of the city. So. So the city really comes alive there. And it was during that time that I discovered photography, and I wanted to be a war photographer, because I believe that was where life was lived at the kind of the real cutting edge. You know, you see the you see humanity in its in its most visceral and vivid color in terrible situations. And I kind of that seemed like an interesting thing to go to go and do.

Michael Hingson 05:27

Well, what? So what did you major in in college in Newcastle? So I did

Nick Francis 05:31

history and politics, and then I went did a course in television journalism, and ended up working at BBC News as a initially running on the floor. So I used to deliver the papers that you know, when you see people shuffling or not, they do it anymore, actually, because everything, everything's digital now digital, yeah, but when they were worried about the the auto cues going down, they we always had to make sure that they had the up to date script. And so I would be printing in, obviously, the, you know, because it's a three hour news show, the scripts constantly evolving, and so, you know, I was making sure they had the most up to date version in their hands. And it's, I don't know if you have spent any time around live TV Mike, but it's an incredibly humbling experience, like the power of it. You know, there's sort of two or 3 million people watching these two people who are sitting five feet in front of me, and the, you know, the sort of slightly kind of, there was an element of me that just wanted to jump in front of them and kind of go, ah. And, you know, never, ever work in live TV, ever again. But you know, anyway, I did that and ended up working as a producer, writing and developing, developing packets that would go out on the show, producing interviews and things. And, you know, I absolutely loved it. It was, it was a great time. But then I left to go and set up my company.

Michael Hingson 06:56

I am amazed, even today, with with watching people on the news, and I've and I've been in a number of studios during live broadcasts and so on. But I'm amazed at how well, mostly, at least, I've been fortunate. Mostly, the people are able to read because they do have to read everything. It isn't like you're doing a lot of bad living in a studio. Obviously, if you are out with a story, out in the field, if you will, there, there may be more where you don't have a printed script to go by, but I'm amazed at the people in the studio, how much they are able to do by by reading it all completely.

Nick Francis 07:37

It's, I mean, the whole experience is kind of, it's awe inspiring, really. And you know, when you first go into a Live, a live broadcast studio, and you see the complexity, and you know, they've got feeds coming in from all over the world, and you know, there's upwards of 100 people all working together to make it happen. And I remember talking to one of the directors at the time, and I was like, How on earth does this work? And he said, You know, it's simple. You everyone has a very specific job, and you know that as long as you do your bit of the job when it comes in front of you, then the show will go out. He said, where it falls over is when people start worrying about whether other people are going to are going to deliver on time or, you know, and so if you start worrying about what other people are doing, rather than just focusing on the thing you have to do, that's where it potentially falls over,

Michael Hingson 08:29

which is a great object lesson anyway, to worry about and control and don't worry about the rest

Nick Francis 08:36

for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, it's almost a lesson for life. I mean, sorry, it is a lesson for life, and

Michael Hingson 08:43

it's something that I talk a lot about in dealing with the World Trade Center and so on, and because it was a message I received, but I've been really preaching that for a long time. Don't worry about what you can't control, because all you're going to do is create fear and drive yourself

Nick Francis 08:58

crazy, completely, completely. You know. You know what is it? Give me the, give me this. Give me the strength to change the things I can. Give me the give me the ability to let the things that I can't change slide but and the wisdom to know the difference. I'm absolutely mangling that, that saying, but, yeah, it's, it's true, you know. And I think, you know, it's so easy for us to in this kind of modern world where everything's so media, and we're constantly served up things that, you know, shock us, sadness, enrage us, you know, just to be able to step back and say, actually, you know what? These are things I can't really change. I'd have to just let them wash over me. Yeah, and just focus on the things that you really can change.

Michael Hingson 09:46

It's okay to be aware of things, but you've got to separate the things you can control from the things that you can and we, unfortunately aren't taught that. Our parents don't teach us that because they were never taught it, and it's something. That, just as you say, slides by, and it's so unfortunate, because it helps to create such a level of fear about so many things in our in our psyche and in our world that we really shouldn't have to do

Nick Francis 10:13

completely well. I think, you know, obviously, but you know, we've, we've spent hundreds, if not millions of years evolving to become humans, and then, you know, actually being aware of things beyond our own village has only been an evolution of the last, you know what, five, 600 years, yeah. And so we are just absolutely, fundamentally not able to cope with a world of such incredible stimulus that we live in now.

Michael Hingson 10:43

Yeah, and it's only getting worse with all the social media, with all the different things that are happening and of course, and we're only working to develop more and more things to inundate us with more and more kinds of inputs. It's really unfortunate we just don't learn to separate ourselves very easily from all of that.

Nick Francis 11:04

Yeah, well, you know, it's so interesting when you look at the development of VR headsets, and, you know, are we going to have, like, lenses in our eyes that kind of enable us to see computer screens while we're just walking down the road, you know? And you look at that and you think, well, actually, just a cell phone. I mean, cell phones are going to be gone fairly soon. I would imagine, you know, as a format, it's not something that's going to abide but the idea that we're going to create technology that's going to be more, that's going to take us away from being in the moment more rather than less, is kind of terrifying. Because, I would say already, even with, you know, the most basic technology that we have now, which is, you know, mind bending, compared to where we were even 20 years ago, you know, to think that we're only going to become more immersive is, you know, we really, really as a species, have to work out how we are going to be far better at stepping away from this stuff. And I, you know, I do, I wonder, with AI and technology whether there is, you know, there's a real backlash coming of people who do want to just unplug, yeah,

Michael Hingson 12:13

well, it'll be interesting to see, and I hope that people will learn to do it. I know when I started hearing about AI, and one of the first things I heard was how kids would use it to write their papers, and it was a horrible thing, and they were trying to figure out ways so that teachers could tell us something was written by AI, as opposed to a student. And I almost immediately developed this opinion, no, let AI write the papers for students, but when the students turn in their paper, then take a day to in your class where you have every student come up and defend their paper, see who really knows it, you know. And what a great teaching opportunity and teaching moment to to get students also to learn to do public speaking and other things a little bit more than they do, but we haven't. That hasn't caught on, but I continue to preach it.

Nick Francis 13:08

I think that's really smart, you know, as like aI exists, and I think to to pretend somehow that, you know, we can work without it is, you know, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I mean, it's like, well, saying, you know, we're just going to go back to Word processors or typewriters, which, you know, in which it weirdly, in their own time, people looked at and said, this is, you know, these, these are going to completely rot our minds. In fact, yeah, I think Plato said that was very against writing, because he believed it would mean no one could remember anything after that, you know. So it's, you know, it's just, it's an endless, endless evolution. But I think, you know, we have to work out how we incorporate into it, into our education system, for sure.

Michael Hingson 13:57

Well, I remember being in in college and studying physics and so on. And one of the things that we were constantly told is, on tests, you can't bring calculators in, can't use calculators in class. Well, why not? Well, because you could cheat with that. Well, the reality is that the smart physicists realized that it's all about really learning the concepts more than the numbers. And yeah, that's great to to know how to do the math. But the the real issue is, do you know the physics, not just the math completely?

Nick Francis 14:34

Yeah. And then how you know? How are the challenges that are being set such that you know, they really test your ability to use the calculator effectively, right? So how you know? How are you lifting the bar? And in a way, I think that's kind of what we have to do, what we have to do now,

Michael Hingson 14:50

agreed, agreed. So you were in the news business and so on, and then, as you said, you left to start your own company. Why did you decide to do that?

Nick Francis 14:59

Well, a friend of. Ryan and I from University had always talked about doing this rally from London to Mongolia. So, and you do it in an old car that you sort of look at, and you go, well, that's a bit rubbish. It has to have under a one liter engine. So it's tiny, it's cheap. The idea is it breaks down you have an adventure. And it was something we kind of talked about in passing and decided that would be a good thing to do. And then over time, you know, we started sending off. We you know, we applied, and then we started sending off for visas and things. And then before we knew it, we were like, gosh, so it looks like we're actually going to do this thing. But by then, you know, my job at the BBC was really taking off. And so I said, you know, let's do this, but let's make a documentary of it. So long story short, we ended up making a series of diary films for Expedia, which we uploaded onto their website. It was, you know, we were kind of pitching this around about 2005 we kind of did it in 2006 so it was kind of, you know, nobody had really heard of YouTube. The idea of making videos to go online was kind of unheard of because, you know, broadband was just kind of getting sorry. It wasn't unheard of, but it was, it was very, it was a very nascent industry. And so, yeah, we went and drove 9000 miles over five weeks. We spent a week sitting in various different repair yards and kind of break his yards in everywhere from Turkey to Siberia. And when we came back, it became clear that the internet was opening up as this incredible medium for video, and video is such a powerful way to share emotion with a dispersed audience. You know, not that I would have necessarily talked about it in that in those terms back then, but it really seemed like, you know, every every web page, every piece of corporate content, could have a video aspect to it. And so we came back and had a few fits and starts and did some, I mean, we, you know, we made a series of hotel videos where we were paid 50 quid a day to go and film hotels. And it was hot and it was hard work. And anyway, it was rough. But over time, you know, we started to win some more lucrative work. And, you know, really, the company grew from there. We won some awards, which helped us to kind of make a bit of a name for ourselves. And this was, there's been a real explosion in technology, kind of shortly after when we did this. So digital SLRs, so, you know, old kind of SLR cameras, you know, turned into digital cameras, which could then start to shoot video. And so it, there was a real explosion in high quality video produced by very small teams of people using the latest technology creatively. And that just felt like a good kind of kick off point for our business. But we just kind of because we got in in kind of 2006 we just sort of beat a wave that kind of started with digital SLRs, and then was kind of absolutely exploded when video cell phones came on the market, video smartphones. And yeah, you know, because we had these awards and we had some kind of fairly blue chip clients from a relatively early, early stage, we were able to grow the company. We then expanded to the US in kind of 2011 20 between 2011 2014 and then we were working with a lot of the big tech companies in California, so it felt like we should maybe kind of really invest in that. And so I moved out here with some of our team in 2018 at the beginning of 2018 and I've been here ever since, wow.

Michael Hingson 18:44

So what is it? What was it like starting a business here, or bringing the business here, as opposed to what it was in England?

Nick Francis 18:53

It's really interesting, because the creatively the UK is so strong, you know, like so many, you know, from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin to the Rolling Stones to, you know, and then on through, like all the kind of, you know, film and TV, you know, Brits are very good at kind of Creating, like, high level creative, but not necessarily always the best at kind of monetizing it, you know. I mean, some of those obviously have been fantastic successes, right? And so I think in the UK, we we take a lot longer over getting, getting to, like, the perfect creative output, whereas the US is far more focused on, you know, okay, we need this to to perform a task, and frankly, if we get it 80% done, then we're good, right? And so I think a lot of creative businesses in the UK look at the US and they go, gosh. Firstly, the streets are paved with gold. Like the commercial opportunity seems incredible, but actually creating. Tracking it is incredibly difficult, and I think it's because we sort of see the outputs in the wrong way. I think they're just the energy and the dynamism of the US economy is just, it's kind of awe inspiring. But you know, so many businesses try to expand here and kind of fall over themselves. And I think the number one thing is just, you have to have a founder who's willing to move to the US. Because I think Churchill said that we're two two countries divided by the same language. And I never fully understood what that meant until I moved here. I think what it what he really means by that is that we're so culturally different in the US versus the UK. And I think lots of Brits look at America and think, Well, you know, it's just the same. It's just a bit kind of bigger and a bit Brasher, you know, and it and actually, I think if people in the US spoke a completely different language, we would approach it as a different culture, which would then help us to understand it better. Yeah. So, yeah. I mean, it's been, it's been the most fabulous adventure to move here and to, you know, it's, it's hard sometimes, and California is a long way from home, but the energy and the optimism and the entrepreneurialism of it, coupled with just the natural beauty is just staggering. So we've made some of our closest friends in California, it's been absolutely fantastic. And across the US, it's been a fantastic adventure for us and our family.

Michael Hingson 21:30

Yeah, I've had the opportunity to travel all over the US, and I hear negative comments about one place or another, like West Virginia, people eat nothing but fried food and all that. But the reality is, if you really take an overall look at it, the country has so much to offer, and I have yet to find a place that I didn't enjoy going to, and people I never enjoyed meeting, I really enjoy all of that, and it's great to meet people, and it's great to experience so much of this country. And I've taken that same posture to other places. I finally got to visit England last October, for the first time. You mentioned rugby earlier, the first time I was exposed to rugby was when I traveled to New Zealand in 2003 and found it pretty fascinating. And then also, I was listening to some rugby, rugby, rugby broadcast, and I tuned across the radio and suddenly found a cricket game that was a little bit slow for me. Yeah, cricket to be it's slow.

Nick Francis 22:41

Yeah, fair enough. It's funny. Actually, we know what you're saying about travel. Like one of the amazing things about our Well, I kind of learned two sort of quite fundamentally philosophical things, I think, you know, or things about the about humans and the human condition. Firstly, like, you know, traveling across, you know, we left from London. We, like, drove down. We went through Belgium and France and Poland and Slovenia, Slovakia, Slovenia, like, all the way down Bulgaria, across Turkey into Georgia and Azerbaijan and across the Caspian Sea, and through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, into Russia, and then down into Mongolia. When we finished, we were due north of Jakarta, right? So we drove, we drove a third of the way around the world. And the two things that taught me were, firstly that human people are good. You know, everywhere we went, people would invite us in to have meals, or they'd like fix our car for not unit for free. I mean, people were so kind everywhere we went. Yeah. And the other thing was, just, when we get on a plane and you fly from here to or you fly from London, say to we, frankly, you fly from London to Turkey, it feels unbelievably different. You know, you fly from London to China, and it's, you know, complete different culture. But what our journey towards us, because we drove, was that, you know, while we might not like to admit it, we're actually quite, you know, Brits are quite similar to the French, and the French actually are quite similar to the Belgians, and Belgians quite similar to the Germans. And, you know, and all the way through, actually, like we just saw a sort of slowly changing gradient of all the different cultures. And it really, you know, we are just one people, you know. So as much as we might feel that, you know, we're all we're all different, actually, when you see it, when you when you do a drive like that, you really, you really get to see how slowly the cultures shift and change. Another thing that's quite funny, actually, was just like, everywhere we went, we would be like, you know, we're driving to Turkey. They'd be like, Oh, God, you just drove through Bulgaria, you know, how is like, everything on your car not been stolen, you know, they're so dodgy that you Bulgarians are so dodgy. And then, you know, we'd get drive through the country, and they'd be like, you know, oh, you're going into Georgia, you know, gosh, what you go. Make, make sure everything's tied down on your car. They're so dodgy. And then you get into Georgia, and they're like, Oh my God, you've just very driven through Turkey this, like, everyone sort of had these, like, weird, yeah, kind of perceptions of their neighbors. And it was all nonsense, yeah, you know.

Michael Hingson 25:15

And the reality is that, as you pointed out, people are good, you know, I think, I think politicians are the ones who so often mess it up for everyone, just because they've got agendas. And unfortunately, they teach everyone else to be suspicious of of each other, because, oh, this person clearly has a hidden agenda when it normally isn't necessarily true at all.

Nick Francis 25:42

No, no, no, certainly not in my experience, anyway, not in my experience. But, you know, well, oh, go ahead. No, no. It's just, you know, it's, it is. It's, it is weird the way that happens, you know, well, they say, you know, if, if politicians fought wars rather than, rather than our young men and women, then there'd be a lot less of them. Yeah, so Well,

Michael Hingson 26:06

there would be, well as I tell people, you know, I I've learned a lot from working with eight guy dogs and my wife's service dog, who we had for, oh, gosh, 14 years almost, and one of the things that I tell people is I absolutely do believe what people say, that dogs love unconditionally, unless they're just totally traumatized by something, but they don't trust unconditionally. The difference between dogs and people is that dogs are more open to trust because we've taught ourselves and have been taught by others, that everyone has their own hidden agenda. So we don't trust. We're not open to trust, which is so unfortunate because it affects the psyche of so many people in such a negative way. We get too suspicious of people, so it's a lot harder to earn trust.

Nick Francis 27:02

Yeah, I mean, I've, I don't know, you know, like I've been, I've been very fortunate in my life, and I kind of always try to be, you know, open and trusting. And frankly, you know, I think if you're open and trusting with people, in my experience, you kind of, it comes back to you, you know, and maybe kind of looking for the best in everyone. You know, there are times where that's not ideal, but you know, I think you know, in the overwhelming majority of cases, you know, actually, you know, you treat people right? And you know what goes what goes around, comes around, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 27:35

And I think that's so very true. There are some people who just are going to be different than that, but I think for the most part, if you show that you're open to trust people will want to trust you, as long as you're also willing to trust

Nick Francis 27:51

them completely. Yeah, completely.

Michael Hingson 27:54

So I think that that's the big thing we have to deal with. And I don't know, I hope that we, we will learn it. But I think that politicians are really the most guilty about teaching us. Why not to trust but that too, hopefully, will be something we deal with.

Nick Francis 28:12

I think, you know, I think we have to, you know, it's, it's one of the tragedies of our age, I think, is that the, you know, we spent the 20th century, thinking that sex was the kind of ultimate sales tool. And then it took algorithms to for us to realize that actually anger and resentment are the most powerful sales tools, which is, you know, it's a it's something which, in time, we will work out, right? And I think the problem is that, at the minute, these tech businesses are in such insane ascendancy, and they're so wealthy that it's very hard to regulate them. And I think in time, what will happen is, you know, they'll start to lose some of that luster and some of that insane scale and that power, and then, you know, then regulation will come in. But you know whether or not, we'll see maybe, hopefully our civilization will still be around to see that.

Michael Hingson 29:04

No, there is that, or maybe the Vulcans will show up and show us a better way. But you know,

Nick Francis 29:11

oh, you know, I'm, I'm kind of endlessly optimistic. I think, you know, we are. We're building towards a very positive future. I think so. Yeah, it's just, you know, get always bumps along the way, yeah.

Michael Hingson 29:24

So you named your company casual. Why did you do that? Or how did that come about?

Nick Francis 29:30

It's a slightly weird name for something, you know, we work with, kind of, you know, global blue chip businesses. And, you know, casual is kind of the last thing that you would want to associate with, a, with a, with any kind of services business that works in that sphere. I think, you know, we, the completely honest answer is that the journalism course I did was television, current affairs journalism, so it's called TV cadge, and so we, when we made a film for a local charity as part of that course. Course, we were asked to name our company, and we just said, well, cash, cash casual, casual films. So we called it casual films. And then when my friend and I set the company up, kind of formally, to do the Mongol Rally, we, you know, we had this name, you know, the company, the film that we'd made for the charity, had gone down really well. It had been played at BAFTA in London. And so we thought, well, you know, we should just, you know, hang on to that name. And it didn't, you know, at the time, it didn't really seem too much of an issue. It was only funny. It was coming to the US, where I think people are a bit more literal, and they were a bit like, well, casual. Like, why casual, you know. And I remember being on a shoot once. And, you know, obviously, kind of some filmmakers can be a little casual themselves, not necessarily in the work, but in the way they present themselves, right? And I remember sitting down, we were interviewing this CEO, and he said, who, you know, who are you? Oh, we're casual films. He's like, Oh, is that why that guy's got ripped jeans? Is it? And I just thought, Damn, you know, we really left ourselves open to that. There was also, there was a time one of our early competitors was called Agile films. And so, you know, I remember talking to one of our clients who said, you know, it's casual, you know, when I have to put together a little document to say, you know, which, which supplier we should choose, and when I lay it on my boss's desk, and one says casual films, and one says agile films, it's like those guys are landing the first punch. But anyway, we, you know, we, what we say now is like, you know, we take a complex process and make it casual. You know, filmmaking, particularly for like, large, complex organizations where you've got lots of different stakeholders, can be very complicated. And so, yeah, we sort of say, you know, we'll take a lot of that stress off, off our clients. So that's kind of the rationale, you know, that we've arrived with, arrived at having spoken to lots of our clients about the role that we play for them. So, you know, there's a kind of positive spin on it, I guess, but I don't know. I don't know whether I'd necessarily call it casual again. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that or not, but, oh,

Michael Hingson 32:00

it's unique, you know? So, yeah, I think there's a lot of merit to it. It's a unique name, and it interests people. I know, for me, one of the things that I do is I have a way of doing this. I put all of my business cards in Braille, so the printed business cards have Braille on them, right? Same thing. It's unique completely.

Nick Francis 32:22

And you listen, you know what look your name is an empty box that you fill with your identity. They say, right? And casual is actually, it's something we've grown into. And you know it's we've been going for nearly 20 years. In fact, funny enough for the end of this year is the 20th anniversary of that first film we made for the for the charity. And then next summer will be our 20th anniversary, which is, you know, it's, it's both been incredibly short and incredibly long, you know, I think, like any kind of experience in life, and it's been some of the hardest kind of times of my entire life, and some of the best as well. So, you know, it's, it is what it is, but you know, casual is who we are, right? I would never check, you know? I'd never change it.

Michael Hingson 33:09

Now, no, of course not, yeah. So is the actual name casual films, or just casual?

Nick Francis 33:13

So it was casual films, but then everyone calls us casual anyway, and I think, like as an organization, we probably need to be a bit more agnostic about the outcome.

Michael Hingson 33:22

Well, the reason I asked, in part was, is there really any filming going on anymore?

Nick Francis 33:28

Well, that's a very that's a very good question. But have we actually ever made a celluloid film? And I think the answer is probably no. We used to, back in the day, we used to make, like, super eight films, which were films, I think, you know, video, you know, ultimately, if you're going to be really pedantic about it, it's like, well, video is a digital, digital delivery. And so basically, every film we make is, is a video. But there is a certain cachet to the you know, because our films are loved and crafted, you know, for good or ill, you know, I think to call them, you know, they are films because, because of the, you know, the care that's put into them. But it's not, it's, it's not celluloid. No, that's okay, yeah, well,

Michael Hingson 34:16

and I know that, like with vinyl records, there is a lot of work being done to preserve and capture what's on cellular film. And so there's a lot of work that I'm sure that's being done to digitize a lot of the old films. And when you do that, then you can also go back and remaster and hopefully in a positive way, and I'm not sure if that always happens, but in a positive way, enhance them

Nick Francis 34:44

completely, completely and, you know, it's, you know, it's interesting talking about, like, you know, people wanting to step back. You know, obviously vinyl is having an absolute as having a moment right now. In fact, I just, I just bought a new stylist for my for my record. Play yesterday. It sounded incredible as a joy. This gave me the sound quality of this new style. It's fantastic. You know, beyond that, you know, running a company, you know, we're in nine offices all over the world. We produce nearly 1000 projects a year. So, you know, it's a company. It's an incredibly complicated company. It's a very fun and exciting company. I love the fact that we make these beautifully creative films. But, you know, it's a bit, I wouldn't say it's like, I don't know, you don't get many MBAs coming out of business school saying, hey, I want to set up a video production company. But, you know, it's been, it's been wonderful, but it's also been stressful. And so, you know, I've, I've always been interested in pottery and ceramics and making stuff with my hands. When I was a kid, I used to make jewelry, and I used to go and sell it in nightclubs, which is kind of weird, but, you know, it paid for my beers. And then whatever works, I say kid. I was 18. I was, I was of age, but of age in the UK anyway. But now, you know, over the last few 18 months or so, I've started make, doing my own ceramics. So, you know, I make vases and and pictures and kind of all sorts of stuff out of clay. And it's just, it's just to be to unplug and just to go and, you know, make things with mud with your hands. It's just the most unbelievably kind of grounding experience.

Michael Hingson 36:26

Yeah, I hear you, yeah. One of the things that I like to do is, and I don't get to do it as much as I would like, but I am involved with organizations like the radio enthusiasts of Puget Sound, which, every year, does recreations of old radio shows. And so we get the scripts we we we have several blind people who are involved in we actually go off and recreate some of the old shows, which is really a lot of fun,

Nick Francis 36:54

I bet, yeah, yeah, sort of you know that connection to the past is, is, yeah, it's great radio. Radio is amazing.

Michael Hingson 37:03

Anyway, what we have to do is to train some of the people who have not had exposure to old radio. We need to train them as to how to really use their voices to convey like the people who performed in radio, whatever they're doing, because too many people don't really necessarily know how to do that well. And it is, it is something that we're going to work on trying to find ways to get people really trained. And one of the ways, of course, is you got to listen to the old show. So one of the things we're getting more and more people to do when we do recreations is to go back and listen to the original show. Well, they say, Well, but, but that's just the way they did it. That's not necessarily the way it should be done. And the response is, no, that's not really true. The way they did it sounded natural, and the way you are doing it doesn't and there's reality that you need to really learn how to to use your voice to convey well, and the only way to do it is to listen to the experts who did it.

Nick Francis 38:06

Yeah, well, it's, you know, it's amazing. The, you know, when the BBC was founded, all the news readers and anyone who appeared on on the radio to to present or perform, had to wear like black tie, like a tuxedo, because it was, you know, they're broadcasting to the nation, so they had to, you know, they had to be dressed appropriately, right, which is kind of amazing. And, you know, it's interesting how you know, when you, when you change your dress, when you change the way you're sitting, it does completely change the way that you project yourself, yeah,

Michael Hingson 38:43

it makes sense, yeah, well, and I always enjoyed some of the old BBC radio shows, like the Goon Show, and completely some of those are so much fun.

Nick Francis 38:54

Oh, great, yeah, I don't think they were wearing tuxedo. It's tuxedos. They would

Michael Hingson 38:59

have been embarrassed. Yeah, right, right. Can you imagine Peter Sellers in a in a tux? It just isn't going to happen.

Nick Francis 39:06

No, right, right. But yeah, no, it's so powerful. You know, they say radio is better than TV because the pictures are better.

Michael Hingson 39:15

I agree. Yeah, sure, yeah. Well, you know, I I don't think this is quite the way he said it, but Fred Allen, the old radio comedian, once said they call television the new medium, because that's as good as it's ever going

Nick Francis 39:28

to get. Yeah, right, right, yeah.

Michael Hingson 39:32

I think there's truth to it. Whether that's exactly the way he said it or not, there's truth to that, yeah, but there's also a lot of good stuff on TV, so it's okay.

Nick Francis 39:41

Well, it's so interesting. Because, you know, when you look at the it's never been more easy to create your own content, yeah, and so, you know, and like, in a way, TV, you know, he's not wrong in that, because it suddenly opened up this, this huge medium for people just to just create. Right? And, you know, and I think, like so many people, create without thinking, and, you know, and certainly in our kind of, in the in the world that we're living in now with AI production, making production so much more accessible, actually taking the time as a human being just to really think about, you know, who are the audience, what are the things that are going to what are going to kind of resonate with them? You know? Actually, I think one of the risks with AI, and not just AI, but just like production being so accessible, is that you can kind of shoot first and kind of think about it afterwards, and, you know, and that's never good. That's always going to be medium. It's medium at best, frankly. Yeah, so yeah, to create really great stuff takes time, you know, yeah, to think about it. Yeah, for sure, yeah.

Michael Hingson 40:50

Well, you know, our podcast is called unstoppable mindset. What do you think that unstoppable mindset really means to you as a practical thing and not just a buzzword. Because so many people talk about the kinds of buzzwords I hear all the time are amazing. That's unstoppable, but it's really a lot more than a buzzword. It goes back to what you think, I think. But what do you think?

Nick Francis 41:15

I think it's something that is is buried deep inside you. You know, I'd say the simple answer is, is just resilience. You know, it's, it's been rough. I write anyone running a small business or a medium sized business at the minute, you know, there's been some tough times over the last, kind of 1824, months or so. And, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who she sold out of her business. And she's like, you know, how are things? I was like, you know, it's, it's, it's tough, you know, we're getting through it, you know, we're changing a lot of things, you know, we're like, we're definitely making the business better, but it's hard. And she's like, Listen, you know, when three years before I sold my company, I was at rock bottom. It was, I genuinely thought it was so stressful. I was crushed by it, but I just kept going. And she's just like, just keep going. And the only difference between success and failure is that resilience and just getting up every day and you just keep, keep throwing stuff at the wall, keep trying new things, keep working and trying to be better. I think, you know, it's funny when you look at entrepreneurs, I'm a member of a mentoring group, and I hope I'm not talking out of school here, but you know, there's 15 entrepreneurs, you know, varying sizes of business, doing all sorts, you know, across all sorts of different industries. And if you sat on the wall, if you were fly on the wall, and you sit and look at these people on a kind of week, month to month basis, and they all present on how their businesses are going. You go, this is this being an entrepreneur does not look like a uniformly fun thing, you know, the sort of the stress and just, you know, people crying and stuff, and you're like, gosh, you know, it's so it's, it's, it's hard, and yet, you know, it's people just keep coming back to it. And yet, I think it's because of that struggle that you have to kind of have something in built in you, that you're sort of, you're there to prove something. And I, you know, I've thought a lot about this, and I wonder whether, kind of, the death of my father at such a young age kind of gave me this incredible fire to seek His affirmation, you know. And unfortunately, obviously, the tragedy of that is like, you know, the one person who would never give me affirmation is my dad. And yet, you know, I get up every day, you know, to have early morning calls with the UK or with Singapore or wherever. And you know, you just just keep on, keeping on. And I think that's probably what and knowing I will never quit, you know, like, even from the earliest days of casual, when we were just, like a couple of people, and we were just, you know, kids doing our very best, I always knew the company was going to be a success act. Like, just a core belief that I was like, this is going to work. This is going to be a success. I didn't necessarily know what that success would look like. I just but I did know that, like, whatever it took, we would map, we'd map our way towards that figure it out. We'd figure it out. And I think, you know, there's probably something unstoppable. I don't know, I don't want to sound immodest, but I think there's probably something in that that you're just like, I am just gonna keep keep on, keeping on.

Michael Hingson 44:22

Do you think that resilience and unstoppability are things that can be taught, or is it just something that's built into you, and either you have it or you don't?

Nick Francis 44:31

I think it's something that probably, it's definitely something that can be learned, for sure, you know. And there are obviously ways that it can there's obviously ways it can be taught. You know, I was, I spent some time in the reserve, like the Army Reserve in the UK, and I just, you know, a lot of that is about teaching you just how much further you can go. I think what it taught me was it was so. So hard. I mean, honestly, some of the stuff we did in our training was, like, you know, it's just raining and raining and raining and, like, because all your kits soaking wet is weighs twice what it did before, and you just, you know, sleeping maybe, you know, an hour or two a night, and, you know, and there wasn't even anyone shooting at us, right? So, you know, like the worst bit wasn't even happening. But like, and like, in a sense, I think, you know, that's what they're trying to do, that, you know, they say, you know, train hard and fight easy. But I remember sort of sitting there, and I was just exhausted, and I just genuinely, I was just thought, you know, what if they tell me to go now, I just, I can't. I literally, I can't, I can't do it. Can't do it. And then they're like, right, lads, put your packs on. Let's go and just put your pack on. Off you go, you know, like, this sort of, the idea of not, like, I was never going to quit, just never, never, ever, you know, and like I'd physically, if I physically, like, literally, my physical being couldn't stand up, you know, I then that was be, that would be, you know, if I was kind of, like literally incapacitated. And I think what that taught me actually, was that, you know, you have what you believe you can do, like you have your sort of, you have your sort of physical envelope, but like that is only a third or a quarter of what you can actually achieve, right, you know. And I think what that, what the that kind of training is about, and you know, you can do it in marathon training. You can do it in all sorts of different, you know, even, frankly, meditate. You know, you train your mind to meditate for, you know, an hour, 90 minutes plus. You know, you're still doing the same. You know, there's a, there's an elasticity within your brain where you can teach yourself that your envelope is so much larger. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, like, is casual going to be a success? Like, I'm good, you know, I'm literally, I won't I won't stop until it is

Michael Hingson 46:52

right, and then why stop? Exactly, exactly you continue to progress and move forward. Well, you know, when everything feels uncertain, whether it's the markets or whatever, what do you do or what's your process for finding clarity?

Nick Francis 47:10

I think a lot of it is in having structured time away. I say structured. You build it into your calendar, but like, but it's unstructured. So, you know, I take a lot of solace in being physically fit. You know, I think if you're, if you feel physically fit, then you feel mentally far more able to deal with things. I certainly when I'm if I'm unfit and if I've been working too much and I haven't been finding the time to exercise. You know, I feel like the problems we have to face just loom so much larger. So, you know, I, I'll book out. I, you know, I work with a fan. I'm lucky enough to have a fantastic assistant who, you know, we book in my my exercise for each week, and it's almost the first thing that goes in the calendar. I do that because I can't be the business my my I can't be the leader my business requires. And it finally happened. It was a few years ago I kind of, like, the whole thing just got really big on me, and it just, you know, and I'm kind of, like, being crushed by it. And I just thought, you know what? Like, I can't, I can't fit other people's face mask, without my face mask being fit, fitted first. Like, in order to be the business my business, I keep saying that to be the lead in my business requires I have to be physically fit. So I have to look after myself first. And so consequently, like, you know, your exercise shouldn't be something just get squeezed in when you find when you have time, because, you know, if you've got family and you know, other things happening, like, you know, just will be squeezed out. So anyway, that goes in. First, I'll go for a bike ride on a Friday afternoon, you know, I'll often listen to a business book and just kind of process things. And it's amazing how often, you know, I'll just go for a run and, like, these things that have been kind of nagging away in the back of my mind, just suddenly I find clarity in them. So I try to exercise, like, five times a week. I mean, that's obviously more than most people can can manage, but you know that that really helps. And then kind of things, like the ceramics is very useful. And then, you know, I'm lucky. I think it's also just so important just to appreciate the things that you already have. You know, I think one of the most important lessons I learned last year was this idea that, you know, here is the only there. You know, everyone's working towards this kind of, like, big, you know, it's like, oh, you know, when I get to there, then everything's going to be okay, you know. And actually, you know, if you think about like, you know, and what did you want to achieve when you left college? Like, what was the salary band that you want? That you wanted to achieve? Right? A lot of people, you know, by the time you hit 4050, you've blown way through that, right? And yet you're still chasing the receding Summit, yeah, you know. And so actually, like, wherever we're trying to head to, we're already there, because once you get there, there's going to be another there that you're trying to. Head to right? So, so, you know, it's just taking a moment to be like, you know, God, I'm so lucky to have what I have. And, you know, I'm living in, we're living in the good old days, like right now, right?

Michael Hingson 50:11

And the reality is that we're doing the same things and having the same discussions, to a large degree, that people did 50, 100 200 years ago. As you pointed out earlier, the fact is that we're, we're just having the same discussions about whether this works, or whether that works, or anything else. But it's all the same,

Nick Francis 50:33

right, you know. And you kind of think, oh, you know, if I just, just, like, you know, if we just open up these new offices, or if we can just, you know, I think, like, look, if I, if I'd looked at casual when we started it as it is now, I would have just been like, absolute. My mind would have exploded, right? You know, if you look at what we've achieved, and yet, I kind of, you know, it's quite hard sometimes to look at it and just be like, Oh yeah, but we're only just starting. Like, there's so much more to go. I can see so much further work, that we need so many more things, that we need to do, so many more things that we could do. And actually, you know, they say, you know, I'm lucky enough to have two healthy, wonderful little girls. And you know, I think a lot of bread winners Look at, look at love being provision, and the idea that, you know, you have to be there to provide for them. And actually, the the truest form of love is presence, right? And just being there for them, and like, you know, not being distracted and kind of putting putting things aside, you know, not jumping on your emails or your Slack messages or whatever first thing in the morning, you know. And I, you know, I'm not. I'm guilty, like, I'm not, you know, I'm not one of these people who have this kind of crazy kind of morning routine where, like, you know, I'm incredibly disciplined about that because, you know, and I should be more. But like, you know, this stuff, one of the, one of the things about having a 24 hour business with people working all over the world is there's always things that I need to respond to. There's always kind of interesting things happening. And so just like making sure that I catch myself every so often to be like, I'm just going to be here now and I'm going to be with them, and I'm going to listen to what they're saying, and I'm going to respond appropriately, and, you know, I'm going to play a game with them, or whatever. That's true love. You know?

Michael Hingson 52:14

Well, there's a lot of merit to the whole concept of unplugging and taking time and living in the moment. One of the things that we talked about in my book live like a guide dog, that we published last year, and it's all about lessons I've learned about leadership and teamwork and preparedness from eight guide dogs and my wife's service dog. One of the things that I learned along the way is the whole concept of living in the moment when I was in the World Trade Center with my fifth guide dog, Roselle. We got home, and I was going to take her outside to go visit the bathroom, but as soon as I took the harness off, she shot off, grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with my retired guide dog. Asked the veterinarians about him the next day, the people at Guide Dogs for the Blind, and they said, Well, did anything threaten her? And I said, No. And they said, there's your answer. The reality is, dogs live in the moment when it was over. It was over. And yeah, right lesson to learn.

Nick Francis 53:15

I mean, amazing, absolutely amazing. You must have taken a lot of strength from that.

Michael Hingson 53:20

Oh, I think it was, it was great. It, you know, I can look back at my life and look at so many things that have happened, things that I did. I never thought that I would become a public speaker, but I learned in so many ways the art of speaking and being relaxed at speaking in a in a public setting, that when suddenly I was confronted with the opportunity to do it, it just seemed like the natural thing to do.

Nick Francis 53:46

Yeah, it's funny, because I think isn't public speaking the number one fear. It is. It's the most fit. It's the most feared thing for the most people.

Michael Hingson 53:57

And the reality is going back to something that we talked about before. The reality is, audiences want you to succeed, unless you're a jerk and you project that, audiences want to hear what you have to say. They want you to be successful. There's really nothing to be afraid of but, but you're right. It is the number one fear, and I've never understood that. I mean, I guess I can intellectually understand it, but internally, I don't. The first time I was asked to speak after the World Trade Center attacks, a pastor called me up and he said, we're going to we're going to have a service outside for all the people who we lost in New Jersey and and that we would like you to come and speak. Take a few minutes. And I said, Sure. And then I asked him, How many people many people were going to be at the service? He said, 6000 that was, that was my first speech.

Nick Francis 54:49

Yeah, wow. But it didn't bother me, you know, no, I bet

Michael Hingson 54:54

you do the best you can, and you try to improve, and so on. But, but it is true that so many people. Are public speaking, and there's no reason to what

Nick Francis 55:03

did that whole experience teach you?

Michael Hingson 55:06

Well, one of the things that taught me was, don't worry about the things that you can't control. It also taught me that, in reality, any of us can be confronted with unexpected things at any time, and the question is, how well do we prepare to deal with it? So for me, for example, and it took me years after September 11 to recognize this, but one of the things that that happened when the building was hit, and Neither I, nor anyone on my side of the building really knew what happened. People say all the time, well, you didn't know because you couldn't see it. Well, excuse me, it hit 18 floors above us on the other side of the building. And the last time I checked X ray vision was fictitious, so nobody knew. But did the building shake? Oh, it tipped. Because tall buildings like that are flexible. And if you go to any tall building, in reality, they're made to buffet in wind storms and so on, and in fact, they're made to possibly be struck by an airplane, although no one ever expected that somebody would deliberately take a fully loaded jet aircraft and crash it into a tower, because it wasn't the plane hitting the tower as such that destroyed both of them. It was the exploding jet fuel that destroyed so much more infrastructure caused the buildings to collapse. But in reality, for me, I had done a lot of preparation ahead of time, not even thinking that there would be an emergency, but thinking about I need to really know all I can about the building, because I've got to be the leader of my office, and I should know all of that. I should know what to do in an emergency. I should know how to take people to lunch and where to go and all that. And by learning all of that, as I learned many and discovered many years later, it created a mindset that kicked in when the World Trade Center was struck, and in fact, we didn't know until after both towers had collapsed, and I called my wife. We I talked with her just before we evacuated, and the media hadn't even gotten the story yet, but I never got a chance to talk with her until after both buildings had collapsed, and then I was able to get through and she's the first one that told us how the two buildings had been hit by hijacked aircraft. But the mindset had kicked in that said, You know what to do, do it and that. And again, I didn't really think about that until much later, but that's something that is a lesson we all could learn. We shouldn't rely on just watching signs to know what to do, no to go in an emergency. We should really know it, because the knowledge, rather than just having information, the true intellectual knowledge that we internalize, makes such a big difference.

Nick Francis 57:46

Do you think it was the fact that you were blind that made you so much more keen to know the way out that kind of that really helped you to understand that at the time?

Michael Hingson 57:56

Well, what I think is being blind and growing up in an environment where so many things could be unexpected, for me, it was important to know so, for example, when I would go somewhere to meet a customer, I would spend time, ahead of time, learning how to get around, learning how to get to where they were and and learning what what the process was, because we didn't have Google Maps and we didn't have all the intellectual and and technological things that we have today. Well intellectual we did with the technology we didn't have. So today it's easier, but still, I want to know what to do. I want to really have the answers, and then I can can more easily and more effectively deal with what I need to deal with and react. So I'm sure that blindness played a part in all of that, because if I hadn't learned how to do the things that I did and know the things that I knew, then it would have been a totally different ball game, and so sure, I'm sure, I'm certain that blindness had something to do with it, but I also know that, that the fact is, what I learned is the same kinds of things that everyone should learn, and we shouldn't rely on just the signs, because what if the building were full of smoke, then what would you do? Right? And I've had examples of that since I was at a safety council meeting once where there was somebody from an electric company in Missouri who said, you know, we've wondered for years, what do we do if there's a fire in the generator room, in the basement, In the generator room, how do people get out? And he and I actually worked on it, and they developed a way where people could have a path that they could follow with their feet to get them out. But the but the reality is that what people first need to learn is eyesight is not the only game in town. Yeah, right. Mean, it's so important to really learn that, but people, people don't, and we take too many things for granted, which is, which is really so unfortunate, because we really should do a little bit better than we do about making sure that we prepare for not just emergencies, but just for life in general.

Nick Francis 1:00:18

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure, and not take it for

Michael Hingson 1:00:21

granted, and not take it for granted, absolutely. Oh,

Nick Francis 1:00:25

well, you know, thank God that that all worked out

Michael Hingson 1:00:29

well, you know, I'm, I'm very happy that it did as well.

Nick Francis 1:00:32

Yeah, your wife is too well.

Michael Hingson 1:00:37

She was Well, I'm sure she is, wherever she is. She passed away in 2022 we were married 40 years, and as I tell people, she's monitoring me from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I'll hear about it. So I've been been working at being a good kid.

Nick Francis 1:00:49

I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sorry. Mike, sorry to hear that.

Michael Hingson 1:00:53

Well, I appreciate that she was in a wheelchair her whole life, and the body just slowed down, and things happen. Yeah, and so it was, it was sad. I miss her, but I also know that what I don't do is move on from her, but I will move forward from her. The difference being when I move forward, I'm still going to keep her in mind, and I learned a lot from her. I hope she learned some things from me. And so it's important that we we just move forward and and use all the lessons we learned to continue to function and

Nick Francis 1:01:23

live Amen, yeah, for sure. Well, we've been

Michael Hingson 1:01:27

doing this an hour, and I don't want to keep you anymore, but I don't know, we may have to do another one of these, because I have lots more questions, and I'm sure you have more you want to contribute, but for now, I better let you go so that you can do whatever you're going to do here on a on a Wednesday, and do whatever happens,

Nick Francis 1:01:46

absolutely, yeah, onwards and upwards. It's been great to you. It has. I want to thank

Michael Hingson 1:01:52

you, and I want to thank all of you for being out there and and being with us today. If you'd like to Nick if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Nick Francis 1:02:02

You can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Nick Francis film. If you I share everything that I learn about running a company and creativity and brand storytelling and just life really on my on my newsletter, which you can access through my through my LinkedIn page Nick Francis film. It's called Beyond casual, the newsletter, and so yeah, check it out. Cool.

Michael Hingson 1:02:28

Well, thank you all for being here, and I hope that if you like the show, you'll let us know. Please email me at Michael H i, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and wherever you're listening, give us a five star rating. We really value your reviews, especially when they're the good ones, but we want to hear whatever you have to say. And if any of you have ideas of other people who ought to be guests, Nick, including you, we are always looking for more people to come on, so feel free to introduce us, and we'll we'll get them on as well, because I think everyone has stories to tell, and we need to to to get people to recognize that we underrate ourselves way too much and or to put it the other way, we're more unstoppable than we think we are. So we'd love to hear from you, and we'd love you to keep in touch. But Nick once again, thank you very much for being here. This has been wonderful,

Nick Francis 1:03:18

absolute pleasure. Mike really, really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.

Michael Hingson 1:03:26

Episode 397 – Unstoppable Purpose Found Through Photography with Mobeen Ansari

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What happens when your voice is built through visuals, not volume? In this Unstoppable Mindset episode, I talk with photographer and storyteller Mobeen Ansari about growing up with hearing loss, learning speech with support from his family and the John Tracy Center, and using technology to stay connected in real time.

We also explore how his art became a bridge across culture and faith, from documenting religious minorities in Pakistan to chronicling everyday heroes, and why he feels urgency to photograph climate change before more communities, heritage sites, and ways of life are lost.

You’ll hear how purpose grows when you share your story in a way that helps others feel less alone, and why Mobeen believes one story can become a blueprint for someone else to navigate their own challenge.

Highlights:

00:03:54 - Learn how early family support can shape confidence, communication, and independence for life.

00:08:31 - Discover how deciding when to capture a moment can define your values as a storyteller.

00:15:14 - Learn practical ways to stay fully present in conversations when hearing is a daily challenge.

00:23:24 - See how unexpected role models can redefine what living fully looks like at any stage of life.

00:39:15 - Understand how visual storytelling can cross cultural and faith boundaries without words.

00:46:38 - Learn why documenting climate change now matters before stories, places, and communities disappear.

About the Guest:

Mobeen Ansari is a photographer, filmmaker and artist from Islamabad, Pakistan. Having a background in fine arts, he picked up the camera during high school and photographed his surroundings and friends- a path that motivated him to be a pictorial historian. His journey as a photographer and artist is deeply linked to a challenge that he had faced since after his birth.

Three weeks after he was born, Mobeen was diagnosed with hearing loss due to meningitis, and this challenge has inspired him to observe people more visually, which eventually led him to being an artist. He does advocacy for people with hearing loss.

Mobeen's work focuses on his home country of Pakistan and its people, promoting a diverse & poetic image of his country through his photos & films. As a photojournalist he focuses on human interest stories and has extensively worked on topics of climate change, global health and migration.

Mobeen has published three photography books. His first one, ‘Dharkan: The Heartbeat of a Nation’, features portraits of iconic people of Pakistan from all walks of life. His second book, called ‘White in the Flag’ is based on the lives & festivities of religious minorities in Pakistan. Both these books have had two volumes published over the years. His third book is called ‘Miraas’ which is also about iconic people of Pakistan and follows ‘Dharkan’ as a sequel.

Mobeen has also made two silent movies; ’Hellhole’ is a black and white short film, based on the life of a sanitation worker, and ‘Lady of the Emerald Scarf’ is based on the life of Aziza, a carpet maker in Guilmit in Northern Pakistan.

He has exhibited in Pakistan & around the world, namely in UK, Italy, China Iraq, & across the US and UAE. His photographs have been displayed in many famous places as well, including Times Square in New York City. Mobeen is also a recipient of the Swedish Red Cross Journalism prize for his photography on the story of FIFA World Cup football manufacture in Sialkot.

Ways to connect with Mobeen**:**

www.mobeenansari.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/mobeenart

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mobeenansari/

Instagram: @mobeenansariphoto

X: @Mobeen_Ansari

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host. Michael Hingson, we're really glad that you are here, and today we are going to talk to Mobeen Ansari, and Mobeen is in Islamabad. I believe you're still in Islamabad, aren't you? There we go. I am, yeah. And so, so he is 12 hours ahead of where we are. So it is four in the afternoon here, and I can't believe it, but he's up at four in the morning where he is actually I get up around the same time most mornings, but I go to bed earlier than he does. Anyway. We're really glad that he is here. He is a photographer, he speaks he's a journalist in so many ways, and we're going to talk about all of that as we go forward. Mobin also is profoundly hard of hearing. Uses hearing aids. He was diagnosed as being hard of hearing when he was three weeks old. So I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit near the beginning, so we'll go ahead and start. So mo bean, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad that you're here.

Mobeen Ansari 02:32

It's a pleasure to be here, and I'm honored to plan your show. Thank you so much.

Michael Hingson 02:37

Well, thank you very much, and I'm glad that we're able to make this work, and I should explain that he is able to read what is going on the screen. I use a program called otter to transcribe when necessary, whatever I and other people in a meeting, or in this case, in a podcast, are saying, and well being is able to read all of that. So that's one of the ways, and one of the reasons that we get to do this in real time. So it's really kind of cool, and I'm really excited by that. Well, let's go ahead and move forward. Why don't you tell us a little about the early Beau beam growing up? And obviously that starts, that's where your adventure starts in a lot of ways. So why don't you tell us about you growing up and all that.

Mobeen Ansari 03:22

So I'm glad you mentioned the captions part, because, you know, that has been really, really revolutionary. That has been quite a lifesaver, be it, you know, Netflix, be it anywhere I go into your life, I read captions like there's an app on my phone that I use for real life competitions, and that's where I, you know, get everything. That's where technology is pretty cool. So I do that because of my hearing does, as you mentioned, when I was three weeks old, I had severe meningitis due to it, had lost hearing in both my ear and so when my hearing loss were diagnosed, it was, you know, around the time we didn't have resources, the technology that we do today.

Michael Hingson 04:15

When was that? What year was that about?

Mobeen Ansari 04:19

1986 okay, sorry, 1987 so yeah, so they figured that I had locked my hearing at three weeks of age, but didn't properly diagnose it until I think I was three months old. So yeah, then January was my diagnosis, okay.

Michael Hingson 04:44

And so how did you how did you function, how did you do things when you were, when you were a young child? Because at that point was kind of well, much before you could use a hearing aid and learn to speak and so on. So what?

Mobeen Ansari 05:00

You do. So my parents would have a better memory of that than I would, but I would say that they were, you know, extra hard. They went an extra mile. I mean, I would say, you know, 100 extra mile. My mother learned to be a peace therapist, and my father. He learned to be he learned how to read audiogram, to learn the audiology, familiarize himself with hearing a technology with an engineer support. My parents work around me. David went to a lot of doctors, obviously, I was a very difficult child, but I think that actually laid the foundation in me becoming an artist. Because, you know, today, the hearing is it fits right into my ear so you cannot see it, basically because my hair is longer. But back then, hearing aids used to be almost like on a harness, and you to be full of quiet, so you would actually stick out like a sore thumb. So, you know, obviously you stand out in a crowd. So I would be very conscious, and I would often, you know, get asked what this is. So I would say, this is a radio but for most part of my childhood, I was very introverted, but I absolutely love art. My grandmother's for the painter, and she was also photographer, as well as my grandfather, the hobbyist photographer, and you know, seeing them create all of the visuals in different ways, I was inspired, and I would tell my stories in form of sketching or making modified action figures. And photography was something I picked up way later on in high school, when the first digital camera had just come out, and I finally started in a really interacting with the world.

Michael Hingson 07:13

So early on you you drew because you didn't really use the camera yet. And I think it's very interesting how much your parents worked to make sure they could really help you. As you said, Your mother was a speech you became a speech therapist, and your father learned about the technologies and so on. So when did you start using hearing aids? That's

Mobeen Ansari 07:42

a good question. I think I probably started using it when I was two years old. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's gonna start using it, but then, you know, I think I'll probably have to ask my parents capacity, but a moment,

Mobeen Ansari 08:08

you know, go ahead, I think they worked around me. They really improvised on the situation. They learned at the went along, and I think I learned speech gradually. Did a lot of, you know, technical know, how about this? But I would also have to credit John Troy clinic in Los Angeles, because, you know, back then, there was no mobile phone, there were no emails, but my mother would put in touch with John Troy center in LA and they would send a lot of material back and forth for many years, and they would provide a guidance. They would provide her a lot of articles, a lot of details on how to help me learn speech. A lot of visuals were involved. And because of the emphasis on visuals, I think that kind of pushed me further to become an artist, because I would speak more, but with just so to

Michael Hingson 09:25

say so, it was sort of a natural progression for you, at least it seemed that way to you, to start using art as a way to communicate, as opposed as opposed to talking.

Mobeen Ansari 09:39

Yeah, absolutely, you know, so I would like pass forward a little bit to my high school. You know, I was always a very shy child up until, you know, my early teens, and the first camera had just come out, this was like 2001 2002 at. It. That's when my dad got one, and I would take that to school today. You know, everyone has a smartphone back then, if you had a camera, you're pretty cool. And that is what. I started taking pictures of my friends. I started taking pictures of my teachers, of landscapes around me. And I would even capture, you know, funniest of things, like my friend getting late for school, and one day, a friend of mine got into a fight because somebody stole his girlfriend, or something like that happened, you know, that was a long time ago, and he lost the fight, and he turned off into the world court to cry, and he was just sort of, you're trying to hide all his vulnerability. I happened to be in the same place as him, and I had my camera, and I was like, should I capture this moment, or should I let this permit go? And well, I decided to capture it, and that is when human emotion truly started to fascinate me. So I was born in a very old city. I live in the capital of Islamabad right now, but I was born in the city of travel to be and that is home to lots of old, you know, heritage sites, lots of old places, lots of old, interesting scenes. And you know, that always inspired you, that always makes you feel alive. And I guess all of these things came together. And, you know, I really got into the art of picture storytelling. And by the end of my high school graduation, everybody was given an award. The certificate that I was given was, it was called pictorial historian, and that is what inspired me to really document everything. Document my country. Document is people, document landscape. In fact, that award it actually has in my studio right now been there for, you know, over 21 years, but it inspired me luck to this day.

Michael Hingson 12:20

So going back to the story you just told, did you tell your friend that you took pictures of him when he was crying?

Mobeen Ansari 12:32

Eventually, yes, I would not talk. You're familiar with the content back then, but the Catholic friend, I know so I mean, you know everyone, you're all kids, so yeah, very, yeah, that was a very normal circumstance. But yeah, you know,

Michael Hingson 12:52

how did he react when you told him,

Mobeen Ansari 12:56

Oh, he was fine. It's pretty cool about it, okay, but I should probably touch base with him. I haven't spoken to him for many years that Yeah,

Michael Hingson 13:08

well, but as long as Yeah, but obviously you were, you were good friends, and you were able to continue that. So that's, that's pretty cool. So you, your hearing aids were also probably pretty large and pretty clunky as well, weren't they?

Mobeen Ansari 13:26

Yeah, they were. But you know, with time my hearing aid became smaller. Oh sure. So hearing aid model that I'm wearing right now that kind of started coming in place from 1995 1995 96 onwards. But you know, like, even today, it's called like BDE behind the ear, hearing it even today, I still wear the large format because my hearing loss is more it's on the profound side, right? Just like if I take my hearing, it off. I cannot hear but that's a great thing, because if I don't want to listen to anybody, right, and I can sleep peacefully at night.

Michael Hingson 14:21

Have you ever used bone conduction headphones or earphones?

Mobeen Ansari 14:30

But I have actually used something I forgot what is called, but these are very specific kind of ear bone that get plugged into your hearing it. So once you plug into that, you cannot hear anything else. But it discontinued that. So now they use Bluetooth.

Michael Hingson 14:49

Well, bone conduction headphones are, are, are devices that, rather than projecting the audio into your ear, they actually. Be projected straight into the bone and bypassing most of the ear. And I know a number of people have found them to be useful, like, if you want to listen to music and so on, or listen to audio, you can connect them. There are Bluetooth versions, and then there are cable versions, but the sound doesn't go into your ear. It goes into the bone, which is why they call it bone conduction.

Mobeen Ansari 15:26

Okay, that's interesting, I think.

Michael Hingson 15:29

And some of them do work with hearing aids as well.

Mobeen Ansari 15:34

Okay, yeah, I think I've experienced that when they do the audio can test they put, like at the back of your head or something?

Michael Hingson 15:43

Yeah, the the most common one, at least in the United States, and I suspect most places, is made by a company called aftershocks. I think it's spelled A, F, T, E, R, S, H, O, k, s, but something to think about. Anyway. So you went through high school mostly were, were your student colleagues and friends, and maybe not always friends? Were they pretty tolerant of the fact that you were a little bit different than they were. Did you ever have major problems with people?

Mobeen Ansari 16:22

You know, I've actually had a great support system, and for most part, I actually had a lot of amazing friends from college who are still my, you know, friend to the dead, sorry, from school. I'm actually closer to my friend from school than I am two friends of college difficulties. You know, if you're different, you'll always be prone to people who sort of are not sure how to navigate that, or just want, you know, sort of test things out. So to say, so it wasn't without his problems, but for most part of it's surprisingly, surprisingly, I've had a great support system, but, you know, the biggest challenge was actually not being able to understand conversation. So I'm going to go a bit back and forth on the timeline here. You know, if so, in 2021, I had something known as menus disease. Menier disease is something, it's an irregular infection that arises from stress, and what happens is that you're hearing it drops and it is replaced by drinking and bathing and all sorts of real according to my experience, it affects those with hearing loss much more than it affects those with regular, normal hearing. It's almost like tinnitus on steroids. That is how I would type it. And I've had about three occurrences of that, either going to stress or being around loud situations and noises, and that is where it became so challenging that it became difficult to hear, even with hearing it or lip reading. So that is why I use a transcriber app wherever I go, and that been a lifesaver, you know. So I believe that every time I have evolved to life, every time I have grown up, I've been able to better understand people to like at the last, you know, four years I've been using this application to now, I think I'm catching up on all the nuances of conversation that I've missed. Right if I would talk to you five years ago, I would probably understand 40% of what you're saying. I would understand it by reading your lips or your body language or ask you to write or take something for me, but now with this app, I'm able to actually get to 99% of the conversation. So I think with time, people have actually become more tired and more accepting, and now there is more awareness. I think, awareness, right?

Michael Hingson 19:24

Well, yeah, I was gonna say it's been an only like the last four years or so, that a lot of this has become very doable in real time, and I think also AI has helped the process. But do you find that the apps and the other technologies, like what we use here, do you find that occasionally it does make mistakes, or do you not even see that very much at all?

Mobeen Ansari 19:55

You know it does make mistakes, and the biggest problem is when there is no data, when there is no. Wide network, or if it runs out of battery, you know, because now I kind of almost 24/7 so my battery just integrate that very fast. And also because, you know, if I travel in remote regions of Pakistan, because I'm a photographer, my job to travel to all of these places, all of these hidden corners. So I need to have conversation, especially in those places. And if that ad didn't work there, then we have a problem. Yeah, that is when it's problem. Sometimes, depending on accidents, it doesn't pick up everything. So, you know, sometimes that happens, but I think technology is improving.

Michael Hingson 20:50

Let me ask the question. Let me ask the question this way. Certainly we're speaking essentially from two different parts of the world. When you hear, when you hear or see me speak, because you're you're able to read the transcriptions. I'm assuming it's pretty accurate. What is it like when you're speaking? Does the system that we're using here understand you well as in addition to understanding me?

Mobeen Ansari 21:18

Well, yes, I think it does so like, you know, I just occasionally look down to see if it's catching up on everything. Yeah, on that note, I ought to try and improve my speech over time. I used to speak very fast. I used to mumble a lot, and so now I become more mindful of it, hopefully during covid. You know, during covid, a lot of podcasts started coming out, and I had my own actually, so I would, like brought myself back. I would look at this recording, and I would see what kind of mistakes I'm making. So I'm not sure if transcription pick up everything I'm saying, but I do try and improve myself, just like the next chapter of my life where I'm trying to improve my speech, my enunciation

Michael Hingson 22:16

Well, and that's why I was was asking, it must be a great help to you to be able to look at your speaking through the eyes of the Translate. Well, not translation, but through the eyes of the speech program, so you're able to see what it's doing. And as you said, you can use it to practice. You can use it to improve your speech. Probably it is true that slowing down speech helps the system understand it better as well. Yeah, yeah. So that makes sense. Well, when you were growing up, your parents clearly were very supportive. Did they really encourage you to do whatever you wanted to do? Do they have any preconceived notions of what kind of work you should do when you grew up? Or do they really leave it to you and and say we're going to support you with whatever you do?

Mobeen Ansari 23:21

Oh, they were supportive. And whatever I wanted to do, they were very supportive in what my brother had gone to do I had to enter brothers. So they were engineers. And you know what my my parents were always, always, you know, very encouraging of whatever period we wanted to follow. So I get the a lot of credit goes to my my parents, also, because they even put their very distinct fields. They actually had a great understanding of arts and photography, especially my dad, and that really helped me have conversations. You know, when I was younger to have a better understanding of art. You know, because my grandmother used to paint a lot, and because she did photography. When she migrated from India to Pakistan in 1947 she took, like, really, really powerful pictures. And I think that instilled a lot of this in me as well. I've had a great support that way.

Michael Hingson 24:26

Yeah, so your grandmother helps as well.

Mobeen Ansari 24:32

Oh yeah, oh yeah. She did very, very ahead of her time. She's very cool, and she made really large scale painting. So she was an example of always making the best of life, no matter where you are, no matter how old you are. She actually practiced a Kibana in the 80s. So that was pretty cool. So, you know. Yeah, she played a major part in my life.

Michael Hingson 25:05

When did you start learning English? Because that I won't say it was a harder challenge for you. Was a different challenge, but clearly, I assume you learned originally Pakistani and so on. But how did you go about learning English?

Mobeen Ansari 25:23

Oh, so I learned about the languages when I started speech. So I mean to be split the languages of Urdu. You are, be you. So I started learning about my mother tongue and English at the same time. You know, basically both languages at work to both ran in parallel, but other today, I have to speak a bit of Italian and a few other regional languages of Pakistan so and in my school. I don't know why, but we had French as a subject, but now I've completely forgotten French at Yeah, this kind of, it kind of helped a lot. It's pretty cool, very interesting. But yeah, I mean, I love to speak English. Just when I learned speech, what

Michael Hingson 26:19

did you major in when you went to college?

Mobeen Ansari 26:24

So I majored in painting. I went to National College of Arts, and I did my bachelor's in fine arts, and I did my majors in painting, and I did my minor in printmaking and sculpture. So my background was always rooted in fine arts. Photography was something that ran in parallel until I decided that photography was the ultimate medium that I absolutely love doing that became kind of the voice of my heart or a medium of oppression and tougher and bone today for

Michael Hingson 27:11

did they even have a major in photography when you went to college?

Mobeen Ansari 27:17

No, photography was something that I learned, you know, as a hobby, because I learned that during school, and I was self taught. One of my uncles is a globally renowned photographer. So he also taught me, you know, the art of lighting. He also taught me on how to interact with people, on how to set up appointments. He taught me so many things. So you could say that being a painter helped me become a better photographer. Being a photographer helped me become a better painter. So both went hand in hand report co existed. Yeah, so photography is something that I don't exactly have a degree in, but something that I learned because I'm more of an art photographer. I'm more of an artist than I am a photographer,

Michael Hingson 28:17

okay, but you're using photography as kind of the main vehicle to display or project your art, absolutely.

Mobeen Ansari 28:30

So what I try to do is I still try to incorporate painting into my photography, meaning I try to use the kind of lighting that you see in painting all of these subtle colors that Rembrandt of Caravaggio use, so I tried to sort of incorporate that. And anytime I press my photograph, I don't print it on paper, I print it on canvas. There's a paint really element to it, so so that my photo don't come up as a challenge, or just photos bottles or commercial in nature, but that they look like painting. And I think I have probably achieved that to a degree, because a lot of people asked me, Do you know, like, Okay, how much I did painting for and create painting. So I think you know, whatever my objective was, I think I'm probably just, you know, I'm getting there. Probably that's what my aim is. So you have a photography my main objective with the main voice that I use, and it has helped me tell stories of my homeland. It has helped me to tell stories of my life. It has helped me tell stories of people around

Michael Hingson 29:49

me, but you're but what you do is as I understand you, you're, you may take pictures. You may capture the images. With a camera, but then you put them on canvas.

Mobeen Ansari 30:05

Yeah, I just every time I have an exhibition or a display pictures which are present in my room right now, I always print them on Canvas, because when you print them on Canvas, the colors become more richer, right,

Michael Hingson 30:22

more mentally. But what? But what you're doing, but what you're putting on Canvas are the pictures that you've taken with your camera.

Mobeen Ansari 30:31

Oh, yeah, yeah, okay. But occasionally, occasionally, I tried to do something like I would print my photos on Canvas, and then I would try to paint on them. It's something that I've been experimenting with, but I'm not directly quite there yet. Conceptually, let's see in the future when these two things make properly. But now photographs?

Michael Hingson 31:02

Yeah, it's a big challenge. I i can imagine that it would be a challenge to try to be able to print them on cameras and then canvas, and then do some painting, because it is two different media, but in a sense, but it will be interesting to see if you're able to be successful with that in the future. What would you say? It's easier today, though, to to print your pictures on Canvas, because you're able to do it from digital photographs, as opposed to what you must have needed to do, oh, 20 years ago and so on, where you had film and you had negatives and so on, and printing them like you do today was a whole different thing to do.

Mobeen Ansari 31:50

Oh yeah, it's same to think good yesterday, somebody asked me if I do photography on an analog camera, and I have a lot of them, like lots and lots of them, I still have a lot of black and white film, but the problem is, nobody could develop them. I don't have that room. So otherwise I would do that very often. Otherwise I have a few functional cameras that tend to it. I'm consciously just thinking of reviving that. Let's see what happens to it. So I think it's become very difficult. You know also, because Pakistan has a small community of photographers, so the last person who everybody would go to for developing the film or making sure that the analog cameras became functional. He unfortunately passed away a few years ago, so I'm sort of trying to find somebody who can help me do this. It's a very fascinating process, but I haven't done any analog film camera photography for the last 15 years now, definitely a different ball game with, you know, typical cameras, yeah, the pattern, you could just take 36 pictures, and today you can just, you know, take 300 and do all sorts of trial and error. But I tried, you know, I think I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to photography, so I kind of try and make sure that I get the shots at the very first photograph, you know, because that's how my dad trained me on analog cameras, because back then, you couldn't see how the pictures are going to turn out until you printed them. So every time my dad took a picture, he would spend maybe two or three minutes on the setting, and he would really make the person in front of him wait a long time. And then you need to work on shutter speed or the aperture or the ISO, and once you would take that picture is perfect, no need to anything to it,

Michael Hingson 34:09

but, but transposing it, but, but transferring it to from an analog picture back then to Canvas must have been a lot more of a challenge than it is today.

Mobeen Ansari 34:24

No back then, working canvas printing. Canvas printing was something that I guess I just started discovering from 2014 onwards. So it would like during that this is laid up,

Michael Hingson 34:38

but you were still able to do it because you just substituted Canvas for the the typical photographic paper that you normally would use is what I hear you say,

Mobeen Ansari 34:50

Oh yeah, Canvas printing was something that I figured out much later on, right?

Michael Hingson 34:59

Um. But you were still able to do it with some analog pictures until digital cameras really came into existence. Or did you always use it with a digital camera?

Mobeen Ansari 35:11

So I basically, when I started off, I started with the handle camera. And obviously, you know, back in the 90s, if somebody asked you to take a picture, or we have to take a picture of something, you just had the analog camera at hand. Yeah. And my grandparents, my dad, they all had, you know, analog cameras. Some of it, I still have it

Michael Hingson 35:36

with me, but were you able to do canvas painting from the analog cameras? No, yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Mobeen Ansari 35:43

No, I haven't tried, yeah, but I think must have been possible, but I've only tried Canvas printing in the digital real.

Michael Hingson 35:53

Do you are you finding other people do the same thing? Are there? Are there a number of people that do canvas painting?

Mobeen Ansari 36:02

I lot of them do. I think it's not very common because it's very expensive to print it on canvas. Yeah, because you know, once you once you test again, but you don't know how it's going to turn out. A lot of images, they turn out very rough. The pictures trade, and if can, with print, expose to the camera, sometimes, sorry, the canvas print exposed to the sun, then there's the risk of a lot of fading that can happen. So there's a lot of risk involved. Obviously, printing is a lot better now. It can withstand exposure to heat and sun, but Canvas printing is not as common as you know, matte paper printing, non reflective, matte paper. Some photographers do. It depends on what kind of images you want to get out? Yeah, what's your budget is, and what kind of field you're hoping to get out of it. My aim is very specific, because I aim to make it very Painterly. That's my objective with the canvas.

Michael Hingson 37:17

Yeah, you want them to look like paintings?

Mobeen Ansari 37:21

Yeah? Yeah, absolutely,

Michael Hingson 37:23

which, which? I understand it's, it is a fascinating thing. I hadn't really heard of the whole idea of canvas painting with photograph or photography before, but it sounds really fascinating to to have that Yeah, and it makes you a unique kind of person when you do that, but if it works, and you're able to make it work, that's really a pretty cool thing to do. So you have you you've done both painting and photography and well, and sculpting as well. What made you really decide, what was the turning point that made you decide to to go to photography is kind of your main way of capturing images.

Mobeen Ansari 38:12

So it was with high school, because I was still studying, you know, art as a subject back then, but I was still consistently doing that. And then, like earlier, I mentioned to you that my school gave me an award called pictorial historian. That is what inspired me to follow this girl. That is what set me on this path. That is what made me find this whole purpose of capturing history. You know, Pakistan is home to a lot of rich cultures, rich landscapes, incredible heritage sites. And I think that's when I became fascinated. Because, you know, so many Pakistanis have these incredible stories of resilience entrepreneurship, and they have incredible faces, and, you know, so I guess that what made me want to capture it really. So I think, yeah, it was in high school, and then eventually in college, because, you know, port and school and college, I would be asked to take pictures of events. I'll be asked to take pictures of things around me. Where I went to college, it was surrounded by all kinds of, you know, old temples and churches and old houses and very old streets. So that, really, you know, always kept me inspired. So I get over time. I think it's just always been there in my heart. I decided to really, really go for it during college. Well.

Michael Hingson 40:00

But you've, you've done pretty well with it. Needless to say, which is, which is really exciting and which is certainly very rewarding. Have you? Have you done any pictures that have really been famous, that that people regard as exceptionally well done?

Mobeen Ansari 40:22

I Yes, obviously, that's it for the audience to decide. But right, I understand, yeah, I mean, but judging from my path exhibitions, and judging from system media, there have been quite a few, including the monitor out of just last week, I went to this abandoned railway station, which was on a British colonial time, abandoned now, but that became a very, very successful photograph. I was pretty surprised to see the feedback. But yes, in my career, they have been about, maybe about 10 to 15 picture that really, really stood out or transcended barriers. Because coming out is about transcending barriers. Art is about transcending barriers, whether it is cultural or political, anything right if a person entered a part of the world views a portrait that I've taken in Pakistan, and define the connection with the subject. My mission is accomplished, because that's what I would love to do through art, to connect the world through art, through art and in the absence of verbal communication. I would like for this to be a visual communication to show where I'm coming from, or the very interesting people that I beat. And that is that sort of what I do. So I guess you know, there have been some portraits. I've taken some landscapes or some heritage sites, and including the subjects that I have photography of my book that acting have probably stood out in mind of people.

Michael Hingson 42:14

So you have published three books so far, right? Yes, but tell me about your books, if you would.

Mobeen Ansari 42:24

So my first book is called Harkin. I will just hold it up for the camera. It is my first book, and what is it called? It is called turken, and the book is about iconic people of Pakistan who have impacted this history, be it philanthropist, be it sports people, be it people in music or in performing arts, or be it Even people who are sanitation workers or electricians to it's about people who who have impacted the country, whether they are famous or not, but who I consider to be icons. Some of them are really, really, really famous, very well known people around the world, you know, obviously based in Pakistan. So my book is about chronicling them. It's about documenting them. It's about celebrating them. My second book without, okay, most

Michael Hingson 43:29

people are going to listen to the podcast anyway, but go ahead. Yeah.

Mobeen Ansari 43:35

So basically it's writing the flag is about the religious minorities of Pakistan, because, you know, Pakistan is largely a Muslim country. But when people around the world, they look at Pakistan, they don't realize that it's a multicultural society. There's so many religions. Pakistan is home to a lot of ancient civilizations, a lot of religions that are there. And so this book document life and festivities of religious minorities of Pakistan. You know, like I in my childhood, have actually attended Easter mass, Christmas and all of these festivities, because my father's best friend was a Christian. So we had that exposure to, you know, different faiths, how people practice them. So I wanted to document that. That's my second book.

Michael Hingson 44:39

It's wonderful that you had, it's wonderful that you had parents that were willing to not only experience but share experiences with you about different cultures, different people, so that it gave you a broader view of society, which is really cool.

Mobeen Ansari 44:58

Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So your third book? So my third book is a sequel to my first one, same topic, people who have impacted the country. And you know, with the Pakistan has a huge, huge population, it had no shortage of heroes and heroines and people who have created history in the country. So my first book has 98 people, obviously, which is not enough to feature everybody. So my second book, it features 115 people. So it features people who are not in the first book.

Michael Hingson 45:41

Your third book? Yeah, okay, yeah. Well, there's, you know, I appreciate that there's a very rich culture, and I'm really glad that you're, you're making Chronicles or or records of all of that. Is there a fourth book coming? Have you started working on a fourth book yet?

Mobeen Ansari 46:05

You know in fact, yes, there is. Whenever people hear about my book, they assume that there's going to be landscape or portraits or street photography or something that is more anthropological in nature. That's the photography I truly enjoy doing. These are the photographs that are displayed in my studio right now. So, but I would never really study for it, because Pakistan had, you know, we have poor provinces. And when I started these books, I hadn't really documented everything. You know, I come from the urban city, and, you know, I just, just only take taking pictures in main cities at that time. But now I have taken pictures everywhere. I've been literally to every nook and cranny in the country. So now I have a better understanding, a better visual representation. So a fourth book, it may be down the line, maybe five years, 10 years, I don't know yet.

Michael Hingson 47:13

Well, one thing that I know you're interested in, that you've, you've at least thought about, is the whole idea behind climate change and the environment. And I know you've done some work to travel and document climate change and the environment and so on. Tell us, tell us more about that and where that might be going.

Mobeen Ansari 47:36

So on tape, note, Michael, you know there's a lot of flooding going on in Pakistan. You know, in just one day, almost 314 people died, but many others you had missing. You had some of the worst flooding test time round. And to be reeling from that, and we had some major flooding some teachers back in. Well, climate change is no longer a wake up call. We had to take action years ago, if not, you know, yesterday and till right now, we are seeing effects of it. And you know, Pakistan has a lot of high mountain peaks. It has, it is home to the second highest mountain in the world, Ketu, and it has a lot of glaciers. You know, people talk about melting polar ice caps. People talk about effects of climate change around the world, but I think it had to be seen everywhere. So in Pakistan, especially, climate change is really, really rearing space. So I have traveled to the north to capture melting glacier, to capture stories of how it affects different communities, the water supply and the agriculture. So that is what I'm trying to do. And if I take pictures of a desert down south where a sand dune is spreading over agricultural land that it wasn't doing up until seven months ago. So you know climate change is it's everywhere. Right now, we are experiencing rains every day. It's been the longest monsoon. So it has also affected the way of life. It has also affected ancient heritage sites. Some of these heritage sites, which are over 3000 years old, and they have bestowed, you know, so much, but they are not able to withstand what we are facing right now. Um, and unfortunately, you know, with unregulated construction, with carbon emissions here and around the world, where deforestation, I felt that there was a strong need to document these places, to bring awareness of what is happening to bring awareness to what we would lose if we don't look after mother nature, that the work I have been doing on climate change, as well as topics of global health and migration, so those two topics are also very close To My Heart.

Michael Hingson 50:40

Have you done any traveling outside Pakistan?

Mobeen Ansari 50:45

Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been traveling abroad since I was very little. I have exhibited in Italy, in the United States. I was just in the US debris. My brother lives in Dallas, so, yeah, I keep traveling because, because my workshop, because of my book events, or my exhibition, usually here and around the world.

Michael Hingson 51:14

Have you done any photography work here in the United States?

Mobeen Ansari 51:19

Yeah, I have, I mean, in the US, I just don't directly do photography, but I do workshop, because whatever tool that I captured from Pakistan, I do it there. Okay, funny thing is, a funny thing is that, you know, when you take so many pictures in Pakistan, you become so used to rustic beauty and a very specific kind of beauty that you have a hard time capturing what's outside. But I've always, always just enjoyed taking pictures in in Mexico and Netherlands, in Italy, in India, because they that rustic beauty. But for the first time, you know, I actually spent some time on photography. This year, I went to Chicago, and I was able to take pictures of Chicago landscape, Chicago cityscape, completely. You know, Snowden, that was a pretty cool kind of palette to work with. Got to take some night pictures with everything Snowden, traveling Chicago, downtown. So yeah, sometimes I do photography in the US, but I'm mostly there to do workshops or exhibitions or meet my brothers.

Michael Hingson 52:34

What is your your work process? In other words, how do you decide what ideas for you are worthwhile pursuing and and recording and chronicling.

Mobeen Ansari 52:46

So I think it depends on where their story, where there is a lot of uniqueness, that is what stands out to me, and obviously beauty there. But they have to be there. They have to be some uniqueness, you know, like, if you look at one of the pictures behind me, this is a person who used to run a library that had been there since 1933 his father, he had this really, really cool library. And you know, to that guy would always maintain it, that library would have, you know, three old books, you know, a philosophy of religion, of theology, and there was even a handwritten, 600 years old copy of the Quran with his religious book for Muslims. So, you know, I found these stories very interesting. So I found it interesting because he was so passionate about literature, and his library was pretty cool. So that's something that you don't get to see. So I love seeing where there is a soul, where there is a connection. I love taking pictures of indigenous communities, and obviously, you know, landscapes as well. Okay? Also, you know, when it comes to climate change, when it comes to migration, when it comes to global health, that's what I take picture to raise awareness.

Michael Hingson 54:33

Yeah, and your job is to raise awareness.

Mobeen Ansari 54:41

So that's what I try to do, if I'm well informed about it, or if I feel that is something that needed a light to be shown on it, that's what I do. Took my photograph, and also, you know. Whatever had this appeal, whatever has a beauty, whatever has a story that's in spur of the moment. Sometimes it determined beforehand, like this year, particularly, it particularly helped me understand how to pick my subject. Even though I've been doing this for 22 years, this year, I did not do as much photography as I normally do, and I'm very, very picky about it. Like last week I went to this abandoned railway station. I decided to capture it because it's very fascinating. It's no longer used, but the local residents of that area, they still use it. And if you look at it, it kind of almost looks like it's almost science fiction film. So, you know, I'm a big star. Was that Big Star Trek fan? So, yes, I'm in port the camps. So I also like something that had these elements of fantasy to it. So my work, it can be all over the place, sometimes,

Michael Hingson 56:09

well, as a as a speaker, it's, it's clearly very important to you to share your own personal journey and your own experiences. Why is that? Why do you want to share what you do with others?

Mobeen Ansari 56:28

So earlier, I mentioned to you that John Tracy center played a major, major role in my life. He helped my mother. They provided all the materials. You know, in late 80s, early 90s, and so I will tell you what happened. So my aunt, my mom's sister, she used to live in the US, and when my hearing loss were diagnosed, my mother jumped right into action. I mean, both my parents did. So my mother, she landed in New York, and to my aunt would live in New Jersey. So every day she would go to New York, and she landed in New York League of hard of hearing. And a lady over there asked my mom, do you want your child to speak, or do you want him to learn? Frank Lacher and my mother, without any hesitation, she said, I want my child to speak and to see what put in touch with John Troy center and rest with history, and they provided with everything that needed. So I am affiliated with the center as an alumni. And whenever I'm with the US, whenever I'm in LA, I visit the center to see how I can support parents of those with hearing loss, and I remember when I went in 2016 2018 I gave a little talk to the parents of those with hair in glass. And I got to two other place as well, where I spent my childhood joint. Every time I went there, I saw the same fears. I saw the same determination in parents of those with hearing loss, as I saw in my parents eyes. And by the end of my talk, they came up to me, and they would tell me, you know, that sharing my experiences helped them. It motivated them. It helped them not be discouraged, because having a child hearing loss is not easy. And you know, like there was this lady from Ecuador, and you know, she spoke in Spanish, and she see other translators, you know, tell me this, so to be able to reach out with those stories, to be able to provide encouragement and any little guidance, or whatever little knowledge I have from my experience, it gave me this purpose. And a lot of people, I think, you know, you feel less lonely in this you feel hurt, you feel seen. And when you share experiences, then you have sort of a blueprint how you want to navigate in one small thing can help the other person. That's fantastic. That's why I share my personal experiences, not just to help those with hearing loss, but with any challenge. Because you know when you. Have a challenge when you have, you know, when a person is differently able, so it's a whole community in itself. You know, we lift each other up, and if one story can help do that, because, you know, like for me, my parents told me, never let your hearing loss be seen as a disability. Never let it be seen as a weakness, but let it be seen as a challenge that makes you stronger and that will aspire to do be it when I get it lost all of my life, be it when I had the latest or many years, or anything. So I want to be able to become stronger from to share my experiences with it. And that is why I feel it's important to share the story.

Michael Hingson 1:00:56

And I think that's absolutely appropriate, and that's absolutely right. Do you have a family of your own? Are you married? Do you have any children or anything? Not yet. Not yet. You're still working on that, huh?

Mobeen Ansari 1:01:10

Well, so to say, Yeah, I've just been married to my work for way too long.

Michael Hingson 1:01:16

Oh, there you are. There's nothing wrong with that. You've got something that you

Mobeen Ansari 1:01:22

kind of get batting after a while, yeah.

Michael Hingson 1:01:26

Well, if the time, if the right person comes along, then it, then that will happen. But meanwhile, you're, you're doing a lot of good work, and I really appreciate it. And I hope everyone who listens and watches this podcast appreciates it as well. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?

Mobeen Ansari 1:01:45

They can send me an email, which is out there for everybody on my website. I'm on all my social media as well. My email is being.ansarima.com

Michael Hingson 1:01:57

so can you spell that? Can you Yeah, M, o b e n, dot a do it once more, M O B, E N,

Mobeen Ansari 1:02:07

M O B, double, e n, dot, a n, S, A R, i@gmail.com

Michael Hingson 1:02:17

at gmail.com, okay, and your website is.com

Mobeen Ansari 1:02:26

same as my name.

Michael Hingson 1:02:27

So, okay, so it's mo bean.ansari@our.www.mo

Michael Hingson 1:02:35

bean dot Ansari, or just mo Bean on, sorry,

Mobeen Ansari 1:02:41

just moving on, sorry. We com, no.no.

Michael Hingson 1:02:44

Dot between mobien and Ansari, okay, so it's www, dot mobile being on sorry, yeah, so it's www, dot, M, O, B, E, N, A, N, S, A, R, i.com Yes. Well, great. I have absolutely enjoyed you being with us today. I really appreciate your time and your insights, and I value a lot what you do. I think you represent so many things so well. So thank you for being here with us, and I want to thank all of you who are out there listening and watching the podcast today, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and we appreciate it if you would give us a five star rating wherever you are observing the podcast. Please do that. We value that a great deal. And if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest, please let me know. We're always looking for people and mobeen you as well. If you know anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on the podcast, I would appreciate it if you would introduce us. But for now, I just want to thank you one more time for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you for being on the podcast with us today.

Mobeen Ansari 1:04:08

Thank you so much. It's been wonderful, and thank you for giving me the platform to share my stories. And I hope that it helps whoever watching this. Up to date.

Michael Hingson 1:04:26

Episode 396 – Cynthia Washington Makes Emotional Intelligence an Unstoppable Leadership Edge

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What if success was less about status and more about gratitude, service, and love? In this Unstoppable Mindset conversation, I talk with strategist and social media influencer Cynthia Washington about climbing and then stepping away from the corporate ladder, choosing a “socio economic experiment” that stripped life back to the basics, and discovering what really matters. You’ll hear how growing up in Pasadena, studying at Cal Poly Pomona and Columbia Business School, and working with brands like Enterprise and Zions Bank all led Cynthia to a life centered on emotional intelligence, mentoring young women in tech, and leading with heart. I believe you’ll come away seeing gratitude, leadership, and your own potential to be unstoppable in a very different light.

Highlights:

00:09 – Explore how early life experiences influence the values that guide personal and professional growth.02:59 – Learn how changing direction can uncover the strengths that shape long-term leadership.05:29 – See how pivotal transitions help define a clearer sense of purpose.10:07 – Discover what stepping away from convention reveals about identity and success.20:05 – Reflect on how redefining success can shift your entire approach to work and life.22:13 – Learn how a grounded mindset practice strengthens resilience and clarity.34:25 – Explore how personal evolution can grow into a mission to empower the next generation.59:11 – Gain a new perspective on how we perceive ability, inclusion, and human potential.

About the Guest:

Cynthia Washington: Bridging Societal Gaps Through Leadership, Influence, and Love

Cynthia Washington is an accomplished business professional, an award-winning leader, and international influencer whose life and career embodies resilience, vision, and compassion. While studying at Columbia University, she embarked on a socio-economic experiment, which became her reality, highlighting her journey across her social media platforms in hope of sharing her deep commitment to bridge societal gaps and create a better world—one love style, one courageous step at a time. A proud Park City local of more than twenty years, Cynthia’s story begins in Southern California, where she grew up between the San Gabriel Mountains and the beaches of Malibu. Her cousins called her “Malibu Barbie,” and her stepbrother called her “Love.” Rooted in her values and guided by her heart, Cynthia’s story is not only one of success but of transformation—a legacy driven by her belief that we deserve better. Cynthia leads with integrity and authenticity. She continues to expand her global network of leadership, uniting hearts and minds to inspire lasting, positive change on the right side of history with a framework of faith, family and fun that is built on a foundation of love, kindness, compassion and a hope for peace. One Love, Bob Marley style.

Professionally, Cynthia Washington stands at the intersection of strategy, leadership, and emotional intelligence. An agile and results-driven leader, she has distinguished herself through her ability to combine quantitative intuition with deep empathy—qualities that make her both a visionary and a unifier. Known for her collaborative leadership style, she excels in developing teams, leading organizational change, and driving sales performance across diverse industries. Her strategic mindset and exceptional communication skills have made her a trusted partner to executives and innovators alike. Cynthia’s work fosters meaningful engagement between employees and senior leaders, helping organizations align vision with values. Through her global portfolio of projects, she has sharpened her expertise in marketing, leadership development, and brand transformation, helping companies from Park City to Silicon Slopes and across international markets thrive. Her career is a testament to excellence, purpose, and adaptability—qualities that have earned her numerous accolades and the respect of peers worldwide. Among her many achievements, Cynthia was honored as a SheTech Champion Impact Award Recipient at the Women Tech Awards, celebrating her leadership, mentorship, and dedication to empowering young women in technology. For more than five years, she has stood alongside thousands of high school students—mentoring, volunteering, and serving as a role model for the next generation of innovators.

Motivated by her desire to create a better world for her daughter, she embarked on what she lovingly calls her “mom mission”—a service journey dedicated to making her community and the world around her better. During her sabbatical from Silicon Valley into this transformative period, Cynthia launched LVL UP with CW, her brand, leveraging her expertise to help local and global businesses grow, evolve, and thrive. As an international social media influencer, she has used her platform not for fame or recognition, but for global impact, sharing messages of resilience, hope, and empowerment. This work is a lesson of intersectionality and bridges the worlds of fashion, sports, philanthropy, business, money, technology, spirituality, global preservation, health and wellness in hopes of leveling up and shifting the societal norms. She has partnered with brands across industries to elevate visibility, deepen engagement, and build authentic customer connections. Through brand ambassador relationships, social media management, and content creation, Cynthia has amplified voices, strengthened communities, and showcased how influence, when rooted in integrity, is a force for good.

That same belief shines through in Cynthia Washington’s powerful memoir, Mind Matters: The Story of My Life. Written during her sabbatical, the respectfully honest memoir captures her life’s “grind with grit” story. The cover, graced by her daughter’s original artwork, wraps her book with a big thank you hug, encapsulating the power of love that anchors Cynthia’s bold voyage. Mind Matters explores her corporate climb and fall, her studies at Columbia University, her travels across the United States with her daughter, the Aloha spirit of Hawaii, and her experiences in Hollywood and the music industry. Interwoven through these chapters are stories of friendship, including her personal connections with cultural icons like Eminem and Kobe Bryant, whose wisdom and creativity shaped what Cynthia calls The Trifecta - a guiding philosophy built on Kobe’s Mamba Mentality, the music of Eminem, and her own life’s work. Three forces that together drive her vision and her ability to live her socio-economic experiment proving money is a tool and the real power is in the mind. “You can do anything you set your mind to, man” - Eminem

Mind Matters: The Story of My Life is available on Amazon and other major online retailers and can also be ordered through local bookstores. The memoir has been nominated for The Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing, a recognition of both its literary merit and its heartfelt message of perseverance. Yet, true to her character, Cynthia did not embark on this journey for fame or recognition—she wrote it to give back, to inspire, and to remind readers everywhere that no matter where you come from, with a healthy positive mindset you too can change the trajectory of your life.

Beyond her work as an author and international leader, Cynthia lives a simple life. She is a mom, a trailblazer, and an advocate, representing many initiatives that level up society and bridge societal gaps. She turned her pain into her strength and used that as fuel to ignite a movement. Her heart is full of gratitude for all the bands and their aid, as they played a meaningful role in inspiring the Band Aid, a global movement for unity and peace that emerged during a time when the world needed hope most. A true Band Aid.

Ways to connect with Cynthia**:**

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/misscdub

Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-washington-1b13a265

Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Matters-Story-My-Life/dp/B0DJRPQTY2

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're with us today, wherever you happen to be, hope you're having a good day, and hope that we can inspire you and make this a fun time for you as well. Our guest today is Cynthia Washington. Cynthia describes herself as standing at the intersection of strategy, leadership and an emotional intelligence, and I know that she's going to talk more about that and what what brought her to come to that conclusion, but I've been looking at her information. I think she's got a lot of interesting stuff to talk to us about, and we'll get to it. But for now, Cynthia, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Cynthia Washington 02:05

Oh, thank you, Michael. I appreciate being here and spending this time with you today, and I'm looking forward to our conversation.

Michael Hingson 02:13

Well, I am as well. Well, why don't we start? I love to start this way with the the early Cynthia, if you will.

Cynthia Washington 02:20

Of course, yes, the early Cynthia. I grew up in Pasadena, California, that Southern California, near the Rose Bowl in the San Gabriel Mountains. I attended an all girls private Catholic school for my seventh to 12th grades. I attended also Cal Poly Pomona, where I studied international business and marketing. And I love everything Southern California. I've always had this dream of living in Park City, and I ended up coming here in when was it 2004 so I've been here almost 21 years.

Michael Hingson 03:04

So when you were at Cal Poly, did you help build the Rose Parade Float?

Cynthia Washington 03:09

I did not build the Rose Parade Float, even though both Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly Pomona do a collaborative effort to build one every year since I grew up with the Rose Parade in my backyard, I had my own special moments with that. I always wanted to be on the Rose Parade court, and so my mom put me into a many different pageants, which helped prepare me and built my confidence so that I could be the person I am today. And I'm forever grateful for that experience like sports, it teaches you about competition, failure and set you up for success.

Michael Hingson 04:05

Yes. And again, what did you study at Cal Poly,

Cynthia Washington 04:10

international business and marketing? Okay, I originally started in microbiology. I had finished with the intention to become a doctor, and realized I could not stomach blood or needles, and so I quickly changed my major once I made that realization, and I changed my major to English, because I love reading Shakespeare Books. Everything is just so fascinating, fascinating about the English language and its literature. So I studied that for a little while, my father told me that I needed to do something different, and therefore I changed my major to international business and marketing.

Michael Hingson 05:00

Hmm, that was different than English by any standard. Yeah.

Cynthia Washington 05:06

So it was definitely different. Well, he is a businessman, a banker, and I think you know, for him, it was important for me to kind of follow in those footsteps, which I have, ironically, and I'm forever grateful for him for pushing me in a different direction, I use all three though, the science, the technology, the English and the international business skills in my current role, so, or roles,

Michael Hingson 05:37

well, so you graduated. Did you go on and get any advanced degrees or just a bachelor's?

Cynthia Washington 05:43

Oh, well, I did. It took me a while, too, though. I recently, in 2022 applied to Columbia University, actually Columbia Business School, and I completed their chief marketing officer executive education program with a Certificate in Business Excellence from Columbia Business School. So yes, I did eventually go back to school. However, I had a few careers in and amongst that along my path and my journey, which helped me have a more well rounded knowledge, yeah, to enter into that up advanced learning.

Michael Hingson 06:35

So what did you do after you graduated from Cal Poly?

Cynthia Washington 06:40

After I graduated from Cal Poly, I took a gap year, to be honest, and in that gap year, I learned so much about myself. I intersected with Hollywood for a brief moment in time, developed some really great, lasting friendships that have surpassed time. In addition to that, I skied, I snowboard, I learned to surf, and did all the things that I just needed to do as a California girl, yes, it was quite fun and bolted me into the person I am today. With that being said, I once again, had my father reminding me that it was time to get a job, and so I ventured into the management trainee program with enterprise run a car, climbed that corporate ladder, eventually having a territory from Santa Barbara to San Diego that I managed and oversaw a team inside one of our insurance partners headquarters, Which was really amazing opportunity. Then that took me, with a relocation package to Utah with my husband and our newborn baby to come and plant roots. Here he they enterprise was ahead of times in the fact that they wanted to harvest talent from different parts of the United States to strengthen the team they were building in Utah. My husband and I at the time, were part of that strategy, which was really an amazing opportunity, because I was one of a handful women managers that were brought on to the Utah team, and we were able to establish ourselves as influencers and leaders to help grow the women leadership network within Utah and Idaho for enterprise.

Michael Hingson 09:14

You said, early I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. You said early on that you always wanted to go to Park City. Why was that? Sounds like, you know, you got to live your dream. But why was that? Yes.

Cynthia Washington 09:26

Well, my father worked a lot, and for him to disconnect from work, we would come and visit Park City or travel to Hawaii. Well, we summer it every summer in Kauai for the month of July. So to contrast that we had time in Park City, Utah before it was what it has become, which was really fascinating. And I loved having the exposure to the Four Seasons and just the. Um, simple life that park city offered was really refreshing, coming from the hustle and bustle of Downtown LA and being in the city, it was just something I dreamt of, and I'm so grateful to have lived that dream, to be here and have to and to have raised my daughter here as well

Michael Hingson 10:27

makes sense. And as I said, you now get to live your dream. You're living where you wanted to, and you've been there now for, like, 21 years, and you sound like you haven't changed your mind, you're very happy with it.

Cynthia Washington 10:43

Yes, you know, my daughter's graduating college soon, and perhaps maybe I'll think of another location to move to. But for now, this is what I call home. This is where I've planted my my seeds and my roots for our little single mom family. So yeah, it's been great.

Michael Hingson 11:06

Well, so you you say that you lived a social, socio economic experiment. Tell me more about what that means. Yes.

Cynthia Washington 11:19

So while at Columbia University, I opted to live a socio economic experience to contrast the life that I grew up with. So as I mentioned, I attended Cal Poly, worked with enterprise, had a great career with them. When I came to Utah, I kept that career. After my divorce, I began another career at America first credit union. I saw, I saw that I needed to take a step back from the career world, and so I took a 20 hour teller position as I was figuring out my relationship with my husband and determining our next steps. And so once that was dissolved, I had this great team who saw my leadership skills and helped me climb another corporate ladder. After a few years one of my previous colleagues came to me and asked me to venture into Silicon Valley, doing business in Utah with a team, a Medicare sales team that I managed, and that was quite fascinating, talk about baptism by fire. I learned all things Medicare on the fly, and had a really amazing opportunity with that. And so I have steadily over time, climbed three different corporate ladders, made excellent income, six figures, generously raising my daughter here in Utah, and it has always been in the back of my mind to understand life from a different lens, to understand it with a different perspective. And so as a result, when I was in the Columbia application process, I had become really, really, really sick, deathly sick, I like to say I was on my death bed when I applied to Colombia because I was surviving on water and pressed juices for a little over a month, because I was having some difficulties internally. And so while I had that downtime, I had a lot of time to think, and it was important to me to apply at Columbia. Well, I originally applied to Northwestern and they recommended me to Columbia. And so when I did my Columbia application, it was important for me not to just take the northwestern recommendation, but to also set myself apart. And I thought, well, the socio economic experiment would be great at something I've been thinking about, you know, living life through a different lens. I had the savings built up so that I could do so. And I thought, Yes, I can do this. I can You can do anything you set your mind to. Quote. Eminem, I did. I did that. I lived it. I abandoned my ego, I abandoned all the luxurious items that I had, and lived this truly simple life. And it was quite fascinating, because the more I trusted that process, the more I grew and became still and trusted God's guidance in this journey that I was creating. Fast forward through the social media aspect of everything, I was reminded of some Hollywood friends that I had forgotten about, to be honest. And I don't know how you forget about them, but I did, because I never really spoke about those tender moments I had, and cherish them within my heart and my soul. But I was overcoming this really traumatic experience, a bad, bad relationship that put me into hiding, yet with being at Columbia, living the socio economic experiment and sharing my life through my social media influencer role, my Hollywood friends found me in a time of need, and through this reintroduction, I was reminded of a night I like to coin as dream night, and I call it dream night because that's the night I met Marshall Mathers, who the world knows as Eminem, and he and I were from completely different aspects of life, with completely different perspectives on life, and yet, when we met, we intersected. I was leaving Hollywood, he was coming into it, and we spent together, as silly as it sounds, playing beer pong, thinking through all of the world's problems. And in that conversation, I had mentioned that one day I was going to go to Columbia, and one day I was going to live the socio economic experiment so that I could help the world. And you know, he envisioned his dream of becoming this rap star, and together, we would reunite our forces for good to help elevate the world. And I forgot about this moment in time, to be quite honest, I just continued on a path that I naturally was creating when I was younger, because before meeting Marshall, I had met Kobe Bryant while I was a student graduating Cal Poly, and he was new, upcoming rising superstar into basketball. He had his eye on Vanessa. Her group of friends were very smart, and he knew he needed to knowledge up to get his girl. And so here I was this book smart girl, kind of hanging out in Hollywood. I had worked a job at Staples Center, because I love the Lakers, and it was really cool. I, you know, had me more court side than it did have me working because I gave away more of my tables, and I did actually work to spend time building these relationships with Kobe and the Lakers, which I'm so forever grateful for, and because Kobe recognized my book smart, his spotlight and together, we would have these Kobe talks, which ultimately built the framework for Mama mentality and my only ask of him as I exited Hollywood and that era of my life was that he named mob and mentality, mob and mentality, which he did. And so I, you know, I had. Had Mamba mentality. This up and comer rap star Eminem, who, honestly, I didn't even know was Eminem. For me, he was this guy from Detroit that I met through my friend Travis Barker, who happened to be the drummer blink, 182 but I was so unaware of all these people and who they were. They were, to me, were just people I knew and friends that I had. And, you know, fast forward to where we're at now. It's like we're all living our dreams, and it's really super cool. But the socio economic experiment came from that dream night with Marshall and this whole concept of who and how we wanted to be in this future version of ourselves and I wanted to be this socio economic experiment to understand life through a different lens, especially after meeting him that One night and hearing his life experience, my life experience that you know, it was fascinating to me, like I want, I I want to help people, but to truly help people and bridge those societal gaps that exist,

Cynthia Washington 21:16

one has To have a full scope of life through all perspectives, and this opportunity through Columbia, with this experiment, positioned me to really embrace that, and now I am very happy because I think it has helped me appreciate the quality, true quality of life. You know, it's not about the money, it's not about the fame, it's not about the recognition. It's about love and family and caring and nurturing one another

Michael Hingson 21:59

with and I would presume that you would say that that's what you learned from the experiment,

Cynthia Washington 22:05

yes, yes, absolutely. That's what I learned. You know, here, as I was climbing all these different corporate ladders, I always thought it was about having more you know, having more money, having more things, having a bigger house, a nicer car and all this stuff, but truly abandoning all that stuff allowed me to live more because I appreciated the true moment as A gift, especially from being on my deathbed, you know, to being able to live each day to its fullest, that in and amongst itself, was a gift to me, and learning to be present for my daughter was a present for Me. And so these were all things that socio economic experiment taught me about appreciating life.

Michael Hingson 23:07

So where do concepts like gratitude come into all of that? And how is gratitude help keep you centered and kind of moving forward?

Cynthia Washington 23:18

Great question through this journey I've been on, I've learned to live each day with a grateful heart. I wake up daily appreciative of the moment, to be alive, regardless of what I have or what accomplishments I've achieved. I truly am thankful for the gift of life. And with that being said, I live in a spirit of Thanksgiving, not because Thanksgiving is on the horizon and the holidays grow near, but because having that gratitude rooted in my soul has helped me Stay focused on my Why stay firm in my beliefs and trust the process every step of the way, living with gratitude has just opened my Heart to the possibilities, and it's been a phenomenal growth experience. The more I give thanks, the more I give, the more I serve, the better I lead, the stronger I am, and the more abundant the blessings are. Are, and it's just truly remarkable to be this vessel for good living life with the spirit of Thanksgiving.

Michael Hingson 25:12

If somebody were to ask you, how can you teach me how to really have gratitude and make it a part of my life, what? What kind of advice or what kind of guidance can you give someone to help them learn to be a person who's more grateful or have more gratitude? Wow, um,

Cynthia Washington 25:33

if someone is looking to have more gratitude and develops a process in establishing more gratitude. I think it would just be to reframe your focus instead of, oh, I don't have these things, right? That's when I let go of my Louis vuittons my fancy car, and, you know, sold all my really nice clothes that you know, just to have some extra cash to accomplish more of my goals, I let go of all Those materialistic things. And instead of having the mindset of like, Oh, I'm getting rid of these things, I was I saw it as an opportunity. So I guess what I'm saying is to reframe, instead of it being like, I don't have these things, or the woe is me attitude reframe that too. I am blessed with a family, I am blessed with food, I am blessed with shelter, I am blessed with a job that provides me with stability. I am blessed with the person in the mirror who has awoken for this moment in time, awoken, awaked it has. How do you say that? Awakened, that's fine. Awakened, yeah, has awakened in this moment, you know, for another beautiful day, and then after that, reframing of the mindset, focus on the positives and count your blessings. I know that sounds so cliche, but be grateful for this. Yes, be grateful for the things that you do have, the people who love you love is the most durable power that there is, you know, and having that focus on those good things with a positive mindset reframed from the negative, you can easily shape yourself into a person who lives with gratitude and then reciprocate it. You know, as you, as you go about your day, give that gratitude to someone else with a nice smile or a thank you. And people can feel a thank you. People can feel a smile. People can feel that authentic, genuine sense of gratitude in any capacity of life. And that is far more reaching than that negative I don't have I don't have enough. I don't I'm not qualified for this type of negative mindset that weighs people down. Instead, when you live with gratitude, you feel lighter, you feel more alive, and you feel unstoppable.

Michael Hingson 29:09

Have you ever read a book by a gentleman named Henry Drummond called Love the greatest thing in the world?

Cynthia Washington 29:18

No, but it sounds like something I would enjoy reading. It's

Michael Hingson 29:21

more, it's very short, but he he talks all about the fact that love is, in fact, the greatest thing in the most powerful thing in the world, and that that it is something that we all ought to express and deal with a whole lot more than than we do. Was written in, in, I think, the late 1800s I believe. But it is, it is well worth reading. As I said, it's very short. I've read the audio version, and it only takes an hour, so it's not very long book. But it doesn't need

Cynthia Washington 29:59

to be well. I will definitely add that to my reading list, because my step brother called me love and it's my nickname, and all the work I have done while on my mom mission after Columbia and over the past few years to help bridge societal gaps, to make the world better for my daughter, her friends and our children and the world ultimately stems from love and gratitude and love are to my focuses. There you go.

Michael Hingson 30:46

And as makes a lot of sense, as they should be well. So what have you been doing? Well, so you worked for enterprise, and then you went on, I guess, to do some other things. But what have you been doing since Columbia?

Cynthia Washington 31:02

Well, since Columbia, my last class at Columbia was in finance. I studied finance, macro economics. And one more thing I forgot, that's okay. So anyway, well, my last class at Columbia was in finance and Oh, corporate governance, yes. So at Columbia, I studied corporate governance, macroeconomics and finance, while also completing my chief marketing officer executive education requirements and my last class being in finance aligned with Zions Bank, 150 year anniversary of being in business. I thought, wow, this is quite timely. Zions Bank is highly reputable, very respected organization in Utah. And I wanted to work with them while I finished Columbia, and initially I took a role to just kind of understand money real time, working on the front lines across a variety of different branches, and now I still work with them. I am in their retail banking administration department. I work with a great team. I am close to the SVPs, EBPs, and with the branches, our clients. I work on multiple different projects, doing different things, which is so fascinating because I'm in the heartbeat of the business, and it satisfies my my desire to stay relevant and use all my skill sets for good, because I have that ability to touch so many different people and projects in the work that I do at science bank, it allows me the flexibility to maintain my social media influencer status, and both give me the stability to be a good single mom for my daughter who's finishing Up in college. So I'm very grateful for that opportunity, and Colombia opens so many doors. As far as the social media marketing piece of the work I've done since Columbia, I sit on a handful of boards, Big Brothers, Big Sisters. I am on the boulder way forward legislative committee as a chair, and I continue to just do a bunch of philanthropic work, which I. I'm able to promote and highlight within the social media work that I do, so the two work beautifully together, and I am happy just to give back in the capacity I can using my skill sets at a maximized level,

Michael Hingson 35:24

okay, well, you also formed your own company, didn't you?

Cynthia Washington 35:29

Yes, I did form my own company. It's called level up with C dub, and that business has allowed me to work with amazing brands throughout Park Cities, silicon slopes and globally. It started, yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. It started because I wanted to level up my community and bridge some gaps that I saw, and then it has grown into something bigger and better in the fact that the work that I'm doing is not only helping local businesses, but it's helping level up our youth, and creating an opportunity for our youth to follow a yellow brick road, so to speak, with my work that I have put forth so that they are more resilient, emotionally intelligent, and have the mental strength To endure this ever changing world. So it's been quite interesting to see how it's shifted from helping businesses mentoring individuals into this new space.

Michael Hingson 37:14

And so what does the company do today? What? What you talk about helping youth and so on? Tell me a little bit more about what what you do and how you do it, and is it just you, or do you have other people in the company?

Cynthia Washington 37:27

No, it's just me. Just now, just me. Yes, I don't have enough time to invest in it because Zions is my nine to five. I work at a local boutique in town to stay in the heartbeat of town, you know. And then I have the social media stuff that I do. So my calendar is quite full. The level up with C dub work has been word of mouth, and people like you have sought me through various platforms, and I like that. I'm not ready to scale it yet, even though it is scalable, but I like being able to control the the the incoming work and produce high quality products with my brand name attached to it. So right now, it's something that exists. Um, it's something it's a labor of love, and so I'm not quite ready to bring on a team, because it's multi faceted. There's a lot of mentoring, there's a lot of coaching, there's a lot of brand building, and these are all things that I just like to do on my own.

Michael Hingson 39:20

So what kind of things do you do you do from a mentoring standpoint, what? What exactly does the company do?

Cynthia Washington 39:28

Well, from a mentoring standpoint, I mentor across different platforms. I just received an Impact Award for mentoring girls in the tech realm of silicon slopes, over 1000 Utah high schoolers, actually, 1000s of high school girls have been mentored through this program called she tech, of which I am a part of and. Um, in addition to that, I have middle level professionals who want to level up within their career, who utilize me and my services to help coach them to their next corporate move. And so there's some one on one time. People hire me. I fit them into my schedule. We work together. They call me, you know, hey, I have this moment at work that's happening and I need some guidance. How do I navigate it? You know, sometimes it's easier to talk through that situation with a coach than it is to talk through it with your peer or manager, because you don't want to take away the integrity of the the momentum you've created at work. So I act as at sounding board for a handful of other executive, young executives who are up and coming, rising into their career, and so it's it's multifaceted. Everything's been word of mouth, and I don't have a website. I started with one, I perhaps might go back to creating one. But for now, everything is pretty manageable. I just wear a lot of different hats and work through a lot of different projects, helping many different people across different platforms.

Michael Hingson 41:48

How do you keep it all together?

Cynthia Washington 41:53

Great question. I use a calendar. I write a lot of notes down. I have a very systematic approach to everything that I have going on. I've learned to say no and to prioritize what's most important. I had an executive coach when I was in Silicon Valley and working in the Medicare realm of business and my executive coach brought so much value into being that sounding board for me and Springboarding My career that giving back in that same capacity is so rewarding for me. I find enjoyment out of it, and the busier I am, the more full I feel my life is. And so right now, I manage it all by writing it down and keeping it organized. You know, in my calendars, thankfully, there's flexibility with all that I do, which allows me to be very agile and giving back in the level up with C dub work that I do.

Michael Hingson 43:21

Well, it sounds like when you had access to an executive coach, you were very observant about what they did, so that you could do that same sort of thing and pass it on. Because it sounds like you you took to heart the lessons you learned from that coach. Absolutely.

Cynthia Washington 43:40

I had the best executive coach. And you know, when I was on my deathbed, she reached out to me and cared for me even though I was no longer her client. You know, we had become friends through that relationship, and I want to be that person for someone else, and that's why right now, I don't have anyone on my team with me, and I don't have an intention of scaling it At this point in time, because I try to, I to take on the workload with intention and purpose so that I can authentically lead and give back to help others grow and thrive within their realm of life, right?

Michael Hingson 44:46

Well, you have written a book. Tell us about that and what what it is, and anything you want to talk about,

Cynthia Washington 44:54

yeah, this is a book right here for those who. You are able to see

Michael Hingson 45:04

it, and it's called Mind Matters.

Cynthia Washington 45:07

Yes, sir, Mind Matters. It's the story of my life. It's a memoir encompasses everything and an easy to read book. It encompasses my travels, my corporate climb and fall, my Columbia education and studies, how I overcame some big hurdles with a grind, with grit, mindset and mentality. My time in Hollywood, what I like to call the trifecta me, Eminem and Kobe, and my work, the music of Eminem and Mama mentality with those three things, you can achieve anything. And what else does it include? Oh, it just has some really fun tales of growing up in California. I and some principles, guiding principles I learned from Columbia University that I wanted to encapsulate into this book and share again to give back to others. It's modestly priced on Amazon. You can buy it wherever books are sold. It's I didn't write it for fame or recognition. I respectfully share stories about my friends in Hollywood. Good and, yeah, it's a fun a fun story. I released it a year ago, October 10, and did my first book launch release party, November 15. And so it's really fun to see it become what it has, and to see its ripple effects throughout society.

Michael Hingson 47:32

What did you learn about you from writing the book?

Cynthia Washington 47:39

Oh, well, writing a book requires a lot of self discipline. I learned that I have lived a story rich with abundant blessings, and I learned that I have accomplished so much with having That spirit of gratitude. I grind it with grit, resilience, that has catapulted me into the space that I am living in now. However, it was also a very humbling experience as I wrote the book, I it healed me in some ways, because I had been in hiding for a year, and as much As I was sharing my life on social media, I was still afraid to live my life because I was in hiding, and so it helped me heal from that trauma, which is why I have it modestly priced, because if I can help someone else overcome something as traumatic that I have lived by sharing my story and giving hope through my story, then I want to put it out there. I'm not in it for money. I'm in it so I can help our society through this humanitarian effort, you know, and sharing a little bit about me might help someone in their time of need. So, yes, I love. Learned. I learned to heal, I learned to trust the process, and I learned who I am.

Michael Hingson 50:08

It makes a lot of sense. And I asked the question, having written three books and learning from all three of them, various things about me, but also just learning to have the discipline and to go into that place where you can create something that hopefully people in the world will appreciate. I think that's that's a really cool thing, and clearly you've done that.

Cynthia Washington 50:38

Yes, thank you, and you definitely can understand that, you know, you put your heart and soul into this book of creative mindfulness, and it's truly rewarding to share it with other people. And I like to say my books wrapped with my daughter's big thank you hug, because it's wrapped in her artwork that she drew, that I have framed, and I thought it was a perfect cover for it. And it's it's really a blessing to have gone through the trauma, live through it, and for her to see this work of art, share my story and help others and her. Thank you. Hug around it is even a bigger form of love

Michael Hingson 51:44

you have won, and you mentioned it earlier, a she Peck she tech champion Impact Award. Tell us about that award, what it is, and a little bit more about why you won one and so on.

Cynthia Washington 51:58

Yes, so while at Columbia, I did the level up with CW work, I worked with Zions Bank, had the social media influencer role, and I aligned with a lot of great women and businesses throughout Park City, Salt Lake and silicon slopes, those women became friends and she Tech was founded by one of my friends, and I became involved in that about five years ago, as a mentor, a role model, an influencer, helping young girls learn that there is opportunity in The tech space. Technology space for women and girls learning and their worth, their their value and creating opportunities for them. And so through the social media aspect, I have been able to share to share the great work of she tech and women tech Council and some other brands that I've aligned with to help young girls see other women leaders actively working and living in these different capacities. So all of the work that I do goes hand in hand with this mentoring space and helping our youth see their potential. Chi Tech, I was one of 30 who received that award this year, I was humbly honored to be a recipient of the award. I knew the work I was doing was focused on my love to change the world for my daughter and make the world a better place for her, her friends and ultimately, all children. I just didn't realize how far reaching my impact was until I received the email notifying me of this. Impact Award, and when I stood on stage with all these other champions, champions, champion champions, championing change and this trajectory of our world. It just reinforced all of the work I have done and the profound impact it's having on our youth today, and it's remarkable to like. I can't, I can't express the depth it has, because it's so far reaching, and it's something beyond my wildest dreams that I've created through my work, through all these different intersections of strategic marketing and social media brand work and leading by

Cynthia Washington 56:16

good and using my influence for good. And it's just truly amazing to see that I've helped 1000s of teenage girls understand their potential, their value and their worth, knowing that there's so many different possibilities in the tech space for them to learn, grow and do

Michael Hingson 56:47

well, congratulations on winning the award. That's a that's a cool thing, and obviously you're making a big difference.

Cynthia Washington 56:57

Thank you so much. I'm still so humbled, and I keep having to ground myself because I never expected to be in this moment. I simply was a mom on a mission to change the trajectory for my daughter, and receiving this award was something I never expected, and I keep ground, grounding myself, because I just I'm so humbly honored to have received it, and to have come to this, this elevated level of where I'm at in my current life, by giving up everything, I became something so much bigger and better than I ever expected or or planned for myself, and it's profound to me, and I just have to constantly ground myself and remind myself like that it's it's okay to be here.

Michael Hingson 58:17

That's what gratitude can do, and that's what gratitude obviously does for you, because you you clearly exhibit a lot of gratitude in in all that you say and all that you do. And I think that's extremely important. People really should think a little bit more about gratitude than they then they typically do. But you know, it is something that that clearly you have put in the forefront of of your being. You do a lot with social media. And tell me a little bit more about about that as we move forward here and get close to wrapping up.

Cynthia Washington 58:57

Well, yes, I do do a lot on social media, but before I answer that question, you found me through social media, and I want you to share a little bit about how you discovered me knowing that you're unable to see a lot of the content I create. So how were you able to find me? And then I'll answer that question. Tell me what intrigued you

Michael Hingson 59:31

when you say not see the content, like, What do you mean?

Cynthia Washington 59:36

Well, you have a blindness, vision impairment, correct,

Michael Hingson 59:46

not an impairment, but that's okay, but, but what is it that I don't see exactly?

Cynthia Washington 59:52

How do you see my social media content for you to be able to find.

Michael Hingson 1:00:00

I use a piece of software that verbalizes whatever comes across the computer screen, so hearing the the text, listening to what your profile on LinkedIn says about you and so on, is all just as straightforward for me as it is for you, and to describe that in great detail would be like me asking you how you do what you do. It's what we grow up learning. The reality is, blindness isn't the problem. That's why I said it's not an impairment, because people always think about blindness as a visual impairment. Well, visually, I'm not different because I'm blind and I'm not impaired because I am blind, if, if the reality is impairment has nothing to do with it, and we really need to get away from thinking that someone is less than someone else because they may not have the same senses that that we do. And while I don't necessarily have eyesight, I have other gifts that I've learned to maximize, and probably the greatest gift of all, is that I don't happen to be light dependent like you are. The reality is that for you, when there's a power failure or something that causes all the lights and everything to go out, you scramble looking for an iPhone or a smartphone or a flashlight or something to bring light in, because we spent a lot of time bringing light on demand. To you ever since the light bulb was invented, I don't have that problem. The power goes out, doesn't bother me a bit. The reality is we've got to get away from this idea of thing that somebody is impaired because they don't have some things that we do. There are a lot of ways to get information, and eyesight is only one of them.

Cynthia Washington 1:01:48

I love that, and that's exactly why I wanted you to explain that, because I think that's super important as we discuss unstoppable mindset. I think that's a critical necessity for society to learn and to know, and because you were able to find me using these great resources that you have and the work I'm putting forth intrigued you to bring me into this meeting with you. So I am, again, so grateful that we have this opportunity to collaborate in this space, bringing both our good works together to Oh, help level up awareness that there are no limits. We are unstoppable. Glasses shattering everywhere because of people like you and me who are doing this good work to change the trajectory of the world, and social media for me, has given me the opportunity to do what you do in this podcast.

Michael Hingson 1:03:14

If you want people to be able to reach out to you and interact with you, how best can they do that

Cynthia Washington 1:03:22

the like you did through LinkedIn is great. That's how I do receive most of my work is through LinkedIn. People find me there and will message me through then, LinkedIn, what?

Michael Hingson 1:03:43

What's your LinkedIn name or your house?

Cynthia Washington 1:03:47

Cynthia Washington. Okay, that's easy, yes. Cynthia Washington, Park City, Salt Lake City, will get you to me. Another outlet is through Instagram. I'm little bit more hesitant to reply to the direct messages on Instagram. I do try to filter a lot of my content and screen things. So I do trust LinkedIn a little bit more. As far as the messaging component is concerned, also, I have provided you with my email which you're happy I'm happy for you to share. Okay, so any of those three means will get you connected to me. I do not have a website. As I said, everything is organic, authentic and word of mouth. My Plate is really full, and so I like to be selective of the projects I bring on in hopes that they give back to society in one way or another. Lacher, I'm not doing it to chase every deal or get a bunch of free product. I do it with a very intentional Spirit giving back with gratitude that karmic effect goes a long way well.

Michael Hingson 1:05:18

I hope people will reach out. You clearly have a lot to offer, and I think you've you've given us a lot to think about today, which I appreciate a great deal. So thank you very much for that. I want to thank all of you who are listening or watching our podcast today, or maybe you're doing both listening and watching. That's okay too. I want to thank you for being here with us. Love to get your thoughts. If you have any messages or our ideas you want to pass along. Love it if you'd reach out to me. Michael, H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, you can and I would appreciate it if you would, wherever you're listening or watching this podcast, give us a five star rating, and please give us a review. We really value your reviews highly, and I would appreciate it if you would do that. If you know of anyone Cynthia, you as well, who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please let us know. Introduce us. We're always looking for people to come on to help show everyone that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are. But again, Cynthia, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful. Can you believe we've been doing this over an hour already?

Cynthia Washington 1:06:37

Oh no, not at all. Oh yeah. Well, I am so forever grateful again, and as we head into the holidays, just remind everyone to live with a spirit of gratitude, be kind to others. And there are no limits. It's time to shatter those limits that we have created as barriers and Live limitless with an unstoppable mindset.

Michael Hingson 1:07:09

Episode 395 – Finding an Unstoppable Voice as a Neurodivergent Author with Jennifer Shaw

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0000

What struck me most in my conversation with author Jennifer Shaw is how often we underestimate the power of understanding our own story. Jennifer grew up sensing she was different, yet never had the words for why. Hearing her share how a late diagnosis of autism and ADHD finally helped her trust her own voice reminded me how important it is for all of us to feel seen. As she talked about raising two autistic sons, finding healing through writing, and learning to drop the shame she carried for so long, I found myself thinking about the many people who still hide their struggles because they don’t want to be judged.

I believe listeners will connect deeply with Jennifer’s honesty. She shows that creativity can grow out of the very things we once thought were flaws, and that resilience is something we build each time we choose to show up as ourselves. This episode reminded me why I created Unstoppable Mindset: to hold space for stories like hers—stories that help us see difference as strength and encourage us to build a world where every person is valued for who they truly are.

Highlights:

01:33 – See how early misunderstandings can shape the way someone learns to navigate people and communication.06:53 – Learn how masking and observation influence the way neurodivergent adults move through the world.11:21 – Explore how parenting experiences can open the door to understanding your own identity.12:20 – Hear how finally naming a lifelong pattern can shift shame into clarity and self-trust.20:46 – Understand why self-doubt becomes a major barrier and how stepping forward can change that story.25:57 – Discover how personal journeys can naturally weave themselves into creative work and character building.29:01 – Gain insight into why creative careers grow through endurance rather than rapid wins.30:55 – Learn how creative practices can act as grounding tools when life becomes overwhelming.33:20 – Explore how willpower and environment work together in building real resilience.40:23 – See how focusing only on limitations can keep society from recognizing real strengths.45:27 – Consider how acceptance over “fixing” creates more space for people to thrive.46:53 – Hear why embracing difference can open a more confident and creative way of living.51:07 – Learn how limiting beliefs can restrict creativity and how widening your lens can unlock growth.59:38 – Explore how curiosity and lived experience fuel a deeper creative imagination.

About the Guest:

J. M. Shaw lives in Alberta, Canada, with her husband and two young children. She has been writing for most of her life, though it took years to find the courage to share her stories. What began as a childhood hobby evolved into a passion that, at times, borders on obsession—and is decidedly cheaper than therapy. Though initially interested in teaching and psychology, Shaw ultimately graduated and worked as an X-ray technologist—all the while continuing to write in secret. Through it all, storytelling remained her constant: a sanctuary, a compass, and a way to make sense of the chaos. Her early work filled journals and notebooks, then spilled into typewritten manuscripts and laptop hard drives—worlds crafted from raw imagination and quiet observation.

A pivotal turning point came in 2019, when Shaw was diagnosed with autism and ADHD. The news brought clarity to a lifetime of feeling “too much” or “too different.” She realized that her intense focus, emotional depth, and ability to live inside fictional worlds weren’t flaws—they were the gifts of a neurodivergent mind. Her unique insights allow her to create characters with emotional realism, while her mythical creatures, societies, and belief systems draw inspiration from both history and modern culture. In many ways, her fantasy series mirrors her own arc: navigating society through the lens of autism, embracing her differences, and discovering where she belongs.

Shaw’s fiction blends magic with meaning, often exploring themes of identity, resilience, and redemption. Though her worlds are fantastical, her stories remain grounded in human truths. Her characters—flawed, searching, and sometimes broken—feel eerily real. Literary influences like Stephen King, Margaret Atwood, and Dean Koontz helped shape her genre-bending style, while her mother—an English major and blunt-but-honest critic—instilled in her a love of classic literature and the drive to become a better storyteller.

In 2021, Shaw released The Ascension, the first book in her fantasy-adventure series, The Callum Walker Series. Since then, she’s published three sequels, with dozens of short stories, poems, and manuscripts still in her vault. Though painfully introverted, she attends book signings and author talks to connect with readers—shedding ecstatic tears as they share how deeply her work resonates with them. While these moments can be overwhelming, they remind her why she writes: to create stories that matter.

Currently, Shaw is working on the fifth installment of The Callum Walker Series, expanding the emotional arcs and raising the stakes in her imagined realms. Alongside it, she is developing a new dystopian-adventure that blends inequality, rebellion, love, and moral complexity. Whether indie or traditionally published, her dream remains the same: to see her books in bookstores across the world and to keep building worlds for those who need them most.

Ways to connect with Jennifer**:**

Website: www.jmshawauthor.com

Facebook: jmshawauthor

Instagram: @jmshaw_author

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And we put it that way, because a lot of diversity people never address the issue of or include people with disabilities in their world, and some of us confront that, and I specifically take the approach you either are inclusive or you're not. There's no partial inclusion. So we put inclusion at the first part of unstoppable mindset, then diversity and the unexpected, which is everything that doesn't have anything to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most things, but it makes it kind of fun anyway, and we're glad that you're here, wherever you happen to be listening or watching, the Podcast. Today, we get to chat with Jennifer Shaw. Jennifer is an author, and she's been a a closet writer part of her life, but but she came out of the closet and has been publishing, which is cool, and she has a lot of other stories to tell, unstoppable in a lot of different ways. So I'm sure we're going to have a lot of fun talking today, and I hope that you learn some interesting and relevant concepts to your world. So Jennifer, thanks for being here and for being on unstoppable mindset. We really appreciate you coming.

Jennifer Shaw 02:36

Thank you so much for having me. Well,

Michael Hingson 02:38

why don't we start at the beginning, and why don't you tell us about kind of the early Jennifer, early Jennifer,

Jennifer Shaw 02:44

so I was very much of an introvert, very shy. I didn't really know how to talk to people. Kind of was trying to figure things out, and was having, was having a hard time figuring things out, and became more of a misfit. And I needed a way of dealing with, you know, my misunderstandings. I came became very much a people watcher, and for a while, that worked, but I needed an outlet in order to be able to analyze and sort out my ideas. And then my mom bought me a typewriter because, you know, I'm that old. And I started, I know about typewriters? Yeah, and I started writing as a hobby, and then it became a passion and obsession. Now it's just cheaper than therapy. And in 2019 I was diagnosed with autism and ADHD, which makes total sense, looking back at all the things that I used to do and the way I felt, it makes sense now, and I thought I never shared any of my stories, but I've been writing by that point for over 30 years. And I thought, well, maybe writing is my special interest. And I got brave, and I sent off my first book in my series. It's now published because I just finished that one at the time to an editor, and I'm thinking, well, the worst they can say is it sucks. And my editor came back and said, This doesn't suck. You should publish. So two years later, I did

Michael Hingson 04:05

cool well. So of course, one of the big questions, one of the most important ones of the whole day, is, do you still have the typewriter? No, yeah, I know. I don't know what happened to mine either. It is. It has gone away somewhere.

Jennifer Shaw 04:19

Mine was really cool. It was a plug in electrical one had a white out strip and everything. I gave a presentation for grade five classroom, and I told them, I got started on a typewriter, and then I was going into how I got published, and different aspects of fiction writing and and plots and character development, that stuff and that, after an hour and a half, the only questions they had to ask was, what's a typewriter?

Michael Hingson 04:43

Typewriter, of course, if you really want to delve into history and be fascinating to learn the history of the typewriter, do you know it?

Jennifer Shaw 04:51

No, I do not.

Michael Hingson 04:53

So the among other things, one of the first ways a typewriter was developed and used was. Was a countess in Europe who had a husband who didn't pay much attention to her. So she had a lover, and she wanted to be able to communicate with her lover. She is blind, and so she couldn't just have people write down messages and relay them and all that. So somebody invented this machine where she could actually create messages with a keyboard a typewriter, and then seal them, and she could get her ladies in waiting, or whoever to to give them to her, her lover. That was her way to communicate with with him, without her husband finding out. Yeah, so the ultimate note taker, the ultimate note taker, I learned to type. Well, I started to learn at home, and then between seventh and eighth grade, I took some summer school courses, just cuz it was something to do, and one of them was typing, and I didn't even think about the fact that all the other kids in the class kept complaining because they didn't know what letters they were pushing because there were no labels on the keys, which didn't bother me a bit. And so I typed then, I don't know. I assume it still is required out here, but in the eighth grade, you have to pass a test on the US Constitution, and for me to be able to take the test, they got the test transcribed into Braille, and then I brought my typewriter in and typed the answers. I guess. I don't know why they didn't just have me speak to someone, but I'm glad they did it that way. So it was fine. I'm sure it was a little bit noisy for the other kids in the class, but the typewriter wasn't too noisy. But, yeah, I typed all the answers and went from there. So that was kind of cool, but I don't remember what happened to the typewriter over the years.

Jennifer Shaw 06:52

I think it gave way to keyboards and, you know, online writing programs.

Michael Hingson 06:58

Yeah, I'm sure that it did, but I don't know what happened to my typewriter nevertheless, but oh well. But yeah, I did, and keyboards and everything else. But having used the typewriter, I already knew how to type, except for learning a few keys. Well, even mine was a manual typewriter. And then there was a Braille typewriter created by IBM. It's called the Model D, and it was like a regular typewriter, except instead of letters on the the keys that went up and struck the paper, it was actually braille characters and it and it struck hard enough that it actually created braille characters on the paper. So that was, that was kind of fun. But, yeah, I'm sure it all just kind of went to keyboards and everything else and and then there were word processors, and now it's just all computers.

Jennifer Shaw 07:53

Yep, yep. We're a digital age.

Michael Hingson 07:55

Nowadays. We are very much a digital age. So you went to to regular school and all that, yep,

Jennifer Shaw 08:04

and I was never like I was it was never noticed that I was struggling because, I mean, for the most part, women tend to mask it. That's why less, fewer women are diagnosed than men. I just internalized it, and I came up with my own strategies to deal with things, and unless you were disruptive to class or you had some sort of learning difficulties and stuff, you never really got any attention. So I just sort of disappeared, because I never struggled in school and I was just the shy one. Yeah, taught myself how to communicate with other kids by taking notes of conversations. I have notebooks where I'm like, okay, so and so said this. This was the answer, okay, there was a smile. So that must be what I need to say when somebody says that. So I developed a script for myself in order to be able to socialize.

Michael Hingson 08:55

And that was kind of the way you you masked it, or that was part of masking it.

Jennifer Shaw 09:00

That was part of masking it. I spent a lot of time people watching so that I could blend in a lot more, kind of trying to figure it out. I felt like I was an alien dropped off on this planet and that somebody forgot to give me the script. And, you know, I was trying to figure things out as I went.

Michael Hingson 09:15

Well, maybe that's actually what happened, and they'll come back and pick you up someday, maybe, but then you can beat up on them because they didn't leave a script.

Jennifer Shaw 09:25

Yeah, you guys left me here with no instructions,

Michael Hingson 09:27

or you were supposed to create the instructions because they were clueless. There's that possibility, you know,

Jennifer Shaw 09:33

maybe I was like, you know, patient X or something,

Michael Hingson 09:37

the advanced model, as it were. So you, you went through school, you went through high school, and all that. You went to college.

Jennifer Shaw 09:45

I did, yes, yeah, I went through I was going to be a teacher, but they were doing the teacher strike at that time, and that I was doing my observation practicum. And I was like, I don't know if that's something I want to go into. I'm glad I didn't. And. Instead, you know, I mean, I had an interest in psychology, and I took some psychology classes, and loved them. It intrigues me how the mind works. But I ended up going into a trade school I went to in Alberta. It's the, it's called an innate northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and I became an x ray technologist, and I worked in that field for many years.

Michael Hingson 10:22

Did you enjoy it? I loved it. I love that I

Jennifer Shaw 10:25

didn't have to, you know, like, yes, you have to work in an environment where you got other people there, but you can still work independently and, and I loved that. And I love this. I've always been very much a science math geek, you know, things numbers. I have a propensity for numbers and and then science and math, just, you know, they were fun.

Michael Hingson 10:45

Yeah, well, I agree, having a master's degree in physics and I have a secondary teaching credential, so I appreciate what you're saying. It's interesting. I would think also, as an x ray technician, although you had to give people instructions as to where to position themselves and all that. It wasn't something where you had to be very conversationally intensive, necessarily,

Jennifer Shaw 11:07

yeah, and I mean, people didn't, you know, I didn't spend a lot of time with each patient, and I was able to mask a lot of my awkwardness and stuff and short short bursts, so nobody really noticed. And, you know, I had fun with the science part of it. And, yeah, it just it was never noticed. Although the social aspects, interacting with co workers and stuff, was bit difficult after, you know, outside of the actual tasks, that was interesting.

Michael Hingson 11:38

I have a friend who just recently graduated from school learning to be an x ray technician. And I tease her all the time and tell her, you got to really be careful, though, because those x rays can slip out of your grasp if you're not careful, that you just never know when one's going to try to sneak away. So you better keep an eye on them and slap it when it does. Yeah, go catch them. I sent her an email last week saying, I just heard on the news an x ray escape from your hospital. What are you doing to catch it? They're fun, yeah, but, but you, but you did all of that, and then, so how long were you an x ray technician

Jennifer Shaw 12:22

a little over 10 years I retired once my kids were born,

Michael Hingson 12:27

okay, you had a more, well, a bigger and probably more important job to do that way,

Jennifer Shaw 12:36

yes, and I mean, like at the time, we didn't know that both my boys would be, you Know, diagnosed on the spectrum, both of them have anxiety and ADHD, but I just, I was struggling with with work and being a mom, and it, in all honesty, it was going to cost me more for childcare than it was for me to just stay home.

Michael Hingson 13:00

How did your so when they were diagnosed, what did your husband think

Jennifer Shaw 13:04

my husband was? He says, okay, okay, I get it. Yeah, I can see those things and stuff like that. And I know when from my perspective, because both my boys went through the ADOS assessment, my thoughts were, those are the things you're looking for, because I've done those my whole life. And then, so, like, my oldest was diagnosed in like, June or July, and I received my diagnosis that September, and then my littlest guy was diagnosed the following year.

Michael Hingson 13:29

You went through the assessment, and that's how you discovered it. Yep. So how old were you when they when they found it?

Jennifer Shaw 13:35

Oh, I don't know if I want to give ages. I was just under 40. Okay.

Michael Hingson 13:40

Well, the reason I asked was, as we talked a little bit about before we actually started the recording, I've had a number of people on the podcast who learned that they were on the spectrum. They were diagnosed later in life. I've talked to people who were 40 and even, I think, one or two above, but it just is fascinating to learn how many people actually were diagnosed later in life. And I know that part of it has to do with the fact that we've just gotten a lot smarter about autism and ADHD and so on, which which helps. So I think that that makes a lot of sense that you can understand why people were diagnosed later in life, and in every case, what people have said is that they're so relieved they have an answer they know, and it makes them feel so much better about themselves.

Jennifer Shaw 14:36

Yeah, I know for myself, once I was diagnosed, I've never really kept it a secret. I've, you know, I I've given myself permission to ask questions if I'm confused, and then it opens up the doors for other people, like I will, I will tell them, like some things I don't understand, like I don't understand sarcasm. It's difficult. I can give it I don't understand when somebody is being sarcastic to me, and there's some idioms. And jokes that I that just they weigh over my head, so I'm giving myself permission to ask if I'm confused, because otherwise, how will I know?

Michael Hingson 15:11

Yeah, it's it's pretty fascinating, and people deal with it in different ways. It's almost like being dyslexic, the same sort of concept you're dealing with, something where it's totally different and you may not even understand it at first, but so many people who realize they're dyslexic or have dyslexia, find ways to deal with it, and most people never even know, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Shaw 15:39

Well, I mean, I've like, not this year, but within the last couple years, I've been diagnosed with dyslexia as well. And then come to find out that my father had it as well, but he just never mentioned. It just never came up.

Michael Hingson 15:51

Yeah, yeah. It's, it's pretty fascinating. But human the human psyche and the human body are very malleable, and we can get creative and deal with a lot of stuff, but I think the most important thing is that you figure out and you learn how to deal with it, and you don't make it something that is a negative in your life. It's the way you are. I've talked many times to people, and of course, it comes from me in part, from the being in the World Trade Center. Don't worry about the thing you can't control. And the fact is that autism is there, you're aware of it, and you deal with it, and maybe the day will come when we can learn to control it, but now at least you know what you're dealing with. And that's the big issue, yeah.

Jennifer Shaw 16:39

And I think it like you hit it on the nail on the head, is like, the reason so many adults are being diagnosed is because we know more about it. I distinctly remember somebody asking me shortly after I was diagnosed, and they asked me specifically, oh, what's it like to be autistic? And I was like, I don't know. What's it like to not be. It's all I know. You tell me what it's like to not be, and I can tell you what it's like to be. Says it's not something you can really, yeah, people just can't experience it, I guess.

Michael Hingson 17:08

Well, people ask me a lot, what's it like to be blind, and what is it like that you're just live in the dark? Well, I don't live in the dark, and that's something that is so unfortunate that we believe that eyesight is the only game in town, or most people do, and the reality is, blindness isn't about darkness. So I don't see, all right, the problem with most people is they do see, and that doesn't work for them. When suddenly the power goes out and you don't have lights anymore. Why do you distinguish one from the other? It's so unfortunate that we do that, but unfortunately, we collectively haven't taught ourselves to recognize that everyone has gifts, and we need to allow people to to manifest their gifts and not negate them and not demean the people just because they're different than us.

Jennifer Shaw 17:56

Yeah, and I know I've had I've had people tell me it's like, oh well, you don't look autistic, and I'm like, I don't know what you would expect me to look like, but I've honestly tried really hard not to think of of the autism and the ADHD. I tried really hard not to look at it as a disability. In my own life, I've looked at it as it's just my brain is wired differently. Yeah, I've explained this to my boys. It's, you know, our minds are always open. We can't filter anything that's coming in. And it's like our computer, you know, our brain, if you imagine our brain as being a computer, we've got every possible tab open trying to perform a million different tasks. We've got music playing here, video playing here. We're trying to search for this file. We can't find anything. And then every now and then, it just becomes very overwhelming, and we get the swirly wheel of death and we have to restart, yeah, but we can multitask like nobody's business until then well, and

Michael Hingson 18:45

the reality is, most people can learn to do it, although focusing on one thing at a time is always better anyway, but still, I hear what you're saying. My favorite story is a guy wanted to sell me life insurance when I was in college, and I knew at the time that people who were blind or had other disabilities couldn't buy life insurance because the insurance companies decided that we're a higher risk. It turns out that they weren't making that decision based on any real evidence or data. They just assumed it because that's the way the world was, and eventually that was dealt with by law. But this guy called up one day and he said, I want to sell you life insurance. Well, I thought I'd give him a shot at it, so I invited him over, and he came at three in the afternoon, and I didn't tell him in advance. I was blind, so I go to the door with my guide dog at the time Holland, and I opened the door, and he said, I'm looking for Mike Hinkson. And I said, I'm Mike hingson. You are. I'm Michael Hinkson. What can I do for you? Well, you didn't sound blind on the telephone. And I'm still wondering, what are the heck does that mean?

Jennifer Shaw 19:52

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's just, I think, you know, it's a lack of understanding. And. You know, the inability to put yourself in somebody else's shoes?

Michael Hingson 20:03

Well, I think we have the ability, but we just don't, we don't learn how to use it. But you're right. It's all about education. And I think, personally, that all of us are teachers, or should be or can be. And so I choose not to take offense when somebody says you don't sound blind, or makes other kinds of comments. I i may push a little hard, but I can't be angry at them, because I know that it's all about ignorance, and they just don't know, and we as a society don't teach which we should do more of

Jennifer Shaw 20:38

Yeah, I know that once I made, you know, like I posted on my, you know, with talk to my friends and stuff about the fact that I have autism and that I just, I'm learning about it myself as well. I've had a lot of people come to me and ask me, it's like, well, what, what? What did you notice? How did you find out? And I think I might be on the spectrum. And there's, you know, and it's amazing how many people came out of the woodwork with queries about, you know, questions. And I was like, This is awesome. I can answer questions and educate, yeah,

Michael Hingson 21:09

well, and it's true, and the only way we can really learn and deal with some of the stuff is to have a conversation, and to have conversations with each other and be included in the conversation, and that's where it gets really comfortable, or uncomfortable is that people don't want to include you. Oh, I could end up like that person, or that person just clearly isn't, isn't as capable as I because they're blind or they have autism. Well, that's just not true, yeah, and it's, it's a challenge to deal with. Well, here's a question for you. What do you think is the biggest barrier that that people have or that they impose on themselves, and how do you move past it?

Jennifer Shaw 21:52

I think that the biggest barrier that people pose on them, pose on themselves, is doubting whether or not they're worthwhile and and I know I did the lat I did that for many years and and, like I said, it wasn't until I received my diagnosis, I thought maybe, maybe, you know, I won't know unless I try. So I got out of my comfort zone, and I surpassed my doubt, and I tried, and then I come to find out that, okay, I should publish. And I've had some, you know, I've had a lot of fun doing that, and I've seen some success in that as well.

Michael Hingson 22:24

One of my favorite quotes goes back to the original Star Wars movie Yoda, who said there is no try, do or do not. Don't try. I think that's absolutely true. Do it. That's why I also totally decided in the past to stop using the word failure, because failure is such an end all inappropriate thing. All right, so something didn't work out. The real question, and most of us don't learn to do it, although some of us are trying to teach them, but the biggest question is, why did this happen? What do I do about it? And we don't learn how to be introspective and analyze ourselves about that, I wrote a book that was published last year called Live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith, and it's all about teaching people from lessons I learned from my dogs about how to control fear and how to really step back when things happen and analyze what you do, what you fear, what you're about and how you deal with it. But there's no such thing as failure. It's just okay. This didn't work out right. Why? Why was I afraid? Or why am I afraid now? And what do I do about it? And we just don't see nearly as much analytical thinking on those kinds of subjects as we should.

Jennifer Shaw 23:49

Yeah, wasn't there a quote somewhere? I can't remember who it was. I think was Edison, maybe, that he didn't fail 99 times. He found 99 times how not to do it right, and he just kept going and going and going until we got it right. Yeah. The other

Michael Hingson 24:04

one I really like is the quote from Einstein that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing every time and expecting something different to happen. I think

Jennifer Shaw 24:12

they said that at my graduation from high school, you'll get what you got, yeah,

Michael Hingson 24:19

and you can decide to look for alternatives and look for ways to do it better, but, but it is, I think you're I don't know if it was Edison, but I'm going to assume it was who said that, but I think you're right, and it certainly makes a lot of

Jennifer Shaw 24:35

sense, yes, yeah, and I've tried to live by embracing, because I've told this to my kids as well, and I've embraced the idea that, you know, we learn better from our mistakes than we do from the things we did right,

Michael Hingson 24:49

although we could learn if we really thought about it, when we do something right and we go back and look at it and say, What could I have done to even make that better? And we usually don't do that well, that worked out well, so I don't have to worry about that. Well, exactly we should, you know,

Jennifer Shaw 25:07

2020 looking back and saying, Well, what would we have done if this had happened? We just sort of stop. It's like when you're looking for your keys in your house. Once you find them, you stop looking. You don't keep looking for possible places it could have been. You just stop the journey.

Michael Hingson 25:20

Or you don't look at why did I put them there? That's not where I usually put them.

Speaker 1 25:26

Yeah, exactly, yeah. So when

Michael Hingson 25:30

you discovered that you were on the spectrum, what did your husband think about

Jennifer Shaw 25:34

that? He thought it made sense. Um, that

Michael Hingson 25:37

explains a lot about you.

Jennifer Shaw 25:38

Yeah, a little bit might be on the spectrum as well. He might be ADHD, because he has a lot of the same traits as me. But he says, yeah, it's kind of not worth going and getting it checked out and stuff like that so

Michael Hingson 25:54

well, until he he wants to, then that probably makes sense.

Jennifer Shaw 25:59

And there's no reason. There's no reason. Yeah,

Michael Hingson 26:03

things go well, and that that's the big, important thing. But you look at at life, you look at what's going on, and you look at how you can change, what you need to change, and go forward Exactly. So tell me about your writing. You have, you have been writing a series. What did you do before the series? What was sort of the first things that you wrote that were published?

Jennifer Shaw 26:26

That I wrote a short story for in a classroom assignment, my teacher published it. Wrote a couple poems. I had a teacher, a different teacher published those. But this, the series that I've written is kind of my first foray into publishing and stuff. And then just prior to that, it was just writing stories for myself, or writing scenes that came to to mind that I wanted to explore, and a lot of them had to do with characters overcoming adversity, because that's how I felt. That was what was going on in my life,

Michael Hingson 26:57

and it was so what's the series about?

Jennifer Shaw 27:03

So it's a magic, fantasy action adventure, some supernatural suspense kind of all sprinkled in for good measure, because I get bored of my series is there's our world, our time, coexisting magical realm, but there's a veil that separates us, and we can't see across this veil because we don't have magic. But these creatures that do can and have and they've been the source of inspiration for our fairy tales and Monster stories. And then my main character, a young man by the name of Callum Walker, is born with the ability to use magic. He doesn't know why. He's trying to make the most of it. We do learn why as we go through the series, but he doesn't know. And because he has magic, he's able to cross this veil into this magical realm. And he's learning about this world. He's learning about the beings in it. Adventures ensue, and we follow him through the series, trying to figure out as he's trying to figure out who he is, where he belongs, because he's too magic for here, but to human care and then master these abilities to survive.

Michael Hingson 27:56

So has he figured out an answer to the question of why or where?

Jennifer Shaw 28:00

Not yet. No answers as we go, but he's learning more. Mostly it's he's learning to accept himself and to start to trust and open up. And, you know, instead of thinking that there must be something wrong with him, and that's why he has these abilities, he starts to think, Okay, well, what can I do with these abilities and stuff? So in a lot of ways, his journey mirrors mine

Michael Hingson 28:23

well, and he's asking questions, and as you ask questions, that's the most important thing you're willing to consider and explore, absolutely. So are these self published, or does a publisher publish them?

Jennifer Shaw 28:40

I'm indie, published through press company called Maverick first press.

Michael Hingson 28:44

Inc, have any of the books been converted to audio?

Jennifer Shaw 28:48

Not yet, but I am looking into it.

Michael Hingson 28:51

Some of us would like that I do read braille, and I could get a book in electronic form, and I can probably get it converted, but it'll be fun if you do get them into an audio format. I love magic and fantasy, and especially when it isn't too dark and too heavy. I've read Stephen King, but I've gotten away from reading a lot of Stephen King, just because I don't think I need things to be that dark. Although I am very impressed by what he does and how he comes up with these ideas, I'll never know.

Jennifer Shaw 29:20

Yeah, I know. I don't think that it's as dark as Stephen King, but it's certainly a little darker and older than Harry Potter series.

Michael Hingson 29:26

So, yeah, well, and and Harry Potter has been another one that has been certainly very good and has has encouraged a lot of kids to read. Yes and adults,

Jennifer Shaw 29:42

yeah, we don't all have to be middle grade students to enjoy a middle

29:46

grade book, right?

Michael Hingson 29:49

Oh, absolutely true. Well, so if you had to give one piece of advice or talk about experiences, to write. Writers who are trying to share, what would you what would you tell them?

Jennifer Shaw 30:05

I would say that writing and publishing, it's a marathon. It's not a race. Don't expect immediate success. You have to work for it. But don't give up. You know? I mean, a lot of times we tend to give up too soon, when we don't see results and stuff. But if you give up, you'll never reach the finish line if you continue going, you may, you know, eventually you'll reach the finish line, and maybe not what you expect, but you will reach that finish line if you keep going.

Michael Hingson 30:30

Yeah, we we are taught all too often to give up way too early. Well, it didn't work, so obviously it's not the right answer. Well, maybe it was the right answer. Most people aren't. JK Rowling, but at the same time, she went through a lot before she started getting her books published, but they're very creative. Yep, I would, I would still like to see a new series of Harry Potter books. Well, there is a guy who wrote James Potter his son, who's written a series, which is pretty good, but, you know, they're fun, yeah.

Jennifer Shaw 31:07

Oh, I mean, that's why we like to read them. We like to imagine, we like to, you know, put ourselves in the shoes of, you know, the superhero. And I think that we all kind of, you know, feel a connection to those unlikely heroes that aren't perfect. And I think that appeals to a lot of people.

Michael Hingson 31:27

I think it certainly does. I mean, that's clearly a lot of Harry Potter. He was certainly a kid who was different. Couldn't figure out why, and wasn't always well understood, but he worked at it, and that is something that we all can take a lesson to learn.

Speaker 1 31:45

Exactly yes. So

Michael Hingson 31:48

given everything that goes on with you, if the world feels overwhelming at some point, what kind of things do you do to ground yourself or or get calm again?

Jennifer Shaw 31:59

Well, writing is my self care. It's my outlet. It's therapy. Aside from writing, I I'm getting back into reading because I'm going to book signing events and talks and such, and everybody's recommending, oh, read this book, read this book, and I'm finding some hidden gems out there. So I'm getting back into reading, and that seems to be very relaxing, but I do go. I do have to step away from a lot of people sometimes and just be by myself. And I'll, I'll put my headphones on, and I'll listen to my my track. I guess it's not track anymore. It was Spotify. And I'll just go for a walk for an hour, let my mind wander like a video and see where it leads me, and then come back an hour later, and my husband's like, Oh, where'd you walk? Because, like, I have no idea, but you should hear the adventures I had, yeah,

Michael Hingson 32:44

both from what you read and what you thought

Jennifer Shaw 32:45

about, yeah, just the things going through my head. What? And then the same thing when I'm writing, I see it as a movie in my head, and I'm just writing down what I see a lot of times, long for the ride.

Michael Hingson 32:55

Yeah, your characters are writing it, and you're just there,

Jennifer Shaw 32:58

yeah, you know. And when I'm when I'm in the zone. I call those the zone moments. And I won't know what's going to happen until it starts to happen. And I'm writing a sentence, oh, I didn't know that was gonna happen. I want to see where this goes. And it'll take me to somewhere where I'm like, wow, that's an amazing scene. How could I, how did I think of that? Or, on the contrary, it'll take me somewhere and I'll be like, What is wrong with me? I know that came out of my head, but what is wrong with me? So, you know, it's a double edged sword,

Michael Hingson 33:26

but write them all down, because you never know where you can use them.

Jennifer Shaw 33:29

Oh, absolutely. I don't delete anything. I can just wind and then start again, see where it leads. And it never goes to the same place twice.

Michael Hingson 33:37

That's what makes it fun. It's an adventure. I don't know. I think there's an alien presence here somewhere.

Jennifer Shaw 33:44

Who knows? Maybe I'm the next step in evolution. Could

Michael Hingson 33:47

be or you come from somewhere else. And like I said, they put you down here to figure it out, and they'll come back and get you

Jennifer Shaw 33:57

well, but never know. There's so many things we don't understand. You know,

Michael Hingson 34:00

well, then that's true, but you know, all you can do is keep working at it and think about it. And you never know when you'll come up, come up with an answer well, or story or another story, right? So keep writing. So clearly, though, you exhibit a lot of resilience in a number of ways. Do you think resilience is something we're born with, or something that we learn, or both.

Jennifer Shaw 34:25

I think it's a little of both. You know, maybe we have a stronger determination or willfulness when we're born, but it can also be a part of our environment. You know, we develop things that we want to do. We develop desires and dreams and stuff. And you know the combination of the two, the you know, the willful resolve and the desire to dream and be better. And I think those two combined will drive us towards our our goals.

Michael Hingson 34:53

Now are your parents still with us? Yes. So what did they think when. You were diagnosed as being on the spectrum.

Jennifer Shaw 35:03

Um, I think my dad was more open to the idea. I don't think my mom believed it, but then she's kind of, she's kind of saying, like, okay, maybe, maybe it's, oddly enough, she was, you know, more open to the idea of me having ADHD than autism. And I just think there was just a lack of understanding. But as time has gone on, I think she sees it, not just in me, but I think she sees aspects of that in herself as well.

Michael Hingson 35:28

And in a sense, that's what I was wondering, was that they, they saw you grow up, and in some ways, they had to see what was going on. And I was wondering if, when you got an answer, if that was really something that helped them or that they understood?

Jennifer Shaw 35:46

Yeah, I I think so. Although I did internalize a lot of of my understandings and misconceptions about life, I internalized it a lot, and I was the annoying cousins because I just, you know, said the appropriate things at inappropriate times and didn't catch jokes and didn't understand sarcasm and and I was just the oddball one out. But I think now that my mom understands a little bit more about autism and ADHD, she's seeing the signs

Michael Hingson 36:13

well, and whether she understood it or not, she had to, certainly, as your mom, see that there was something going on. Well, I don't know my I'm whether she verbalized it or she just changed it out.

Jennifer Shaw 36:28

I think she was just, she was working two full time jobs raising five kids on her own. I think that there just wasn't enough time in the day to notice everything.

36:37

Yeah, well,

Michael Hingson 36:40

but it's always nice to really get an answer, and you you've accepted this as the answer, and hopefully they will, they will accept it as well. So that's a good thing.

Jennifer Shaw 36:54

Whether or not they accept it is up to them. I'm that's their choice. Yeah, yeah. It's their choice. The most important thing is that I'm understanding it.

Michael Hingson 37:04

Yeah, well, and then helps you move forward. Which is, which is a good thing? Yes. So do you think that vulnerability is part of resilience?

Jennifer Shaw 37:18

I think it's important to understand where we're vulnerable. It's like accepting your weaknesses. We all want to improve. We don't want to stay weak and vulnerable, but the only way to improve is to accept those and to understand those and to identify those so that we know where to improve. So I think that it is important.

Michael Hingson 37:38

I think it's crucial that we continue to work on our own ideas and attitudes and selves to be able to to move forward. And you're right. I think vulnerability is something that we all exhibit in one way or another, and when we do is that a bad thing? No, I don't think it should be. I think there are some people who think they're invulnerable to everything, and the reality is they're not

Jennifer Shaw 38:09

those narcissists. Yeah,

Michael Hingson 38:11

was getting there, but that's and that's exactly the problem. Is that they won't deal with issues at all. And so the fact of the matter is that they they cause a lot more difficulty for everyone. Yep, of course, they never think they do, but they do. Yeah.

Jennifer Shaw 38:30

I mean, if you don't accept the fact that you're not perfect and that you have weaknesses and vulnerabilities, then you're just it turns into you're just either denying it or you're completely ignorant. How do you

Michael Hingson 38:41

balance strength and softness? And because, you know when you're dealing with vulnerability and so on, and it happens, well, how do you, how do you bring all of it to balance?

Jennifer Shaw 38:50

Um, it's the yin and yang, right? Um, you know, the strength keeps you going, the softness keeps you open to accepting and learning.

Michael Hingson 38:59

Yeah, that makes sense. It gives you the opportunity to to go back and analyze and synthesize whatever you're thinking. Yes. Well, autism is, by the definitions that we face, considered a disability, which is fine, although my belief is that everybody on the planet has a disability, and for most people, as others have heard me say on this podcast, the disability that most people have is their light dependent, and they don't do well if suddenly the lights go out until they can find a smartphone or whatever, because the inventors, 147 years ago created the electric light bulb, which started us on a road of looking for ways to have light on demand whenever we wanted it and whenever we do want it, when that works, until suddenly the light on demand machine isn't directly available to us when light goes away. So I think that light on demand is a lovely thing, but the machines that provide it are. Only covering up a disability that most people have that they don't want to recognize.

Jennifer Shaw 40:05

And I'd also argue that the more dependent we become on technology, that the harder it is to adjust to, you know, the way we used to live. If you go to the grocery store, everything's automated. And if the power goes out at the grocery store, nobody knows how to count out change now, yeah,

Michael Hingson 40:22

they they cannot calculate on their own. I continue to work to be able to do that. So I like to to figure things out. People are always saying to me, How come you got the answers so quickly of how much change or how much to leave for a tip I practice, yeah, it's not magical. And the reality is, you don't always have a calculator, and a calculator is just one more thing to lug around. So why have it when you can just learn to do it yourself? Yeah?

Jennifer Shaw 40:49

Or we have a cell phone which has got everything on it.

Michael Hingson 40:52

Oh, I know, yeah, there is that too. But you know, the the thing about all of this is that we all have disabilities, is what I'm basically saying. But if you use disability in sort of the traditional sense, and by that I mean you have certain kinds of conditions that people call a disability, although I will submit absolutely that disability does not mean a lack of ability. But how do societal definitions of disability, kind of affect people more than the actual condition itself, whatever it is.

Jennifer Shaw 41:26

I think society as a whole tend to focus on the negatives and the limitations, and if you focus solely on those, then nobody can see beyond those to what a person can do, because there's a whole, you know, there's a whole lot out there that people can do. You can, you can learn to adjust to a lot of things. The brain is very malleable. And, you know, we're not just given one sense for one reason. You know, we have five senses, well, arguably more, depending on who you talk to, yeah, to feel out the world. And same thing with autism is, you know, I mean, I had a hard time those things that would come naturally to people, like socializing, learning to speak, even my son at the playground, he didn't know how to approach kids to ask him to play and but those things can be learned. They just have to spend the time doing it well.

Michael Hingson 42:19

And I hear you, do you think that autism is under the definition of disability?

Jennifer Shaw 42:26

I think it can be very debilitating. I think that, you know, and then some people suffer more severe. They're more ranges than than I do mine, but I do think that the brain can learn to adjust a lot, maybe not the same as everybody else, and there will be struggles and there will be challenges, and there'll be anxieties and and things is it is, in a way, a disability. It'll never go away. But I don't think it has to be debilitating

Michael Hingson 42:59

struggles and anxieties, but everyone experiences that in one way or another, and that's, of course, the point. Why should some of us be singled out?

Jennifer Shaw 43:07

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I do know, though, that with there's, I guess we call them an invisible disability, because I don't look autistic, I don't look ADHD, but I struggle inwardly. It's a lot more emotional. It's a lot more mental, you know, analyzing every conversation I've ever had. It's very exhausting and confusing, and it can lead to other things and stuff that, you know, I mean, I don't think everybody else goes around counting license plates obsessively, you know, adding up numbers on license plates and stuff. And if I don't, it can be very anxiety inducing. I don't think everybody else has to, you know, make notebooks worth of conversations to learn to talk to people and watch the world around them, to try to figure out how to act. I think for a lot of people, it comes naturally. And because I had to learn all those things on my own and stuff, it created a lot more anxiety than another person would have in that area, and life is already chaotic enough, you know, more anxiety on top of anxiety and such.

Michael Hingson 44:11

Yeah, but some of that we create ourselves and don't need to. And again, it gets back to the fact we all have different gifts, and so some people are much more socially outgoing, so they can do so many more things that seem like everyone should be able to do them. But again, not everyone has the same gifts. Yeah, I think that we need to recognize that. Sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say,

Jennifer Shaw 44:34

just like, not everybody has the same weaknesses, right? I learned. I think, you know, if we, if we learned to, you know, share the strengths that we have that might overcome somebody else's weaknesses and stuff. It would be a whole lot better place. Instead of trying to label everybody and segregate everybody based on their limitations, let's, let's look at their strengths and see which ones coordinate. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 44:56

How does HD? ADHD manifest itself?

Jennifer Shaw 45:00

Yeah, it's some, in a lot of ways, very similar to autism, and that's probably why it's now considered part of the autism spectrum. I have a difficult time focusing on things that I don't find intriguing, like, oh gosh, if I had to read a social studies textbook, I would go stark raving mad and fall asleep. And I've really hard time staying focused. Don't have to read the same paragraph 20 times, but you give me a textbook on physics, and I'm right in there, and I'll hyper focus for like, 12 straight hours, forgetting the world exists and don't eat, don't sleep, don't move, and I will just immerse myself in that. And then there's a difficult time regulating emotions so somebody gets upset about something for the most part. You know, you can calm yourself down and stuff like that. With autism and ADHD, it's really hard to regulate those emotions and come down from that hyper, hyper emotional state down to a normal state.

Michael Hingson 46:00

I can see that in a lot of ways, it can look very similar to to autism in terms of the way you're describing it. It makes, makes sense, yeah, which? Which is something one has to deal with. Well, if people stop trying to fix what makes us different? What could we do with the world? How would things be different?

Jennifer Shaw 46:22

I think the world be very interesting if we stopped trying to fix people and just started trying to accept people and see how, you know, like, I think that for one we would also be a lot more open to accepting people, but that would have to come first. And I think that would be amazing, because, you know, if we were all the same and we all tried to fit into the same mold, it's going to be a very boring place.

Michael Hingson 46:46

The thing that is interesting about what you just said, and the question really is, when we try to fix things, why do we need to fix things? What is it that's really broken? And that's of course, the big issue is that people make assumptions based on just their own experiences, rather than looking at other people and looking at their experiences. Is that really broken? As it goes back to like when I talk about blindness, yeah, am I broken? I don't think so. I do things differently. If I had been able to see growing up, that would have been nice. But you know what? It's not the end of the world not to and it doesn't make me less of a person, and you happen to be on the autism spectrum, that's fine. It would be nice if you didn't have to deal with that, and you could function and deal with things the way most people do. But there are probably advantages, and there's certainly reasons why you are the way you are, why I am the way I am. And so why should that be a bad thing?

Jennifer Shaw 47:48

I don't think it is. I mean, other than the fact that I would love to be, you know, not have to suffer with the stress and anxieties that I do, and the insecurities and the doubt and trying to figure out this world and where I belong and stuff, I wouldn't. I like the way my brain works. I like the way I think, you know, very What if, very out of the box, very creative mindsets. And I wouldn't change that for the world.

Michael Hingson 48:15

Yeah, and I think people really should be accepted the way they are. Certainly there are people who we classify as geniuses because they do something that we didn't think of, and it catches on, and it's creative. Einstein did it. I mean, for that matter, there's something that that Elon Musk has done that has created this vehicle that no one else created successfully before him. Now I'm not sure that he's the greatest business guy, because I hear that Tesla is not the most profitable company in the world, but that's fine. Or Steve Jobs and Bill Gates created things. Did they do it all?

Jennifer Shaw 48:56

Sorry, Sebastian Bach too. Yeah. I mean those prodigies, right?

Michael Hingson 49:01

And they didn't do they didn't do everything. I understand that Einstein wasn't the greatest mathematician in the world, but he was great at concepts, and he had other people who who helped with some of the math that he didn't do, but, but the reality is, we all have gifts, and we should be able to use those gifts, and other people should appreciate them and be able to add on to what they do. One thing I always told employees when I hired people, is my job isn't to boss you around because I hired you because you demonstrated enough that you can do the job I want you to do, but my job is not to boss you, but rather to use my skills to help enhance what you do. So what we need to do is to work together to figure out how I can help you be better because of the gifts that I bring that you don't have. Some people got that, and some people didn't.

Jennifer Shaw 49:50

Some people are just, they're less, you know, open minded. I think I don't know, like, less accepting of other people and less accepting of differences. And it's unfortunate. Passionate, you know, and that creates a lot of problems that, you know, they can't look beyond differences and to see the beauty behind it.

Michael Hingson 50:11

Yeah, and, and the fact of the matter is that, again, we were all on the earth in one way or another, and at some point we're going to have to learn to accept that we're all part of the same world, and working together is a better way to do it. Yeah, absolutely. How do we get there?

Jennifer Shaw 50:28

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe idealistic, you know, Star Trek society, or utopian society, you know. And maybe in 100 or 200 years, we'll get there. But if you think about 100 years ago, if you look at us 100 years ago, and then you think of all the technology that we have today, and that's in, like, one century is not a long time, given how long people have been on this planet. And look at all the things we've accomplished, technology wise, and look at all the great things that we have done, you know, and it's just imagine how many more, or how much, how much more we could do if we work together instead of working against each other.

Michael Hingson 51:06

Yeah, and that's of course, the issue is that we haven't learned yet to necessarily work together. To some, for some people, that gets back to narcissism, right? They, they're, they're the only ones who know anything. What do you do? But yeah, I hear you, but, but, you know, I think the day is going to come when we're going to truly learn and understand that we're all in this together, and we really need to learn to work together, otherwise it's going to be a real, serious issue. Hopefully that happens sooner than later,

Jennifer Shaw 51:39

yes, yeah, I don't think so, but it would be a nice to imagine what it would be like if it happened tomorrow.

Michael Hingson 51:47

Yeah, how much potential do you think is lost, not because of limitations, but, but rather because of how we define them?

Jennifer Shaw 51:58

I think we use limitations to set our boundaries, but by setting boundaries, we can never see ourselves moving past them, and nor do we try so. I think that setting limitations is hugely detrimental to our growth as as you know, creative minds.

Michael Hingson 52:18

I think also though limitations are what we often put on other people, and oftentimes out of fear because somebody is different than us, and we create limitations that that aren't realistic, although we try to pigeonhole people. But the reality is that limitations are are are also representations of our fears and our misconceptions about other people, and it's the whole thing of, don't confuse me with the facts.

Jennifer Shaw 52:51

Yes, yeah. And you know there's Yeah, like you said, there's these self limitations, but there's also limitations that we place on other people because we've judged them based on our understanding.

Michael Hingson 53:03

Yeah, and we shouldn't do that, because we probably don't really know them very well anyway, but I but I do think that we all define ourselves, and we each define who we are, and that gets back to the whole thing of, don't judge somebody by what they look like or or what you think about them. Judge people by their actions, and give people the opportunity to really work on showing you what they can do.

Jennifer Shaw 53:36

Absolutely, that's definitely a motto by which I've tried to live my life. I honestly don't know everybody out there. I mean, I don't think anybody does. And unless somebody gives me a reason or their behavior says otherwise, I'm going to assume that they're, you know, a good person, you know. I mean, if they, you know, if I assume this person is a good person, but maybe they smack me across face or take, you know, steal from me and stuff, then I'm going to judge those behaviors.

Michael Hingson 54:02

One of the things that I learned, and we talked about in my book live like a guide dog, is dogs, and I do believe this love unconditionally, unless something really hurts them, so that they just stop loving. But dogs love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between dogs and people is again, unless something truly has been traumatic for a dog. Dogs are more open to trust than we are. They don't worry about, well, what's this guy's hidden agenda, or why is this woman the way she is? The fact is that they're open to trust and they're looking to develop trusting relationships, and they also want us to set the rules. They want us to be the pack leaders. I'm sure there are some dogs that that probably are better than the people they're with, but by and large, the dog wants the person to be the pack leader. They want them to tell the dog, what are the rules? So. Every guide dog I've had, it's all about setting boundaries, setting rules, and working with that dog so that we each know what our responsibilities to the relationship are. And I think absolutely dogs can get that just as much as people do. They're looking for us to set the rules, but they want that, and the fact of the matter is that they get it just as much as we do. And if that relationship really develops, the kind of trust that's possible, that's a bond that's second to none, and we should all honor that we could do that with with each other too. Yeah, there are people who have hidden agendas and people that we can learn not to trust because they don't want to earn our trust either. They're in it for themselves. But I don't think that most people are that way. I think that most people really do want to develop relationships.

Jennifer Shaw 55:51

Yeah, and another aspect of dogs too, is they're very humble, you know, they they don't, I mean, they probably do have some, you know, some egos, but for the most part, they're very humble, and they don't dwell on the mistakes of their past. They live in the moment. And I love Yeah, no, go ahead. They do absolutely they do

Michael Hingson 56:14

one of the things that I learned after September 11, because my contacted the folks at Guide Dogs for the Blind about it, my diet, my guide dog was Roselle, and I said, Do you think this affected her, the whole relationship? And the veterinarian I spoke with, who was the head of veterinary services, the guide dogs asked, did anything directly threaten her? And I said, no, nothing did. He said, Well, there's your answer. The fact is, dogs don't do what if they don't worry about what might have been or even what happened if it didn't affect them? They they do live in the moment when we got home after the events on September 11, I took roselle's harness off and was going to take her outside. She would have none of it. She ran off, grabbed her favorite tug bone and started playing tug of war with our retired guy dog, Lenny. It was over for her. It was done.

Jennifer Shaw 57:06

It's finished, the journey's done, and I'm living in this moment now, yeah,

Michael Hingson 57:10

different moment. I'm not going to worry about it, and you shouldn't either, which was the lesson to learn from that. Yes, but the reality is that dogs don't do what. If dogs really want to just do what they need to do. They know the rules, like I said. They want to know what you expect, and they will deal with that. And by and large, once you set rules, dogs will live by those rules. And if they don't, you tell them that you didn't do that the right way. You don't do that in a mean way. There are very strong ways of positively telling a dog, yeah, that's not what the right thing was to do. But by the same token, typically, that doesn't really happen once they learn the rules. My guide dog, Alamo, and I, as I tell people with this dog like any dog. I think I took a really good year before we had developed enough of a trusting relationship that we really knew what each other was thinking and that we could function seamlessly as a team. And make no mistake, it is all about it being a team. People always say, well, your dog led you down the stairs to get out of the World Trade Center. Oh, a lot of the time we couldn't even have worked work the dog and harness because there were too many people on the stairs. So the harness was on her, but she had to walk it heel behind me, and I was holding on to a stair rail because it was the only way to get out. And you know, the reality is that guide dogs don't lead. They guide. Their job is to make sure that we walk safely, not to know where to go and how to get there exactly.

Jennifer Shaw 58:45

And, I mean, how would, how would your dog know to go out of the building? They're looking for they're looking to us for guidance as much as we are to them.

Michael Hingson 58:53

And not only how to get out of the building, but if you teach a dog a way to get out of the building, what if that way is blocked, you know? And the reality is, there were technically four ways to get out of the building, one of which was not available, and that was elevators, because there was fire, and we knew it, so couldn't use elevators because the fire got in the elevator cars, which it did, that would be the end of anybody in the elevators. The other three ways were three stairwells, and fortunately, we were 18 floors below where the planes hit, so we were in a good place to be able to get out and did that. But even so, there was a lot of fear on the stairs, and so I needed to keep Rozelle focused by constantly praising her and encouraging her and saying, what a good dog that also helps create more of a trusting relationship, because she knows I'm doing okay and I'm not worried about her because I'm telling her what a great job she's doing, just doing the things she does,

Jennifer Shaw 59:53

I would almost say that that need to calm her down forced you to stay calm Correct. That helped you. Do that as much as it did her like that need,

Michael Hingson 1:00:04

and it helped other people. I've had people who've come up to me years later and said, we entered the stairwell as you were walking by, and we followed you down the stairs because you were talking to your dog, and you guys were doing great. And if you could then so could we

1:00:16

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Michael Hingson 1:00:19

So how has your life experience shaped the way you tell the stories and the kinds of things you talk about? Because I'm sure that has to have an effect.

Jennifer Shaw 1:00:28

Yeah, well, like I said, my arcs and my character's journeys, a lot of it mirrors my own journey through society and through life and stuff. But, you know, I mean, I see things and I wonder what ifs, and any, any situation, I will wonder what ifs, and it gets my mind going. It keeps my mind moving. Life experience is awesome. And there's a lot of there's life is awesome. There's a lot of things out there that can spark ideas and creativity. And I do think that when we were talking before about resilience being whether it's built or we're born with it and stuff and life experience is one of those things that can, you know, help to nurture that resilience.

Michael Hingson 1:01:15

Yeah, do you think having a different way of experiencing the world gives you a deeper understanding of character when writing and reading

Jennifer Shaw 1:01:26

absolutely, yeah, I see I'm analyzing things a lot more than somebody else who, you know, conversations come easy to them. They wouldn't necessarily analyze every word, every body language, every facial feature. So I think that, because I have to do that, it allows me to understand my characters and understand that that's my way of understanding people, is by looking at all these other cues.

Michael Hingson 1:01:49

Do you think it's a better way or a different way? I don't

Jennifer Shaw 1:01:52

think it's better. I think it's just different. It's how I've managed.

Michael Hingson 1:01:57

Yeah, it's just the way you you look at things, and you've adapted your your writing to take advantage of that, which is cool. Yes, absolutely. Well, this has really been a lot of fun, needless to say, and I'm glad we had a chance to do it. If people want to reach out to you, how can they do that?

Jennifer Shaw 1:02:16

They can find everything they need on my website. JM Shaw, author.com I have an email, I have links to my good reads. I've got links to Instagram and Facebook, and they can see all of my books there, and there's links to them online as well.

Michael Hingson 1:02:31

So j, m Shaw, S, H, A, W, author.com Correct. I remembered it. Wow. I'm impressed. Well, that's great. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for being here with us. We really appreciate it. Please, wherever you're experiencing our podcast, give us a five star review. We value those very highly. And if you'd like to reach out to me, you can do so by going in and emailing me at Michael H i@accessibe.com M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and Michael hingson spelled M, I C H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s o n.com/podcast, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on This podcast. Who you think ought to be a guest, they probably should be. And we'd love you to give us an introduction. And Jennifer, that goes true for you as well. If you know anyone, we'd love to get introductions. We're always looking for more people to have on the podcast. But again, I just want to thank you for being here. This has absolutely been a lot of fun.

Jennifer Shaw 1:03:39

Well, thank you so much. I have a lot of fun. I mean, who doesn't want to go and talk about themselves?

Michael Hingson 1:03:42

About themselves, right? There you go. It's all about having fun, right? Yes, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 1:03:53

Episode 394 – Unstoppable Connection: Ghana, Guides and the Power of Story with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 12:00:00 -0000

Stories have a way of helping us recognize ourselves, and that’s exactly what happened in my conversation with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond. Nana shares what it was like to grow up in Queens, then suddenly move to a boarding school in Ghana, and how that experience shaped her identity in ways she’s still uncovering today. As Nana describes her path from writer to author, her years of persistence, and the curiosity that led to books like Powder Necklace and Blue, I felt a deep connection to her commitment to keep creating even when the process feels uncertain. We also explored trust, partnership, and the lessons my guide dogs have taught me—all ideas that tie into the heart of Nana’s storytelling. This conversation is an invitation to see your own life with more clarity, courage, and compassion.

Highlights:

00:00:10 – Step into a conversation that explores how stories shape courage and connection.

00:01:41 – See how early environments influence identity and spark deeper questions about belonging.

00:02:55 – Learn how a major cultural shift can expand perspective and redefine personal truth.

00:23:05 – Discover what creative persistence looks like when the path is long and uncertain.

00:27:45 – Understand what distinguishes writing from fully embracing authorship.

00:33:22 – Explore how powerful storytelling draws people into a moment rather than just describing it.

00:46:45 – Follow how curiosity about history can unlock unexpected creative direction.

00:59:31 – Gain insight into why treating a publisher as a partner strengthens both the work and the audience reach.

About the Guest:

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond is the author of Powder Necklace: A Novel, the award-winning children's picture book Blue: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky, the collection Relations: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices, and My Parents’ Marriage: A Novel. Tapped for her passion about Africa's rich fashion traditions and techniques, Brew-Hammond was commissioned by the curators of Brooklyn Museum's "Africa Fashion" exhibit to pen and perform an original poem for the museum's companion short film of the same name. In the clip, she wore a look from the made-in-Ghana lifestyle line she co-founded with her mother and sister, Exit 14. The brand was featured on Vogue .com. Every month, Brew-Hammond co-leads the Redeemed Writers Group whose mission is to write light into the darkness. Learn more about it here.Learn more at nanabrewhammond.com.

Ways to connect with Nana**:**

Instagram, Facebook and Threads: @nanaekuawriter

Twitter: @nanaekua

www.NanaBrewHammond.com

ORDER my new novel MY PARENTS' MARRIAGE
Read 2023 NCTE Award Winner & NAACP Image Award Nominee BLUE: A History of the Color as Deep as the Sea and as Wide as the Sky
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RELATIONS: An Anthology of African and Diaspora Voices ,

stories, essays & poems by new and established Black writers

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Exit 14 , all weather, uniquely designed, 100% cotton apparel sustainably made in Ghana

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:20

And a pleasant, Good day to you all, wherever you happen to be, I would like to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a conversation with Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond And Nana has a lot of interesting things to talk about. She's written books, she's done a variety of different things, and rather than me giving it all away, it'll be more fun to let her tell the stories and get a chance for us to listen to her. She is in Oakland, California, so she's at the other end of the state for me, and we were just comparing the weather. It's a lot colder where she is than where I live down here in Victorville, where today it's 104 degrees outside. And Nana, you said it was like, what, somewhere around 70. Yeah, it's 68 There you go. See lovely weather. Well, Nana, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here, and I want to thank you for taking the time to be with us.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 02:23

I feel the same way. Thank you for having me on your amazing show. And it's so wonderful to be in conversation with you.

Michael Hingson 02:30

Well, I'm glad we get a chance to spend some time together and we can, we can talk about whatever we want to talk about and make it relevant and interesting. So we'll do that. Why don't we start with what I love to do at the beginning of these is to talk about the early Nana growing up and all that. So take us back as close to the beginning as your memory allows.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 02:52

Oh gosh, as my memory allows. Um, I so I was born in Plattsburgh, New York, which is upstate near Montreal, Canada.

Michael Hingson 03:06

Been there. Oh, cool in the winter. I even crossed the lake in an icebreaker.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 03:12

But yeah, oh my gosh, wow. Okay, yeah. Bring back memories. Well, I was only there for till I was, like two years old. So, but I do, I have gone up there in the winter and it is cold. Yes, it is cold, yeah. So I was born there, but I grew up in New York City and had that really was sort of my life. I lived in New York, grew up in Queens, New York, and then at 12 years old, my parents decided to send me to Ghana to go to school. And that was sort of like a big, the biggest change of my life, like I know that there was a before Ghana and an after Ghana, Nana and so, yeah, wow.

Michael Hingson 04:02

So, so when was that? What year was that that you went to Ghana?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 04:06

That was 1990 August of 1990 actually.

Michael Hingson 04:11

So what did you think about going to Ghana? I mean, clearly that was a major change.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 04:15

Yeah, you know, I, you know, my parents are from Ghana originally. So when, you know, they would always talk about it. We, you know, back then phones, long distance phone calls to Ghana. I, you know, that was, that was the extent of my sort of understanding of Ghana, the food that we ate at home, etc. So going to Ghana was just sort of mind blowing to me, to sort of be crossing, you know, getting on a plane and all of that, and then being in the country that my parents had left to come to the United States, was just sort of like, oh, wow, connecting with family members. It was just, it was a lot. To process, because life was very, very, very, very different. So yeah, it was just sort of a wild eye opening experience about just the world and myself and my family that ultimately inspired me to write a book about it, because it was just, I just, it was a lot to process.

Michael Hingson 05:25

Why did they want you to go to to Ghana to study?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 05:30

Yeah, so in the 90s, in New York City or and in the late 80s, there was the crack epidemic was happening, and we, you know, I mean, I remember, we lived in a house in Queens, and when we would, you know, part of our chores was to sweep in front of the house, you know, rake the leaves, that kind of thing in the fall. And we would, all the time there would be crack files, you know, like as we're sweeping up, and I didn't get there where we were young. My sister was, you know, a teenager. I was 12, and my, you know, my younger brother had just been born. He was just like a, like, a little under a year old. And I think my parents just didn't feel that it was a safe place for us as kids to grow up. And so, yeah, they wanted to kind of give us an opportunity to get out of, you know, that environment for a while.

Michael Hingson 06:33

What did you think of it?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 06:35

I mean, you know, as a kid, you never want to leave what to you. So it was, I would say it was, it was, it was interesting. Because initially I loved it. I was like, I actually campaigned, you know, I was like, I really, you know, would like to stay in Ghana, but I didn't want to stay for, you know, the three years, which is what I what happened? I wanted to stay for maybe, like a year, kind of try it, you know, go to school for a year. I found it this really cool adventure, go to boarding school and on all of that. But my parents made the decision that we should just sort of ride it out and finish like I had to finish high school. And, yeah, so, so great for me.

Michael Hingson 07:25

So you were there for three years, yes. So by you were 12, so by 15, you had finished high

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 07:32

school, yeah, because the system there is different. It's it was at the time the British system. So it was like a form system where I saw I entered in form three, because it was, it wasn't quite the equivalent in the sense that I probably should have started in form two or form one, but I was also an advanced student, and and they, the way the system there works is you have to take a common entrance exam from primary school to get into secondary school. So it's very difficult to get into school midstream there. So we had to go through all of these hoops. And, you know, there was an opening in form three, and that was higher than my, you know, than where I should have been, but I was advanced, so I was able to get into that school that way. You did okay. I assume I did. I mean, I struggled, which was interesting, because I was a very, you know, good, strong student in the States, but I struggled mightily when I first got there, and throughout, it was never easy, but I was able to manage.

Michael Hingson 08:49

Now, did your sister also go to Ghana? She

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 08:52

did, and she was hopping mad.

Michael Hingson 08:55

How old was she when you were 12, she was

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 08:59

17, so she Okay, yeah, almost about to go to college. She was really excited about, like, that portion of life. And then it was like, okay, she's in Ghana. She was hopping mad.

Michael Hingson 09:13

Well, how long did she stay?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 09:16

Well, so she stayed for two years. Because what Ghana has is sort of like, at the time it was something called sixth form, which is, again, the British system. So it's sort of like a college prep in between the equivalent of that. So she basically did that in Ghana.

Michael Hingson 09:38

Okay, well, and your little brother didn't go to Ghana,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 09:44

not yet, not not yet. You

Michael Hingson 09:47

mean they didn't send him over at one year? No, okay, well, that's probably a good idea. Well, so looking back on it, what do you think about having spent three years in.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 10:00

Ghana, looking back on it, I think it was actually really, really good for me. I mean, it was that doesn't take away from the fact that it was very difficult. It was very, very challenging, not only academically. It was I was bullied really hard at this boarding school that I went to. The girls just kind of made my life hell. But what was amazing about it for me was that I had, I had exposure to Ghanaian culture in a way that I would never have had in the States. As I mentioned to you, Ghana was sort of that country over there when I lived in America. And you know, it existed as you know, family members coming to visit, long distance phone calls, the food that we ate, that you know, the accents that we had, things that made us different, and at the time, that was not cool. You know, as a kid, you just want to fit in and you don't want to be different. And going to Ghana was my opportunity to learn that, wow, I didn't have to be embarrassed or ashamed of that difference. There was so much to be proud of. You know, my family was, you know, a sprawling family, you know, my my grandmother owned a business, my grandfather owned a business, you know, it was, it was really, it was eye opening, just to sort of be in another environment. People knew how to, you know, pronounce my name, and I didn't have to, you know, just explain things. And that was really affirming for a 12 year old and a 13 year old when you're going through that, you know. So it was really good for me. And in Ghana is where I came to know Christ. I became a Christian, and it was something that spiritually, I was not really, I don't know, I just didn't really think about spiritual. I did on some level. But going to Ghana, it everything just felt so palpable. It was really like we're praying for this. And it happened, you know what I mean, like, yeah. It felt very Yeah. It was just a time in my life when life really felt very the mysteries of life really felt like they were open to me,

Michael Hingson 12:37

interesting and so you clearly gained a lot of insight and knowledge and experience over there that you were able to bring back with you when you came Yes, yes.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 12:55

When I returned to the States, I was just, I think of myself, I guess, as a weirdo. Like, when I came back, I just felt so weird because I couldn't really, fully, you know, connect with my friends, because I had missed out on three years of culture, you know. And you You don't realize how much culture means, like, until, like, you know, you don't have those references anymore. I didn't know the songs that were popular. I didn't, you know, know about, I forget, there was some sort of genes that were really popular while I was gone. I didn't know what they were. I didn't have a pair of them. So it was just sort of this, this interesting time. And I was also young, because I had finished high school, and I was 15, yeah, my friends were, you know, sophomores, yeah, you know, and I was beginning the process of looking into college. So it was just a really isolating time for me and I, but also, you know, interesting and I, again, I say it was, it was ultimately in the in the wash of it. I think it was good because it enabled me to sort of, I guess, mature in a way that enabled me to start college earlier. And, you know, sort of see the world in a much different way.

Michael Hingson 14:26

So when you went to college, what did you want to do? Or had you had you decided to start laying plans for a major and what you wanted to do post college,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 14:36

I did not know what I wanted to do. I kind of, I mean, I kind of thought I wanted to be a doctor. I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Like, all my life, growing up, I was like, I'm going to be a doctor. And I was a science student in Ghana, but I struggled mightily. But still, I went. I entered college with us. You know, the plans? To become a bio psychology major. And you know, I took two, three classes, well more than that, I did, like, a year of classes. And I was just like, This is not for me, not for me at all. But yeah, yeah. So it was, it was that was a little rough.

Michael Hingson 15:21

Things happen. So what did? What did you go off and do?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 15:25

Then I ended up majoring in political science and Africana Studies, and it was, I remember taking a political science class my freshman year, and I, my my professor was amazing, but it was, it was interesting to me. I think looking back now, being able to think about the world in a way that was sort of linking history and politics and culture together. And I think that was interesting to me, because I had just come from Ghana and had been exposed to, like, sort of this completely different culture, completely different political system, and, you know, kind of having that, I that thinking, or that wonderment of like, wow, you can Life can be so different somewhere else, but it's still life, and it's still happening, but also having that connection as an American to America and what's happening there. And so holding both of those things in my hands when I got to college, I think I was, I just what I was really sort of intrigued by the idea of studying politics and studying culture and society,

Michael Hingson 16:48

and that's what you did. Yes, I did. So you got a degree in political science.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 16:54

Yes, a double degree political science and Africana Studies.

Michael Hingson 16:57

Africana Studies, okay, and again, that that's probably pretty interesting, because the the Ghana influence had to help with the Africana Studies, and the desire to to do that, and you certainly came with a good amount of knowledge that had to help in getting that as a part of your major.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 17:16

Well, interestingly, my focus was on African American Studies, because I really growing up as an immigrant, like with immigrant parents, their understanding or their their thought process wasn't necessarily, I don't know they weren't. They didn't really raise us to think about race or being black, because their consciousness wasn't about that. It was they were immigrants. You know what? I mean, they weren't thinking about that. So I was actually quite curious, because I did grow up in America and I was black, but I didn't understand, you know, the history of America in that way. And I remember, actually, when I was in was it the third or maybe it was the second or third grade, or maybe it was fifth grade. I did a project on the Civil War, and I remember being so interested in it, because I had, I just didn't, you know, it wasn't. I was so fascinated by American history because I really wasn't. I didn't, I didn't understand it in the way that maybe somebody who wasn't the child of immigrants, you know, might, you know, connect with it. So I was just Yeah, so I was really fascinated by African American history, so I ended up double majoring in it and concentrating on African American politics, which was really fascinating to me.

Michael Hingson 18:55

Yeah, and there certainly has been a fair amount of that over the years, hasn't there? Yes, there has, but you can, you can cope with it and and again. But did your time in Ghana, kind of influence any of what you did in terms of African American Studies? Did it help you at all?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 19:15

Um, I, I don't know, because I don't because, because I think what, what I what, what Ghana helped me with was, I remember, I'll say this. I remember one time in Ghana, in class, we were reading a book by an author who had we were reading a play, actually by a Ghanaian writer who was writing about a Ghanian man who married an African American woman and brought her to his home. And there was a lot of clash between them, because, you know, they were both black, but they had different sort of backgrounds. Yeah, and I remember the teacher asking, because the. The the wife that he brought home, the African American woman, mentioned certain things about America, and no one in the classroom could answer any questions about America, and I was the only one who could. And I was, you know, very, very sort of shy in that in that school and in that context. But I remember that day feeling so emboldened, like I was, like, I can actually contribute to this conversation. And so maybe, you know, in on some level, when I got back to the states, maybe there was some interest in linking those two things together. But it wasn't as as is in life. It wasn't obvious to me. Then it was sort of just kind of me following my interest and curiosity. And I ended up, I didn't set out to be an Africana Studies double major, but I ended up taking so many classes that I had the credits. And, you know, I was like, Okay, I guess I'm I have two degrees now, or two, two concentrations,

Michael Hingson 21:02

yeah, did you go and do any advanced work beyond getting bachelor's degrees?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 21:08

No, I did not. When I graduated, I initially thought I might get interested, get in, go to law school. But this was me again, following my muse. I realized that my real interest was in writing papers when I was in college. You know, give me a 15 page paper, 20 page paper, I was ecstatic. I loved writing papers. And I think that's one of the reasons, too, why I loved political science and Africana Studies, because we were assigned tons of papers, and it enabled me to sort of, you know, writing these papers enabled me to kind of think through questions that I had, or process what I was reading or thinking about or feeling. And so when I graduated from college, you know, I got, you know, a job, and was working, trying to figure out, Okay, do I want to go to law school? But at the time that I graduated, that was also during the time of, like, the.com boom, and there were a lot of online magazines that were looking for writers, and so I started, kind of, you know, submitting, and I got some some things published. And as that was happening, I was like, I think this is what I want to focus on.

Michael Hingson 22:30

So when did you really know that you were a writer? Then?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 22:34

I mean, I don't I think that when I got back, when I started working, so I, ultimately, I got a job in advertising, and I was working, you know, as an assistant in the on the account side of things, but there was this whole creative department that, you know, got to, you know, come up with all of the, you know, the the taglines and write commercials and write jingles and all that kind of stuff. And I was, like, so fascinated by that, and that's what I thought, okay, I could if you know, I need a job, I need money, and I want to write, so maybe this is what I need to be doing. And so I ultimately did get a job as a copywriter and and I still, you know, do that work today, but I think I always knew that I needed to write, and I wanted to actually write about my experience in Ghana. So I remember, you know, I started kind of very fledgling. Would began to write into that, and I ultimately started writing that the book that became my first book, powder necklace, on the subway to and from work. Every morning I would wake up very early, write what I could get ready for work, right on the bus, right on the subway, you know, get to work after work. You know, repeat. And it took me many years, but that's what I did. And I wrote my first book,

Michael Hingson 24:14

and that was published in 2010 right? Yes, it was, did you self publish?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 24:18

Or I well, I did not self publish. I was published by Simon and Schuster. Simon and Schuster's Atria Books, Washington Square press. And part of my process was I started just kind of, you know, the Internet. The Internet was new. It was something that was available to me. So I started just kind of Googling, how do you get published? And they said you needed a literary agent. So I started looking online for literary agents. And because I lived in New York City at the time, I would literally write my my query letters and like, hand deliver them different agencies. 90s, and one woman, after four years of looking, said, Okay, this sounds interesting. I'd love to meet with you. And I didn't believe. I was like, wow, I've been rejected for four years, and somebody actually wants this, and she was able to sell the book. And I was shocked. I was like, Simon and sister, okay? And at the time they bought it, the, you know, the America, the US, was going through the whole financial, you know, crisis, the recession, in 2008 so they held my book for a year, and then we began the process in 2009 and then they, you know, we were on track to publish it in 2010

Michael Hingson 25:46

Wow. Well, tell me about that book. Yeah.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 25:51

Powder necklace is a novel. It's a fictionalized account of my experience going to high school in Ghana. I when I went to school in Ghana. I went to a girls boarding school in the mountains of Ghana central region, and that school was going through a major water crisis. We did not, I mean, we the short story is that, I guess, because of we were on the mountain, the water pressure was very low, and so it was really difficult to get the water up that mountain. And they didn't have like enough, you know, tanks around the school and what have you. So we had one artificial well, and then we had, like, an underground well, and that was it. And the underground well wasn't always, you know, full of water to service the whole school. It was really difficult. So, you know, we had to bring in our own water, some. And then it became, if you had money, you could bring water. But if you didn't have money, you didn't and it was a very desperate time for for young girls without being not being able to take a shower on demand. And it was, it was wild.

Michael Hingson 27:15

Where does the title powder necklace come from?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 27:19

So the title, I named it powder necklace, because, as I mentioned, taking a shower became this like symbol of the haves and the have nots. And, you know, all of this having water, really. And if so, what, what the girls, what we would do is, you know, after you've taken a bath, people would put tons of powder on their necks. And it was sometimes it was okay we didn't take a bath, so we're going to put powder on our necks to scented powder to cover the odor. But it was also a way, like if you had bathed, to sort of, you know, show off that you'd bathed. So for me, it was as I was reflecting on the on this as I was writing this story and reflecting on that whole experience, I thought, wow, it was sort of our way of holding our heads up, you know, in the difficult situation, and kind of making the best of it. So that's why I called it powder necklace,

Michael Hingson 28:17

okay? And that was for children.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 28:20

Well, it was for young adults, young adults, but

Michael Hingson 28:25

it was more writing than pictures.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 28:27

Yeah, it was a young adult novel. I actually, I mean, this was my first book. I really didn't know what I was doing. I just, I wrote the book and I didn't know that it was a young adult novel, until people were like, Yeah, you wrote a young adult novel. I'm like, okay,

Michael Hingson 28:47

works for me. Well, what does, what does being a writer mean to you?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 28:54

Um, I think being a writer means to me being able to articulate. A time, a place, a mood, a moment, being able to articulate it, one for myself, but also to create a record that helps people who don't necessarily have that gift to be able to sort of put words to the experience of living at a time place, having a certain feeling about something.

Michael Hingson 29:34

Do you think there's a difference between being considered a writer and being an author, are they the same, or are they really different?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 29:45

I do think that there is a difference, and not in a sort of, you know, highfalutin way. I think the difference is the fact that when you I think, like, when you asked me initially, like, when do you think that you you became. Became a writer. My My instinct is to say that I think I was always a writer, because I think if you write, you're a writer. And whether you're published or not, you're a writer. If you have that inclination, that gift, and you sort of invest in that gift, and invest and develop it. I think you're a writer, but I think with an author, I think then that's to me. I think of it as the business of being a writer, or the business of being, yeah, you are now sort of in business with your publisher. Publisher has invested a certain amount in you, and it then becomes a more sort of public facing thing. The work is not just for you anymore. The work is now being disseminated to a group and hopefully to as many people as possible, and you as the writer now have to figure out, like, how do I get to my audience? How do I maximize or expand the reach of this thing that I wrote? How do I connect with people around the story and build build a readership. And how do I ultimately, you know, the my desire and goal would be to live off of this. How do I make turn this into something that I can, I can do, you know, full time and live off of

Michael Hingson 31:38

so you turn from a writer to being an author.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 31:42

I'm, yes, I am an author, and I'm and I'm hoping to get to the to the, you know, the point where I can do it 100% full time, and it be, you know, 100% lucrative in that way.

Michael Hingson 31:56

So what are you doing now? In addition to doing books, I

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 32:01

also freelance as a copywriter, so I'm still copywriting,

Michael Hingson 32:05

okay, I was wondering what you what you did? So you're doing, still marketing and jingles and all those things, yeah, well, I

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 32:13

I'm my focus. I do do that, but my focus is mainly in the digital space. So I write lots of websites and web ads and social media copy, and, you know, things of that nature, campaign work.

Michael Hingson 32:33

Well, that's, is there anything that you've written or copy written that we would all know,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 32:42

yeah, I mean, I did. I've done a lot. I guess the maybe the most recent thing that I've done that people might be aware of, or some people might be aware of, is the Brooklyn Museum in New York, did a an exhibition called Africa fashion. And I, they created a short film to promote it, and I, they commissioned me to write an original piece for it. And so I wrote that piece and and performed it in the film. So, you know, people who are into that kind of thing a museum, that that museum might be aware of it. But I've also written for, I did a lot of work for L'Oreal Paris, USA, and I've just done a lot of beauty work. So many of the beauty brands you might be aware, you know, you might know, I've done some work for them, cool.

Michael Hingson 33:45

Well, that, you know, you do have to do things to earn an income to to be able to afford to write until you can do it full time.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 33:53

Yeah, yeah. And I actually really love copywriting. I think it's an it's been an incredible teacher in the sense of how to how to crystallize an idea in very short, you know, in just a few words, how to convey emotion in just a few words. And also that storytelling is not just the words, it's how you deliver the story that's all part of it. So I think it's been an incredible teacher in that way.

Michael Hingson 34:28

I know for me as a speaker, it is how you tell the story. And I've learned over 23 and a half years of speaking how to take people inside the World Trade Center and actually have them travel with me and do all the things that, and experience all the things that that I went through, and then come out of the other side and I and I say that because so many people after I speak somewhere, well. Come up and say, we were with you in the building. We were with you with everything that you did. And I appreciate that there is a real significant art to storytelling, and part of it is also, and I'm sure that this is true for you as a writer and an author, that part of it has to be that you have to actually connect with the audience. You've got to understand the audience. You've got to connect with them, and you have to bring them along, because they're not expecting to go with you.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 35:33

Absolutely, absolutely. And I will say that I started one of your books just the beginning of it, and I was just running with Roselle, and I was so taken, so absorbed by the first few pages of it. You really do immerse us. And I think that that's the best kind of of writing. You know, when you're able to kind of present material that people may or may not be familiar with, and make it riveting and really bring us into it, and then have us invest being, feel invested well.

Michael Hingson 36:16

And I think the last book that we did last year live like a guide dog. I worked really hard to make sure that we were drawing people into the experiences, because every chapter is actually taking lessons from one of my guide dogs and also from Fantasia, which who is my wife's service dog, but each chapter relates to one of those dogs, and I wanted them to be environments where people again were drawn in and appreciate the dogs for what they are and what they do, not just some dumb Animal that comes along. Yeah.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 37:00

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, so interesting. I think there's, there's so much, I guess. I don't want to use the word, I guess what I want to say, there's a lot of mystery in in the sort of human animal interaction, and people just aren't aware of how powerful it is, and I can, I'm saying that I speak for myself, because growing up, actually, I was really, really scared of dogs and animals, all animals, and I so there's, there's two, there's kind of two stories I'll share. But one is when we were, when we were growing up, my parents, you know, were from Ghana. They wanted to eat goat meat. And at the time, you couldn't just go to a supermarket goat meat. So we used to go to a farm out in New Jersey that had goats, and we would have to go and have the goat, you know, slaughtered and, you know, cut up and all that kind of stuff for the meat. And I remember that whenever the hand would go into, you know, the pen where the goats were, the goats would just were. They would be so stressed out, they would like, you know, part like the ocean walked in, and if he picked, when he picked one out. There would be other people, other goats in the pen that would start screaming in agony, along with the goat that had been picked out. And I was just like, Oh my gosh. That must be his family members, like, or his loved ones. And it was so I remember that was so eye opening to me, like, wow. So I ended up years, years later, I wrote a short story, and I actually did some research on goats and how brilliant they are, and I was just like, wow, oh my goodness, I remember that so well. But I have a cat right now, and my kitty cat is just such a such a joy, like just sort of to build that relationship with, with my with my pet, is just such a beautiful thing, and how she just kind of, because I grew up really scared of pets, and I sort of inherited her when I got when I got married, you know, she's been very patient with me, like, because at first I was so skittish around her, and I could see her, kind of like rolling her eyes, like, I mean, you no harm. You can pick me up. It's all good. And she's just been so wonderfully patient with me. We've built that bond over time.

Michael Hingson 39:31

Well, yeah, I have, of course, my my eighth guy, dog, Alamo, and stitch the cat. Stitch is 15 and a half and a real cutie pie. We rescued her. Actually, there were people who were living next to us, and he was moving out. His wife had died, and he just told the people who were moving all of his stuff out, take the cat to the pound. I don't want anything to do with it. And we, we said, Absolutely not. We'll find it a home. And then I asked, What the. Cat's name was, and they told me the cat's name was stitch. And I knew that this cat wasn't going to go anywhere because my wife had been, well, my wife had been a quilter since 1994 and a quilter is never going to give away a cat named stitch. Yes.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 40:14

Oh, I'm so glad stitch found a home with you.

Michael Hingson 40:18

Oh, yeah. Well, we found a stitch.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 40:20

Oh, that's right, that's right.

Michael Hingson 40:23

And, and, and so she's, she's got lots of personality. And so it really works out pretty well. No, no complaints. And I've always said, Whenever I get a guide dog, because my wife has always had cats, when I get a new guide dog, I've always said, and will continue to say, it has to be a dog that's been raised around cats and has no problems with cats. I have seen a couple of Guide Dogs, actually, that hated cats, and one almost killed a cat, and that's I will never tolerate that. Yeah, they have to get along. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely now, when we brought Alamo home, stitch had a few concerns about this dog in her house. She got over it when she decided that Alamo wasn't going to do anything to bother her and they they talk all the time now and rub noses and all that sort of stuff. Oh, that's so cool, yeah, but, but it's, it is great, and they, they bring so much joy and so many lessons to us that I think it was really important to learn.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 41:34

Yeah, yeah. You're reminding me the first dog, because my grandmother actually loves animals, and when I went to Ghana, she got a dog, and, you know, as a kid, so we got a puppy. And I remember the puppy was initially supposed to be a guard dog, but we I, I would feed the I would hand feed the dog sausages and just spoil the dog so much. Could not be a guard dog, so I loved that dog. Joshua, yeah, Joshua,

Michael Hingson 42:07

well, but you and Joshua got along really well. On we got along great. One of the things that people sometimes ask me is if my dog trained to protect and the answer is no, they're not trained, and then they've said, Well, what would happen if somebody were to decide to attack you with the dog around? And my response will always be and rightly so, I wouldn't want to be the person to try that and find out what will happen, because much more than guarding, there's love. And I've always believed that dogs love unconditionally. I think trusting is a different story. They are open to trust, but, but you have to earn their trust. They'll love you, but will they trust you? That depends on you. And so it's it's really pretty cool, but I would not want to be the person to ever decide to try to attack us, because I, I am sure that Alamo would not tolerate that at all.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 43:10

Oh, not at all. How do, how do you or how have you built trust with your your pets?

Michael Hingson 43:17

Well, a lot of it has to do with they want us to be the pack leaders. They want us to be their team leader. And so I have to set the ground rules. So, for example, no jumping on the furniture and all that. But again, it's also how you convey that. So if my dog is going to jump up on something and I don't want that, I'll say, leave it. And as soon as the dog obeys, I'll give the dog a food reward, a kibble, to let the dog know, and I'll also use a clicker, but I'll let the dog know I approve of what you did, not punishing them for, you know, something else. Yeah, so it's not punishment, it's positive rewards. I think that's extremely important, but also it is in the stressful times being very focused and calm. So if we're walking somewhere and we get lost, that is not the dog's fault, because it's my job to know where to go and how to get where I'm going, and it's the dog's job to make sure that we walk safely to get there, so if we get lost, that's on me. And what I can't do, or shouldn't do, is panic and become very fearful and upset, because the dog will sense that I have to stop and figure it out and continue to praise the dog, saying what a good job you're doing, and so on. And those kinds of things are the things that will, over time, build that trust. I think it takes a good year to truly build a trusting relationship that is second. To none. And that's the kind of teaming relationship that you want, whether it's a guide dog or any dog. And even as far as that goes, although they're different cats, yeah, but it's, it's all about building that relationship and conveying the command and conveying that you want to trust and be trusted?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 45:24

Yeah, yeah. I think you're you. What you said that really resonated with me is that they want to know. They want you to be the pack leader and the and part of that is, you know, you lay down the ground rules, but also you're responsible for them and their well being. And, yeah, that really, that really resonated with me.

Michael Hingson 45:48

Well, so you wrote your first book, and then when did you write your second book?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 45:55

My second book came out in 2022, so it was a 12 year spread in my first book and my second book, Why so long? Oh my gosh, my book, I was the book I was working on, like to sort of follow, was just rejected for, for all that whole time, and I was, you know, in more and more distraught, and, you know, in despair about it. I didn't know what to do about it. And I actually, you know, I was actually reading the Bible, and I came across the fact that there was a curtain, a blue curtain, in King Solomon's temple. And I was like, why does it matter that the curtain was blue? And so I just started googling casually, and I discovered that there was a snail in antiquity that was harvested for the blue drops that it it secreted, or it secreted drops that were ultimately oxidized to turn blue. And I was like, what I've never heard about this? I started doing some more research, and I realized, like, oh my gosh, the color blue has such a fascinating history. Kids need to know about this. And so I wrote it really as a poem initially, but then I thought, you know, I really want to see if I can get this published. And I was able to get it published, and that became my children's book blue, which was such a bomb to my soul, because after sort of a decade of getting, you know, rejected, and, you know, close to a decade of getting rejected, this, this sort of beautiful, like, sort of knowledge, you know, I came across, But I was able to create a book, and it's just been a wonderful experience with the children's

Michael Hingson 47:45

book, wow, so the full title of blue is,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 47:51

it's blue a history of the color as deep as the sea and as wide as the sky. Wow.

Michael Hingson 47:57

That should be enough to get the book sold. But as you point out, there's, there's a lot of history, yes, and that, that's pretty cool. So it was, it was released in 2022 and they finally, the publishers finally bought into that, huh?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 48:16

Well, yeah, I mean, that wasn't the novel that I've been working on. So I was still working. I ultimately, I did sell the novel, but that was its own journey, and I ended up writing another book that became the book is called my parents marriage, and it is not about my actual parents marriage. It's a novel about a young woman for adult readers. It's my first book for adult readers, and it is about a young woman whose parents are in a polygamous union, and how they're they have a really turbulent polygamous union, and how that relationship kind of kind of cast a shadow on this woman's, you know, choices in relationships and marriage for herself.

Michael Hingson 49:10

So you you publish that my parents marriage. You also did a collection relations. Tell me about relationships.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 49:18

I did. Yeah, so relations is an anthology of its stories, essays and poems that are by writers from all across the continent of Africa. So I have Egyptian poets and Libyan you know essayists and you know, Nigerian storytellers, just it was, it was a really amazing project to work on. I started working on it during August of 2020, which was sort of like I've heard it described as peak pandemic, right? You know, we were several months. Into lockdown, and you know, it became this wonderful way for me to kind of connect while I was sort of holed up in my apartment in New York.

Michael Hingson 50:15

Okay, now, were you married by then?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 50:18

No, I was not. I had just started dating my now husband, and I was like, Am I ever gonna see this man again? Because he lived in California, so at that time, the planes were grounded. I remember we were, like, on the first, very first flights that were able to start, you know, that started and be on planes, there'd be like, four people on the entire plane.

Michael Hingson 50:42

Yeah, hopefully you both weren't on planes going against each other at the same time. No, you did communicate a little more than that. Oh, good. Well, so you published. So when was well? What was relations published?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 51:02

Relations came out in 2023 okay, February of 2023, and my parents marriage came out in July of 2024. Just came out in July of 2025,

Michael Hingson 51:14

which one the paperback of the paperback? Oh, okay. Have any of them been converted to audio Yes,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 51:23

all, but my first book, are audio books. So blue is an audio book, beautifully read, and then their relations, the stories and essays and poems are read by two speaking artists, and then my parents, marriage is is also wonderfully performed. So, yeah, they're all an audience.

Michael Hingson 51:50

That's cool, yeah. So when you're writing, what, what's kind of the difference, or, how do you differentiate between writing for young people and writing for adults. There must be differences.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 52:07

Yeah, I think, I think with for young people, and the practical thing that I try to do is make sure that the vocabulary is are is familiar to them, mostly familiar. I like to put in a stretch word now and then to kind of get them to, like, get to the dictionary and find out what. But if I'm right, when I when I wrote blue, for example, knowing that, you know, the the age group is, the age spread is four to 888, year olds are in third grade. Four year olds are in pre K, so that's that's pretty big spread. So my sweet spot is first and second grade vocabulary words. Okay, it has to be something that they've been exposed to. So thinking of it in that way, the other thing too is breaking down concepts that are, you know, as adults, you know, we just assume that you know, or you can go look it up, but just kind of thinking it through. So if I'm talking about, instead of saying that, you know, there was a snail in antiquity who, you know, heart, you know, dyers were harvesting blue dye from these snails through after a process of oxidation. I wouldn't use any of those words. I would say, snail produced some drops that when exposed to the air and the sun turned blue. And so just sort of really, kind of being mindful of that, and also thinking very visually, writing, very visually. How can I create pictures with words that would be familiar to a child, that can sort of ignite their imagination?

Michael Hingson 53:53

Yeah, I think it's extremely important to to deal with the visual aspects of it, but using words and really drawing again, drawing people in because if you just say, well, you can see this in this picture. That doesn't mean a lot, and you're also, I would think, helping to teach or create the concept that some people might some children might want to go off and write because they like how you say and what you say

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 54:24

absolutely and when I when I talk to kids, I go or visit schools, I invite them like I wrote about the color blue. What's your favorite color? These are some some things that I did to kind of learn about it. You can do these things to learn about your favorite color and write your own book?

Michael Hingson 54:42

Yeah, yeah, it's, I think, so important to really draw people in and get them to think. And I think it's so much fun for me, I do some of that, but I have probably more of a chance. Challenge, because kids want to play with the dog. Yeah, it's all about the dog. I did a lecture at a K through six elementary school in San Francisco several years ago. I'm trying to remember what school it was anyway, and the teacher said you can only talk for about 10 or 12 minutes, because they just won't pay attention any longer than that. 35 minutes later, I finally ended the discussion, because they were so fascinated to hear me talk about what my dog did. And then I carried that over to how blind people work and function and all that. And the fact is, they were fascinated. The teachers couldn't believe it, but for me, it was a great lesson to know that it's all about creating these pictures that people can follow,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 55:53

yeah, and also to extending those pictures or those words into an experience for kids. Yeah, they really, they really appreciate, sort of like seeing it, kind of, you know, see if the having the concept come to life, yeah, way. And so I'm sure when they see your dog, or are able to interact with your dog, that must be so wonderful for them,

Michael Hingson 56:22

but it's important for them to understand what the dog is all about. So by the time they get to interact with the dog, we've talked about things like, you never pet a guide dog in harness. This is what a guide dog does, and this is what they don't do. There are a lot of things to to cover. So it's great when I have the opportunity to really teach them. And sometimes we'll walk around a classroom and I'll show them what he does. Yeah, it's important to be able to do that. Oh, I love that. I love that. And he loves it, of course, all the way. So no question about that. He's you haven't lived until you've seen two or 300 kids all wanting to pet this dog. And the dog knows what to do. He's down on the floor with every appendage stretched out as far as he can go to maximize petting places, petting. Oh, it is so funny. I love that. He loves it. He's, he's, he's so happy. He doesn't care whether he'll do it more with kids even than adults, but, yeah, he'll do it with everybody. It's all about petting me and just remembering I'm the dog. I love that. Well, you've gone through a fair amount of time between books, and I'm sort of curious, what do you think about all the various kinds of changes and ebbs and flows that have come along in the book business, in the book publishing business and so on.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 57:56

Yeah, there have been a lot of changes. Um, I think, um, when my first book came out, like things like, you know, Instagram Bookstagram did not exist. There weren't many sort of podcasts or things of that nature. So I think that there is, there's definitely, there are more venues and more platforms to, you know, get the message out about the book. But I think also there is, it's also just hard. It's in some ways, it also feels in some ways more challenging to get the word out, because in addition to, like, yes, there are more venues in that way, regard, there are fewer book reviewers and fewer places to get a book reviewed, and there's a whole kind of interesting business about around getting reviews. So it's just not the same in that way. But then at the same time. I think what remains the same is connecting with readers. I think the most effective thing is, you know, writing a book that's good and then getting people who have read it and liked it to evangelize, to tell people I liked it, please buy it, or you should have you heard of and because at the end of the day, you know, that's what's going to, you know, give it some wind

Michael Hingson 59:30

when thunder dog came out, and we did mention about reviews, and it actually has had, like well over 1600 reviews since it came out in 2011 live like a guide dog hasn't had, of course, so many yet, but every time I get a chance to talk about that book, I ask people to go review it and tell them why it's so important, because potential readers want to know what people think of the book. Yeah, for sure. For sure, it's. It really is important for readers to review and just be honest and say what you think. It's fine, but people should do that. For me, I think one of the biggest things that I see that publishers are doing less of is in a lot of ways, true marketing. You don't, you know, you don't see them doing nearly as much. Of course, I know it's more expensive, but to help create book tours or anything like that, they focus only on social media, and that's not the way to market the book.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 1:00:33

Yeah, I think, I mean, I've never worked inside a publishing office, so I don't know what actually, how they make these decisions and what goes on, but I do. I think what I have come to sort of think, how I've come to think of it, is the publisher is my business partner, sort of invested in terms of, they've given me an advance. They're going to do the turn key things like, you know, make sure the book gets reviewed by Publishers Weekly, or, sorry, Publishers Marketplace, or no Publishers Weekly. I was correct, and Kirkus review, Kirkus right, and all those kinds of things. And maybe they'll do a mailing to you know who they believe are the people that they need to mail it to. But outside of that, unless you know you, you know it's stipulated in your contract, or you know you are that high, yeah, you know that that celebrity author, or that that best selling author that they you know, are willing to put that money behind. You're working with some your publicist, who's been assigned to your book has is probably working on 10 other books. Can devote so much to it. And so what I've learned is thankful. I'm thankful that, you know, I have this publisher, but I also know that I need to do a lot of work on my own to get

Michael Hingson 1:02:04

you've got to be your best marketer, yes, but, but there's value in that too, because you can tell the story whatever it is, like no one else, exactly, exactly. And so that's that's really pretty important, yeah,

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 1:02:18

for sure, for sure. And you can be, you know that I think, also giving yourself permission to be creative, yeah, you know, how can you get the word out in really creative ways, like, again, the publisher. These are things that like, if there was, you know, people, there were many people dedicated to your book for this amount of time, they could kind of sit there and brainstorm and do all those things. But, you know, the reality is, in most cases, it's a small it's a lean and mean team. They don't have that bandwidth, so yeah, just kind of coming up with creative ways. And at times, what I have learned to do is, how can I, if I have an idea that is maybe low cost and but I can't necessarily do it on my own? How can I ask them for support, because they do have, you know, a little bit more resources,

Michael Hingson 1:03:16

yeah, and, and the how is really pretty simple. Actually, you just ask exactly, exactly, and you know either they will or they won't, or you'll share it, or whatever. And I have found that same thing to be true. Well, Nana, if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? If they might want to talk about you doing copywriting for them or whatever, how can people find you?

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 1:03:41

So my website is Nana brew-hammond.com, can you spell please? It's n, a n, a, b, r, e, w, H, A, M, M, O, N, d.com, and I have a newsletter there. So a newsletter sign up. So they can sign up to be a part of my newsletter and connect with me that way. They can also find me on Instagram, I'm at n, a, n, a, e, K, U, a writer on Instagram, and I'm also on Facebook at that same name, and then on Twitter, I am that without the writer. So, n, a, n, a, e, K, U, a,

Michael Hingson 1:04:28

okay, cool. Well, I hope people will reach out and and I hope that they will read your books and like them and review them. I hope the same thing. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching us today. We really appreciate you being here with us. I'd love to hear what you think. Please feel free to email me. I'm reachable at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I. B, e.com, Michael H i@accessibe.com love to hear your thoughts and love to get your your opinions. I would really appreciate it if you would give us a five star rating when you have the opportunity to review this podcast. We really value your ratings and reviews very highly, and definitely want to know what you think, but please give us a great rating. We love that. If you know anyone who wants to be a guest on a podcast, or you think ought to be a guest, we're always looking for guests. And Nana you as well. If you know anyone, we're always looking for more people to come on the podcast and tell their stories. So we appreciate it. If you'd let us know. By the way, you can also go to my podcast page, www dot Michael hingson, M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s o n.com/podcast, that's another way to reach out to me as well. But definitely anything you can do to bring more folks to us, we value it very highly. And so with that, once again, Nana, I want to thank you for being here. This has been great.

Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond 1:06:01

Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me on, and you are such an inspiration. And thank you.

Michael Hingson 1:06:13

Episode 393 – Why Realigning from the Inside Out Creates Unstoppable Energy with Kassandra Hamilton

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Burnout shows up quietly, and in this conversation, I think you will hear just how deeply it can shape a life. When I sat down with Kassandra Hamilton, she opened up about building a meaningful career in global and Indigenous health while struggling with exhaustion, anxiety, and the pressure to look like everything was fine. Her turning point came when she finally stopped long enough to ask what she truly needed.

Kassandra talks about people pleasing, giving her power away, and the inside out process she now teaches to help others realign their lives. We walk through the RAIN method, the importance of boundaries, and the small daily choices that help you rebuild trust in yourself. My hope is that you walk away feeling grounded, encouraged, and ready to take one step toward a more aligned and Unstoppable life.

Highlights:

01:12 – Learn how early purpose can quietly shape the path you follow.

02:51 – See how a wider view of global health reveals what truly drives burnout.

06:56 – Understand how systems and technology can add pressure when they overlook human needs.

12:50 – Learn how hidden emotions can surface when you slow down and pay attention.

17:37 – Explore how reclaiming your power shifts the way you respond to stress.

24:23 – Discover how emotional regulation tools help you move through difficult moments.

41:18 – Learn how small, steady changes rebuild energy and direction.

47:36 – Understand why real burnout recovery starts with alignment, not escape.

About the Guest:

Kassandra Hamilton is an alignment life coach, bestselling author in 3 categories, musician, healer, and facilitator. She is dedicated to helping others find inner alignment and live from the inside out, rather than in a burnout state or in autopilot mode. After completing a degree in biology and international development, and then completing a Masters of Science, she wanted to pursue a career in medicine. She has always wanted to be of service to others, and as a child she literally had dreams of holding her hands towards people and visualizing light being sent to them. only way it made sense in terms of a traditional career trajectory while she was in school was to pursue medicine.

After completing her Masters degree, she decided to work alongside doctors to see what their day to day was like and how they were creating a positive impact in their communities. What she actually saw was a lot of burnout, paperwork, and dissatisfied lives of people that were once passionate about medicine. She was working for Doctors of BC in Vancouver, with a high end office and apartment, when she collapsed one day in her apartment from an overwhelming sense of anxiety, burnout and grief. She had lost her dog, her boyfriend, and both her grandparents all within three months. On top of that, she was in a career that looked good on paper, but wasn’t actually fulfilling her purpose of being of service to others. She no longer wanted to pursue medicine and didn’t know how she got to a dead end if she had followed all the “right” steps according to society’s blueprint for success.

She spent the next few years really learning about her inner world and what her purpose in life was. She became dedicated to her own healing and coping with anxiety and burnout. For the next decade, she began working with First Nations across Canada. She witnessed and learned about the importance of looking at the whole person, from a spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical lens. Everything seemed to be connected. As someone with a science background, she had always been fascinated with the intricacies and magical elements of everything that comes together in one singular cell. Our emotions are energy in motion, and if they don’t move through, they get stuck. We decide if we allow our emotions to flow or not. Kassandra also realized how powerful our minds are. With one thought, we create a story. That story becomes our reality. With all of these realizations, she came to understand that we are literally magicians of our own realities. Kassandra has learned and experienced, time and time again, that health and happiness stems from our internal world first and is a combination of our mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional realms. Once we deal with our inner worlds and live in state of awareness over how we are operating in the world, we can project that version of ourselves out into the world to create positive change.

In a world that constantly pulls us outward - with notifications, expectations, distractions “The Magic of Realigning From the Inside Out” is about bringing us back home to ourselves. Through deeply personal storytelling, scientific insights, and soul-centres practiced, Kassandra invites readers to reconnect with their inner compass. This is a guidebook for anyone longing to move from autopilot to alignment and discovering what it truly means to live with intention, purpose, and clarity.

Because the answers aren't out there, they HAVE to start from within. We weren't meant to just get through the day. It is exhausting trying to fix and control everything “OUT THERE.” And the thing is, we have no control over what’s happening out there anyways, We were meant to thrive and share our gifts with the world. This is how positive ripple effects are made. This is Kassandra plans to leave the world a better place, and support others to do the same.

With the external chaos, political mess, climate change, and growing tensions worldwide, She decided it was time to start creating some positive changes.

She now has started a coaching practice committed to sharing her work with others, and her book compliments her work, outlining a 4-phase approach to moving from anxiety, fear, burnout, to living in alignment and inner power.

After a very successful book tour showcasing her bestseller (in 3 categories) “The Magic of Realigning From the Inside Out” – she is going on tour. But this isn’t just any book tour – it is centred around creating community connections. She will be doing wellness workshops and talks in local libraries, bookstores, and wellness venues around burnout prevention, boundaries, resilience, and authentic leadership, leveraging my book as a tool for this. She is currently in the planning stages and open to support in making this happen.

Kassandra is dedicated to sharing stories that inspire personal development and growth. She brings a unique perspective to storytelling, blending data-driven insights with narrative. With years of experience in health information management projects with First Nations communities in Canada, she has become fascinated with the power of sharing compelling stories through complex qualitative data. Her book is titled “The Magic of Realigning From the Inside Out” and is now available on Amazon and 50+ more platforms.

Outside of writing, she loves traveling, dancing, hiking, paddleboarding, and putting on community events that promote inner healing and connection. She also provides sound healing sessions, Ayurvedic Head Massage, and Bio-Energy Healing sessions at a local wellness establishment in her community. She volunteers at Connective Society as a restorative justice mentor for youth who are struggling with a lack of leadership or role models in their life.

Lastly, Kassandra is a singer/songwriter and a musician. You can find her playing at local open mics, hosting backyard community jam sessions, or at gigs around Vancouver Island. She put out an EP under the artist name “Kazz” in 2018 called “Reflections” and has released 4 singles under this title since. This year (2025), she started a new collaborative label with her partner who is a music producer, and they have released two songs under the artist name “Cyphyr & Myraky.”

Her mission is this: So many people believe the answers are "out there" and feel helpless in the current state of the world environmentally, politically, economically etc.

Instead of feeling helpless, paralyzed by fear, or living under the influence of external circumstance and chaos, we can create real change by first realigning from the inside out to reconnect with our inner power and creativity. Imagine a world where people took responsibility for their life, knew their purpose, and felt like they were living life in full alignment with this. Imagine what our communities would look like then?

Above all else, Kassandra wants to inspire others to create positive ripple effects out into the world.

Ways to connect with Kassandra**:**

Instagram: @kassandra hamilton

Facebook: Coaching with Kassandra

TikTok: coachingwithkassandra

LinkedIn: Kassandra Hamilton

Website: www.kassandrahamilton.com

Linktree with all my info: https://linktr.ee/kassandra.hamilton

Spotify: Under name "Kazz": https://open.spotify.com/artist/0gpUecr9VkVJMmVIyp1NFt?si=byM7VdL9QDeezl5-666XKQ\&utm_medium=share\&utm_source=linktree\&nd=1\&dlsi=9a801d5edc774e1d

Under name "Cyphyr & Myraky" - new collaborative label

https://open.spotify.com/artist/3xUxZGxTseXQB2G9PVolMn?si=In3BLhX3SMK_c-3ukTlCfQ\&utm_medium=share\&utm_source=linktree\&nd=1\&dlsi=d369f571e6384062

Amazon Link to Book: https://a.co/d/2yWISSu

Book Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDKW9ZNrsvA

Rogers TV Community News Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0eOnQ2DAdg

Nanaimo News Bulletin Story: https://www.nanaimobulletin.com/local-news/nanaimo-health-and-life-coachs-new-book-guides-inner-alignment-8182386

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

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https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone. I want to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're really glad that you're here with us today. Our guest today is Kassandra Hamilton, from up in British Columbia, way, and she has, I think, a lot to talk about. She's a coach. She talks about burnout and but also about her many talents. She sings, she's a musician, and on top of everything else, she's an author, and she just wrote a book that has just come out. So we've got lots to talk about, or she has lots to talk about, and we'll talk about it with her. So, Kassandra, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.

Kassandra Hamilton 02:08

Thanks for having me, Michael. I'm really grateful to be here today.

Michael Hingson 02:12

Well, I'm excited. There's obviously a lot to talk about, I think so. Tell us a little bit about the early Cassandra growing up, and all the usual things. You know, you got to start at the beginning somewhere,

Kassandra Hamilton 02:22

absolutely, yeah, so as a kid, I mean, I've always been curious. My mom used to get very puzzled by me as a child, because I would always ask, like, who is God and how is the world made? And I just had all these questions. And it just never really stopped. When I was six, I had a vision of helping people and healing them with my hands, and I just saw this light between my hands and other people, and it was this recurring dream I kept having, and I didn't understand it in the practical sense. So I pursued a very traditional, you know, career in medicine, because that's what made sense to me, and the social conditions that we had in front of us, and that didn't really pan out for me. I just it wasn't resonating. I felt like the system was very rigid. And I just have always been fascinated with more of a holistic picture of someone you know, like their physical, emotional, spiritual selves, and so the just focusing on the physical alone just wasn't cutting it for me. I knew there was so much more, and I was so curious about all of that. So yeah, I've gone through different sort of journeys on my path, and come back to a place of really wanting to be of service and share some of the tools and strategies that I've learned along the way.

Michael Hingson 03:47

Well, you started down the road of going into medicine, didn't you? Mm, hmm. And what was your master's in? Because I know you had your your master's degree, and then you started working with doctors. What did you get your master's degree in?

Kassandra Hamilton 04:02

Yeah, so I completed a master's of science because it was in the stream of global health. And so I was really fascinated by the multifaceted aspect of that. And not just looking at physical impact in the world. We looked at, you know, political and economic, geographic indicators of health really gave me that sort of overall vision of what health looks like from from that bird's eye view. And then I wanted to pursue medicine after that, because, again, I wanted to be of service to others, but I ended up working with doctors to see if that's actually what I wanted to do, and I just saw the amount of burnout that doctors were experiencing and how 80% of their workload was paperwork.

Michael Hingson 04:56

And so what did. You do.

Kassandra Hamilton 05:02

So I left that work. I was there for two years, and it just I wasn't buying it. So I left. I started my own company as a consultant, and realized that a lot of the issues I was seeing abroad, I actually we had a lot of gaps here in Canada, especially with our indigenous communities, the disparities there were just huge, and so I focused my energy for the last decade on working with indigenous communities and unlearning a lot of sort of colonial ways of doing things and really integrating the holistic health model that is presented from from that culture that I was working with, and it's really, really been transformative and instrumental in the way that I approach health now,

Michael Hingson 05:51

well, I'm curious about something sort of off the wall. I appreciate what you're saying about paperwork, and I'm sure there are all sorts of legalistic reasons why there has to be so much paperwork and so on in the medical world, especially when everybody's so concerned about things like malpractice and all that. But do you think any of that has gotten any better? Or how has it changed as we are progressing more to a paperless or different kind of charting system where everything is done from a computer terminal. I'm spoiled. My doctors are with Kaiser Permanente, and everything is all done on wireless, or at least on non paper chart. Types of things that they're just typing into the computer, actually, as as we're communicating and we're talking and I'm in visiting and so on, but everything is all done online. What do you think about that? Does that help any

Kassandra Hamilton 06:53

so very great question. So when we're talking about accessibility, I'm going to say no, not for indigenous communities, at least here in Canada, I'll speak from my experience, but things have gone digital, and actually what I was doing was working as a digital health consultant to bridge health gaps in digital systems. Because what was happening and what still happens is there's systems that are quite siloed, and so a lot of health centers that are remote will be using paper still, or they'll be using system for that and another system for this. And so there's no wrap around, diligence around the client. And so there is this huge accessibility issue, which is what I've been working on for the last 10 years.

Michael Hingson 07:41

Well, do you think that as well? Hopefully you'll see more paperless kinds of things go into play. But do you think in areas where the paper quantity has decreased, in the online or digital chart systems have come into play. Does that help burn out at all? Do you think again?

Kassandra Hamilton 08:08

You know what? It really depends. Like you're you're only as good as your as your system allows, and so if you haven't allowed for inclusivity, and for example, a lot of the work that was funded in the first couple years that I was doing, there was no due diligence to figure out whether or not these remote areas even had internet. So without internet, they were pumping money into all of these systems that were super high tech, not culturally appropriate. A lot of elders don't even own a computer, let alone a smartphone or anything like that, or have service. So it was there was a huge disconnect there, and so part of the work I've been doing is a lot of advocacy and helping government agencies understand the connecting pieces that are are instrumental in the success of digital health implementation. Yeah, well,

Michael Hingson 09:09

you know here, I know a fair amount about the whole digital chart system, because my sister in law was a critical care unit nurse at Kaiser, and then she managed several wards, and then she was tasked to be the head nurse for on the profit side, to help bring digital charts into Kaiser and and so I heard a lot about it from her and especially all the doctors who opposed it, just because they didn't want any change. They wanted to just do things the way that they had always done them. Yeah. And so the result is that they kind of got dragged kicking and screaming into it a little bit. But now I hear people mostly praising the whole system because it makes their job a lot easier. On the other hand, the other thing that happens, though, is they the system crams more patients into a doctor's appointment schedule every day, and so I'm not sure they're always seeing as much of patients as they should of any given patient, but I guess they have more doctors that specialize in different things. So no matter what happens, the doctors can all see whatever there is to see, because everything is in the chart, right?

Kassandra Hamilton 10:41

And so Absolutely, in theory, and in urban areas where that works, you know, the digital systems are set up properly, absolutely. But in terms of going back to your question about burnout, if there's one nurse for one community, and she's a chart in five different, you know, systems that it's actually going to add to her burnout at the end of the day. Yeah?

Michael Hingson 11:04

Well, yeah, and I appreciate that. I mean, so clearly, there's still quite a disparity, but it does, it does sound like in areas where they're able to truly bring digital charts and capturing information digitally into the system where, where that does exist, it can make people's lives, doctors, lives and so on, a little bit easier, and maybe contribute a little bit less to burnout.

Kassandra Hamilton 11:34

Yeah, absolutely. And of course, that's the hope, and that's you know, why we continue to do the work to bring it into this, especially with AI too, like bringing more efficiency into the workplace, and it's all part of it. So yes, absolutely there's, there's definitely some, some hope, and some, you know, leaner, leaner ways of doing things for a lot of people. So yeah, yeah.

Michael Hingson 12:01

I'll hope it will continue to get better, and that the influence will expand so that the more rural areas and so on will be able to get the kinds of things that the more urban areas have. Now I live in an area that's fairly urban, but we don't have a Kaiser hospital up here. We have clinics, but we don't have a hospital. And apparently there's now, finally some movement toward making that happen. But it's interesting, where we used to live, in Northern California. We lived in a very what was, although we weren't, but was a rich County, and there were 200,000 people or so in the county, and there was a Kaiser hospital in the county. There was a Kaiser hospital about 30 miles away in San Francisco, and there were Kaiser hospitals going north, 1520, miles further north, in Petaluma. So there are a lot of hospitals, but we are in an area where there are over 400,000 people now, and there isn't a Kaiser hospital here, and that just has always seemed kind of strange to me. And the response is, well, the doctors don't want to move up here. I mean, there are all sorts of different reasons that are given, but it just seems strange. So if you really need to go to the hospital, they do have contracts that sort of work sometimes, or you have to go about 50 miles to get to the nearest actual Kaiser hospital, right? So it's strange.

Kassandra Hamilton 13:38

It is strange. And there's a lot of things. Who knows who made the last call on decision? Right? So, right, yeah.

Michael Hingson 13:48

Well, again, so the rumor goes they're going to be building a hospital here, and I think that will be a good thing. So we'll see. We'll see how it goes. But you experienced burnout,

Kassandra Hamilton 14:00

didn't you? I did? Yes, I tell us about that, if you would. Yeah, absolutely so when I was 27 and I went, that was

Michael Hingson 14:13

last year, right?

Kassandra Hamilton 14:14

Yes, thank you. It was 10 years ago, but on the outside, I was thriving. Michael, I was like, working for doctors of BC, I had an apartment on the ninth floor. I had an ocean view. I had the apartment downtown. I was, you know, dating. I was like, doing all these things. I was achieving, pushing and showing up. And inside I was running on empty, and I was very disconnected from my purpose, from myself, and that breakdown became eventually a breakthrough, but in the process, you know, I lost all my grandparents and my dog, and I didn't have tools for dealing with my anxiety. Yeah, and social media sort of just amplified that sort of comparative feeling, and I just started to slow down and like really realign, and I realized how many people were living on autopilot and surviving instead of thriving. And that's really when I wanted to become committed to helping others reclaim their purpose and their authenticity, and not just bounce back from burnout, but like rise into something greater, and like reconnect with themselves and their why of their purpose of being here. You know,

Michael Hingson 15:33

yeah, because you you thought you were thriving, but you really weren't. Yeah, exactly which is, which is unfortunate, but still, those kinds of things happen. So what did you So, how did you go from experiencing burnout to moving forward and realigning? What? What did you learn? How did you discover it and what actually happened.

Kassandra Hamilton 16:01

So I, you know, I, for a long time, went through my own inward journey. And I, you know, I went to counseling, I sought other ways of healing, through energy work, I tried all the different tools and modalities, and I realized over time, it meant flipping the script, and most of us live from the outside in, and we're chasing expectations and people pleasing, letting circumstances dictate our worth, and living from the inside out to me meant connecting with who I was and my values and and the truth of finding my like finding my purpose, and letting that be the driver, and that means having boundaries. It means speaking up when you're when you're scared or you have fear. I know you've done a lot of work with fear and how to leverage that for a more positive outcome, rather than letting it stop you. So in my life, that shift has really helped me stop outsourcing my power and allowed me to show up authentically in my work and my relationships and creativity, and that's where my freedom and vitality really lives, and I really want to share that with others.

Michael Hingson 17:12

That's interesting. Way that you put it, you're outsourcing your power. What do you mean by that?

Kassandra Hamilton 17:18

I was giving my power away. I was waiting for someone else to approve of something that I did. I was showcasing my, you know, achievements, and that was how I attached value to my identity and who I was.

Michael Hingson 17:34

And of course, what that really meant is that you, as you said, it was all about people pleasing and so on. And how did you change all that?

Kassandra Hamilton 17:43

It wasn't overnight, I'll bet it wasn't, yeah, and so I changed all that by getting curious and by going inside. And I have a four step process that I share in this book that I've now written. And the first step is to observe yourself, like, how are you showing up? What kind of patterns are coming up for you? And then starting to understand, like, why, where did those come from? And then starting to re tune that part of yourself, like, Okay, so that's how I'm showing up. How do I want to show up? And how can I change my patterns, and how I react to things, to do that, and that's how you start to, sort of like flip the narrative and limp from the inside out.

Michael Hingson 18:26

How do people do that? Because we're, because we're, I think we're really trained to behave that way. We're we're trained to as, as you would put it, all too often, give your power away or outsource your power. And how do we change that mentality?

Kassandra Hamilton 18:48

Yeah, well, we have to first observe ourselves. We have to look at, you know, how are boundaries being used in your life? Or are they even there? Are you showing up for yourself as much as you're showing up for other people? Are you being authentic in what really is, in alignment with your own values? Are you living on purpose? So these things are what we look at, and then I have tools and frameworks and questions to help people really start to observe themselves from an outside perspective and ask themselves, Is this really how I want to be living right now? Is this allowing me to live the life that I want?

Michael Hingson 19:34

Yeah, and is it, is it helping me grow Exactly? And that's that's a lot of the issue that that we face. I know, in my my book live like a guide dog that wrote was published last year. We we talk a lot about the fact that people need to learn, or hopefully will learn, how to be much more introspective and. And analyze what they do every day, and really put that analysis to work, to to learn. What am I afraid of? What is going on? Why am I worried about this? Because I don't have any control over it and and people just don't grow up feeling that way, because we don't really teach people how to learn to control fear and how to be introspective, which is part of the problem, of course, right?

Kassandra Hamilton 20:27

Or even how to manage our emotions, right? Like emotion is energy in motion, and if we do not allow it to move through us, it gets stuck, and it shows up in our bodies as a physical ailment, yeah. And that's the mind, body, spirit connection. That's why physical, mental, emotional health is so important to look at as as a whole, not just in silo.

Michael Hingson 20:51

So how do you how do you teach people to take a different view than what we typically learned how to do well?

Kassandra Hamilton 21:01

So once we've observed what people what people are, how they're operating, we then start to understand where it comes from. So a lot of people are programmed either by society or early childhood experiences, and then they are just operating on autopilot from those patterns. But they don't know that. So once you start like, awareness is everything, and once you see something, you can't unsee it. So at that point, it's like, okay, how can we move from this place to where you want to be? And so I have a lot of tools for understanding and processing your emotions in real time. I have tools for understanding and managing nervous like your nervous system, I look at it from a science and health background as well as a spiritual background. So it's like blending the tool to and understanding that healing isn't just physical and mindfulness and slowing down and journaling and just taking the time to actually try and understand yourself.

Michael Hingson 22:03

So how has all of this changed how you live your life?

Kassandra Hamilton 22:08

Well, I since I started operating in a different way, I bought a house. I bought another house, about another house, I, you know, wrote a book. I changed careers. I am coaching people now I'm just like really living in my element, in my my full purpose, which is have this written on my wall that I want to help others rediscover their magic, so we can all fly together. So it's really about spreading positive ripple effects in the world, you know, but starting at home and in our communities. And I believe that that inside out ripple effect is so much more powerful than anything we can do out there,

Michael Hingson 22:56

just so that we get it out there. What's the title of the book?

Kassandra Hamilton 22:59

It's called the magic of realigning from the inside out.

Michael Hingson 23:04

Since we, we talked about it, I figured we better get the title out there. Yeah, thank you. And there is a picture of the book cover and so on in the show notes. But I just wanted to make sure that you, you did tell people the title. Well, tell me, is there an incident or a moment where you realize that your work could really create change in someone's life?

Kassandra Hamilton 23:32

Yeah, you know, that's an interesting question. I've been asked that a few times, and the answer is that I just have a very strong morning practice where I journal. And throughout that journaling the last few years, I realized my process of integrating all of these tools and what it's done for me, and it just became like again, me observing myself through the pages and recognizing that I you know, it was my responsibility to share this, this work that I had done with other people, and not from a place of of ego, but really from that place of wanting to share stories and experiences in hopes that it will inspire others to, you know, take the time to Get curious and courageous about their own lives.

Michael Hingson 24:22

Did you have any kind of an aha moment or a moment with anyone besides yourself that really caused you to realize, Oh, I'm really making a difference here. I'm really able to do this, and it makes a lot of sense to do what I'm doing.

Kassandra Hamilton 24:38

Well, it's so funny, because informally, all of my friends will come to me for, you know, advice or coaching or reframing or whatever, and then eventually I was like, Man, I should get paid. And

Michael Hingson 24:53

they're not your friends anymore, because now you're charging them, right?

Kassandra Hamilton 24:58

So it's something that I've. Always really wanted to do, and I've always been fascinated by people and how their brains work, and what their resistance to change is, including my own. And yeah, I guess I just sort of had this moment a few years ago when I was like, I want to really focus my time on and energy to help other people have these moments of insight, or aha moments, or realizing they can pivot and actually start creating what they want in their lives.

Michael Hingson 25:29

So what kind of tools do you use in your coaching process to help people do that?

Kassandra Hamilton 25:34

Yeah, I lean on a lot of work from Gabor Mate and Deepak Chopra. I use tools that I've learned through Tara Brock. So my favorite tool, actually, that I, that I use, and I, I encourage people to try, is rain. And so if I could leave one sort of tool for people here today, it would be rain. And rain stands for recognize, acknowledge or accept, investigate, and then nourish. And so anytime people are in an activated emotional state or a negative emotion, they can sit away from their current situations, whether it's you go to the bathroom, or you sit alone for a few moments and you just recognize, okay, what is it that I'm feeling anxiety? Alright, we've named it. I recognize it. I'm accepting and acknowledging that I feel anxious. And then I is investigating, why do I feel anxious? What is the reason I feel anxious? And once you have figured out why, you can start to comfort yourself from a place of compassion, like it's okay to feel this way, you know Michael, like emotions are just children that want to be seen and heard, and the more you shove them down, the more chaos ensues. So when you comfort those emotions and you understand them, they move through you, naturally, emotion energy in motion. That's how we can assist ourselves in getting better at letting the emotions move through us.

Michael Hingson 27:08

Yeah, and something that comes to mind along that that same line is the whole issue that you've already talked about, some which is talking about what what you feel, whoever you are, and be willing to express emotions, be willing to be honest with yourself and with other people. And again, I just think that we so often are taught not to do that. It's so unfortunate.

Kassandra Hamilton 27:36

Absolutely, absolutely, we're not taught about anything. And I have a long list for the education curriculum, let me tell you, yeah, boundaries, you know, emotional regulation, emotional intelligence, yeah, reframing, Like there's just so many things, so many things.

Michael Hingson 28:03

So you've, you've helped a lot of people, primarily, who do you do you coach? Who are your your typical clients? Or does it matter?

Kassandra Hamilton 28:14

So I typically coach people between ages 25 to 40, but I actually recently had a senior reach out to me after she found an article in the paper, and so I'm not excluding people from who I work with, but generally speaking, that's sort of the age range is 25 to 45 people who maybe have reached a, you know, the career they thought they were always going to do and get there, and they're like, this, isn't it? This isn't it for me, I'm burnt out. I'm tired. It's not what I thought it was going to be. Or maybe they're in a relationship and they're stuck and feeling burnt out from that. So yeah, that's the age group that I work in. Because regardless of what issue you're working on, career, relationship, sense of self, these tools will help you pivot to really realign with your purpose.

Michael Hingson 29:03

So how do you help people go from being stuck to realigning and empowered

Kassandra Hamilton 29:10

through my four step process? So I don't want to give too much away, but people will just need to read the book to find out.

Michael Hingson 29:19

Well, if you can describe maybe a little bit in general, just enough to Yeah.

Kassandra Hamilton 29:24

So just like I was saying before, like first getting really clear on how people are operating, so that's the observed part, and then starting to understand themselves through the different patterns that are coming up on a weekly, daily basis. So it's a lot of investigating and getting data in the first couple weeks, and then after that, we start to understand how to rewire things through different tools that I introduce, and we do it in small, manageable steps. My coaching programs are either six weeks or two. 12 weeks long. And throughout that process, we try things, and everyone's different. So some tools stick, you know, more than others, and that's okay. I just have a the approach that I've moved them through, and by the end, people are having amazing experiences and feeling like it's life changing. And I have, you know, a lot of people reaching out with testimonials that I just, you know, really helped fuel me to continue this work.

Michael Hingson 30:26

Have you done this at all with children? I

Kassandra Hamilton 30:30

haven't, but it's so interesting that you asked that because I really love working with youth. I work in a restorative justice volunteer program here in my community, and it's all about providing mentorship and being a role model for for youth that have maybe lost their way. And that's definitely an area I'm curious about. It's funny that you mentioned that.

Michael Hingson 30:55

Well, it just, you know, the the reality is that the earlier we can get people to think about this and change and go more toward the kind of processes that you promote, the better it would be. But I also realize that that's a it's a little bit different process with with youth, I'm sure, than it is with older, older people, adults and so on. But I was just curious if you had done any, or if you have any plans to maybe open any kind of programs more for youth to help them the same way, because clearly there are a lot of stuck youth out there.

Kassandra Hamilton 31:37

Yeah, very much so. And to be honest, like with the amount of technology and information overload and state of the world, like the amount of overwhelm and anxiety among youth right now is just through the charts, yeah, yeah. So definitely something that's been on my mind, and I I'm very curious as to what sparked you to ask that, because it's definitely something I've been exploring so

Michael Hingson 32:02

well, it just popped into my head that that's an interesting thing to think about. And I would also think that the earlier we can and in this case, you can, reach children, the more open they probably are to listening to suggestions if you can establish a rapport with them. The reality is that that at a younger age, they're not as locked in to ways of doing things as they might be later on, my wife was my late wife was a teacher for 10 years, then she loved teaching second and third graders, and she said even by the time you're getting to fourth graders, they're starting to be a little bit more rigid in their mindsets. And so the result was that it was harder sometimes to reach them. And I think that's true, and I and I know that everything I've ever read or heard younger the child, the more open they are, and the more they're able to learn. Like younger children are better able to learn more than one language and so on. And the earlier you can get to children, probably the better it would be all the way around.

Kassandra Hamilton 33:19

Absolutely, absolutely, yeah, yeah, definitely, an avian Avenue. I've been curious and exploring myself. So, yeah,

Michael Hingson 33:28

I wonder, I wonder what the techniques would be, because I'm sure that the techniques are going to be a little bit different than than what you face with older people,

Kassandra Hamilton 33:37

not necessarily like I think at any age, it's good to learn about boundaries and why they're important and understanding what we think they are versus what they actually are. And same with, you know, seeking validation outside of ourselves. Like I don't think, I don't think it's quite I think it might be a little bit more stuck when we're older, but I don't think it's very different. Yeah, I guess it just depends. Just depends.

Michael Hingson 34:07

Well, you talk a lot about boundaries, authenticity, authenticity and purpose. How does all that really go into your whole coaching program?

Kassandra Hamilton 34:22

Sorry? In what sense, like, can you ask that it may be a different a different way?

Michael Hingson 34:29

Well, um, you talk, you've you've mentioned boundaries a number of times, and authenticity and so on. So I'm just curious, how do they fit into what you do and what you want people to do okay?

Kassandra Hamilton 34:41

So people will come to me and they're, you know, feeling burnt out. They're constantly on. They're juggling family relationships, digital overload. They don't have space to breathe, let alone, you know, connect with themselves. And underneath that, there's often a lot of people pleasing or fear. Not being enough or living by other people's expectations, and so so many of them are feeling exhausted, unfulfilled, lack of worth when they come to me and they're just like, I don't know what else to do. And often, a misconception about burnout is that you need to work harder for things to get better, or you just need a small break to reset, and then you're fine. But if we don't change anything in that, in the mind, in the mindset, then people are just going to go back to the way, the way they were.

Michael Hingson 35:33

How would you really define burnout?

Kassandra Hamilton 35:38

I would define burnout as people feeling helpless, feeling like they're living on autopilot, exhaustion, feeling like there's just so much to manage and they don't have the time or the energy again, feeling like they can't or don't know about boundaries, and yeah, they're unfulfilled. They're not feeling like themselves. And so what I would suggest for anyone who's feeling that way is one of the things you can do is just just pause, create a moment of space for yourself, even if it's just five minutes a day, ask yourself what you really need, and it sounds simple, but most of us are so disconnected or needs that we don't even ask the question. But that pauses our power. It can be the doorway to listening to yourself again, and from there, you can start making choices that really align with what you actually want?

Michael Hingson 36:43

One of the things that I suggest, and we do it in live like a guide dog, and I suggest it to people whenever we get in these discussions, is, no matter what you say about not having time, you absolutely have time, especially worst case at the end of the day, when you're starting to fall asleep, take the time to analyze yourself, take the time to become more introspective, because you have that time because you're in bed for heaven's sake. So you're really not supposed to be doing anything else, or shouldn't, but it's a great time to start to think about yourself, and I think that's a great time to deal with all the things that you're talking about here as well.

Kassandra Hamilton 37:20

Oh yeah, absolutely, yeah. And people have time for what they prioritize. That's that's the truth. And whether that's something people want to accept, it's absolutely the truth. You will make time for the things that are important to you.

Michael Hingson 37:35

Yeah, well, and that's what it really comes down to does, isn't it that you're always going to make time for the things that you find are important to you, and the reality is that you'll be able to progress when you discover that some of the things that are important to you are the kinds of things that we're talking about here that will avoid burnout or get you away From that absolutely we just have to really neck us back to boundaries and authenticity and purpose. It just gets back to knowing what you really need, and ultimately, no one can know that better than you about yourself.

Kassandra Hamilton 38:16

Absolutely, we have to reconnect to what matters and build the life that gives energy instead of only draining it.

Michael Hingson 38:23

Yeah, and we can, we can do that, but we do need to take the time to make that happen, and that's why I really suggest do it at the end of the day. It's quiet and or you can make it quiet, and you can really learn by doing that you don't have to watch TV until an hour after you've fallen asleep, and then you wake up and discover the TV's on. You can take the time to become a little bit more introspective and learn more about yourself that way. And that's exactly what will happen if you really think about it

Kassandra Hamilton 38:55

100% and you know, at my book launch, people were asking, like, how did you write a book, and it was like, it's not it's not hard in the sense that it's hard, it's hard because you have to show up every day. But that consistency, whether it's five minutes or an hour, like the consistency is everything. So showing up for yourself in small ways or whatever feels manageable at first, will naturally give you more energy to wake up early and give yourself more time. You know, it's just happens that way.

Michael Hingson 39:25

Yeah, yeah. Well, I agree. What's your favorite tool that you use with clients?

Kassandra Hamilton 39:31

So it would be the one I shared with you earlier rain. It has been very instrumental for people in transforming how long it takes them to go from from a place of fear or anxiety or resentment to just processing it and being neutral. And it's amazing.

Michael Hingson 39:53

And again, just to reiterate, it rain stands for,

Kassandra Hamilton 39:57

recognize, accept or acknowledge. Manage, investigate and nourish,

Michael Hingson 40:05

that's cheating. You get both both spellings of rain in there. That's that works, but it makes perfect sense and and I'm assuming that you've felt you've had pretty good success with people. Have you had anyone that just resists, even though they come to you and they say, Oh, I'm burned out and all that, but you start to work with them and they just resist? Or do you find that you're able to usually break through?

Kassandra Hamilton 40:35

So it's funny, because a lot of people that come to me are very resistant to it, because of the nature of burnout, where people feel like don't have the time or the energy right at the beginning, a lot of people are very resistant, and they say so in their testimonials. No, at first I felt resistant, but then I didn't know that these things were actually going to give me exactly what I what I needed. So I've worked with a couple nurses. I worked with a woman who was managing, like, working four jobs, and she was super burnt out. But eventually, probably by like two or three weeks in, people are starting to feel the differences, and they're, they're all in. So yeah, it does take a bit to get them there, but once they're there, they're they're flying so,

Michael Hingson 41:22

yeah, oh, that's that is so really cool, because you're able to break through and get people to do exactly what we've been talking about, which is so important to do,

Kassandra Hamilton 41:34

yeah, yeah. And you know the moments for me that just feel like, Oh, this is the work I meant to do, is seeing someone go from that place of burnout or defeat because they're working a job they don't enjoy to starting their own business that's leveraging their creativity and their passion, or they've repaired a relationship, or they're finally feeling confident in themselves like there's No better gift to me than to see that change in somebody.

Michael Hingson 42:06

What are some of the most common struggles that you see in people? I know we've probably talked a lot about it, but you know, it's good to summarize. But what are some of the kind of the most common struggles that you find in people? And why do you think that people are experiencing so much burnout? And I'm assuming that those two are related,

Kassandra Hamilton 42:27

yeah, yeah. So, okay, so if we were talking about career, people that are managing a career that is very demanding, and that is all they do, and they have no energy for time like for things outside of work. What they say is that they're feeling numb, or they're living on autopilot, or they don't recognize themselves anymore. Another shared that she was really scared of leaving because of a financial aspect. And so I think at that point, you just start to flip the narrative and ask, well, what are you sacrificing by staying right? So like, maybe we need to get a part time job while we're exploring our creativity and building a new business for ourselves, but it's 100% possible, and these programs are not meant to make these drastic changes overnight. They're small, incremental, consistent changes that over time bring you to a place of alignment with what you actually want to create in life. Do you

Michael Hingson 43:34

find that there are some people who feel I can't stay here, I've got to leave or this boss isn't good, or whatever, when, in reality, it's it's something different, and that a mindset shift makes them discover that they really are in a good well, they're in a good position, or they have a good career, or whatever, but their perspective has just been off.

Kassandra Hamilton 43:56

Yeah, absolutely. So someone said something to me the other day that it stuck with me at the time, but it was something like, If you can't, if you can't get out of it, you better get into it. Yeah, that's a good point. It's like, yeah, sometimes it's just with how you're showing up for yourself and for the people around you. And that's the shift that needs to happen. So it's not necessarily about leaving a job. Thank you for bringing that up. It is about changing your life from the inside, and a huge part of that is mindset and the energy that you're bringing to a situation. Because how you do one thing is how you do everything. So, yeah,

Michael Hingson 44:41

it's it's like, well, one of the things that I constantly tell people is there are a lot of times that something occurs to you or that you're involved with you have no control over, because you're not the one that that did it, or you're not the one that directly made this happen. And but you always have the choice of how you deal with whatever happens. So even if you don't have any direct influence over something occurring, you have always the opportunity to determine how you're going to deal with it. And that's always something that I think is so important for people to analyze and think about. But I think all too many people don't

Kassandra Hamilton 45:21

absolutely the power is in our pause. And that's something I tell people all the time, the power is in your pause. Slow down, take a second, don't respond right away. And then come from a place of power, and you know that it changes everything.

Michael Hingson 45:38

Well, the reality is that the more of that that you do, the more you pause, the more you think about it. The fact is, the quicker, over time, you'll be able to make a decision, because you're teaching yourself how to do that

Kassandra Hamilton 45:54

truly. Yep.

Michael Hingson 45:56

And so for a while, you may not be able to or you you are not confident enough to be able to make a decision right away, which is fine, you should pause. But the fact of the matter is, I think what I really describe it as, and I think it's so true, is you need to learn to listen to your inner voice, because your inner voice is going to tell you what you need to do. And you just need to really learn to focus on that, but we don't. We always say, Oh, that's too easy. That can't be the right answer when it really is.

Kassandra Hamilton 46:26

It really is. And so again, that pause is also about space, right? So when I feel triggered by something, I will take the space to let myself come back down from that and then ask myself what I really want, or again, coming back to boundaries, if someone asks me if I want to do something, and I'm a very social person, and I love connection, so right away, I want to say yes, I'll, you know, do that thing with you. Now I have a really beautiful way to still show that it's like something I want to partake in, but honor myself as well. By saying I love this idea, I need a little bit of time to figure out if I can fully commit to this, and I'll get back to you at this time so it shows integrity, not only to myself, but to to that person as well, and showing up in a way that it like, if I have capacity to do that, then I will, yeah.

Michael Hingson 47:25

Well, if somebody listening to this kind of feels unfulfilled or stuck exhausted, what's the very first step that you would suggest that they take?

Kassandra Hamilton 47:37

Just like I was saying, just take a pause.

Michael Hingson 47:40

I knew you were going to

Kassandra Hamilton 47:41

say that create a moment of space. Ask yourself, what's really going on and what you really want, and then ask yourself if your actions are all the choices that you're about to make align with that, yeah.

Michael Hingson 47:56

And the reason I asked the question was, was really just to get you to reiterate that and to get people to hear it again, because we have to really come together in our own minds and decide what we want to do, and we shouldn't have knee jerk reactions. There's no need to do that, if we think about it and really take the time to ponder what makes the most sense to do. Can we'll get the right answers if we work at it

Kassandra Hamilton 48:22

100% you just have to put in a little bit of curiosity and time to figure it out. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 48:33

What do you think is one of the greatest misunderstandings about burnout and what is the truth that you really wish more people knew?

Kassandra Hamilton 48:46

People think burnout is just about being tired or needing a vacation, but it's so much deeper than that. And you know, it's a sign that we've been living out of alignment with ourselves, and that rest alone isn't going to fix it real, real recovery is is coming from changing the way that we live and setting boundaries and reconnecting with what matters and building a life that gives energy instead of strain.

Michael Hingson 49:16

Yeah, again, it gets back to that authenticity thing.

Kassandra Hamilton 49:19

Yep, that thing, yeah.

Michael Hingson 49:26

What are some of the biggest transformations that you've seen from your clients that you're really pleased about?

Kassandra Hamilton 49:33

I've seen clients go from anxious and depleted to, like I said, starting businesses that they love. And that wasn't even something that we worked on together, it was like just a few tweaks, you know, simple but not easy, shifts that they made. And then I get emails or comments about how they're starting businesses that they love, and they're full time booked in that so like that. That's been a big transformation. Question for a few of my clients. One woman was trying to find a relationship, and she had tried everything, and from all different angles, and it wasn't working, and truthfully, she needed to come back to herself and align with herself, and when she did that, you know, nine months later, she found the love of her life, and one client said she stopped feeling numb for the first time in years. Another shared that she actually laughed and felt joy again. And these transformations are powerful because they're not just surface change or changes. They're they're life changing shifts in how people see themselves and what they what they feel like they can create in the world.

Michael Hingson 50:46

And ultimately, isn't most of this transformation or shift really a change in one's mindset.

Kassandra Hamilton 50:54

Yes, it is mindset, and it is also taking the time, taking the time, having the courage and having awareness of how we are operating in our daily lives, and why, yeah, and then shifting that.

Michael Hingson 51:12

Well, tell us all about the book. When did it launch, and what's happened, and what do you see coming down the line for it and so on? Yes, I know you have a lot to talk about, so tell us.

Kassandra Hamilton 51:27

So the magic of realigning from the inside out is very much in line with what I coach about, which is about bringing us back home to ourselves. And I share a lot of personal storytelling and scientific connections and soulful practices that I've tried that have worked really well for me, and I really invite readers to reconnect with with themselves. So it's sort of like a guidebook like the first the first half of the book is a lot of stories, the second half is more tools and strategies. And overall, it's the idea that, you know, the answers aren't out there. They have to start within. And we weren't meant to just get through the day. It's exhausting to try to fix and control everything out there. The thing is, we have no control over what's happening out there anyways, and so we have our one wild and precious life, and it's like, what are we going to do with that, especially in a world that's constantly pulling us outward with notifications and expectations and distractions? Yeah, I really believe this is how we show up to make a positive difference in the world by working on ourselves and spreading that upward.

Michael Hingson 52:40

So when did the book launch?

Kassandra Hamilton 52:43

August 21 was my book launch here on Vancouver Island, and I'm actually organizing a little book tour. Yeah, across the province here. So yeah, that's stay tuned. It'll be next month. I think so.

Michael Hingson 53:01

Have you had any kind of book tours, or what kind of publicity Have you had so far for the book?

Kassandra Hamilton 53:06

So I was working with a publicist, which was very new to me, and I was able to connect with some press. So a couple newspapers came to my book launch. There was, I think it was like 50 people that showed up, and the mayor came to give a speech, and he wants to meet with me for lunch next week and talk more about what I could do with the book, which is great, because I really think I can use it as a tool for helping in my own community and maybe even offering organizations some opportunities to explore strategies to get their their employees out of burnout. Yeah? So that's kind of what's happened so far, and a lot of bookstores have taken it up. So I've got all the local bookstores here. Have it. It's not available on Amazon, yeah, and it's actually a bestseller. I reached bestseller status in three categories. What categories, personal development, personal growth, and I think anxiety was the third one I have to look back at it.

Michael Hingson 54:14

Well, definitely congratulations are in order for doing that. Though. Thank you. Thank you. So that's that is definitely kind of cool to to have that kind of situation and that kind of status happening with the book. It makes it very exciting and certainly gratifying in so many ways. When did you start coaching? Did you when did you actually start your company?

Kassandra Hamilton 54:37

So I started coaching. Let's see two, two, no, a year and a half ago. So honestly, formally, not that long, but it's already just something I'm so passionate about and getting more and more positive feedback on. So yeah, I guess in the grand scheme of things, I'm just getting started.

Michael Hingson 54:59

Well, that's fair. That's fine. Yeah, we, we think you're going to go far at least. I think you're going to go quite a, quite a distance with all of this. Do you just coach people directly, one on one? Do you do virtual coaching? Do you coach outside of British Columbia and all that?

Kassandra Hamilton 55:18

Yeah, you know, I mostly work virtually, because then I can be accessible to more people. So that's how I actually prefer to work, is virtually, but I'm open to, you know, meeting people where they're at and however they want to communicate. So I've been doing phone calls with with one person and then zoom with another, and if people do want to do in person, I'm open to it. It's just a little bit more restrictive in terms of reach. But I'm also going to be doing some wellness workshops and talks around these tools and strategies I've learned, and using my book as a tool as I go through the province next month. So it's not just going to be about the book. It's going to be presenting and giving workshops and talks around this work, and then presenting my book as a tool to use in in helping people get back to a place of alignment and energy again.

Michael Hingson 56:20

Well, on your on your website, we haven't talked about that yet, but on your website, do you have any videos of talks or anything like that that you've done?

Kassandra Hamilton 56:31

Not of any talks. I think my first one, to be honest with you, is, was at the book launch, but it went so well that I'm just sort of, I'm I'm adding fuel to that fire, you know, and I'm just gonna keep going, yeah. So I haven't done any talks beyond that one yet, but I have some testimonials and things on my website. So those are the videos that are there.

Michael Hingson 56:55

Well, for people who are listening to this today, who feel like they want to do. So, how can they reach out to you and connect with you, and what? What happens?

Kassandra Hamilton 57:05

Yeah, so the best way is to reach out to me through my website or my I have a link tree link that I think I might have sent you, Michael, but it has all my different links for working on with coaching or reaching out in different ways and contact information. So link tree, Instagram are my main ones, but also obviously email and my website. So what is your website? It's www, dot Kassandra with a K Hamilton, which is my last name.com,

Michael Hingson 57:40

so that's easy. Www, dot Kassandra Hamilton com,

Kassandra Hamilton 57:44

yeah, and on Instagram, it's at Kassandra with a K underscore Hamilton, so

Michael Hingson 57:50

Okay, yeah, have you? Have you done much with LinkedIn?

Kassandra Hamilton 57:55

I have, yeah, I also have LinkedIn, yep. And I have Tiktok, and I have Facebook,

Michael Hingson 58:00

all the things, all the different suspects, all the usual suspects, yes, yeah. Well, that is, you know, that is really pretty cool. I hope that people will reach out, because you've off, you've clearly offered a lot of very useful and relevant information. And I think that it's extremely important that people take it to heart, and I hope that maybe we're going to be able to have contributed to your getting some more people in the business too.

Kassandra Hamilton 58:30

I really appreciate that, Michael and I know you've done so much work with people as well, and inspired others, you know, astronomically. So I really appreciate and feel grateful for the time that you've given me today.

Michael Hingson 58:46

Well, this has been a lot of fun, and we'll have to do it again. You'll have to come on and some point in the future and let us know how things are going and how the book is doing, and how everything else is happening. But I, but I really do value the fact that you've spent so much time with us today.

Kassandra Hamilton 59:03

Thank you so much. At least we're in the

Michael Hingson 59:06

same time zone. That helps. Yes, that's true. Well, Kassandra, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you out there for listening to us and being with us and watching us, whichever you do. I'd love to hear from you as well. I'd like to get your thoughts and your opinions. Please reach out to me. At Michael H i, that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, I'd like to get your thoughts. Like to know what you thought of today's episode, wherever you are experiencing the podcast, please give us a five star review. We value your reviews highly, and we would really appreciate you giving us reviews of this episode and the podcast in general, and for anyone out there, including you, Kassandra, who might know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable. Mindset and tell their own story. Please reach out. Let us. Let us know. Email me again. Michael H i@accessibe.com love to hear from you. You can also go to our website, which is www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, so that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, we'd love to hear from you. So whatever you do, we really appreciate you being a part of us today, and we we value very much all your time. So Kassandra again, thanks very much. This has been cool.

Kassandra Hamilton 1:00:37

Thanks, Michael.

Michael Hingson 1:00:44

Episode 392 – Becoming Unstoppable Taught Koen DeWitt About Healing and Self-Belief

Fri, 28 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

I sat down with Koen DeWitt, and his story is a powerful reminder of what resilience really looks like. Koen grew up in a home where emotions were never spoken, and he carried that silence into adulthood. When he left corporate life to dive in Thailand, he expected a fresh start. Instead, he survived the 2004 tsunami and had to rebuild everything from the ground up.

Koen opened up about the setbacks that followed, from business betrayal to a sudden heart surgery. What impressed me most was his willingness to keep choosing growth instead of staying in the pain. Today he helps entrepreneurs find purpose and stability in their own journeys, and his story encourages all of us to keep going even when life feels overwhelming.

Highlights:

00:00 – Learn how early family patterns shape the way you handle pressure as an adult.02:14 – See how breaking out of routine can open unexpected paths to personal growth.04:33 – Understand why facing fear head on can transform the way you move through life.06:48 – Explore how rebuilding your identity starts with acknowledging what you’ve avoided.09:12 – Learn how to recognize the signs that you are living from performance instead of purpose.11:40 – Hear how setbacks can become the turning points that redefine your direction.14:28 – Discover why trusting the wrong people can still teach you the right lessons.17:05 – Understand how health challenges can clarify what truly matters in your work and life.19:44 – Learn how choosing honesty over emotional silence creates real resilience.22:31 – See how helping others through their struggles can deepen your own healing.

About the Guest:

Koen De Wit is a marketing strategist, coach, and former diving instructor who’s rebuilt his life more than once — not by choice, but by necessity.

Originally from Belgium, his early life was shaped by emotional distance, chronic illness, and the pressure to stay useful. That same drive helped him build successful dive businesses across Asia — until betrayal, trauma, and collapse forced him to start over.

Twice.

In 2004, Koen survived the Asian tsunami that killed 300.000 people and wounded many more.

After 18 surgeries and no access to rehab or emotional support, he pushed forward the only way he knew how: by working.

He became one of Thailand’s leading diving instructor trainers. But behind the achievements, he carried the weight of trauma and over-responsibility. That way of surviving — through control and performance — eventually stopped working.

In 2017, after losing his business again, Koen turned to digital marketing as a last resort. What began as survival became a calling.

Today, he helps coaches and service entrepreneurs rebuild their business structures so they stop burning out and start creating something that feels right to run. His work blends strategy and structure with the emotional clarity most people avoid.

Koen lives in Thailand with his wife and son. He doesn’t believe in hustle or hype. He believes in clarity, calm systems, and work that gives back more than it takes.

Ways to connect with Koen**:**

https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-funnel-therapist/

https://www.facebook.com/koen.d.wit

https://www.youtube.com/@funneltherapist

Website

https://www.thefunneltherapist.com/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Episode 391 – How Young Adults Build Unstoppable Confidence with Hillary Spiritos

Tue, 25 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Young people today face noise, pressure and expectations that can drown out who they really are. I have met many who feel unsure of their path, and I believe this is one of the most important conversations we can have. In this episode, I sit with youth coach Hillary Spiritos, someone who has walked her own winding path from fearless child, to shy young adult, to a coach helping others reconnect with their inner voice. Her honesty about the old messages she carried and the ways she learned to trust herself again offers a lesson for all of us, no matter our age.

Hillary and I talk about what young adults face today, why so many feel lost and how simple daily choices can move us away from fear and toward clarity. You will hear how she helps people uncover what they value, build resilience and create a life that feels true. I think you will find this conversation grounding and hopeful. My hope is that it reminds you, just as it reminded me, that we all have the ability to step forward with purpose and live with an Unstoppable mindset.

Highlights:

00:10 – Learn how early life messages shape confidence and identity.01:27 – See why many young adults step back from who they really are.02:54 – Understand how internal stories influence your choices.03:55 – Hear how changing environments helps you discover new parts of yourself.13:42 – Learn how young adults navigate both opportunity and uncertainty.15:36 – Understand why modern pressures make clarity harder to find.19:00 – Discover why resilience begins with facing normal challenges.23:25 – Learn how redefining success opens space for authentic living.25:20 – See how guided reflection builds direction and self trust.39:57 – Discover tools that help you quiet the noise and listen inward.

About the Guest:

Hillary Spiritos, founder of Bat Outta Hell, is a pathfinding coach dedicated to helping young adults pursue the lives they envision by building self-trust and discovering their potential. She conducts workshops on essential life skills such as leadership development, interviewing, resilience, and maximizing your study abroad experience.

Through her coaching, Hillary empowers young adults to navigate social media noise and societal pressures, encouraging them to listen to their inner voice and achieve their unique personal and professional goals. This process helps clients identify their values, overcome obstacles, and embrace their fears, ultimately leading to a fulfilling and authentic life. As a certified pathfinding coach, she offers her clients that unique in-between space to create and execute their life road map.

Hillary brings years of experience as an Academic Advisor at NYU and Northeastern University, as well as a background in the corporate sector, both as an employee and freelancer.

Ways to connect with Hillary**:**

https://batouttahell.net/

https://www.tiktok.com/@bat.outta_hell

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hillaryspiritos/

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

Subscribe to the podcast

Leave us an Apple Podcasts review

Transcription Notes:

Michael Hingson 00:00

Michael Hingson 01:21

Well, hi everyone, wherever you happen to be today, I would like to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, and I am your host, Michael hingson, or you can call me Mike, one of those two, no other kind of words, just Mike or Michael. But we're glad you're here, whether you're watching, listening or doing both. And our guest today is a coach. She especially does a lot in coaching and working with youth, young people, and I'm really interested to learn more about that as we go forward. I think it'll be kind of fun. So I would like to welcome Hillary Spiritos to unstoppable mindset, Hillary, we're glad you're here. Thanks for coming.

Hillary Spiritos 02:02

Hi, thank you so much for having me. Mike. It's a pleasure to be with you.

Michael Hingson 02:06

Well, I think it's a pleasure to be with you too, so I guess it works out both ways, right? Wonderful. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for being here. Why don't we start as I love to do, let's start at the beginning. Tell us sort of about the early Hillary, growing up and all that. Since you know you're dealing with youth and and all that, you were one once. So let's, let's hear about you.

Hillary Spiritos 02:29

I was one once, absolutely. So I was a really fearless child. I had a really, like, wild fashion sense. I asked a lot of questions. I was pretty independent. I like to stay in my room and like play with my imagination and and then as I got older, I got a little bit shyer. I got a little bit behind the scenes. I started to I started to back away a little bit and kind of lose touch with who I was. And then I have finally, like when I was in my when I was in university, I really just decided that I didn't really know what I wanted to do, what I wanted to study what I was interested in, and it's been a process to kind of live my fullest, most authentic life, and that is what I want to help young people do.

Michael Hingson 03:29

Why did you back away? Why did you become kind of, maybe less outgoing or less adventuresome, if you will?

Hillary Spiritos 03:38

I think you know there are multiple reasons for this puberty is not like the least of which, but I would say that I'm a big believer that we are taught these messages when we're younger as children, and they get internalized. And I think I internalized messages that were to make myself smaller, to not cause waves, to just not be as big of a presence, perhaps. And so I you have to kind of rewire that. You have to break free from that, and then you can decide, actually, I'm not at the mercy of these stories that I've been told in these messages that I've gotten. Now,

Michael Hingson 04:23

where are you from?

Hillary Spiritos 04:24

I'm from New York City. Okay,

Michael Hingson 04:27

yeah. Well, you know, New York is a tough place, so you can certainly learn to be outgoing and active there. But I hear what you're saying, yeah. Now, where are you now?

Hillary Spiritos 04:39

I live in London, England,

Michael Hingson 04:41

okay, yes, a little ways from New York,

Hillary Spiritos 04:45

absolutely. But actually not as far as you might

Michael Hingson 04:48

think, no, it's only, what a five hour airplane flight, right?

Hillary Spiritos 04:53

But it's, it's actually shorter than going to California, yeah?

Michael Hingson 04:58

So, yeah. You know well, but what took you to London?

Hillary Spiritos 05:06

I have always wanted to live in London, and I really love the arts and culture and comedy scene here. I also am a deep, deep lover of travel, and obviously living on the continent of Europe, just gives me more opportunity to travel in that way and over the weekend, you know. And I also just am a deep believer in international education, study abroad, the ability to have cross cultural experiences, to learn more about yourself and your place in the world and the world itself through experiencing your life and yourself in a different

Michael Hingson 05:46

place. Do you have a car, or do you just use the tube and public transportation? I

Hillary Spiritos 05:52

use the tube and public transportation mostly. I mean, the thing about Europe is that it's really well connected over train.

Michael Hingson 05:59

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that that makes a big difference, because you can get wherever you want to go around Europe fairly easily by train, sure, absolutely, certainly, a lot easier than getting around most places in in the States.

Hillary Spiritos 06:19

Yeah, that's that can be true, though. I mean, there is an ease to a car Absolutely, and there's like a lovely I can blast my music and be with my thoughts and be in my own space that a car brings you that the train doesn't,

Michael Hingson 06:34

yeah, well, or you use earphones, but it's still not the same.

Hillary Spiritos 06:39

Yeah, I have a lot of clients and students who are perhaps in places that they don't have their car, and they find that their car is their safe space, and the space where they can vent and listen to music and just be alone and and they feel fine that they really miss their car. So it's I mean, but I also grew up in New York City, so I, I, it's not a part of my it's not a part of my existence, really.

Michael Hingson 07:06

Yeah, you're used to not having a car pretty much. I had a friend when I lived in in Winthrop, Massachusetts for three years. I had a friend. We both worked at the same company, and his philosophy was, buy a car, but don't get anything fancy. Just get a clunker. And when it dies, just leave it and go off and buy another one. And so he never did get any kind of a really high end car. And he had a couple where they died, and he just left them or got got them taken away, and then he went off and got a new

Hillary Spiritos 07:43

car. Sure, I guess it's really just what you value. Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 07:50

Well, I'm pretty used to having access to a lot of public transportation. Unfortunately, where I live here in California, we don't have a lot where I live anyway, of great transportation, but I remember living in the east, and of course, there was a lot more train access around New York, around Boston and around Washington, DC, for that matter, compared To out here, absolutely well. So where did you go to college?

Hillary Spiritos 08:24

I went. I got my undergraduate degree at Duke University, and then I got my master's in international education at NYU.

Michael Hingson 08:33

Okay, and so what was your Bachelor's

Hillary Spiritos 08:37

in theater and comparative religion?

Michael Hingson 08:41

That's a little different than international education. What prompted you to

Hillary Spiritos 08:44

switch? Yeah, so that's a great question. So I actually changed my major in my junior year of college because I didn't believe that anyone would be accepting of me majoring in theater and comparative religion as two separate things, and I didn't think it was good enough, and I had all these judgments again from messaging that I received as a young person, and I finally decided that I wasn't going to listen to that. So I changed my major, and I actually worked in the theater and live events production for five or six years after college, and loved it, but I found that it wasn't fulfilling in the way that I wanted my work to be. It wasn't as soul feeding as I wanted my work to be. And I realized that I was an RA at Duke University, and I I just truly loved working with young adults and helping them find their path and figure out what they wanted to do with their life and who they were and what they valued and and so I found that I really wanted to be in the world of higher education, so I went and got my master's.

Michael Hingson 09:49

But you didn't do that right out of getting a bachelor's. It was a little bit later.

Hillary Spiritos 09:53

Yeah, it was about five or six years later. Wow.

Michael Hingson 09:55

So what did you do for the theater while you were working?

Hillary Spiritos 09:58

I. Yeah, I was a stage manager in the theater, and then I was a Live Events Producer, so concerts, festivals, movie premieres, anything like that. I helped

Michael Hingson 10:11

produce. Did you do a lot of that around New York?

Hillary Spiritos 10:15

Yeah, so New York, LA, I also worked in Boston, actually, both as in the theater, as well as at a university in Boston after I had gotten my masters. So yeah,

Michael Hingson 10:29

I always enjoyed going to Broadway shows. There's, there's nothing like live theater. I agree. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's just a totally different kind of environment, and it's so much more fun than watching a movie or whatever, the sound is different and better and just the whole performance. There's nothing like seeing something on the stage. Yeah?

Hillary Spiritos 10:54

I mean, I think it's all about To each their own. Right? There are actors and people who find that movies have changed their lives and and I definitely have movies that I watch over and over again for comfort, same with TV shows. But for me, personally, the theater, there's nothing like live theater. Live theater is like energizing for me, and if I go too long without seeing it, I get a little

Michael Hingson 11:18

Yeah, well, you're in a in a town that has a fair amount

Hillary Spiritos 11:22

of theater? Absolutely, yes.

Michael Hingson 11:25

So what are your favorite movies? Oh, oh.

Hillary Spiritos 11:30

I mean, I guess it depends on what genre we're talking about. But I really love the genre of, like, inspirational sports movies. I that also I remember watching all of those and just really resonating with the character of the coach and realizing that that's kind of who I wanted to be in life, that person who recognized the potential and helped everybody reach their potential. So I loved, you know, the Karate Kid and Mighty Ducks and, like the replacements and strictly ballroom and and miracle and, you know, any Rocky,

Michael Hingson 12:10

you name it, yeah, A League of Their Own.

Hillary Spiritos 12:14

Oh, League of Their Own is incredible.

Michael Hingson 12:16

Absolutely, yeah, I always like the league of their own. Yeah,

Hillary Spiritos 12:19

the natural is also a great fact be the natural.

Michael Hingson 12:22

And I read the book long after seeing the movie, but I, but I read the book, and that was worth reading as well.

Hillary Spiritos 12:32

I think I've also read it, but I'm not, I can't.

Michael Hingson 12:38

Yeah, it's been a long time since since I've read it, but it was fun. I don't know my probably one of my favorite movies, and I love to quote it all the time. Goes away from sports. It's Young Frankenstein, but I'm a Mel Brooks fan. So what can I say? Oh yeah.

Hillary Spiritos 12:55

Oh yeah. I mean, that's an incredible film, too. And I would say I love a lot of movies that are not inspirational sports movies as well, but yeah for sure,

Michael Hingson 13:03

yeah, and I've always liked Casablanca. That's still one of my favorite movies of all time.

Hillary Spiritos 13:09

Classic, absolutely,

Michael Hingson 13:11

a classic, absolutely yes. But there's still nothing like going to see things on Broadway. You know, I used to see, I watched Damn Yankees the movie, and then when I lived back in the east, we got to see Damn Yankees on Broadway. I actually saw it twice. The second time was with Jerry Lewis playing Mr. Applegate, the devil, and it was the only thing he ever did on Broadway. And we, before we went to see it, there was a my wife read an interview with him, and he said his father had told him, you won't have really ever arrived in entertainment until you do something on Broadway. Well, he did a great job in the play. It was well worth seeing.

Hillary Spiritos 14:00

Well, yeah, I mean that that's a challenging statement for sure. And I think it depends how you how he took that right, but that can also be very disheartening,

Michael Hingson 14:11

yeah, yeah, well, he took it, he took it the right way. And, and, you know, he, I think he thought his dad was, was hoping his dad was watching from wherever his dad was and saw him on Broadway, but Broadway plays are fun, and I've seen a number on Broadway, and I've seen some plays not on Broadway, but still, people did a great job well. So you anyway, you did theater, and then you went back and got your master's degree, and you wanted to deal with young people. Why? Specifically just young people?

Hillary Spiritos 14:50

I think that young adults are exist in such an incredible but volatile space. So like throughout life, we go through on this track of all pretty much doing the same things at the same time, at the same pace with everybody else. And then when we meet or when we get to university, there just becomes so many more paths, and paths start to diverge, and everyone starts to get a little bit mixed up, and then once you're out of university, then that happens even more, and that can be a period of incredible opportunity and possibility and excitement, but it can also be a time of really a lot of anxiety and challenges and obstacles and fear of the unknown, and I think that that is a really exciting, interesting, dynamic place to be. I also just love the ethos of young people, of I'm not going to take that this is the way it's always been done, mentality. I'm not going to just let whatever is going on in the world wash over me. I'm going to actually take a stand. I'm I'm going to stand for what I believe in. And I think that's just a really, I mean, there are some real fierce young people out here, out here, and so that's really uplifting and really motivating and energizing to see.

Michael Hingson 16:18

Do you think that it's different now than it was, say, 30 or 40 years ago, in terms of dealing with youth and young people in terms of what they face and how they face it. Has it? Has it changed much? Or do you think it's really basically the same? And of course, the other logical question is, Is it easier or harder now?

Hillary Spiritos 16:39

Absolutely, so I think that it is absolutely part of the human condition to try to figure out who you are and what you want, and that is something that young people are constantly dealing with at every generation. So that's absolutely true, but I do believe that there are certain things that make it harder for this generation, the Gen Z and Millennial like cohort, I think that whether that's the covid pandemic, social media, helicopter or lawn mower, snow plow, parenting, whatever you want to call it, that just this general state of the world, there are all of These structures and systems in place that are crumbling and broken, that young adults are having to get a grip and understand and find their feet in a world that is constantly shifting and and not meeting their needs. So I think it is definitely, I mean, harder is challenging to rank, right? Because, like, obviously, there are very hard challenges in various generations, but I do think it is very different.

Michael Hingson 17:49

Well, you know, in 1917, 18, we had the pandemic of the flu. So it's not like this is the first time we've ever had that, but sure, it just seems to me, with everything that's going on today, with with social media, with instantaneous communications and so on, and probably other things where a number of people are raised in fear oriented environments, it is definitely a lot more challenging to be a youth growing up today. They're just too many challenges, much less you mentioned helicopter and other kinds of parents, I would assume that they're operating more out of fear than anything else, which is why they do what they do.

Hillary Spiritos 18:36

Well, that's interesting. I think they absolutely could be operating out of fear, and they can be operating out of the I want you to reach this echelon. I want you to do this thing, have this job, so that you will be secure and safe. However, we know that that's not a given, right? There's no such thing as security in that way. But I would also say there's a way to be operating out of a projection of what they wish that they lived, and they're passing that along to their children as well. So there are various ways that it can manifest

Michael Hingson 19:12

that's probably been somewhat true though, through most generations, although it may be a little bit more the case now, because there's so many outside forces, and they want to keep their kids from having to put up with all of that.

Hillary Spiritos 19:23

Yeah, I would also say that their parenting used to be a little bit more hands off, and it is now. Let me remove the obstacles from my children's lives and let me and that's a generalization. Obviously, not all parents are like that, but there is a big push to let me make it somewhat easier, and that's not to say don't support your children, and that's not to say don't help them out. That's not to you know, but in removing all the obstacles, young people aren't given the opportunity to build. Of the self reliance and the resilience and the self trust that they need to move forward,

Michael Hingson 20:05

yeah, and it may ultimately come down to, how many of the obstacles are you really removing, but? But that is true, that they make it they think easier. But the reality is, there are reasons why we all have to go through different situations to learn

Hillary Spiritos 20:26

Sure, absolutely, I think if you, if you don't develop resilience or self reliance or grit, I think that that is, that is going to be a very challenging life until you learn to really develop those traits, those skills, tools,

Michael Hingson 20:46

I know for students with disabilities. And this goes back 50 years. I know here in California, a number of the colleges and universities started hiring people to run offices for students with disabilities, and they would come in and Oh, we'll get we'll, we'll, we'll make sure you have your textbooks, we'll make sure you have a place to take your tests. And they do any number of things for students that some of us who grew up a little bit before those offices realized that the offices were were really creating more of a problem than a great solution, because they did everything for students, rather than students learning to do things for themselves. Students didn't learn how to hire people to read information for them, or how to go to professors and advocate for what they needed, because they just relied on the offices. And the offices would say, well, students don't know how to do those things, yeah, and they never will. It's the same, it's the same kind of concept. But you know, the reality is that there is a reason why there is value in having challenges put before you to overcome and deal with

Hillary Spiritos 22:07

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, it helps you recognize what you're capable of, and it also helps you realize that you have been through maybe something difficult previously, or you've gone outside of your comfort zone or tried something new or whatever, there's precedence there that you can do something like that again, and if you don't have those experiences, then you are unsure. I mean, I have clients who have not built up these experiences, or they don't recognize the experiences that they've had, and that's part of the work that we do, is that then they just feel so unprepared to go out in the world because they don't know what they're made of.

Michael Hingson 22:47

Yeah, yeah. And it is, it is a real challenge. And you know, the other part about it is that what referring back to the offices for students with disabilities, what the offices should be doing, is encouraging students to to do the work, and then saying, this is what, what I actually went through, and then actually saying, if you have a problem and you can't get the things that you know you need to have, will help you. We will. We will bring the resources of the university to, for example, to to bear, to get you what you need. But you have to be the one to initiate it. And I think that's the issue.

Hillary Spiritos 23:32

Sure, absolutely, it's it's it's the it's the asking questions without trying to figure out what the answer is yourself, or trying to find the answer yourself. And I think that can be manifest in many ways, and I think that that is also indicative of like a larger of a larger system, which is not being able to trust that you can figure it out, not being able to trust that you have the answer or that you can, like, trust your inner voice or your gut, and so you look outward and that so it can be part of a task, but it can also just be. It can manifest in your just general life.

Speaker 1 24:14

Yeah. So what does redefining success mean today for young people, and how do they separate their goals from what society expects them to do, or societal expectations?

Hillary Spiritos 24:28

Yeah, absolutely. So, as I kind of alluded to before, is that we learn these definitions. We learn these we have these messaging from when we were younger, and we learn what success means, what failure means, what courage is, and we start to internalize what we think other people will see as acceptable or good enough. And what we need to do is unpack that and. Try to redefine success and failure and all the rest of it for ourselves so that we can live our own lives and not be at the mercy of our prior messaging, childhood wounds of our parents, hopes and dreams and fears, perhaps what people of people in society might deem as not good enough, or not interesting, or whatever we want to live according to what we think we value. And so that would that's what redefining success means.

Speaker 1 25:32

How do you teach people how to redefine success? You you have a coaching process that I assume that you use. So what is that? How does all that work?

Hillary Spiritos 25:42

Yeah, so it's a three month process, and it's called aligned and alive. And the first month is helping young adults really get to the root of who they really are, what they really value, and what they really want their life to look like. And it is going deep, and it is being honest and answering those questions outside of societal expectations, and cutting through the noise to the best of their ability. And then the second month is really honing in on what is blocking you from going after the life you want, from imagining the life you want to create, and creating the life you imagine. And then the third month is reevaluating those what we those of things that we talked about in the first month, so who you really are, what you really value, and what you really want your life to look like. These things probably have changed over the course of this time, as you've kind of uncovered new aspects of yourself, and then we create an actionable strategic plan so that you're not just going off into the world unprepared and feeling unprepared to kind of take the next step. And there are absolutely follow up calls to just make sure that you feel the most secure and that you if you have any questions or kind of feel like you want to check in, that's absolutely acceptable and possible and hope like I hope you will and we will set up. And there are also people who don't work on this three month platform, but they also just meet with me regularly. So it's it depends on what you're looking for. This isn't a one size fits all situation.

Michael Hingson 27:24

Yeah, what? Which makes sense? It it shouldn't be a one size fits all because everyone is a little bit different. Needless to say, absolutely. So I didn't mention it before, but we should talk about what is the name of your company?

Hillary Spiritos 27:39

So the name of my company is called bat out of hell. There you go.

Michael Hingson 27:44

See how did you come up with that? It's I think it's great.

Hillary Spiritos 27:48

Thank you. I really love and have a kinship with bats. I think that bats are highly adaptable, perceptive, social creatures, and they spend a lot of their time upside down, so they see the world in a different perspective, and they symbolize transformation and rebirth and the shedding of the old to come into the new and out of the darkness and into the light, all of which I really resonate with and want the energy of the business. And then I also am not a one size fits all cookie cutter coach, let alone person. And I, and I wanted a name that kind of had that ethos, had that a bit of rock and roll in it, if you will. And so, yeah, I feel like it's has real momentum to it, and a real edge, which is great.

Michael Hingson 28:44

And so you, of course, feel a great kinship for the TV show in the movies Batman, right? Just checking,

Hillary Spiritos 28:51

yeah. I mean, there is, I'm not the biggest Batman fan, Marvel or super, but I will say there I did talk about this with people about how Batman, if I'm correct, embraced what he was most afraid of, and took that to help him fight the bad villains in Gotham. And so that is an incredible thing to do, to take what is blocking you, to take those fears, anxieties and and insecurities, and recognize where they come from, own them to and understand how they influence and manifest in your everyday life, so that you're not at the mercy of them. That's basically what Batman does. And that's great. That's dope.

Michael Hingson 29:37

I think that happened probably more in movies than in the TV series, but that's Sure. Adam West was an interesting character for TV, but that that's fine. I actually sat a row in front of him on an airplane flight once, he was a whole lot different on the airplane than he was as Batman was interesting. Did you talk to him? No. He didn't have any interest in talking to anybody except, I guess it was his agent or or someone who he was with, and that was the only person he talked with. Okay, that's that's a lot. What do you do? You know, well, so the the thing is, though, that I think you're right. Batman, like anyone had fears and he and especially in the movies, he learned to embrace them and did the things that he needed to do. He he chose his life, although there were things that that led him to do it, he still chose his life and operated accordingly. And that's something that we all have the opportunity to do, is we can make choices. I think it's important that we monitor our choices. That is when we choose things. I can I can go back many years in my life and see how I got to where I am today by the choices that I made. And I think that's a thing that is worth people doing, is being introspective and and thinking about what you do, what you did, and how you got where you are, not in any kind of a blame way, but rather just to know, and that also helps you then decide where do we go from here,

Hillary Spiritos 31:25

absolutely, to constantly or consistently, take stock of who you are and what you want, and to ask yourself questions of, is that true? Is that actually what I want? Is that actually what I value? Is that what I believe is, Am I doing this because somebody else says I should? Am I doing this because I don't want to be embarrassed, like, am I excited to do this, or excited and anxious, or do I just really not want to do it? All of these questions are really important to continually ask ourselves. But I think if you haven't learned to ask yourself those questions, or if you're feeling really lost at sea, or if you're feeling like you really just don't know how to cut out the noise, then it might be beneficial to talk to somebody. But absolutely, that's something that that's being introspective and reflective is is vital?

Michael Hingson 32:19

Yeah, I think that's extremely important to do, and it's it's also all about working to keep fear from controlling you, and learning how to control fear. And the more you look at like, what, what you do every day. And I encourage people, as they're going to sleep at night, to be introspective. What happened today? What? Why did I react to that? Why? Why was I afraid? What can I learn from that, or even the good stuff that went really well, but how might I do it better? Being introspective and really listening to your inner voice helps a lot in being able to deal with fear.

Hillary Spiritos 33:01

Absolutely, absolutely. I think it's the question of, are you able to listen to the to your inner voice? Do you trust your inner voice? Do you listen to your inner voice? Is there a reason why, even though you hear it, you're not doing it? Is there a reason why you're not taking the steps to engage with your life the way that you want. Do you not even know what the life you want to create is? And I think that these are really like listening to your inner voice is absolutely critical. It's vital. But sometimes it's not the easiest thing to do,

Michael Hingson 33:38

no because we haven't learned to do it. The more we work at it, the easier it becomes. It's a matter of really exercising that muscle that is our mind. Because we can learn to trust that inner voice. We can learn to listen to that inner voice, but we have to make the choice to do it. No one else can do that for us, absolutely.

Hillary Spiritos 33:59

And I think that's that's really important information, right? Because we're the ones that have to live with the consequences of our choices. We have to live. We're the ones who have to live in our lives, so to look outward for answers rather than looking inward. While it might feel more comfortable and you feel like, oh, that way I want won't make mistakes, or people will deem it acceptable, because I've I've taken the census, and everybody thinks that this is what I should do. It doesn't save you from you're the one who actually has to go through the motions, and you might be living someone else's life, and you're going to realize that at some point or another. Yeah.

Michael Hingson 34:43

And, and, I guess, in a sense, hopefully you will realize it and use that to advance and go forward and more. Learn to listen to your inner voice and more. Learn to not be afraid of so many things. Yeah.

Hillary Spiritos 34:57

And, I think that it's you. It's lovely to recognize that and try to get on the right path, or let's say, your path earlier rather than later. Yeah, because what you don't want is to necessarily look back and realize that you've lived your life according to someone else. It's the number one regret of the dying, right? So obviously, we do that to the best of our abilities, because all we can do is make the best decisions with the information that we have at the time. So it's keep it's a constant constant, trying to figure it out, but you we want to get on that. We want to live our most authentic life as as much as possible.

Michael Hingson 35:41

Sure, you talk a lot, or you refer to reclaiming your 20s and 30s and so on. And I think that's an interesting thing, because it's it was a probably most people view it as a simpler time in life. But what are some of the misconceptions that people actually have about their 20s and 30s, and how do you refrain from dealing with uncertainty and turn it into opportunity?

Hillary Spiritos 36:12

Yeah, that's really an interesting question, and it's a way really interesting way of phrasing it, because when you're older, you do tend to say, Oh, if only I, like, realized this in my 20s, because the or, like, what I could tell my 20 year old or 30 year old self is because actually, your 20s and 30s are fraught with a lot of challenges and a lot of insecurities and a lot of fears, and They're actually not necessarily simple times, but I would say some misconceptions are that you need to have it all figured out, that you're running out of time, that it's too late, or that you're behind, that everybody else has it figured out, and you you're lost, that your 20s are for figuring things out, and then once you hit your 30s, you're supposed To have it all figured out, and all your ducks in a row, the idea that your path is straight, and once you make a decision, then you're off to the races. And like you don't ever have to think about it again. If I could just pick the right career, pick the right partner, pick the right industry, I'll just be done. And that's that's not how life works. No. So I would say that we want to reframe uncertainty and all of these questions as opportunity. And so life is uncertain. And so when you learn to see uncertainty as possibility and obstacles as opportunity for growth, then you will begin to have more forward momentum, have live your live a more authentic life, and learn more about yourself and gain self trust and resilience and self reliance. And that's that's what we want to learn how to do in our 20s and 30s and beyond

Michael Hingson 38:00

and beyond, because the reality is, it's all part of the same thing.

Hillary Spiritos 38:04

Sure, absolutely, yeah,

Michael Hingson 38:08

it, it may or may not get any simpler, or maybe we learn enough things that it looks like it's simpler, but because we've learned certain things that help us get through whatever it is we have to get through. But the reality is, it's all about learning. I think, yeah, go ahead.

Hillary Spiritos 38:27

No, I just I think it absolutely is. So I think it's about if you start to recognize this in your 20s and 30s, you will as you go older, the wisdom comes with recognizing that you've done things like this. You've got a lot in your backpack. You have a lot of tools, you have a lot of experiences. You have the wisdom that comes with that. You have the self reliance and the self assurance that comes with that. And you know that you're going to be okay. You know that you can get through it because you've done it. So I think what being an adult means is, am I do I trust myself? Am I secure in who I am? Am I someone? Can I soothe myself? These are questions, rather than like, do I have the home, the kids, the you know, the traditional markers of adulthood really don't mean anything anymore. But what's really important is, Am I okay with me, and how do I want to engage in the world?

Michael Hingson 39:22

Yeah, and the reality is that it is, I think, going back to something we talked about before, it is tougher today, because there are just so many external meth or things that influence or that try to influence, and it probably is a lot more difficult than it than it used to be, because towns are larger, there are more people around. You've got social media, you've got so many other things that you face daily, probably a number of which we didn't used to face, or at least not to the same degree. So. It is more of a challenge than it used to be.

Hillary Spiritos 40:03

Sure, it's definitely it's definitely different, but I do believe that say that there are inflection points, right? And I do think that the advent of social media is a huge inflection point, and something that is not beneficial for young adults of today. Yeah, and it is in many ways detrimental and so but it is something that is here, and it is something that young adults have to navigate. How

Michael Hingson 40:35

do you teach them to deal with all of that, all the noise, all the social media and everything else, because it's all there. And I'm sure that you as a coach, face this, because you hear it from the people that you work with. Well, but all this is going on. How do you teach people to know what to cut out, or how to cut out a lot of that, to be able to get back to that, I've got to really know me absolutely.

Hillary Spiritos 41:02

So there are many tools that one can engage with. So there's actually sitting quietly and reflecting like literally cutting out the noise. There are mindfulness practices and meditation, there's journaling, and there's getting out in nature and exercise and dance and creative expression, and there are definitely tools in which you can get out of your head and into the body and and learn to literally cut out the noise. But I think what's really important is to figure out what resonates for each person, because, as we've said, everybody is different. But in particular for social media like it is really important to have an awareness of why you're using it so it feels like a neutral platform, or maybe it doesn't anymore. People are waking up to it, but it's optimized for engagement, and what you're seeing is someone's projected, curated reality. And so you want to ask yourself why you're doing it. You don't want to sit there and mindlessly scroll. You want to ask yourself what you're trying to get out of it. Are you looking for connection or validation, or creative inspiration or connection? And that can help you navigate through and help you realize what you want to get out from it, and not just like take it all in mindlessly, and we want to obviously be skeptical, skeptical of the information, and we want to limit our use, if not cut it out fully. And it's not a replacement for human connection. A lot of people we have feel like have a loneliness epidemic, because it's not, while social media does connect people, it's not a replacement for human to human connection. So it's really important to keep that in your life. And so I think it's just really important to continually engage with these questions of why you're engaging with it, and what it makes you feel, and how does it serve you? And do you want to be at the mercy of that? And the more you start to question it, the more you can break down those ties,

Michael Hingson 43:16

yeah, and the more of that you do, then again, the more you're practicing some of that introspection that we talked about earlier, absolutely, which is really what it's all about. There's nothing wrong with, I don't want to call it second guessing, but there's nothing wrong with thinking about what you're doing, what you did, and using all of that as a learning experience. Life's an adventure. We should we should take it that way.

Hillary Spiritos 43:43

Well, that's absolutely true as well. It's like all of these experiences are experiences. All of these are adventures. All of these are opportunities for growth, learning more about ourselves. And I don't want to minimize or belittle the fact that everyone needs to your life needs to be sustainable. You need to be able to like, live your life financially. So it's not like it's all fluff and but I do think it's important to recognize that this is all just a learning experience. Nobody really knows what they're doing. We're all trying to figure it out. So it's okay to take a little bit, cut yourself a little bit of slack, and be nicer to yourself and and it's actually really important to cut out the critical voice in your head, because that that is actually a huge reason of why you are feeling

Michael Hingson 44:38

stuck. Yeah, I've said many times on this podcast that one of the things that I've learned over the last couple of years is to stop saying I'm my own worst critic. I used to do that because I will like to record speeches when I travel and speak publicly, and I come back and listen to them, and I always just sort of quickly. He said, I'm my own worst critic. I want to really listen to it, because if I don't tell me, nobody else will. And I realized what a negative thing to say. And I finally realized I should be saying I'm my own best teacher. Because in reality, no one can teach me anything. They can provide me with information, but I'm the only one that can truly teach me or open me up for learning

Hillary Spiritos 45:21

that's beautiful. I love that I definitely have realized over the course of my life, that I have and I have certain narratives. We all do have certain narratives and stories that we've told ourselves about who we are as people that are actually quite negative and like we're not this kind of person, or we're not capable of this, or we're not the kind of person that does that, and it's actually limiting, and it's not going to help us in the long run

Michael Hingson 45:50

well, and we've got to get over this negativity. Just also you do, yeah, the other thing is, I don't like failure. I don't like the term failure because it is so negative, I think that things don't always work out the way we expect. And if we view it as a failure, that's an end, but it's not. It is okay. Something happened. It didn't go the way I wanted. What can I learn from that? And that's the part I think that most of us miss. We don't take that step to really step back or jump back a little bit and go. What do I learn from this that will help me not make the same judgment as as last time? Will not make it go the same way. How do I make it go better next time?

Hillary Spiritos 46:35

Yeah, and I think it definitely doesn't help that as young people, we are. We are like system, systemically taught to believe that grades and achievement is of the utmost importance, and the worst grade you can get is an F, and that means it's not good enough. Like that is the lesson we are learned. We are taught over and over and over again. So it is obviously not hard to deduce why we have this definition of failure. Yeah, and obviously our parents and other people in our community perhaps might have such fears, as we've talked about previously in this conversation, that might be like, if you do this, then you might fail at this. You like don't necessarily pursue this career, you might fail at this, and that's perceived to be a really bad thing. Yeah, but as you're saying, If you again, a failure is another way to read, another word that you may need to redefine. Because failure doesn't mean we're terrible. Failure doesn't mean we're incapable. Failure doesn't mean that we should, we should be never like we should stop doing this all together. It's not, it's not a judgment of our self worth. It's just a data point to help us realize, oh, this is not something that I maybe want to engage with, or, oh, I need to learn a little bit more about this, or whatever it might be. I also think it's important to recognize that failure, really, in my opinion, is not trying and not living the life that you want to live. It's if I believe that you can understand failure as like I'm just abdicating my responsibility to make these choices to somebody else, and I'm going to live the life that they've laid out for me, or not trying the things that you want to do, those could be perceived as failure. That's really the only way that can happen. The other

Michael Hingson 48:32

part about it, though, is sometimes there may be some other cause for you're not succeeding at doing something. For sure, it could be you're dyslexic, and you don't, you don't do well at reading things, and nobody has diagnosed that. Nobody's figured that out, which is, again, another reason why it's always good for you to be analytical about what you do and and be introspective, or be willing to ask,

Hillary Spiritos 49:00

absolutely, that's a great point, absolutely,

Michael Hingson 49:05

because all too often we just tend to make assumptions. As you've pointed out, yeah,

Hillary Spiritos 49:14

you always want to ask yourself, Is it true and how does that serve me? How does that belief serve me? Is it keeping me stuck?

Michael Hingson 49:21

Right? Well, how do you help your clients navigate fear, and especially the fear of disappointing others and so on, as they're growing up and as they're gaining more experience?

Hillary Spiritos 49:35

So this is actually definitely what we've been partially done, right? So it's redefining these, redefining failure for yourself and like or with any you know, just thought or assumption and asking yourself, Is it true? How does that serve you? Do you want to live at the mercy of that thought or belief and the fear of disappointing others? Is really interesting, because, as what we said before, it's not it's not someone else's life, it's your life, and you're the one who was to exist in that world. And it's also interesting, just as a note to recognize, sometimes we think we're going to disappoint somebody, because we assume what their response is going to be, but we've actually never had that conversation with them. So is that even true? Like, have you even had that conversation with them? Because we can often scare ourselves with these assumptions of what we think their response is going to be. So if we really don't even take the time to ask, but we're like, oh my god, we're paralyzed by the fear of of what we think they'll say. Then that's something we want to break through. And I also just think again, it's really important to recognize that you we want to build and form a relationship with our inner child, and so the way to live your fullest, fiercest, most authentic life and live the life you imagine is by creating a relationship with your inner child, because that is where your spark, your creativity, your passion, your zest for life, lives, but it's also where your fears and securities and anxieties live. But when you recognize that you are a composite of all of that, that is true, self love, and you can give that to yourself and other people, and also, again, when you recognize and own your fears and securities and anxieties, you're not at the mercy of them. And you can decide, I'm not going to bow down to them. I am going to move forward, I'm going to muster up the courage to move forward in the face of these fears and do what I want to do. Yeah,

Michael Hingson 51:49

which makes a lot of sense. Well, you know, one of the things that I was wondering, how long have you been coaching? Let me ask that.

Hillary Spiritos 51:56

So I opened up my business during the pandemic, so in 2020 but I've been doing this work for a lot longer than working in universities.

Michael Hingson 52:09

So what did you do at universities? You worked in academia a long time?

Hillary Spiritos 52:13

Yeah, so I was an academic advisor, and I got the reputation of being like my meetings just happened to run a lot longer, and I was not interested in having transactional conversations with students. I was more interested in trying to figure out who they are and what they wanted and why they weren't going after that, and what they wanted to major in, and what they wanted from their college career and beyond. And we got deep sometimes. And so, yeah, I was, I was someone who who just dug a little bit deeper for sure,

Michael Hingson 52:45

well, and you I would think because of that, made students really think and become a lot more analytical about themselves.

Hillary Spiritos 52:56

Yeah, I think it's really important to recognize why you are doing something, you know, I I ran into students, and I still have clients today who feel like if they don't know what they want to do, they should study business, or they really love art and drawing, or fashion or what, or some creative field, and their parents say that that's not good enough, and that they should study business or go into medical School or what have you like, there are lots of things that we accept as true or like, you know, maybe, oh, I can't study something in the humanities. I won't get a job from that. That's not important. You know, there are a lot of things we accept as true based on what society tells us, what society values, seemingly, what our parents and our community value, and it's really important to start questioning that and asking if that's really what we want to do. Because if you don't know what you want to do, and you think you're going to study business, because that's a catch all, but you actually realize that you don't enjoy math and you don't want to spend your day in front of a computer, you don't want like then you're going to be miserable. And it's really important to recognize that that's okay to not want that.

Speaker 1 54:04

I really think one of the most important things to get out of college, and for those who don't go to college, then you get it from high school or from alternative ways. But I think that one of the most important things is not even necessarily dealing with your major but it is all this whole concept of character development. It's all the other lessons that you learn because you're in an environment where you have to do things differently than you expected that you were going to based on what your parents and other people told you. And I think that's one of the most important things that we could ever have happened to us is that we step out away from at some point in our lives, our

Michael Hingson 54:48

growing up period, and we really put ourselves in an environment where we have to discover new things again. That's all part of life and being adventurous. Yeah.

Hillary Spiritos 54:58

I mean, as someone who has worked at. Academia for a long time and still does a little bit of hot gossip. I absolutely believe that academics is probably the least important part of college.

Michael Hingson 55:09

Yeah, I wasn't going to say that directly, but I agree.

Hillary Spiritos 55:14

Yeah, it is mostly what is real. I mean, sure it's very important to learn things absolutely, but it is really important to engage with different perspectives, learn adaptability and communication and time management, and figure out who you are and what you value and what your place in the world, and what impact you want to have on the world, and how to navigate systems that you're unfamiliar with, and how to, how to engage in the world the way you want to. I mean, to try new things, take classes that you think you might be interested in, or like that are totally not, not related to your major, like whatever it is. I think it's absolutely 100% I agree.

Speaker 1 55:56

The other part about it is, though, there are also a lot of people who who won't go to college, but doesn't look they don't have the opportunity to do that same learning. Absolutely, oh absolutely. Yeah, there are a lot of ways to get it. Makes a lot of sense, sure,

Hillary Spiritos 56:11

and, and, and that's definitely true in general, but especially within the states. And I think this is the case worldwide. Education is often becoming inaccessible for a lot of people, and so you can absolutely engage this part of your life, in your job, in in volunteer work, out in your community, whatever it might be, absolutely it's just the question of the energy and the motivation and the intent that you bring.

Michael Hingson 56:44

Yeah, what does leadership mean to you, and how do you work to help young people learn or start to learn, to lead authentically?

Hillary Spiritos 56:54

So leadership, to me, is not a title. It's a behavior. It's a sense of self. So it's vision, it's integrity, it's It's empathy, it's courage, communication, authenticity, resourcefulness, all of these things, resilience, to tolerate discomfort and risk taking and so knowing yourself is crucial. What are your strengths? What do you enjoy? What do you value? What are your goals? How do you want to spend your time? What do you stand for? What impact do you want to have? And so we want to practice empathy and active listening to for ourselves and other people. So that means, again, like stopping the critical voice, not judging yourself, asking yourself if this is really what you want, really checking in with yourself and getting to know yourself. We want to build resilience and self reliance and self trust. So again, practicing obstacles is opportunity and for growth and learning how to emotionally regulate yourself and embrace risk taking and the unknown. And we want to cultivate our communication skills, so cultivating our own voice and understanding our own narrative again, as we spoke about and learn to have difficult conversations and not being afraid of somebody else's response and being okay with how they respond, and not taking it as a as like something about yourself criticism, right? As a criticism, exactly, and so, and then be just being a lifelong learner, right? So it's about life is, God willing, hopefully long, and you will pivot, and you will grow and change and embrace that opportunity, and don't be afraid of the fact that things might change. And this is, again, learning to listen to your inner voice, yeah,

Michael Hingson 58:55

well, and I think that that's really, of course, once again, probably goes out saying that's what it's really all about. Well, how about I think some people say Gen Z isn't really prepared for the real world. What do you think about that? Yeah, I'm still trying to decide what the real world is. But anyway,

Hillary Spiritos 59:16

right? So there, there are some assumptions made in that question, right about what the real world is, and and I also, but I want to focus on what the word I'm prepared really, yeah, because perhaps Gen Z is, quote, unquote unprepared in the way that traditional markers might understand. But millennials and Gen Z really grew up in a different world that is shaped by technology and mental health awareness and global crisis crises and social media. That doesn't mean they're unprepared, it just means they're prepared differently, and so in many ways, actually, Gen Z is more equipped to understand the complexity. The modern world. They're digitally fluent. They're able to understand mental health and diversity and inclusion. They question outdated systems that are broken and that are not working for the world and people in the world. And so what gives me hope is that people are not accepting that this is how it's always been been done, mentality, their purpose and mission driven. They're extremely adaptable. Have great emotional awareness, and they're willing to speak out and challenge norms. And so I truly believe that young people are the stewards of our planet, and the more that they live with curiosity and passion and compassion and empathy, the more that they can contribute to healing and transforming the world around them. So instead of like labeling them as unprepared, we should recognize that the world that they're stepping into and the world that we've created is unlike anything we've ever seen before, and we're trying to, like, build the plane as we're flying it. So it's really important to to not belittle them, and not talk down to young people as it seems like a lot of people do, and recognize that actually, young adults have a lot to teach the people who are in these systems that actually, seemingly aren't working anymore well.

Michael Hingson 1:01:23

And the reality is, of course, who is really the unprepared? And it's it's also true that so many people have not learned to navigate the world that we've been creating and that we continue to create, and maybe they're the ones that really need to learn how to become more prepared by becoming more involved in some of these things that young people are learning to do automatically or on their own?

Hillary Spiritos 1:01:50

Absolutely, absolutely.

Michael Hingson 1:01:53

Yeah, well, in reality, to go back to an old joke, we'll know if people are really prepared if they can work VCRs, right? Okay, remember that nobody could work a VCR. They were always so complicated. And now, of course, we don't even know what VCRs are today. But I mean, the

Hillary Spiritos 1:02:14

young people that I talked to don't know what VCRs are. You know what that's you know, the world keeps moving there.

Michael Hingson 1:02:24

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. It dawned on me a couple of years ago as a as a public speaker, that I'm now speaking in a world where we have a whole generation that has grown up without any memory of September 11, and it's an amazing thing to think about, but it has helped me learn how to tell my story better, so that I can, as I like to say it, bring people into the building and have them go down the stairs with me, Have them deal with everything that I dealt with, and be able to come out the other side better for the experience. And I think that's extremely important to be able to do, because so many people don't have a memory of it. And even for the adults who who do for most people, the World Trade Center experience is only as big as their newspaper photographs or their television screens anyway.

Hillary Spiritos 1:03:25

Yeah, I think it is really important to recognize what everybody's actual lived reality is and what everybody's understanding of the world is, and so talking to young people who perhaps are not who did not live through September 11, or who did not live through or perhaps didn't, was weren't able to vote or didn't weren't, like, engaged in the Obama era of like, hope and engagement in politics in that way, or Millennials who were younger in the September 11, like it really, it's meeting people where they are, yep, and recognizing that that is their understanding of what America is, what the world looks like, what how they want to how they want to engage, what work looks like, what their view of their Future is, yeah, and recognizing all that's different.

Speaker 1 1:04:21

I agree. Well, this has been absolutely wonderful, and I'm glad Hillary we had a chance to do this, and I want to thank you for being here and giving us a lot of great insights. And I hope that people will take some of this to heart, if people want to reach out to you, maybe to use some of your skills as a coach and so on, how do they do that? Yeah,

Hillary Spiritos 1:04:41

absolutely. So my website is bat out of hell.net,

Michael Hingson 1:04:47

and my Tiktok out of O, U T, T, A, yes, just want to make sure we spell it so,

Hillary Spiritos 1:04:55

yes, B, A, T, o, u T, T, A, H, E, l, l.net, And then my Tiktok and Instagram are B, A, T, dot, O, U, T, T, A, underscore, hell. And if you would like to start working with me, I am absolutely taking on new clients, or we can schedule a consultation call so you can get to know me and the way I work and see if it's the right fit. So I would love to hear from you. Absolutely, we're we'll get through this together.

Michael Hingson 1:05:24

Do you coach people all over the world?

Hillary Spiritos 1:05:25

I do. I coach people all over the world. I coach individually, one on one coaching. I have group coaching, and I and I do workshops and seminars, so we can be in touch in various different ways. But yeah, I love, I love coaching.

Michael Hingson 1:05:42

Well, super well. Thank you again. And I want to thank all of you for being here, and I hope that this has been useful and that you've learned something from it, and I hope that you'll reach out to Hillary, because she's got a lot to offer. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear what you think of today's episode. So please feel free to email me. Michael M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, we'd love it if wherever you're listening or watching the podcast today, if you'll give us a five star rating, we value that your ratings very highly. Love your thoughts and your input, so please give it. We really appreciate you doing it, and for all of you and Hillary, including you, if you know anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, we're always looking for more people who want to come on and tell their stories to help us all see why we can be and should be more unstoppable than we think we are. So please provide introductions, always looking for more people to chat with. But again, Hillary, I just want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful.

Hillary Spiritos 1:06:48

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. It was great conversation. I loved it.

Michael Hingson 1:06:57

Episode 390 – Tracy Huff Explains How Presence Creates Unstoppable Leadership Without Force or Control

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

You’ll hear a remarkable story today about how strength grows when we choose to show up for one another. I enjoyed my time with Tracy Huff because her path—from a middle-child in Illinois to Army service, to a fourth-degree black belt, to running a school that shapes young leaders—shows how purpose often finds us in unexpected ways. As Tracy shares how martial arts helped her support her son, rebuild her own confidence, and guide families through stress, fear, and change, you will see how her approach reflects what I’ve believed for years: leadership begins with presence, patience, and trust. Our conversation reminded me that we all have the ability to raise the bar for ourselves and those around us, and I believe you’ll find her insights helpful as you continue your own unstoppable journey.

Highlights:

00:10 – Learn how community shapes a stronger mindset01:56 – See how new spaces spark new purpose05:16 – Understand how early roles influence leadership06:26 – Learn how helping a child reveals hidden strengths08:58 – See why trusting yourself builds confidence10:17 – Learn how life’s turns create unexpected growth21:23 – Discover how kids thrive with early leadership skills25:12 – Learn how parents guide with calm communication28:24 – See how responsibility helps kids find their voice36:46 – Learn why presence beats control in stressful moments44:34 – Understand how self-respect creates real authority

About the Guest:

Tracy Huff is a 4th-degree black belt, military veteran, and leadership coach helping women and parents ditch burnout and lead with calm, clarity, and confidence. She’s the creator of the Power Under Pressure Method and author of How to Punch Failure in the Face and How to Raise Kids Who Listen, Follow Through, and Take Ownership—Without Yelling or Nagging. Through her transformational talks and programs, Tracy empowers high-achievers to stop surviving and start leading—at home, at work, and within themselves.

Ways to connect with Tracy**:**

www.linkedin.com/in/ theconfidencecoach

https://www.facebook.com/tracy.huff.39

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com

https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/

https://twitter.com/mhingson

https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links

https://accessibe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe

https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/

https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Transcription Notes:

Episode 389 – The Unstoppable Clarity Inside Michael Whitehouse’s Nine Pillars Framework

Tue, 18 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What if real success came from the relationships you build, not the leads you chase? In this episode, I talk with Michael Whitehouse, whose nontraditional path taught him to think differently and trust his own curiosity. As we explore his journey—from big pivots to building a global network—Michael breaks down why relationship capital matters, how his Nine Pillars framework guides entrepreneurs, and why ethical, human-centered coaching makes all the difference. I walked away feeling renewed, and I think you will too, because Michael reminds us that being unstoppable begins with choosing connection and staying a lifelong learner.

Highlights:

00:10Learn how early experiences can shape your ability to think independently.

02:27See why following your own path can create long-term confidence.

05:00Understand how conversations can become meaningful opportunities.

06:34Discover how unexpected changes can open new directions in your work.

09:29Learn how shifting your approach can create new streams of growth.

11:20See how questioning norms can redefine your professional identity.

13:04Understand why relationship capital often matters more than selling.

18:45Learn how asking honest questions can build stronger connections.

25:59Discover why accessibility expands your audience and impact.

32:11Explore how virtual spaces can deepen your global relationships.

39:23Understand how identifying the real issue can simplify your business.

43:30Learn why speaking your client’s language improves your results.

47:49See what ethical coaching looks like from a practical perspective.

52:32Understand how integrity protects your reputation and value.

57:24Discover how a service-first mindset makes networking easier and more authentic.

About the Guest:

Michael had earned his first international vacation through hard work and sales success—seven days in Punta Cana, scheduled for March 31st, 2020. But instead of sandy beaches, he was met with shutdowns. COVID had just taken hold, cancelling both his trip and rapidly dismantling his work as a magazine publisher.

Determined not to go down with the ship, Michael tapped into his networking skills and began exploring online business. He started by adapting his sales skills to the digital world, eventually earning his coaching certification and discovering his true calling: helping others find clarity and success. But launching an online business wasn’t easy. The resources available were all hyper-niched, and no one was teaching the foundational skills needed to get started. So Michael did the hard work—learning through trial, error, and over 3,000 conversations with entrepreneurs.

Four years later, Michael reached his first 6-figure year and created the Nine Foundational Questions of Business, a framework that helps entrepreneurs identify what’s missing in their business. Today, he provides the very kind of support he wishes had existed when he started—guiding new entrepreneurs through the chaos toward clarity and growth.

Ways to connect with Michael**:**

LinkedIn:

Episode 388 – Building an Unstoppable Vision of Hospitality with Shamim Ehsani of Tribe Hotel

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

Have you ever wondered how a hotel could bring people together and transform a city? In this episode, I talk with Shamim Ehsani, co-founder of Nairobi’s Tribe Hotel, whose vision of “one planet, one tribe” turned hospitality into a living message of unity. Growing up in Kenya, Shamim learned that respect and connection cross every boundary—and he’s built that belief into everything his team does.

We explore how Tribe became a symbol of dignity and authentic service, how art and culture shaped its identity, and why true hospitality starts with valuing people as they are. Shamim’s story reminds us that purpose-driven leadership can turn even a simple idea into something truly unstoppable.

Highlights:

00:58 — Learn how early experiences in Nairobi shaped a lifelong passion for curiosity, courage, and connection.

02:35 — Discover what makes Nairobi one of the world’s most extraordinary cities and why its character inspires unity.

06:55 — Hear how understanding your environment can shape how you design meaningful experiences.

08:06 — Explore how real-world learning can teach the mindset every entrepreneur needs to succeed.

12:56 — Find out why action, not perfection, builds confidence when you’re starting something new.

15:27 — See how vision and perseverance can transform even small beginnings into lasting success.

21:12 — Learn the importance of staying bold when the world around you feels uncertain.

26:44 — Discover how one phrase became the foundation for a purpose-driven movement in hospitality.

33:44 — Understand why true hospitality begins with dignity and self-respect—for both guests and teams.

36:45 — Hear how empowering people to be authentic creates connection and loyalty that can’t be scripted.

44:17 — Learn how investing in people builds confidence, culture, and trust across every interaction.

52:42 — See how storytelling and creativity turn ordinary moments into unforgettable experiences.

About the Guest:

Shamim Ehsani is Co-Founder, Director and Developer of Tribe Hotel, a family-owned and operated,

5-star luxury hotel in Nairobi, Kenya, that channels African authenticity and excellence. Shamim

co-founded the hotel, located in the city’s prestigious diplomatic district, and serves as its Creative

Director, developing new concepts relating to F\&B and service. He is also the hotel’s Marketing Director, overseeing all branding and marketing efforts across the companies and outlets, including developing all of the brands.

Shamim also plays a key role in a constellation of family enterprises that are centered on real estate

development. A prolific and successful entrepreneur, he is also Co-Founder, Director and Developer of Trademark Hotel, Tribe Hotel’s 4-star sister property; Director and Co-Founder of VMX Fitness,

Nairobi’s top fitness facility; Principal and Creative Director of Beeline, a luxury brand marketing

agency; Director of Guardian Holdings, a holding/investment company; and Marketing Director of

Village Market, East Africa’s largest lifestyle and recreation complex.

Shamim co-founded Tribe Hotel with his brother Hooman in 2008 to fulfill a need for a 5-star luxury

hotel in Nairobi’s upscale diplomatic district. The brothers listed the 20 things they did not like about

hotels and set about to create their own that addressed them. The result is a higher standard in global hospitality, with the hotel distinguished as one of the most iconic properties in Africa. The hotel’s guests include royalty, heads of state and countless celebrities. The property boasts 128 rooms, a 10,000-sq.-ft. spa and a heliport.

Tribe Hotel broke away from the colonial style hotels that existed in the market and presents a space that supports the arts and is a better reflection of the wealth and dignity of Africa and the Kenyan people. They transformed the attitude of service from a subservient approach to one that is more egalitarian and congenial, with guests being “hosted” rather than “served.” The hotel boasts 900 African artworks and artifacts curated by Shamim’s mother, Faranak, supports local Nairobi artisans and purveyors, while its acclaimed Jiko restaurant has elevated African cuisine to new heights.

Ways to connect with Shamim**:**

Instagram

TRIBE HOTEL -

Episode 387 – Sir James Gray Robinson Reveals How to Shift From Warrior Mode to Unstoppable Peace

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 10:00:00 -0000

What if burnout was actually the beginning of something better? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I sit down with Sir James Gray Robinson, a third-generation trial lawyer who walked away from a successful career to heal himself—and now teaches others how to do the same.

Sir James and I talk about what really happens when stress takes over the body, how to shift from warrior mode to guru mode, and simple vagus-nerve resets that can calm the mind and restore focus in minutes. You’ll hear why information isn’t the same as experience, how neuroplasticity shapes your habits, and how purpose and service can keep you grounded even in high-pressure work. This conversation is packed with science, wisdom, and hope for anyone ready to reclaim their peace and performance.

Highlights:

00:51 Learn why information isn’t knowledge and how experience locks in learning.03:00 See how becoming a modern knight reshaped values like chivalry and service.04:06 Understand the Royal Order’s code, vetting, and service mission.07:53 Hear how a top trial lawyer hit burnout and what actually flipped the switch.11:10 Get the ABA survey wake-up call on lawyer stress and its impact.13:01 Spot the “warrior vs. guru” modes of the autonomic nervous system.16:03 Learn why serotonin, oxytocin, and dopamine thrive in “guru mode.”22:24 Use vagus-nerve activators to shift out of fight-or-flight fast.27:36 Try the smile reset to trigger calming cranial-nerve pathways.29:22 See why singing or chanting reduces stress before work.31:00 Apply cold water and forearm rubs as quick nervous-system reboots.41:38 Plan your day to prevent anxiety loops and channel problem-solving.45:00 Replace adrenaline addiction with team brainstorming and clear tasks.50:43 Drop multitasking for focused sprints to work smarter and earn more.1:00:00 Add purpose and service so high achievement stays healthy and effective.

About the Guest:

Davidson College in 1975 and Wake Forest University School of Law in 1978.

Ways to connect with Sir James Gray Robinson**:**

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Episode 386 – Unstoppable Performer and Educator with Ronald Cocking

Fri, 07 Nov 2025 10:00:39 -0000

In this impactful and inspiring episode of Unstoppable Mindset, host Michael Hingson sits down with Ronald Cocking—performer, educator, and co-founder of the Looking Glass Studio of Performing Arts—to reflect on a remarkable life shaped by rhythm, resilience, and love. Ron’s journey into the performing arts began at just five years old, when his passion for tap dance ignited a lifelong commitment to dance and musical theater. From his first professional role at age 15 in My Fair Lady to founding one of Southern California’s most impactful arts schools, Ron’s story is one of dedication, creativity, and community. But perhaps the most moving part of Ron’s story is his 49-year partnership—both personal and professional—with the late Gloria McMillan, best known as Harriet Conklin from Our Miss Brooks. Together, they created a legacy of mentorship through the Looking Glass Studio, where they taught thousands of students across generations—not just how to act, sing, or dance, but how to live with confidence and integrity. Ron also reflects on the legacy Gloria left behind, his continued involvement in the arts, and the words of wisdom that guide his life: “Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

“To find happiness, take the gifts God has given you and give them away.” This is more than a story of a career in the arts—it’s a touching tribute to passion, partnership, and purpose that will leave you inspired. Highlights: 00:48 – Hear how early radio at home shaped a lifetime love for performance. 03:00 – Discover why drumming and tap both trained his ear for rhythm. 06:12 – Learn how a tough studio change led to ballet, jazz, and tumbling basics. 08:21 – See the “sing with your feet” method that makes tap click for students. 10:44 – Find out how a teen chorus role in My Fair Lady opened pro doors. 13:19 – Explore the drum-and-tap crossover he performed with Leslie Uggams. 15:39 – Learn how meeting Gloria led to a studio launched for $800. 18:58 – Get the long view on running a school for 44 years with family involved. 23:46 – Understand how Our Miss Brooks moved from radio to TV with its cast intact. 32:36 – See how 42nd Street proves the chorus can be the star. 41:51 – Hear why impact matters more than fame when students build careers. 43:16 – Learn what it takes to blend art and business without losing heart. 45:47 – Compare notes on marriage, teamwork, and communication that lasts. 48:20 – Enjoy a rare soft-shoe moment Ron and Gloria performed together. 56:38 – Take away the “teach to fish” approach that builds lifelong confidence. About the Guest: My father was a trumpet player, thus I heard music at home often in the early 50’s and was always impressed and entertained by the rhythms and beats of Big Band music… especially the drummers. Each time I would see Tap dancers on TV, I was glued to the screen. It fascinated me the way Tap dancers could create such music with their feet! In 1954, at age 5, after begging my Mom and Dad to enroll me in a Tap class, my Dad walked in from work and said “Well, you’re all signed up, and your first Tap class is next Tuesday. I was thrilled and continued studying tap and many other dance forms and performing and teaching dance for all of my life. In my mid teens, I became serious about dancing as a possible career. After seeing my first musical, “The Pajama Game” starring Ruth Lee, I new I wanted to do musical theatre. I got my first professional opportunity at age 15 in “My Fair Lady” for the San Bernardino Civic Light Opera Association and loved every minute of it… and would continue performing for this organization well into my 30’s I met Gloria McMillan in the late 60’s while choreographing a summer musical for children. Gloria’s daughter was doing the role of Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz”. Then, about 3 or 4 years later I would meet Gloria again and the sparks flew. And, yes, she was Gloria McMillan of “Our Miss Brooks” fame on both radio and television. Wow, was I blessed to have crossed paths with her. We shared our lives together for 49 years. On November 4, 1974, Gloria and I opened a performing arts school together named “The Looking Glass Studio of Performing Arts”. We would teach and manage the school together for 44 years until we retired on June 30, 2018. We moved to Huntington Beach, California and spent 3 beautiful years together until she left to meet our Lord in heaven on January 19, 2022. Ways to connect with Ron: Lgsparon@aol.com About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi there, wherever you are and wherever you happen to be today. Welcome to unstoppable mindset. I'm your host, Mike hingson, and today we get to chat with Ron Cocking, who is Ron. Well, we're going to find out over the next hour. And Ron was married for many years to another person who is very famous, and we'll get to that, probably not as well known to what I would probably describe as the younger generation, but you're going to get to learn a lot about Ron and his late wife before we're done, and I am sure we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. So let's get to it. Ron, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Ron Cocking ** 01:59 Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. Michael, this. I've been looking forward to this. Michael Hingson ** 02:04 I have been as well, and we're going to have a lot of fun doing it. Ron Cocking ** 02:08 Do you one note on that last name? It is cocking. Cocking, he comes right? Comes from a little townlet in the coal mining country of England called Cockington. Michael Hingson ** 02:20 I don't know why I keep saying that, but yeah, cocky, no 02:23 problem. Michael Hingson ** 02:24 Well, do you go up to the reps recreations at all? Ron Cocking ** 02:28 Oh my gosh, Gloria. And I know you and Gloria, did do you still do it? I've it's on my schedule for September. Michael Hingson ** 02:35 I'm gonna miss it this year. I've got a speech to give. So I was going to be playing Richard diamond at recreation. Well, I'll have to be Dick Powell another time, but I thought that you you were still doing 02:50 it. I'm planning on it cool. Michael Hingson ** 02:53 Well, tell us about the early Ron cocking and kind of growing up in some of that stuff. Let's start with that. Ron Cocking ** 02:59 Well, the early part of my story was when I was born just a little before television came in, before everyone had a TV in their home. How old are you now? If I maybe, you know, I am now 76 Michael Hingson ** 03:12 Okay, that's what I thought. Yeah, you're one year ahead of me. I'm 75 Ron Cocking ** 03:16 I was born in 49 and so my earliest remembrances my mom and dad and my brother and I lived with our grandfather, and we had no television, but we had this big it must have been about three to four foot tall, this big box on the floor in a very prominent spot in the living room. And that was the Sunday afternoon entertainment. I remember my family sitting around, and I listened and I laughed when they did, but I had no idea what was going on, but that was the family gathering. And just, I know we'll talk about it later, but I I just have this notion that at that time I was laughing, not knowing what I was laughing at, but I bet I was laughing at my future Michael Hingson ** 04:02 wife, yes, yes, but other things as well. I mean, you probably laughed at Jack Benny and Amos and Andy and Ron Cocking ** 04:09 yeah, I remember listening to all those folks, and it was just amazing. Then when television came about and my father was a trumpet player, and I loved his trumpet playing, and he practiced often at home. He would sit in his easy chair and play some tunes and scales and that sort of thing. But what captured my ear and my eyes when I went to on rare occasions when I could go to his engagements, it was always the drummer that just stuck out to me. I was mesmerized by the rhythms that they could produce. And when TV came about, I remember the old variety shows, and they often would have tap dancers like. Had a stair gene, Kelly, Peg Leg Bates and the Nicholas brothers, and I just, I was just taken back by the rhythms. It sounded like music to me. The rhythms just made me want to do it. And so I started putting that bug in my parents ears. And I waited and waited. I wanted to take tap dance lessons. And one day, my dad walks in the back door, and I said, Dad, have you signed me up yet? And he said, Yep, you start next Tuesday at 330 in the afternoon. So I was overjoyed, and I went in for my first lesson. And mind you, this was a private tap class. Total Cost of $1.25 and we had a pianist for music, no record player, live piano, wow. And so I, I rapidly fell in love with tap dance. Michael Hingson ** 05:56 And so you did that when you weren't in school. Presumably, you did go to school. Ron Cocking ** 06:00 Oh, yeah, I did go to school. Yeah, I did well in school, and I enjoyed school. I did all the athletics. I played little league, and eventually would be a tennis player and water polo and all that stuff. But all through the years, after school was on the way to the dance classes. Michael Hingson ** 06:16 So you graduated, or I suppose I don't want to insult drumming, but you graduated from drumming to tap dancing, huh? Ron Cocking ** 06:24 Well, I kept doing them both together. I would dance, and then when my dad would practice, I would beg him to just play a tune like the St Louis Blues, yeah, and so that I could keep time, so I pulled a little stool up in front of an easy chair, and one of the arms of the chair was the ride cymbal, and the other one was the crash cymbal, and the seat of the chair was my snare drum. I would play along with him. And eventually he got tired of that and bought a Hi Fi for my brother and I, and in the bedroom I had a Hi Fi, and I started to put together a set of drums, and I spent hours next to that, Hi Fi, banging on the drums, and I remember it made me feel good. One day, my mom finally said to me, you know, you're starting to sound pretty good, and that that was a landmark for me. I thought, wow, somebody is enjoying my drumming, Michael Hingson ** 07:18 but you couldn't do drumming and tap dancing at the same time. That would have been a little bit of a challenge. A challenge. Ron Cocking ** 07:23 No, I would practice that the drums in the afternoon and then head for the dance studio later. And in this case, I was a local boy. I grew up in Riverside California, and my first tap teacher was literally maybe two miles from our house. But that didn't last long. She got married and became pregnant and closed her studio, and then I she recommended that I go see this teacher in San Bernardino by the name of Vera Lynn. And which I did, I remember walking into this gigantic classroom with a bunch of really tall kids, and I was maybe seven or eight years old, and I guess it was kind of an audition class, but after that evening, I she put me in the most appropriate classes, one of which was ballet, which I wasn't too excited about, but they all told me, If you're going to be a serious dancer, even a tap dancer, you need to get the basic body placement from ballet classes. And I said, Well, I am not going to put any tights and a T shirt on. But they finally got me to do that because they told me that the Rams football team took ballet class twice a week at that time. Ah. Said, no kidding. So they got me, they they got you. They got me into ballet class, and then it was jazz, and then it was tumbling, and so I did it all. Michael Hingson ** 08:43 I remember when we moved to California when I was five, and probably when I was about eight or nine, my brother and I were enrolled by my mother. I guess my parents enrolled us in a dance class. So I took dance class for a few years. I learned something about dancing. I did have a pair of tap shoes, although I didn't do a lot of it, but I, but I did dance and never, never really pursued it enough to become a Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire. Well, few of us do. I didn't dislike it. It just didn't happen. But that was okay, but it was fun to, you know, to do it and to learn something about that. And so I even today, I I remember it, and I appreciate it. So that's pretty cool. Ron Cocking ** 09:32 Well, you would understand what I always told my students, that tap dancing is like singing a song with your feet. Yeah. And I would sing, I would say, you all know, happy birthday, right? So I would sing it, and they would sing it along, and then I'd said, then I would sing it again, and I would sing it totally out of rhythm. And they would wrinkle their nose and look at me and say, okay, so what are you doing? And I'd say, Well, you don't recognize it because the rhythm is not correct. So then I would. Would tap dance Happy birthday, and I'd say, you sing along in your mind and I'm going to tap dance it. And that would always ring a bell in their mind, like, Oh, I get it. The rhythm has to be right on the button, or the people aren't going to recognize Michael Hingson ** 10:16 that was very clever to do. Ron Cocking ** 10:18 Yeah, thank you. And they got it, yeah, they got it, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 10:22 which is even, even more important. That's pretty clever. Well, so you did that, and did you do it all the way through high school, Ron Cocking ** 10:30 all the way through high school? And I think when I was 15, I was, I think I was in the eighth grade, maybe ninth, but I was 15 and got my first chance to I was cast in a professional show for San Bernardino civic light opera Association. And the show was My Fair Lady, and it was my English and journalism teacher at the junior high who had been cast. He was a performer also, but something came up and he couldn't follow through, so he had given the association my name, and I was out in the backyard. My mom came out. Said, Hey, San Bernardino clo just called and they want, they want to see it tonight at seven o'clock. So I put on my dance clothes and went over, and the director, by the name of Gosh, Gene Bayless, came out, and he showed me a couple of steps. And he said, Yeah, let's do it together. And he said, Boy, you unscramble your feet pretty well there kid. And he he looked over into the costumers and said, measure this guy. Let's put him in the show. So I was beside myself. And long story short, I Gosh, I'm over the over the years, I my first show was at age 15 with them, and I participated, did shows with them, until I think my last show, I was about 38 years old, and that last show was anything goes with Leslie uggums, wow. Michael Hingson ** 11:52 So what part did you play on my fair lady? Ron Cocking ** 11:55 I was just a chorus kid. I remember in the opening when Eliza sings, that wouldn't it be lovely? Wouldn't it be lovely? I was a street sweeper. I remember I had a broom, and there were three of us, and we were sweeping up that street and working in and around. Eliza Doolittle, of Michael Hingson ** 12:11 course, being really spiteful. You just said a little while ago, you were beside yourself. And the thing that I got to say to that, quoting the Muppets, is, how do the two of you stand each other? But anyway, that's okay, good in the original Muppet Movie, that line is in there. And I it just came out so fast, but I heard it. I was going, Oh my gosh. I couldn't believe they did that. But anyway, it was so cute, very funny. That's great. So and then you were, you eventually were opposite Leslie UB, Ron Cocking ** 12:39 yes, that was one of the high points talking about dancing and drumming at the same time. In fact, I used to give a drum a basic drum summer camp where I would teach tappers the basics of music notation, quarter notes, eighth notes, 16th notes. And then we would put a tap orchestra together. Everybody had their own music stand and their own drum pad. I would conduct, and we would play little pieces, and they would they would drum a rhythm, tap, a rhythm, drum, a rhythm, tap, a rhythm. And so anyway, it came full circle. One of the highlights of my dance slash drumming career was this show I did with Leslie uggums, the director had done this prior, and he knew it would work, and so so did the conductor in the entre Act. The top of the second act, the pit orchestra starts and plays like eight measures. And then there were six of us on stage, behind the main curtain, and we would play the next 16 bars, and then we would toss it back to the pit, and then toss it back to us, and the curtain would begin to rise, and we were right into the first song that Leslie uggums sang to get into the second act. Then she wanted to add a couple of songs that she liked, and she was very popular in with the audiences in San Bernardino, so she added a couple of songs, and I got to play those songs with her and and that was just so thrilling. And I with the scene finished, I had to have my tap shoes on, on the drum set. I had to hop down from the riser, and came out, brought one of my Toms with me, and played along with another featured tap dancer that kind of took over the scene at that point. So it was, it was really cool. Michael Hingson ** 14:31 So with all this drumming, did you ever meet anyone like buddy rip? Ron Cocking ** 14:35 No, I never met any famous drummers except a man by the name of Jack Sperling, which was one of my drumming idols, Michael Hingson ** 14:44 Donnie Carson was quite the drummer, as I recall, Ron Cocking ** 14:48 yeah, he did play yeah and boy, his his drummer, Ed Shaughnessy on his on The Tonight Show was phenomenal. Yeah, he's another of my favorites, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 14:57 well, and I remember. I guess Johnny Carson and Buddy Rich played together, which was kind of fun. They Ron Cocking ** 15:07 played together, and so did Ed Shaughnessy and Buddy Rich did a little competition on the show one time I realized, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 15:15 right, yeah. Well, and it's interesting to see some of the performers do that. I remember once trying to remember whether what show it was on, maybe it was also a Tonight Show where Steve Martin substituted for Johnny, but he and the steel Canyon, the Steve Canyon band, came out. Of course, he was great on the band, and then flat and Scruggs or flat came out. Or which one? Yeah, which one did the banjo flat, I think, but they, but they banjo together, which was fun? Ron Cocking ** 15:51 Oh, wow, yeah, yeah. Steve Martin is a tremendous band. He is, Whoa, yeah. I, Michael Hingson ** 15:56 I have a hard time imagining fingers moving that fast, but that's okay, me too. I saved my fingers for Braille, so it's okay. So where did you go to college? Ron Cocking ** 16:07 I went to for two years to Riverside City College, Riverside Community College, and then I went for two years to San Bernardino Cal State, San Bernardino, and I was majoring in English because I thought I may want to do some writing. But in the meantime, I became married, I became a father, and so I was trying to work and study and maintain a family life, and I just couldn't do it all. So I didn't quite finish a major at Cal State San Bernardino. I continued actually a nightclub drumming career. And now, now we're getting up to where this our performing arts studio began between Gloria and I. Michael Hingson ** 16:50 So was it? GLORIA? You married first? Ron Cocking ** 16:53 No, okay, no, Gloria was married. Gloria was a prior, prior marriage for 20 some years, or 20 years, I guess. And I had been married only two years, I think. And when we first, well, we actually met while we were both. I'll tell you the story in a minute, if you want to hear it. Sure, the first time I ever met Gloria Macmillan, I had no idea who she was, because she her name was Gloria Allen at the time that was, that was her married name that she took after the arm is Brooks TV show. Well, she took that the new name before the TV show even ended. But I was choreographing a children's summer musical, and the director came up said, hey, I want you to meet this young lady's mom. So the young lady was Gloria's daughter, her oldest daughter, Janet. And I said, Sure. So he said, This is Gloria. Allen, Gloria, this is Ron. And we shook hands, and I said, Nice to meet you. And that was it. And so the show happened. It ran for a couple of weeks, and Gloria was a wonderful stage mom. She she never bothered anyone. She watched the show. She was very supportive of her daughter. Didn't, didn't stage manage Michael Hingson ** 18:09 whatsoever, which wasn't a helicopter mom, which is good, Ron Cocking ** 18:12 definitely that, which was just really cool. So and so I was maybe three, four years later, so Gloria obviously knew that I could dance, because she had seen me choreographed. So I got a phone call from Gloria Allen, and I said, Okay, I remember her. She wanted to meet because she was thinking about starting an acting school and wanted someone to teach actors some dance movement. So I went over for a interview and took my little at that time, about two and a half year old, daughter, three year old, and we chatted, and oh my gosh, I just this, this beautiful woman swept me off my feet. And of course, I by the end of the conversation, I said, Gosh, you know, we talked about how we would integrate the acting and the dance, and I said, Can I have your phone number? Nope, I got the old well, we'll call you. Don't call us. And so I had to wait for a few days before I got a call back, but I got a call back, and I don't remember a lot of details, but the sparks flew really, really quickly, and we started planning our school. And if you can believe that this was 1973 when we started planning, maybe it was early 74 and we invested a whole total of $800 to get ourselves into business. We bought a record player, some mirrors, some paint, and a business license and a little shingle to hang out front. We had a little one room studio, and we. Opened on November 4, 1974 and we would close the studio on June 30, 2018 Wow. Michael Hingson ** 20:08 Yeah. So you, you had it going for quite a while, almost, well, actually, more than 40 years. 44 years. 44 years, yes. And you got married along the way. Ron Cocking ** 20:20 Well along the way, my my wife always said she fell in love with my daughter, and then she had to take me along with her. Yeah. Well, there you go. So we were together constantly, just running the school together. And then eventually I moved over to San Bernardino, and it was, gosh, some 1213, years later, we got married in on June 28 1987 and but nothing really changed, because we had already been living together and raising five children. GLORIA had four from a private prior marriage, and I had my little girl. So we we got all these five kids through elementary and junior high in high school, and they all went to college. And they're all beautiful kids and productive citizens, two of them still in show biz. Her son, my stepson, Christopher Allen, is a successful producer now and of Broadway shows. And our daughter, Barbara Bermudez, the baby that Gloria fell in love with. She's now a producer slash stage manager director. She does really well at big events with keynote speakers. And she'll, if they want her to, she will hire in everything from lighting and sound to extra performers and that sort of thing. And she's, she's just busy constantly all over the world, wow. Michael Hingson ** 21:43 Well, that's pretty cool. And what are the other three doing? Ron Cocking ** 21:47 One is a VP of Sales for it's a tub and shower company, jacuzzi, and the other one is a married housewife, but now she is a grandmother and has two little grandkids, and they that's Janet, the one that I originally had worked with in that children's show. And she and her husband live in Chino Hills, California, which is about 40 minutes from here. I live in Huntington Beach, California now, Michael Hingson ** 22:14 well, and I'm not all that far away from you. We're in Victorville. Oh, Victorville, okay, yeah, the high desert. So the next time you go to Vegas, stop by on your way, I'll do that, since that's mainly what Victorville is probably most known for. I remember when I was growing I grew up in Palmdale, and Palmdale wasn't very large. It only had like about 20 703,000 people. But as I described it to people, Victorville wasn't even a speck on a radar scope compared to Palmdale at that time. Yeah, my gosh, are over 120,000 people in this town? Ron Cocking ** 22:51 Oh, I remember the drive in the early days from here to Vegas in that you really felt like you could get out on the road all alone and relax and take it all in, and now it can be trafficking all all the Speaker 1 ** 23:04 way. Yeah, it's crazy. I don't know. I still think they need to do something to put some sort of additional infrastructure, and there's got to be another way to get people to Vegas and back without going on i 15, because it is so crowded, especially around holidays, that one of these days, somebody will get creative. Maybe they'll get one of Tesla's tunnel boring tools, and they'll make a tunnel, and you can go underground the whole way, I don't know, Ron Cocking ** 23:32 but that would be, that would be great. Something like that would happen. Michael Hingson ** 23:38 Well, so you you started the school and and that did, pretty cool. Did, did Gloria do any more acting after our Miss Brooks? And then we should explain our Miss Brooks is a show that started on radio. Yes, it went on to television, and it was an arm is Brooks. Miss Brooks played by e vardin. Was a teacher at Madison High, and the principal was Osgood Conklin, played by Gail Gordon, who was absolutely perfect for the part. He was a crotchety old curmudgeon by any standards. And Gloria played his daughter, Harriet correct. And so when it went from radio to television, one of the things that strikes me about armas Brooks and a couple of those shows, burns and Allen, I think, is sort of the same. Jack Benny was a little different. But especially armas Brooks, it just seems to me like they they took the radio shows and all they did was, did the same shows. They weren't always the same plots, but it was, it was radio on television. So you, you had the same dialog. It was really easy for me to follow, and it was, was fascinating, because it was just like the radio shows, except they were on television. Ron Cocking ** 24:56 Yeah, pretty much. In fact, there were a lot, there's lots of episodes. Episodes that are even named the same name as they had on the radio, and they're just have to be reworked for for the television screen, Michael Hingson ** 25:08 yeah, but the the dialog was the same, which was so great, Ron Cocking ** 25:13 yeah, yeah. And to see what was I going to add, it was our Miss Brooks was one of the very few radio shows that made the transition to television with the cast with the same intact. Yeah, everybody looked like they sounded. So it worked when they were in front of the camera. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 25:33 it sort of worked with Jack Benny, because most of the well, all the characters were in it, Don Wilson, Mary, Livingston, Dennis day, Rochester, world, yeah. And of course, Mel Blanc, yeah, oh. Ron Cocking ** 25:49 GLORIA tells a story. She she and her mom, Hazel, were walking down the street on the way to do a radio show in the old days in Hollywood, and here comes Mel blank, he says, he pulls over. Says, Hey, where are you girls headed because I know that he probably recognized them from being at at CBS all the time, and they said, We're headed to CBS. He said, hop in. Oh, that's where I'm going. So Mel Brooks gave her a ride to the Mel Blanc, yeah, would have been Michael Hingson ** 26:15 fun if Mel Brooks had but that's okay, Young Frankenstein, but that's another story. It is. But that's that's cool. So did they ever? Did she ever see him any other times? Or was that it? Ron Cocking ** 26:30 No, I think that was it. That's the one story that she has where Mel Blanc is involved. Michael Hingson ** 26:36 What a character, though. And of course, he was the man of a million voices, and it was just incredible doing I actually saw a couple Jack Benny shows this morning and yesterday. One yesterday, he was Professor LeBlanc teaching Jack Benny how to play the violin, which was a lost cause. Ron Cocking ** 26:59 Actually, Jack Benny was not a bad view. No, Michael Hingson ** 27:01 he wasn't violent. No, he wasn't. He had a lot of fun with it, and that stick went straight in from radio to television, and worked really well, and people loved it, and you knew what was going to happen, but it didn't matter. But it was still Ron Cocking ** 27:16 funny, and I'm sure during the transition they there was a little bit of panic in the writers department, like, okay, what are we going to do? We got to come up with a few shows. We got to get ahead a little bit. So the writing being just a little different, I'm sure that's part of the reason why they went back and kind of leaned on the old, old script somewhat, until they kind of cut their teeth on the new this new thing called television Michael Hingson ** 27:39 well, but they still kept a lot of the same routines in one way or another. Ron Cocking ** 27:45 Yeah, when they work, they work, whether you're just listening or whether you're watching, Michael Hingson ** 27:48 right, exactly what other shows made it from radio to television with the cast Ron Cocking ** 27:53 intact? You know, I am not up on that number. I Michael Hingson ** 27:57 know there were a couple that did. RMS, Brooks was, well, oh no, I was gonna say Abbott and Costello, but that was different, but our Miss Brooks certainly did. If Ron Cocking ** 28:09 the Bickersons did, I forget the two actors that did that show, but that was a really, Francis Michael Hingson ** 28:13 Langford and Donna Michi could be, but I think burns and Allen, I think, kept the same people as much as there were. Harry bonzell was still with them, and so on. But it was interesting to see those. And I'm awake early enough in the morning, just because it's a good time to get up, and I get and be real lazy and go slowly to breakfast and all that. But I watched the Benny show, and occasionally before it, I'll watch the burns and Allen show. And I think that the plots weren't as similar from radio to television on the burns and Allen show as they weren't necessarily in the Benny show, but, but it all worked. Ron Cocking ** 28:58 Yeah, yeah. That's why they were on the air for so long? Michael Hingson ** 29:02 Yeah, so what other kind of acting did Gloria do once? So you guys started the school Ron Cocking ** 29:10 well after she well, when we started the school, we found ourselves, you know, raising five children. And so I continued playing nightclub gigs. I had one, one nightclub job for like, five years in a row with two wonderful, wonderful musicians that were like fathers to me. And Gloria actually went to work for her brother in law, and she became a salesperson, and eventually the VP of Sales for a fiberglass tub and shower business down here in Santa Ana. So she drove that 91 freeway from San Bernardino, Santa Ana, all the time. But in, Michael Hingson ** 29:47 yeah, you could do it back then, much more than now. It was a little better Ron Cocking ** 29:51 and but in, but twist in between, she managed. Her mom still did a little bit of agency. And she would call Gloria and say. Want you to go see so and so. She did an episode of perfect strangers. She did an episode with Elliot of the guy that played Elliot Ness, stack the show Robert Stack the show was called Help Wanted no see. I guess that was an in but wanted, anyway, she did that. She did a movie with Bruce Dern and Melanie Griffith called Smile. And so she kept, she kept her foot in the door, but, but not, not all that much she she really enjoyed when John Wilder, one of her childhood acting buddies, who she called her brother, and he still calls her sis, or he would call her sis, still. His name was Johnny McGovern when he was a child actor, and when he decided to try some movie work, he there was another Johnny McGovern in Screen Actors Guild, so he had to change his name to John Wyler, but he did that mini series called centennial, and he wanted Gloria for a specific role, to play a German lady opposite the football player Alex Karras. And they had a couple of really nice scenes together. I think she was in three, maybe four of the segments. And there were many segments, it was like a who's who in Hollywood, the cast of that show Michael Hingson ** 31:28 does that was pretty cool. Ron Cocking ** 31:32 But anyway, yeah, after Gloria finished armas Brooks, she became married to Gilbert Allen, who, who then became a Presbyterian minister. So Gloria, when you said, Did she continue acting? There's a lot of acting that goes on being a minister and being a minister's wife, and she would put together weddings for people, and that sort of thing. And she did that for 20 years. Wow. So she Gloria was a phenomenon. She did so many things. And she did them all so very well, in my Speaker 1 ** 32:04 opinion. And so did you? Yeah, which is, which is really cool. So you, but you, you both started the school, and that really became your life's passion for 44 years. Yes, Ron Cocking ** 32:16 we would get up in the mornings, go do a little business, come home, have a little lunch, go back about 132 o'clock, and we would normally crank up about four after the kids get out of school, and we would teach from four to nine, sometimes to 10. Go out, have some dinner. So yeah, we pretty much 24/7 and we had had such similar backgrounds. Hers on a national radio and television scale, and mine on a much more local, civic light opera scale. But we both had similar relations with our our moms after after the radio tapings and the TV things. GLORIA And her mom. They lived in Beverly Hills, right at Wilshire and Doheny, and they had their favorite chocolate and ice cream stops. And same thing for me, my mom would take me there, two doors down from the little studio where I was taking my tap classes. There was an ice cream parlor, haywoods ice cream. And that was, that was the the lure, if you go in and if you do your practicing, Ronnie, you can, I'll take it for an ice cream so that I did my practicing, had plenty of little treats on the way, so we had that in common, and we both just had very supportive moms that stayed out of the way, not, not what I would call a pushy parent, or, I think you mentioned the helicopter, helicopter, but it Michael Hingson ** 33:37 but it sounds like you didn't necessarily need the bribes to convince you to tap dance, as you know, anyway, but they didn't hurt. Ron Cocking ** 33:46 No, it didn't hurt at all, and it was something to look forward to, but I I just enjoyed it all along. Anyway, I finally got to to really showcase what I could do when I was cast as the dance director in the show 42nd street. Oh, wow. And I was lucky. We were lucky. San Bernardino clo was able to hire John Engstrom, who had done the show on Broadway. The earlier version that came, I think it was on Broadway in the mid or to late 70s. He had worked side by side with Gower Champion putting the show together. He told us all sorts of stories about how long it took Gower to put together that opening dance. Because everything in the opening number you you see those steps later in the show done by the chorus, because the opening number is an audition for dancers who want to be in this new Julian Marsh show. So the music starts, the audience hears, I know there must have been 20 of us tapping our feet off. And then a few seconds later, the curtain rises about two and a half feet. And then they see all these tapping feet. And then the main curtain goes out, and there we all are. And. I my part. I was facing upstage with my back to the audience, and then at some point, turned around and we did it was the most athletic, difficult, two and a half minute tap number I had ever done, I'll bet. But it was cool. There were five or six kids that had done it on Broadway and the national tour. And then during that audition, one more high point, if we have the time, we I was auditioning just like everybody else. The director had called and asked if I would audition, but he wasn't going to be choreographing. John Engstrom was so with there was probably 50 or 60 kids of all ages, some adults auditioning, and at one point, John pulled out one of the auditioners, and he happened to be one of my male tap dance students. And he said, Now I want everybody to watch Paul do this step. Paul did the step. He said, Now he said, Paul, someone is really teaching you well. He said, everybody that's the way to do a traveling timestamp so and that, you know, I'll remember that forever. And it ended up he hired. There were seven myself and seven other of my students were cast in that show. And some of them, some of them later, did the show in Las Vegas, different directors. But yeah, that, that was a high point for me. Speaker 1 ** 36:19 I'm trying to remember the first time I saw 42nd street. I think I've seen it twice on Broadway. I know once, but we also saw it once at the Lawrence Welk Resorts condo there, and they did 42nd street. And that was a lot of that show was just a lot of fun. Anyway, Ron Cocking ** 36:39 it's a fun show. And as John said in that show, The chorus is the star of the show. Speaker 1 ** 36:45 Yeah, it's all about dancing by any by any definition, any standard. It's a wonderful show. And anybody who is listening or watching, if you ever get a chance to go see 42nd street do it, it is, it is. Well, absolutely, well worth it. Ron Cocking ** 37:00 Yeah, good. Good show. Fantastic music, too. Well. Michael Hingson ** 37:03 How did you and Gloria get along so well for so long, basically, 24 hours a day, doing everything together that that I would think you would even be a little bit amazed, not that you guys couldn't do it, but that you did it so well, and so many people don't do it well, Ron Cocking ** 37:21 yeah, I don't know I from, from the the first time we met, we just seemed to be on the same wavelength. And by the way, I found out as time went by, Gloria was like Mrs. Humble. She wasn't a bragger, very humble. And it took me a while to find out what an excellent tap dancer she was. But when we went to the studio in the early days, we had, we just had one room. So she would teach actors for an hour, take a break. I would go in teach a tap class or a movement class or a ballet class. I in the early days, I taught, I taught it all. I taught ballet and jazz and and and and Michael Hingson ** 38:01 tap. Well, let's let's be honest, she had to be able to tap dance around to keep ahead of Osgoode Conklin, but that's another story. Ron Cocking ** 38:09 Yeah. So yeah, that. And as our studio grew, we would walk every day from our first studio down to the corner to a little wind chills donut shop wind chills donuts to get some coffee and come back. And about a year and a half later, after walking by this, this retail vacant spot that was two doors from our studio, we said, I wonder if that might be, you know, something for us, it had a four lease sign. So, long story short, we released it. The owner of the property loved knowing that Gloria Macmillan was that space. And so luckily, you know when things are supposed to happen. They happen as people would move out next to us, we would move in. So we ended up at that particular studio with five different studio rooms. Wow. And so then we can accommodate all of the above, acting, singing classes, all the dance disciplines, all at the same time, and we can, like, quadruple our student body. So then we made another move, because the neighborhood was kind of collapsing around us, we made another room and purchased a building that had been built as a racquetball club. It had six racquetball courts, all 20 by 40, beautiful hardwood. We made four of them, five of them into studios, and then there was a double racquetball racquetball court in the front of the building which they had tournaments in it was 40 by 40 we moved. We made that into a black box theater for Gloria. And the back wall of the theater was one inch glass outside of which the audiences for the racquetball tournaments used to sit. But outside the glass for us, we had to put curtains there, and out front for us was our. Gigantic lobby. The building was 32,000 square feet. Wow, we could it just made our heart, hearts sing when we could walk down that hallway and see a ballet class over here, a tap class over there, singers, singing actors in the acting room. It was beautiful. And again, it was just meant for us because it was our beautiful daughter, Kelly, who passed away just nine months after Gloria did. She's the one that said, you guys ought to look into that. And I said, Well, it's a racquetball court. But again, the first moment we walked in the front door, you start. We started thinking like, whoa. I think we could make this work. And it worked for another 20 years for us and broke our hearts to basically rip it apart, tear the theater down, and everything when we were moving out, because we we couldn't find another studio that was interested in in coming in, because they would have had to purchase the building. We wanted to sell the building. Yeah. So anyway, of all things, they now sell car mufflers out of there. Michael Hingson ** 41:02 That's a little different way, way. Yeah, social shock, did any of your students become pretty well known in the in the entertainment world? Ron Cocking ** 41:11 I wouldn't say well known, but a lot of them have worked a lot and made careers. Some of our former students are now in their 50s, middle 50s, pushing 60, and have done everything from cruise ship to Las Vegas to regional some national tours, even our son, Christopher, he did the national tour of meet me in St Louis with Debbie Boone, okay, and he's the one that is Now a successful producer. He's his latest hit. Well, his first, what can be considered legitimately a Broadway hit show was the show called shucked, and it opened about two years ago, I think, and I finally got to go back to New York and see it just a month before it closed. Very hilarious. Takes place in Iowa. The whole show is built around a county in which everybody that lives there makes their living off of corn, making whiskey. And it is a laugh, way more than a laugh a minute. But anyway, we had one of Gloria's acting students who was hired on with a Jonathan Winters TV sitcom called Davis rules. It ran for two seasons, and here he was like 16 or 17 years old, making, I think it was. He was making $8,000 a week, and he was in heaven. He looked like the Son he played, the grandson of Jonathan Winters and the son of Randy Quaid and so he, yeah, he was in heaven. And then after that, he did a very popular commercial, the 711 brain freeze commercial for Slurpee. The Slurpee, yeah, and he made the so much money from that, but then he kind of disappeared from showbiz. I don't know what he's doing nowadays, Speaker 1 ** 43:00 but it's, it's, it's interesting to, you know, to hear the stories. And, yeah, I can understand that, that not everybody gets to be so famous. Everybody knows them, but it's neat that you had so many people who decided to make entertainment a career. So clearly, you had a pretty good influence on a lot of, a lot of kids. Ron Cocking ** 43:20 Yes, I over the years, Gloria and I felt like we had 1000s of children of our own, that they that we had raised together. It's really a good feeling. And I still get phone calls. We got a phone call once a few years back from from one of our students who had been trying to crack the nut in New York, and she called us like 530 in the morning, because, of course, it was Yeah, but she had just signed her first national tour contract and was going to go out with the show cabaret. So fortunately, we were able to drive up to Santa not let's see, it's just below San San Jose. The show came through San Jose, and we got to see her up there. But those kinds of things are what made us keep teaching, year after year, all these success stories. Of course, we have former students that are now lawyers. Those are actors. Well, we Michael Hingson ** 44:17 won't hold it and we understand, yeah and they are actors, by all means. How many teachers did you have in the studio when you had the big building? Ron Cocking ** 44:26 Gosh, at one time, we had 10 or 12 teachers, teaching vocal teachers, two or three ballet teachers, jazz teachers, and you both taught as well. And we both continued teaching all through that time. We never just became managers, although that's that was part of it, and mixing business with art is a challenge, and it takes kind of a different mindset, and then what an unstoppable mindset you have to have in order to mix business with performing, because it's too. Different sides of your brain and a lot of patience and a lot of patience. And guess who taught me patience? Uh huh, Gloria Macmillan. Michael Hingson ** 45:09 I would Conklin's daughter, yes, and I'll bet that's where she learned patience. No, I'm just teasing, but yeah, I hear you, yeah. Well, I know Karen and I were married for 40 years, until she passed in November of 2022 and there's so many similarities in what you're talking about, because we we could do everything together. We had challenges. Probably the biggest challenge that we ever had was we were living in Vista California, and I was working in Carlsbad, and the president of our company decided that we should open an office, because I was being very successful at selling to the government, we should open an office in the DC area. And so we both got excited about that. But then one day he came in and he had this epiphany. He said, No, not Virginia. I want you to open an office in New York. And Karen absolutely hated that she was ready to go to Virginia and all that. Speaker 1 ** 46:15 But the problem for me was it was either move to New York or take a sales territory that didn't sell very much anymore. The owner wasn't really willing to discuss it, so we had some challenges over that, but the marriage was strong enough that it that it worked out, and we moved to New Jersey, and Karen made a lot of friends back there, but, you know, we always did most everything together. And then when the pandemic occurred, being locked down, it just proved all the more we just did everything together. We were together. We talked a lot, which is, I think one of the keys to any good marriages, and you talk and communicate. Ron Cocking ** 46:56 Yes, in fact, when after we closed the studio in 2018 it took us a few more months to sell our home, and then when we moved down here, it was only about, I don't know, I don't know if it was a full year or not, but the pandemic hit and but it really didn't bother us, because we had, we had been working the teaching scene for so many years that we basically Were done. We basically walked out of the studio. We did. Neither of us have the desire to, well, let's continue in at some level, no, we cherished our time together. We have a little porch out in front of our home here, and it gets the ocean breeze, and we would sit for hours and chat. And oddly enough, not oddly, one of our favorite things to do, we have a website that we went to that had, I think, every radio show of armas Brooks ever made. And we would sit listen to those and just laugh. And, in fact, Gloria, there are some. She said, You know what? I don't even remember that episode at all. So yeah, that that was an interesting part. But yeah, Gloria and I, like your wife and you really enjoyed time together. We never talked about needing separate vacations or anything if we wanted to do something. We did it Speaker 1 ** 48:16 together, yeah, and we did too. And you know, for us it was, it was out of desire, but also was easier for us, because she was in a wheelchair her whole life. I was I'm blind. I've been blind my whole life. And as I tell people, the marriage worked out well. She read, I pushed, and in reality, that really is the way it worked, yeah, yeah. Until she started using a power chair. Then I didn't push. I kept my toes out of the way. But still, it was, it was really did meld and mesh together very well and did everything Ron Cocking ** 48:49 together. That's fantastic. I'm proud of you, Michael, and it really Michael Hingson ** 48:53 it's the only way to go. So I miss her, but like, I keep telling people she's somewhere monitoring me, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I got to be a good kid, Ron Cocking ** 49:04 and I'll hear I'll get some notes tonight from the spirit of Gloria McMillan too. I prayed to her before I went on. I said, please let the words flow and please not let me say anything that's inappropriate. And I think she's guided me through okay so far. Michael Hingson ** 49:20 Well, if, if you do something you're not supposed to, she's gonna probably hit you upside the head. You know, did you two ever actually get to perform together? Ron Cocking ** 49:30 Oh, I'm glad you asked that, because, well, it had been years since I knew that she was a darn good tap dancer. In fact, I had a tap dancing ensemble of of my more advanced kids, and if they wanted to dedicate the extra time that it took, we rehearsed them and let them perform at free of charge once they made it to that group, they they did not pay to come in and rehearse with me, because I would spend a lot of time standing there creating so. So we were doing a performance, and we wanted to spotlight, I forget the exact reason why we wanted to spotlight some of Gloria's career. Talk about radio a little bit. And I said, Gloria, would you do a little soft shoe routine? And because we had invited a mutual friend of ours, Walden Hughes, from the reps organization, and he was going to be the guest of honor, so I talked her into it. At first she wasn't going to go for it, but we had so much fun rehearsing it together. And it wasn't a long routine, it was relatively short, beautiful music, little soft shoe, and it was so much fun to say that we actually tap danced together. But the other times that we actually got to work together was at the old time radio conventions, mostly with reps, and that's really when I got to sit on stage. I was kind of typecast as an announcer, and I got to do some commercials. I got to sing once with Lucy arnazza. Oh, life, a life boy soap commercial. But when Gloria, Well, Gloria did the lead parts, and oh my gosh, that's when I realized what a superb actress she was. And if I don't know if you've heard of Greg Oppenheimer, his father, Jess Oppenheimer created the I Love Lucy shows, and so Gloria loved Jess Oppenheimer. And so Greg Oppenheimer, Jess Son, did a lot of directing, and oh my gosh, I would see he came in very well prepared and knew how the lines should be delivered. And if Gloria was not right on it, he would say, No, wait a minute, Gloria, I want you to emphasize the word decided, and that's going to get the laugh. And when he gave her a reading like that man, the next time she went through that dialog, just what he had asked for. And I thought, Oh my gosh. And her timing, after watching so many armist Brooks TV and listening to radio shows. GLORIA learned her comedic timing from one of the princesses of comedy timing is Eve Arden, right? They were so well for obvious reasons. They were so very similar. And if you have time to story for another story, do you know have you heard of Bob Hastings? He was the lieutenant on McHale's navy. McHale's Navy, right? Yeah. Well, he also did a lot of old time radio. So we went up to Seattle, Michael Hingson ** 52:32 our two grandkids, Troy Amber, he played, not Archie. Was it Henry Aldridge? He was on, Ron Cocking ** 52:40 I think you're right. I'm not too up on the cast of the old time radio show. Yeah, I think you're right. But anyway, he was there, and there was an actress that had to bow out. I don't know who that was, but our grandsons and Gloria and I, we walked in, and as usual, we say hi to everybody. We're given a big packet of six or eight scripts each, and we go to our room and say, Oh my gosh. Get out the pencils, and we start marking our scripts. So we get a phone call from Walden, and he said, hey, Ron Bob. Bob Hastings wants to see Gloria in his room. He wants to read through he's not sure if he wants to do the Bickersons script, because he you know, the gal bowed out and right, you know, so Gloria went down Michael Hingson ** 53:23 couple of doors, coming Ron Cocking ** 53:26 Yes, and she so she came back out of half an hour, 40 minutes later, and she said, well, that little stinker, he was auditioning me. He went in and she went in and he said, Well, you know, I don't know if I want to do this. It doesn't seem that funny to me. Let's read a few lines. Well, long story short, they read the whole thing through, and they were both, they were both rolling around the floor. I'll bet they laughing and so and then jump to the following afternoon, they did it live, and I was able to watch. I had some pre time, and I watched, and they were just fantastic together. I left after the show, I went to the green room, had a little snack, and I was coming back to our room, walking down the hall, and here comes Bob Hastings, and he says, oh, Ron. He said, Your wife was just fantastic. So much better than the other girl would have been. So when I told GLORIA That story that made her her day, her week. She felt so good about that. So that's my Bob Hastings story. Bob Hastings and Gloria Macmillan were great as the Bickersons. Speaker 1 ** 54:29 Yeah, that was a very clever show. It started on the Danny Thomas show, and then they they ended up going off and having their own show, Francis Langford and Donna Michi, but they were very clever. Ron Cocking ** 54:42 Now, did you realize when now that you mentioned Danny Thomas? Did you realize that Gloria's mom, Hazel McMillan, was the first female agent, talent agent in Hollywood? No, and that's how you know when the. They moved from from Portland, Oregon, a little city outside of Portland. They moved because Gloria's mom thought she had talent enough to do radio, and it wasn't a year after they got here to LA that she did her first national show for Lux radio at the age of five. That was in 1937 with with Edward G Robinson. I've got a recording of that show. What's what show was it? It was a Christmas show. And I don't remember the name of the of it, but it was a Christmas show. It was Walden that sent us. Sent Michael Hingson ** 55:33 it to us. I'll find it. I've got it, I'm sure. Ron Cocking ** 55:35 And so, yeah, so, so Gloria was a member of what they called the 500 club. There was a group of, I don't know, nine or 10 kids that by the time the photograph that I have of this club, it looks like Gloria is around 12 to 14 years old, and they had all done 500 or more radio shows. Wow, that's a lot of radio show. There's a lot of radio So Gloria did, I mean, I got a short my point was, her mom was an agent, and when Gloria was working so consistently at armas Brooks, she said, Well, I'm kind of out of a job. I don't need to take you. GLORIA could drive then. And so she came back from the grocery store, Ralph's market near Wilshire and Doheny, and she came back said, Well, I know what I'm going to do. I ran into this cute little boy at the grocery store. I'm going to represent him for television. And she that's, she started the Hazel McMillan agency, and she ran that agency until she just couldn't anymore. I think she ran it until early 1980s but she, my god, she represented people like Angela Cartwright on the Danny Thomas show and Kathy Garver on, all in the family a family affair. Family Affair. Yeah. Jane north. Jane North went in for Dennis the Menace. He didn't get the role. He came back said, Hazel, I don't think they liked me, and they didn't. They didn't call me back or anything. Hazel got on that phone, said, Look, I know this kid can do what you're asking for. I want you to see him again. He went back and they read him again. He got the part, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 57:21 and he was perfect for it. Ron Cocking ** 57:22 He was perfect for that part was, I'm sorry. Michael Hingson ** 57:27 It's sad that he passed earlier this year. Ron Cocking ** 57:29 Yeah, he passed and he had, he had a tough life, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 57:36 well, you know, tell me you, you have what you you have some favorite words of wisdom. Tell me about those. Ron Cocking ** 57:45 Oh, this goes back to the reason why I came across this when I was looking for something significant to say on the opening of one of our big concert programs. We used to do all of our shows at the California theater of Performing Arts in San Bernardino, it's a really, a real gem of a theater. It's where Will Rogers gave his last performance. And so I came across this, and it's, I don't know if this is biblical, you might, you might know, but it's, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. And that's what I felt like Gloria and I were trying to do. We wanted to teach these kids as as professionally. We treated our students as they were, as if they were little professionals. We we expected quality, we expected them to work hard, but again, Gloria taught me patience, unending patience. But we knew that we wanted them to feel confident when the time came, that they would go out and audition. We didn't want them to be embarrassed. We want we wanted them to be able to come back to us and say, Boy, I felt so good at that audition. I knew all the steps I was and I and I read so well it was. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so that aspect of it, we felt that we were feeding them for a lifetime, but we also were creating all of these arts patrons, all these lovers of the arts, 1000s of kids now love to go to musicals and movies and plays because they've kind of been there and done that at our studio. And so anyway, that's and whether, whether or not it was their confidence in show business or whether it was their confidence we've had so many calls from and visits from parents and former students saying, Boy, I just was awarded a job. And they said my my communication skills were excellent, and I owe that to Gloria. I was on the beach the other day, and I looked over and there was this young man and his wife. I assumed it was his wife. It was they were setting. Up their beach chairs, and I looked and I say, Excuse me, is your name Brandon? And he said, No, but he said, Is your name Ron? And I said, Yes. He said, No, my name is Eric. And I said, Eric puentes. And so we reminisced for a while. He took tap from me. He took acting from Gloria, and he said, you know, he was sad to hear of Gloria's passing. And he said, You know, I owe so much to Gloria. I learned so much about speaking in front of groups. And he is now a minister. He has his own church in Redlands, California, and he's a minister. And of all the billion people on the beach, he sits next to me. So that's one of those things when it's supposed to Michael Hingson ** 1:00:41 happen. It happens. It does. Yeah, well, and as we talked about earlier, you and Gloria did lots of stuff with reps, and I'm going to miss it this time, but I've done a few, and I'm going to do some more. What I really enjoy about people who come from the radio era, and who have paid attention to the radio era is that the acting and the way they project is so much different and so much better than people who have no experience with radio. And I know Walden and I have talked about the fact that we are looking to get a grant at some point so that we can train actors or people who want to be involved in these shows, to be real actors, and who will actually go back and listen to the shows, listen to what people did, and really try to bring that forward into the recreations, because so many people who haven't really had the experience, or who haven't really listened to radio programs sound so forced, as opposed to natural. Ron Cocking ** 1:01:46 I agree, and I know exactly what you're saying. In fact, Walden on a couple of at least two or three occasions, he allowed us to take some of Gloria's acting students all the way to Seattle, and we did some in for the spurred vac organization Los Angeles, we did a beautiful rendition of a script that we adapted of the Velveteen Rabbit. And of all people, Janet Waldo agreed to do the fairy at the end, and she was exquisite. And it's only like, I don't know, four or five lines, and, oh my gosh, it just wrapped it up with a satin bow. And, but, but in some of our kids, yeah, they, they, they were very impressed by the radio, uh, recreations that they were exposed to at that convention. Speaker 1 ** 1:02:37 Yeah, yeah. Well, and it's, it is so wonderful to hear some of these actors who do it so well, and to really see how they they are able to pull some of these things together and make the shows a lot better. And I hope that we'll see more of that. I hope that we can actually work to teach more people how to really deal with acting from a standpoint of radio, Ron Cocking ** 1:03:04 that's a great idea. And I know Walden is really sensitive to that. He Yeah, he would really be a proponent of that. Michael Hingson ** 1:03:10 Oh, he and I have talked about it. We're working on it. We're hoping we can get some things. Well, I want to thank you for being here. We've been doing this an hour already. Ron Cocking ** 1:03:18 My gosh, where's the time gone? I know doesn't seem like an hour, but it sure has been a pleasure speaking with you. Michael and I will have to do it again one day. Michael Hingson ** 1:03:27 We will, we'll have to get together, and we can spend an hour. We could talk about Walden, but you know, yeah, there's an hour and a half at least. Yeah, at least. Well, I want to thank you, and I want to thank all of you for listening today. We really appreciate you being here, and what I hope is that if you enjoyed the show, you will go off and give us a five star review wherever you're listening or watching the podcast. We would appreciate positive, really good reviews if you'd like to email Ron, how can people maybe reach out to you? If they want to reach out to you in any way, they're Ron Cocking ** 1:03:59 welcome to reach out through my email. Which is L G S P, A, R O N, at a, o l.com, Michael Hingson ** 1:04:12 what is L G S P, A, Ron Cocking ** 1:04:13 that is the name of our studio, the Looking Glass Studio of Performing Arts. Ah, Michael Hingson ** 1:04:19 so L G, s, p, A, ron@aol.com.com you got it cool? Well, I really appreciate you being here. And again, if any of you'd like to reach out to me, I'd love to hear from you. Hear your thoughts. You can email me at Michael H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, and if you know of anybody else who you think ought to be a guest and Ron you as well. If you know anybody that you think ought to come on, who has stories to tell, I think everybody does, but we're always looking for people to introduce us to more storytellers. So we'd love to hear from anybody that would be great. But again, I want to thank you. For for being here, I'm going to do it right. Ron cocking, see, I got it. We really appreciate you being here, and thank you for for coming on with us. Ron Cocking ** 1:05:09 You're absolutely welcome my pleasure. **Michael Hingson ** 1:05:15 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Episode 385 – The Unstoppable Power of Communication That Inspires Empathy and Inclusion with Dr. Shabnam Asthana

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 10:00:22 -0000

Every once in a while, I meet someone whose story reminds me why inclusion and communication go hand in hand. My guest this week, Shabnam Asthana, is one of those people. She’s a global PR leader, entrepreneur, and author who has spent her life turning words into bridges that connect people and purpose.

We talk about her journey from teaching and lecturing at India’s National Defence Academy to leading global communications for major brands—and what it taught her about empathy, leadership, and real inclusion. Shabnam shares how storytelling can turn data into emotion, and why true diversity is less about representation and more about respect.

Her message is powerful and deeply human: being unstoppable begins with an open heart, quiet courage, and the willingness to rise again. If you’re ready to lead with empathy and communicate with purpose, this conversation will stay with you long after it ends.

Highlights:

00:43 – Hear how early role models and a working mother raised ambitions and set a path toward leadership. 03:39 – Learn why strong communication skills pointed her toward PR and how debates built confidence. 05:24 – See why teaching became the first step when women in PR roles were rare in smaller cities. 08:12 – Discover what it took to lecture at India’s National Defence Academy and earn respect in a rigid setting. 12:09 – Understand the leap from academia to corporate PR after being scouted for communication excellence. 15:50 – Learn how serving as a spokesperson shaped internal and external messaging at a Swedish-Indian firm. 17:01 – Gain a humble view of global work and why inclusion means moving from tokenism to listening. 21:08 – Compare India and Sweden and see how representation differs from real inclusion in practice. 24:18 – Learn how small, specific acts like adding sign to slides can make people feel genuinely seen. 34:24 – Find out how storytelling turns CSR spreadsheets into human change that inspires action. 43:22 – Explore the choice to found Empowered Solutions and why entrepreneurship kept growth alive. 53:06 – Take a fresh definition of an unstoppable mindset rooted in resilience and an open heart.

About the Guest:

A multi-faceted Professional, who has fast tracked from being a reputed National name to a well-respected and emulated global one! Shabnam Asthana has added new dimensions to Global PR and Communications.

She has to her credit, post graduate degrees in English Literature, Public Relations and Advertising, an MBA in Marketing Management & several International certifications including a prestigious Hon. Doctorate in Business Administration from the National American University USA (NAU).

She has over 25 years of rich professional experience. She started her career in the educational field as a high school teacher and then moved on to the role of a Lecturer at the prestigious National Defence Academy, Khadkwasla. She was the only civilian who compered for the Passing out parades, PT & Equestrian display and the Graduation ceremony of the NDA for 3 consecutive years. This was covered live on Doordarshan.

It was after one of the Passing out Parades that she was compering at the NDA, that a senior position in a reputed company was offered to her and thus began her foray into the corporate world.

After her successful corporate stint in senior positions with reputed companies including Multinationals in India and abroad and reputed real estate businesses, she started her own PR and communications firm, Empowered Solutions in 2005 which has been running successfully since then. Adding offices in USA and Canada as part of its international expansion.

Ways to connect with Shabnam :

Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabnam_Asthana Instagram https://www.instagram.com/shabnamasthana/?hl=en Linked in - https://in.linkedin.com/in/dr-shabnam-asthana-7b174a5 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShabnamAsthana/ X - https://x.com/shabnamasthana VyaapaarNiti Expert Profile - https://www.vyaapaarniti.com/expert/dr-shabnam-asthana- Tring Celebrity Platform - https://www.tring.co.in/shabnam-asthana

About the Host:

Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.

https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

Thanks for listening!

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Transcription Notes:

**Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.

**Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, Hi again, everyone. I am your host, Michael Hingson, and you are here listening to or watching or both, unstoppable mindset today, our guest is a person of many talents, and I think you're going to be as amazed about her as I am. Shabnam Asthana is a person who has been involved in she was a teacher for a while. She's been very heavily involved in a variety of things at the corporate level. She started her own marketing firm in 2005 and I don't know what all my gosh, she's got so many things, it's really hard to keep up, but I'm sure she's going to tell us all about it, and I am looking forward to that. And I really appreciate all of you being here with us. So Shabnam, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. And thank you for being here.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 02:15 Thank you, Michael, truly wonderful to be with here, and thank you for that amazing introduction. You make me feel as if I've worn a professional cape of so many accolades and so many things. It's wonderful to be here with you.

**Michael Hingson ** 02:32 Michael, well, you do have lots of awards and lots of accolades.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 02:38 That's just one part of the journey. The true reward is in the, you know, work that I do, these stories, that I shape, the narratives that spring in that is the true reward. And of course, accolades are always welcome, and they are a way of encouragement, which do ensure that, yes, I continue doing the good work.

**Michael Hingson ** 03:00 Well, why don't we start back at the beginning, which is always fun to do. Why don't you tell us about the early Shabnam growing up?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 03:08 Okay, that's something which is very close to my heart. I was born in India in a small city called Bokaro, Steel City. It was a Steel City. It was an industrial town, and we were a very close knit community, and we had lots of, you know, interaction with people. I came from a background where both my parents, my mother and my father were working, and at that point of time, a working woman was sort of seen as a novelty, not something I'm talking way, way back. And now the people will also guess my age, I guess because it's pretty way back. And that was the time when we weren't India was still developing, and women were still not seen as the working class, you know, especially in senior corporate positions. And my mother was a senior officer in the steel plant, so that set my aspirations and ambitions very high. And I wanted to emulate her. I wanted to be someone who was working now what I would do I was not very sure of, but yes, I wanted to be working. And then later on, my sister, my both my sisters, were also working, my older siblings, and of course, that set the tone for me to also hop into the professional shoes, and, you know, chart out a career path for myself. So,

**Michael Hingson ** 04:44 so what? What did you do? As far as schooling? Did you go to college?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 04:51 Yes, I went to the local school there, which was an English medium good school called sin Xavier School. And that was some. Thing which really groomed me for the future, that set the foundations for my career. And after that, I did my schooling in the my college, sorry, in the capital city of India, which is Delhi. And then on, I moved to a place which is close to Mumbai, which is Pune, and I continued my education there. And of course, my career started in Pune. That is when I got into academics, and then henceforth,

**Michael Hingson ** 05:34 so when you were in college, and as you were coming out of it, what did you want to do with your life? What was your plan? Or did you have one?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 05:43 Yes, I did have one. Like I said, I was always good in communications, and people used to tell me that you are a good communicator. I used to win all the debates. I used to win elocution competitions. And I said, Well, yes, communication does seem to be my forte, so why don't I build on that? And then I saw my father, he was in the public relations industry, and I somehow at the back of my mind, I said, Yes, that is something I would surely want to do. So why not try my hand at PR? And that's how the seeds of my career was planted in my mind, and then it developed there on.

**Michael Hingson ** 06:30 But you started out in education and in teaching.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 06:34 Yes, that's very interesting. I'll tell you. I wanted to start my career in PR, but I was in a place which was a small city, and it was a place called Jamshedpur, before I moved on to Pune, and there, the career scope was very limited. We didn't have women in the PR. In fact, it was unheard of. So the best thing, or the easiest thing that a woman could do was to hop on the bandwagon of academics. And not saying that it was something you know, that was not looked up to. But yes, I did enjoy my role as a school teacher. That was my first job in Jamshedpur, a small it was, again, a steel city in India, and I became a high school teacher, and quite enjoyed it, because that was also communication. It was the way you communicated with your students, and, you know, sort of got them into, got them interested in what they were learning. So that was, again a stepping stone, and it was the area of communications which expanded later on.

**Michael Hingson ** 07:47 So how long did you stay in teaching?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 07:51 I was there for about two years in Jamshedpur, and then I moved on to Pune. And guess what the next opportunity I got was as a lecturer in the National Defense Academy. That was a place where the future generals were being groomed, and I was a civilian who, sort of, I was the only civilian, probably, who got into the teaching profession there and there I spent a good four years truly memorable. Worth remembering recounting. There was so many incidents, and I loved teaching. That was something which I did at the National Defense Academy too. Although that was at a higher level, it was very different from the school teaching which I had done. This was more, you know, on a national level, where you had to be more, and there was a lot of discipline which came in, because it was the future, you know, Army personnel, Navy personnel, so all that, there was a lot of discipline that came in and that groomed me better. I understood what the world of discipline meant in the true sense, because I lived

**Michael Hingson ** 09:10 it right. What? How did you discover the job at the defense Academy? Though that's certainly a whole lot different than teaching high school students or maybe not.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 09:23 It is a whole lot intimidating. Let me tell you that it's very intimidating to walk into a room full of, you know, future generals, army people you don't know who you know who you are, I mean, who they are, and you sort of get very intimidated by the kind the aura is very, very intimidating.

**Michael Hingson ** 09:46 How did you discover that job? Yes,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 09:49 that was done. We in India, we have something which is called the employment exchange. So you register there and you give your qualify. You list down your qualifications, and you know whatever you are planning to do, and they invite you for certain vacancies. So one fine day, I was just sitting and having my lunch at home when I received a letter, and the letter was an interview call for the National Defense Academy. I literally jumped out of my skin because I was a school teacher, and then being asked to appear for an interview in the National Defense Academy itself was a big leap for me. Whether I got it or not was a different thing. But then to sort of come on board and go and sort of appear for an interview was also something very exciting. And when I went there, I was like, I said, the only civilian The rest were army officers, wives and daughters, you know, related to the working personnel there. So when I went, I was interviewed by the three representatives from all the three wings, that is the Navy, the Air Force and Army. And that was a very good experience. They asked me a lot of questions, and I believe it was later on I was told that it was my confidence that got me in. So thanks to that, I

**Michael Hingson ** 11:23 was going to ask you why you why you got in, or why you think you got in. And yes,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 11:30 yeah, I did ask them that later, and unofficially, I was told that. Well, it was the way you carried yourself, the confidence and, you know, the excitement and enthusiasm that you shared, which was very, very refreshing.

**Michael Hingson ** 11:48 So what exactly did you do at the academy?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 11:53 I was teaching them English, and I was teaching them literature. I don't know how interested they were in literature, but then the feedback that I got, which was, you know, the it was a routine feedback, which we have the teachers get. So I used to get good marks, and people used to say, yes, that, you know, your classes are engrossing. It's good. And then, apart from that, there was something very interesting I did, which was I compared for their passing out parades, and I compared for all their shows. And that was something which was covered on television, and that gave me a different kind of foothold in my profession, where I was being seen, where I was being heard, and my confidence grew by leaps and bounds. I was being accepted as a woman. I was being accepted as a civilian. And that was something which was very, very heartwarming for me,

**Michael Hingson ** 13:01 and I would assume, very difficult to achieve,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 13:05 I think so I do yes, in retrospect, yes.

**Michael Hingson ** 13:09 So you did that for roughly four years. Yes. And why did you leave that? What was your? Was your thought about that,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 13:21 okay, I would have gone on. It was such a glorious part of my career. But, you know, change, they say, is constant, and that is something which happened. I was comparing for a passing out parade when the chairman of a corporate company which was doing rather well, heard me, and he was impressed by my communication, my speaking abilities, my, you know, the way I was presenting things. And he said he offered me a job, and he said, Why don't you come and join my office and come in as a PR person for my company, and that's exactly I was actually, you know, not very sure whether I wanted to leave this an industry and career where I was already established, where people knew me, and just hop on to the corporate world. But if you remember, that was my ambition. That was what I had always won right at the start. So the moment it came, it almost felt as if it fell into my laps. And I said, Why don't I do that? Yes, and this is a good opportunity, and I must take it up. My I spoke to my family, and they too, felt that it was a good stepping stone to move on. And so I accepted it, and that was my entry into the world of PR, in the corporate

**Michael Hingson ** 14:48 world. So what year was that this

**Shabnam Asthana ** 14:53 was way back on now you are prompting me to give away my age, which is like. Like ancient, I'd be a fossil. Okay, yes, this was way back in the 90s,

**Michael Hingson ** 15:06 okay, and that was kind of what I was curious about. So at that time, industry was a little bit more stable than it was later on, but, but still, you You did it, and you so you stepped into that goal, into that role, and so you became part of the PR world, which is, as you said, what you wanted to do initially, anyway. So, so how long did you stay at that company? I

**Shabnam Asthana ** 15:39 stayed there for about four years, and then the chairman of the company passed away. Unfortunately, he was on a trip to China, and he suffered a massive cardiac arrest, so I was working very closely with him in his office, and as is the norm of the industry, once the leader is not there things you know, sort of crumble, and you know, there's reorganization. New faces come in, and normally the new people bring their own teams. So I felt as if, you know, before they told me to sort of move out or something. I don't know why I pre empted that. I said, Why don't I myself make a shift and join some other industry? I mean, join some other company, which I did. Again, I applied. It was a Swedish company, and again, it was one of the best moves that I could have made. I spent a good 12 years in that company, which Hogan is India Limited, I must name them. They were brilliant. And I spent a very, very good part of my career with that company.

**Michael Hingson ** 16:56 And so again, you did primarily PR, or what did you Yes, it was

**Shabnam Asthana ** 17:02 PR and it was handling the chairman and managing director's office. So the entire communication was handled through me, the internal as well as the external communication. I was a spokesperson, yes,

**Michael Hingson ** 17:18 so you became so in a sense, sort of the face of the company.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 17:21 Yes, I did. It's nice to feel that yes, that it was a good many years that I was the face of the company in terms of communication, yes,

**Michael Hingson ** 17:33 right, right. And, and where were you doing this?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 17:38 This was in Pune, and their head office was in Sweden. I used to sort of move between the two. It was a very global company. The subsidiary was an Indian subsidiary, but the parent company was Swedish. So we had a lot of global travel

17:56 that kept you busy. That did so

**Shabnam Asthana ** 17:59 there were conferences, and there were so many meetings which were happening,

**Michael Hingson ** 18:03 yes, right? So what did, what did you? What did you learn from all of that? Do you think

**Shabnam Asthana ** 18:12 it was a very humbling experience? You know, more than the excitement, I was armed with a lot of excitement, because that would have been one of my first trips outside India. I was I had a lot of excitement, lots of things were on my mind, but then ultimately, when one does travel and work in a global company, it's a very humbling experience, because you are exposed to your strengths and also your blind spots, your strengths, your weaknesses, everything comes to you and then you feel that diversity is not always about representation. It's about respect and inclusion is moving from tokenism to listening. That is what I felt, you know, adapting various voices to your workplace, working in unison, trying to empathize with people from different cultures, different streams, different departments, all that really broadened my horizon. So that was something which I learned.

**Michael Hingson ** 19:30 So what was the culture like, in terms of since you were at a global company, as it were, how was it different when you were dealing with Sweden, as opposed to when you were dealing with India.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 19:45 In India, we don't have diversity as a choice. In India, we are served diversity on a platter because you are born with being diverse. You have. Are numerous religions, you have culture. So we are adaptable people in that sense. But strangely enough, it's a paradox. If I would tell you that inclusion is still a work in progress. Inclusion isn't automatic. It doesn't come to you like that. You have to work for it. Now there is a big change, but I'm talking of the days, way back in the 90s when women in boardrooms were a novelty. So sometimes it was just purely for ornamental value. Sad to say that. But gradually you had to open up, you have to open the doors, and you have to say, look, we are here for a reason. And please listen to our voices too. And that's how we started. I started sort of, I remember once when I was moving in India. I mean, not in Sweden, but once when I was in India, and I was in a strategic board meeting. I was the only woman in the room, and the people were sort of, I could sense the expressions. People were curious, people were dismissing. People were sort of, you know, not sort of prepared to take or listen to me, that was a little bit of a setback. But then gradually, when I started moving abroad, and I started seeing more women, and then gradually, when I was moving so were the others, and they too saw the kind of change that was happening. And so it was pretty difficult in India, initially, if I were to be very honest, Sweden was more inclusive. I could see a lot of women in the workforce. And gradually, since we were sort of interacting with each other, we absorbed each other's cultures and values, and the company became very, very inclusive. So it was a pleasure to work there.

**Michael Hingson ** 22:08 Okay, so in a sense, there were, there are parts of Sweden that made you happier than what you were in the East initially experiencing in India.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 22:19 Absolutely, absolutely, and I have no hesitation in saying that, because they were welcoming. They were welcoming. And the not necessarily my company, but any company in India, the representation of women, especially in PR, was very, very limited. Now we have evolved, and it's a world of difference, and I'm so happy to see that.

**Michael Hingson ** 22:48 How about you, may or may not have a lot of expertise in this, but how about if we're going to talk about inclusion and so on, people with disabilities, both in India and in Sweden and so on and again. I don't know whether you really had much experience or exposure to that. I

**Shabnam Asthana ** 23:06 do. I did have my share of exposure, maybe not extensive, but yes, I do. I remember there's this one incident I'd like to talk to you about. It was in Paris. I was in a conference, and there was a deaf girl in the conference room. I could see people making presentations and knowing fully well, because we had the list of participants, and we had their intros, their introductions with us, my team. And you know, of course, I headed that team. We made a special endeavor to include sign in our presentation. And she was so happy because she said, you know, she came to me and she expressed to me that although I have participated so many times in meetings, and especially corporate meetings, I am so happy to see. It was the first time that I felt I was seen and I was not just a presence. So she was very happy with the kind of, you know, preparation that we did for her especially. So I believe it's very nice if people learn to respect each other and learn to believe that not everybody is similar. You may have so many strengths which I don't have. I do not see any physical disability as a handicap. I'm very, very sure about that, I do not see anybody who appears different or who doesn't have the same listening capacity, hearing capacity, to be different from me. They have their own strengths. So I truly believe that, you know, disability. In that sense, is something which does not put a person in the back seat. How.

**Michael Hingson ** 25:09 How was that attitude received? Well, both at the company, when you were when you were in the room with her, and you were signing and so on. How did other people receive that? And how was that kind of attitude received initially in India?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 25:29 Well, to be very honest, Michael, it wasn't something that is the done thing. People do not accept that. They are like, well, it's a general presentation. We really don't have to make specific I do remember a person who came up to me and said, Shabnam, why did you make a very specific presentation? It was a very general presentation by you doing that, you have set a precedent for others to sort of make them feel small, you know. So he took it in a very negative way. Said, you've made us feel very small. I said, no, please do not look at it that way. It is something where we have made her feel a part of us. It is not trying to belittle anybody, trying not to, you know, get a an edge over others. All of us are the same. It's just that I made it a little easier for her. That's what I just told him, and probably he did, walk away with a smile. I don't know whether it was a sarcastic one or whether it was a smile of acceptance, but then I got my

**Michael Hingson ** 26:38 point. I took was this was this in Sweden or India. This was in Paris. In Paris, okay, yes,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 26:46 okay, this was a conference, which was

**Michael Hingson ** 26:49 she said that, right? Well, you know, the reality is that's all part of the inclusive mindset and the inclusion mindset, and it is so true that most people don't tend to realize it Yes. So I hear what you're saying,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 27:10 yes, and realization and sort of acceptance has evolved. People are more accepting. People are more flexible. You know, the rigidity earlier, people were very rigid. Now there is a lot of flexibility. I believe that, right?

**Michael Hingson ** 27:32 Well, I think it's better. I'm I think there are still all too many people who tend not to really have an overly inclusive mindset. And it is, it is something that that will be with us for a while, and hopefully over time, people will become more open and realize the value of inclusion. In this country, we have, well and around the world, we have a significant number of people who have these so called physical disabilities, and the reality is that the disability is more caused by inaction mostly than it is by real action.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 28:12 Absolutely yes. And I also seriously believe that diversity enriches the outcomes. I have some I have practical experience, and I've seen that. So inclusion enriches outcomes in many ways, right?

**Michael Hingson ** 28:35 How has all of your traveling and all of your exposure in various places around the world. How has that tended to shape your understanding of diversity and inclusion?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 28:50 Okay, yes, that's a very interesting question. I have seen that challenges are real, biases, stereotypes and expectations that women need to prove themselves twice as much also exists in many, many parts of the world. So they have been. I mean, there have been certain cultures, certain countries, which are very easy to breeze through when you are at work meetings or you're talking to people. But there are certain countries in the let's say in the Middle East, the Far East, which are still not very open to, you know, women taking on lead roles, women strategizing, women talking things that would influence decisions. So sometimes there's also a word I'd like to put in here that sometimes it is not country specific. Specific. It is very individual, specific. So there, like you said, you know, there are certain mindsets which still exist. There are people who may be residing in countries that are very open and very receptive, but their own mindset is limiting. And it is a mindset which is closed, it is rigid. So that stops and that prevents any inclusion. You know that, if I were to put it that way, so I would say it's not merely, not always country specific. Yes, individuals have to evolve themselves and change their mindsets. So it's sometimes I've seen it's countries are good, but some individuals are rigid. I've seen some individuals that are good, but the countries that are rigid. So it sort of works both ways.

**Michael Hingson ** 30:54 And it's not just about women, it is about anybody who is different. Yes, then the so called norm, whatever that happens to be, absolutely

**Shabnam Asthana ** 31:03 inclusion is not limited to women. So again, I'd like to clarify that it's inclusion is a broad spectrum. So yes, of course, we are a small part of it. But yes,

**Michael Hingson ** 31:17 you have written a book, yes, romancing your career and and also you've done a lot of mentoring, obviously, and so on. But what do you mean when you talk about women? And I would say anybody who's different need to define success on their own terms. Tell me more about that.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 31:41 So women, or anybody, let's not be very specific about women, because then it would be detracting from the main subject of inclusion. Anybody who wants to be heard has to believe in one thing, that silence is not the answer. Courage is so you have to move from silence to courage. Try and portray your point of view. Speak to people if they listen to you good enough if they don't, it's not as if the doors are closed. If the doors are closed, you can surely open a window for yourself, and it works. So just being silent or being very subdued or being very you know sad that your point of view, or being upset, for that matter, that your point of view is not being listened to is not the answer. You have to show courage. You have to do your homework, right? Remember that value is something that takes anybody places. It's not about being a woman, it's not about being any nationality, any ethnicity. It's just that you have to carry value in whatever you are trying to bring to the table. Once people see value, they will forget whether you are of XYZ nationality or you're an Indian, or you are of any other you're any other gender, if I may say that. So it's the value that a person should work towards. Everybody should work towards bringing value to the table. That is what will get you noticed, and that is what will see you going places. Yes, it did.

**Michael Hingson ** 33:43 And again, I think one of the important things is that, from my standpoint, and I keep pushing it, but it's there is that it also is the same for for so called disabilities. One of the things that I maintain is that everybody on the planet has a disability, and the disability for most people is that you depend on light in order to function, and when suddenly light disappears, you have a big problem, unless you have a way to get light back on demand. But we are. We're not ready to accept that as a as a race yet, so people think that's cute, but, but they're not ready to accept it. It doesn't change the fact that it's really there. But the fact of the matter is that that people do have to speak up for themselves, and there are ways to do that, and there are ways not to do that. It isn't a matter of being obnoxious and demanding, but it is all about, as you expressed it earlier, being confident and showing that confidence and showing your knowledge and showing what you bring to the table absolutely well. You've been involved in PR for a long time, and I'm sure that you would agree, one of the main tools that people in the public relations world and elsewhere have to offer is storytelling. I believe the best salespeople are people who can tell stories and can help relate. But my question would be to ask you, how can storytelling bridge communities and bring people together?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 35:31 Storytelling is a very, very strong element of PR. Storytelling humanizes everything. It brings in a lot of connection. So people connect automatically, if your storytelling is good, so like I keep telling all my juniors as well or new interns who join in corporate fact sheets can be informative. They can give you facts, but storytelling will transform everything. So you move from information to transformation. Storytelling is the human angle to everything. All of us love you a human angle. For example, let me tell you I was in a meeting which was quite a few years ago, and the CEO of the company was telling me they've done a lot of work in corporate social responsibility. So he wanted to tell me about all the expenditure that they've done. They've uplifted so many schools. They've done so much. They've spent so much on education, they've spent so much on water, on sanitation and so many other things, which has improved the lives of the citizens there. I told him, could you tell me one story of one life that has been affected. So he was at a loss because he had not he did not dive deep into that. He didn't look beyond the numbers and the figures. So his HR person stepped in and he told me a story of a girl. She was an Indian girl. Her name was Aarti. How they had transformed her life, and she had moved on to studying in Howard, and she was being employed in one of the top American companies there. So that was something, a story of transformation. So that is so you know, I believe the power of storytelling and that connected everybody, even his own people, were not aware. The employees were not aware. They were just sort of working like robos, putting in their number of hours, doing their work, not going beyond their call of duty to actually see what was happening to the effects, the efforts of their activities. This was something which we brought out in all their corporate brochures, in all the marketing that they were doing, in all the marketing collaterals that worked wonders. We had lots of inquiries for people who wanted to support them in many ways. We had an interview of the girl, and it was something which was very we added a human angle. So like I said, storytelling humanizes the entire concept, and that is something which connects people. So, yes, it's very

**Michael Hingson ** 38:42 interesting. Did he learn to tell stories after that?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 38:46 I believe so, because he was so he was really taken aback. And he said, Wow, I never really thought about it. And you told me, You changed my perspective. You made me see it differently. And if I were to say we got a good retainership After that, because he was very happy and my contract was renewed. So that was something which sort of affected the contract too well.

**Speaker 1 ** 39:19 The reality is that when you tell a story, it is telling stories is something that most everyone can truly relate to, and when you tell a story that someone listens to or hears and reacts to it,

**Michael Hingson ** 39:40 there's nothing better than that, and it's really important that that kind of thing happens. So I'm really glad to hear that you like storytelling. I think it is so important that we have that

39:51 absolutely,

**Michael Hingson ** 39:54 yeah, it's so important to be able to do that. Well, you've told us a little bit. About inclusion and diversity and so on in India and in other countries. Do you think it's changing, both in India and in other countries? And how is it changing?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 40:15 It is changing. If you go back to the 90s to the present day, you will see that people have become I think it has a lot to do with travel. It has a lot to do with interaction. So people are interacting with each other. I speak to you, you speak to me, you tell me something about you, and I say, Hey, is that worth listening to? Yes, it is. And I try and change my mindset. I become more receptive. I try and tell you my viewpoint. You listen to me. You hear me out. So I have seen companies that have moved beyond check boxes of how many women, how many people with disabilities they've, you know, inducted in the employment stream, in their jobs, and it's become more of the CEOs or the top management asking their people, how many voices have we listened to? How many decisions have been made by these people whom we have taken in. You know, how have we evolved as a company? So that has made me see in boardrooms, in various meetings, that the top management is also very aware of what kind of decisions, what policies, are being framed with people as a diverse group. And it's not funneled or restricted to just the top few. It trickles down and it goes to the people they've hired from diverse groups, and it becomes like a voice of the company. So I have seen that changing, and I have seen that diversion is now diversity sort of is moving more towards the corporate DNA. So it is not a demand anymore. It's not a checkbox. It's more as if it is flowing in naturally, and people are more aware of it. So that's what I've seen.

**Michael Hingson ** 42:32 It's a mindset, it is, and people are starting to adopt that. How is it changing in India? You said that in India there's a lot more diversity. But you said inclusion isn't so much there.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 42:46 Yes, it is in see in India, it was globally, I saw that diversion was backed by policies, and there was a certain framework which had a set of rules. It had a set of code of conduct. But in India, it was more based on individual goodwill. So we had people, if the CEO or the top management was pro diversity, it would happen automatically, because the ones at the junior level had no choice. They had to naturally comply. But here now in India, it's become more organized, more structured, and people, there are departments now which look into issues of diversity and inclusion, and they try and make the organization work towards that. So they are big companies. They are small companies in India, all are trying to absorb this in the corporate DNA, like I said. So people are conscious. And there are conscious. There are seminars which are happening. People are being spoken to. There is workplace, you know sensitization that follows. People talk about it, people discuss it, and there is a lot of exchange of dialog which happens. So people talk, people learn, people adapt

**Michael Hingson ** 44:15 well. So you you work for the Swedish company, for you said, like, 12 years, and then what did you

**Shabnam Asthana ** 44:25 do after that? I moved on to, you know, start my own company, which was empowered solutions. That's my brain child, and it's a communications PR and communications company, and I, sort of, I'm the founder director for that the Empowered solutions is my company now, and we are completed. It was set up in 2005 October.

**Michael Hingson ** 44:50 2005 what? What made you decide to leave the bigger corporate world and take on all of the challenges of entrepreneur? Leadership and starting your own company, because that certainly is a major change.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 45:04 It is I was in the top management. I had a set job, I had the name, the recognition, everything that comes with that. But somehow there was still that kind of, I would say, curiosity, to experiment and to try on newer things. And I am a person who gets a little bored of stagnation, and I had almost reached the height of my career in these companies, and there was nothing more I could do unless I bought over those companies and sort of, you know, became the president and the chairman, which I would I could not do. So I said, Why don't I sort of diversify and take all this learning that I have, all the goodwill that I've earned over the years with the people that have been my clients, with my colleagues, with the people I've met in my business conferences. Why don't I take all this and try and set up something on of my own where I am at liberty to do whatever I want to do without the time pressure, you know, without a pressure of morning meetings and you know, things which have to be a nine to five kind of a role here, I do agree that it is a 24 by seven job that I'm doing at present, because I'm always available. And, you know, I believe that accessibility is very important if you have to be successful, you can't sort of close off and say, no, no, I'm, you know, if somebody needs you, you can't say, Okay, I'm just closing my door and my office. So that was the the, you know, the excitement of experimenting once again and seeing, of course, entrepreneurship is something which is very exciting, and that was something which I wanted to experiment and try and see how I could change that. And, you know, get it into my career. And, you know, get off the normal nine to five job. So that's what I did. I wanted to experiment.

**Michael Hingson ** 47:21 So tell me a little bit more about if you would what your company does and how you serve clients and so on. And where are your clients?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 47:29 Okay, so basically, it is a PR and communications company, and we have clients now globally. I have primarily in India, because that is where my office is. But I do have clients in Europe, in us, in Canada, where I am currently. And yes, it is more about public relations and communications, and that's what we do. So it's essentially a diversification of I have also taken on writing as part of one of my services. So I do a lot of book writing. I take on people who want to be either who want to tell a story, and who don't have either the time or the expertise. I write for them. I ghost right for them. We also do events. So we have done a couple of events globally, not on a very large scale, but yes, we do have. So it's events, it's public relations, it's communications, it's training, and it's writing.

**Michael Hingson ** 48:39 So that's it, right? Well, so you have written one book. Are you looking at doing any more books? By any chance?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 48:49 Now I have ghost written about 16 books. So they're all ghost written and under a contract where I don't disclose the names of the books. But yes, I've authored three books, and the first one was romancing your career, a very interesting and fascinating book. That was my first book, and later on, I went on to do two biographies, and yes, I'm doing a couple more correctly, where they are being authored by me. So I'm writing the biographies.

**Michael Hingson ** 49:26 So today, in all the work that that you're, that you're doing, do you, do you get involved with many international projects?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 49:39 Yes, not many, but yes, we are doing a slow and steady progress there. And we do, I do, keep getting a lot of inquiries. And I must say that I have got a couple of inquiries recently which are very interesting. And I. Working on those. Maybe it's a little premature to tell you that, but yes, there is one big project that has come my way, and we're planning to expand from there. Well.

**Michael Hingson ** 50:12 So you have experienced a lot of different countries and so on, and India is certainly becoming more of an economic and a world power in the in terms of what all is happening. Do you think that that the attitudes of India and the way India deals with inclusion and so on is making a difference, and Will that continue to happen?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 50:43 Well, Michael, it will, because we are moving out of our country, and we have, you know, taken spots in so many other countries. So if we want to be included, it's high time we practice the same. So we have to welcome other cultures. We have to welcome other nationalities if we hope to be welcomed in other countries as well. So that is something which has really influenced the thinking of people, because we can't be rigid. We can't be, you know, thinking in our own way. And say, Well, let's not do it, because we have to welcome other countries if we have to work and move out of India. So yes, Michael, I will say that very hard. It's very heartening to note that it is changing, and it will continue to do so. In fact, you know, India is moving from being seen as an outsourced to something which people sort of welcome with open arms. But then, yes, things are changing. There are things which are happening which may limit the movement of people, or it may increase the flow of people. But then, well, we have to adopt, adapt and move on.

**Michael Hingson ** 52:04 Yeah, well, there's always going to be some of that which makes which makes sense. Yes. What kind of advice would you give to someone, especially young professionals, women and others who are different? What advice would you give to someone who may feel excluded or undervalued in their careers.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 52:25 The best thing that I would like to say is that if you hear a no, don't let it bog you down, because be sure that tomorrow you will hear a better yes, it will be something that is shaping the way for your future. So you must not let any naysayers or any projects that fail bog you down just because you're a woman or because you're different or anybody you know. You have to show your courage, you have to be resilient, and you have to lean on your inner strengths. The best magic, the you know, time tried and tested formula, which I would advocate, is leaning on your inner strengths. All of us have a lot of strengths, believe you me, we may not know it, but all of us have a lot of strengths. So when you see a situation that is not to your liking, just lean on your inner strengths. Take a deep breath and say today's no will be a yes tomorrow, and that is the courage that you must move ahead with anybody, irrespective of whether you are a woman or you are any person who is stepping into the corporate world. Just value yourself. Always Be confident. Wear the confidence. And that's the best accessory that you would have.

**Michael Hingson ** 54:03 How would you define unstoppable mindset?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 54:08 Unstoppable mindset is not something which is something which rises beyond limitations. And by limitations, I don't mean only individual limitations. It may be the limitations of the other people. Let that not define your limitation. Your the term unstoppable, to me, is a term which shows resilience. It shows something where you can fumble. It's very natural to fumble, to stumble, to fall down, to face challenges, to face, you know, rejections. It's very normal, but unstoppable is. Being able to get up again with greater strength, with a better mindset, more courageously, and more importantly, with an open heart, which says, Yes, I will do it. You cannot say you cannot. You know, sort of put me down in any way. My courage is there, my inner strength is there. I am unstoppable in that sense.

**Michael Hingson ** 55:28 I think the most important thing that you just said is that you have to do it with an open heart. I think everyone should do that you may learn that your idea may not be the best solution, and it might be the best solution, but you won't know that until you truly have an open heart and an open mind.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 55:46 Truly, yes, absolutely, an open heart, I would say, is really, really key. It's very, very important.

**Michael Hingson ** 55:56 What keeps you motivated as you continue to advocate for adverse diversity and inclusion and equity and so on.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 56:04 What keeps me motivated? Michael, are many things, but then what i If I could just zero down on a couple of them, I would say that what keeps me motivated is the trust that people had in me, and, you know, to give me certain jobs, roles, the trust that they had to sort of say, okay, you can do it. And then I did it. And the people, what keeps me motivated is something also very nice, which somebody came up to me at a recent conference in Germany, and they said, you know, the reason why I didn't give up is because of you. That is me, because I motivated them to do something, and that was your motivation for me, I was like, Okay, if I can motivate you, I too can stay motivated for a long, long time to come. And that's something which I do. I try to inspire and I try to inspire myself as well in the process.

**Michael Hingson ** 57:07 Well, if you could leave everyone who is involved in hearing this podcast and so on today, if you could leave them with one powerful message about embracing diversity and so on. What would that message be?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 57:23 Well, that message would be that whatever is happening today, if you feel that there is even a little bit of acceptability, that is because somebody else has worked towards it, so now it is your chance to give it back to society, to keep working, to keep opening doors for people, for a better tomorrow, for a more inclusive tomorrow. And diversity doesn't and inclusivity doesn't happen overnight. You have to work towards it. There is a it's the whole process, and you have to work towards it relentlessly. Continue working. Somebody else has worked. They have pushed you forward. They have done a whole lot of things. Now it's your turn to do your bit and ensure that the people who are coming after you come to a better tomorrow, a more inclusive tomorrow.

**Michael Hingson ** 58:27 It also, by definition, means that we need to learn how to work with each other and support and help each other,

**Shabnam Asthana ** 58:34 of course. And empathy. Empathy is the key, empathy, sensitivity, all that.

**Michael Hingson ** 58:41 So if people would like to reach out to you, maybe use your company services or talk with you. How can they do that?

**Shabnam Asthana ** 58:48 They could contact me. You can write to me at my email id, which is Shabnam, S, H, A, B n, a m, at empowered solutions, my company name, E, M, P, O, W, E, R, E, D, S, o, l, U, T, I O, N, S, dot, I n, that's my name. The emails will reach me. That's an inbox which you know I'm monitoring myself, and be sure that you will receive a reply. I'd love to hear from people, and I love to communicate. I love to write back. So very welcome.

**Michael Hingson ** 59:30 And I would ask, just sort of on principle, if anyone reaches out to Shabnam, who has heard this podcast, please mention that, just so that she knows where you where you discovered her, and I think that would be a good thing to do. Well, I want to thank you for being here. I think this has been absolutely wonderful. I think we've learned a lot I have and I value the insights that you bring. So I hope that other people will take the. Those same insights away, there's there's a lot to learn here, and there's a lot to gain from this. So I want to thank you again for being here, and maybe we'll have to do this again in the future.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 1:00:12 I'd love to do that. And Michael, I'd like to thank you for hosting this wonderful, wonderful show. I have seen your episodes. They are brilliant, and it's really nice. I was so looking forward to this. It's been an absolute pleasure to interact with you, and I hope that we'll be doing more of this in the near future.

**Michael Hingson ** 1:00:35 Well, we'll have to explore that, and I want to thank all of you who are out there watching and listening. I want to thank you for being here. We appreciate you very much. Wherever you're listening or watching. Please give us a five star review. We value that very highly. We really would appreciate you saying good things about us. A five star review is always a wonderful thing. I'd like to hear from you as well. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are about this podcast. Feel free to email me at Michael M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear from you. Love to hear your thoughts. We value them, and we take all the comments that we get from people very much to heart. So we appreciate you doing that. And if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on our podcast, who you think ought to be a guest, let us know. Introduce us. Shabnam, that's also true for you, please. If you know anyone who ought to be a guest, we'd love to meet people and have them come on the podcast and also help us show how we're all more unstoppable than we think we are, or we thought we were. So once again, though, I want to thank you for being here. Shabnam, this has been wonderful. Thank you very much.

**Shabnam Asthana ** 1:01:51 Thank you, Michael, thank you to all the listeners.

**Michael Hingson ** 1:01:59 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Episode 384 – Building Unstoppable Growth Starts with People, Process, and Product with Jan Southern

Fri, 31 Oct 2025 10:00:19 -0000

What does it take to keep a family business thriving for generations? In this episode of Unstoppable Mindset, I talk with Jan Southern, a seasoned business advisor who helps family-owned companies build long-term success through structure, trust, and clarity. We explore why so many family firms lose their way by the third generation—and what can be done right now to change that story. Jan shares how documenting processes, empowering people, and aligning goals can turn complexity into confidence. We unpack her “Three Ps” framework—People, Process, and Product—and discuss how strong leadership, accountability, and smart AI adoption keep growth steady and sustainable. If you’ve ever wondered what separates businesses that fade from those that flourish, this conversation will show you how to turn structure into freedom and process into legacy.

Highlights:

00:10 – Why unexpected stories reveal how real businesses grow. 01:39 – How early life in Liberal, Kansas shaped a strong work ethic. 07:51 – What a 10,000 sq ft HQ build-out teaches about operations. 09:35 – How a trading floor was rebuilt in 36 hours and why speed matters. 11:21 – Why acquisitions fail without tribal knowledge and culture continuity. 13:19 – What Ferguson Alliance does for mid-market family businesses. 14:08 – Why many family firms don’t make it to the third generation. 17:33 – How the 3 Ps—people, process, product—create durable growth. 20:49 – Why empowerment and clear decision rights prevent costly delays. 33:02 – The step-by-step process mapping approach that builds buy-in. 36:41 – Who should sponsor change and how to align managers. 49:36 – Why process docs and succession planning start on day one. 56:21 – Realistic timelines: six weeks to ninety days and beyond. 58:19 – How referrals expand projects across departments.

About the Guest: With over 40 years of experience in the realm of business optimization and cost-effective strategies, Jan is a seasoned professional dedicated to revolutionizing company efficiency. From collaborating with large corporations encompassing over 1,000 employees to small 2-person offices, Jan’s expertise lies in meticulously analyzing financials, processes, policies and procedures to drive enhanced performance.

Since joining Ferguson Alliance in 2024, Jan has become a Certified Exit Planning Advisor and is currently in the process of certification in Artificial Intelligence Consulting and Implementation, adding to her ability to quickly provide businesses with an assessment and tools that will enhance their prosperity in today’s competitive landscape.

Jan’s forte lies in crafting solutions that align with each client’s vision, bolstering their bottom line and staffing dynamics. Adept in setting policies that align with company objectives, Jan is renowned for transforming challenges into opportunities for growth and longevity. With a knack for unraveling inefficiencies and analyzing net income, Jan is a go-to expert for family-owned businesses looking to extend their legacy into future generations.

Ways to connect with Jan:

Email address : Jan@Ferguson-Alliance.com Phone: 713

851

2229 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jansouthern

cepa Website: https://ferguson
alliance.com

About the Host:

https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/

accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/

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Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone. I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. But the neat thing about it is we don't usually deal with inclusion or diversity. We deal with everything, but that because people come on this podcast to tell their own stories, and that's what we get to do today with Jan southern not necessarily anything profound about inclusion or diversity, but certainly the unexpected. And I'm sure we're going to figure out how that happens and what's unexpected about whatever I got to tell you. Before we started, we were just sitting here telling a few puns back and forth. Oh, well, we could always do that, Jan, well, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank you so much. Glad to be here. Any puns before we start? Jan Southern ** 02:09 No, I think we've had enough of those. I think we did it Michael Hingson ** 02:11 in, huh? Yes. Well, cool. Well, I want to thank you for being here. Jan has been very actively involved in a lot of things dealing with business and helping people and companies of all sizes, companies of all sizes. I don't know about people of all sizes, but companies of all sizes in terms of becoming more effective and being well, I'll just use the term resilient, but we'll get into that. But right now, let's talk about the early Jan. Tell us about Jan growing up and all that sort of stuff that's always fun to start with. Jan Southern ** 02:50 Yes, I grew up in Liberal Kansas, which is a small town just north of the Oklahoma border and a little bit east of New Mexico kind of down in that little Four Corners area. And I grew up in the time when we could leave our house in the morning on the weekends and come home just before dusk at night, and our parents didn't panic, you know. So it was a good it was a good time growing up. I i lived right across the street from the junior high and high school, so I had a hugely long walk to work, I mean, Michael Hingson ** 03:28 to school, Jan Southern ** 03:30 yeah, and so, you know, was a, was a cheerleader in high school, and went to college, then at Oklahoma State, and graduated from there, and here I am in the work world. I've been working since I was about 20 years old, and I'd hate to tell you how many years that's been. Michael Hingson ** 03:51 You can if you want. I won't tell 03:55 nobody will know. Michael Hingson ** 03:57 Good point. Well, I know it's been a long time I read your bio, so I know, but that's okay. Well, so when you What did you major in in college psychology? Ah, okay. And did you find a bachelor's degree or just bachelor's Jan Southern ** 04:16 I did not. I got an Mrs. Degree and had two wonderful children and grew up, they've grown up and to become very fine young men with kids of their own. So I have four grandchildren and one great grandchild, so Michael Hingson ** 04:33 Wowie Zowie, yeah, that's pretty cool. So when you left college after graduating, what did you do? Jan Southern ** 04:40 I first went to work in a bank. My ex husband was in pharmacy school at Oklahoma, State University of Oklahoma, and so I went to work in a bank. I was the working wife while he went to pharmacy school. And went to work in a bank, and years later, became a bank consultant. So we we lived in Norman, Oklahoma until he was out of school and and as I began having children during our marriage, I went to work for a pediatrician, which was very convenient when you're trying to take care of kids when they're young. Michael Hingson ** 05:23 Yeah, and what did you What did you do for a pediatrician? Jan Southern ** 05:27 I was, I was her receptionist, and typed medical charts, so I learned a lot about medicine. Was very she was head of of pediatrics at a local hospital, and also taught at the university. And so I got a great education and health and well being of kids. It was, it was a great job. Michael Hingson ** 05:51 My my sister in law had her first child while still in high school, and ended up having to go to work. She went to work for Kaiser Permanente as a medical transcriber, but she really worked her way up. She went to college, got a nursing degree, and so on, and she became a nurse. And eventually, when she Well, she didn't retire, but her last job on the medical side was she managed seven wards, and also had been very involved in the critical care unit. Was a nurse in the CCU for a number of years. Then she was tasked. She went to the profit making side of Kaiser, as it were, and she was tasked with bringing paperless charts into Kaiser. She was the nurse involved in the team that did that. So she came a long way from being a medical transcriber. Jan Southern ** 06:51 Well, she came a long way from being a single mom in high school. That's a great story of success. Michael Hingson ** 06:56 Well, and she wasn't totally a single mom. She she and the guy did marry, but eventually they they did divorce because he wasn't as committed as he should be to one person, if it were, Speaker 1 ** 07:10 that's a familiar story. And he also drank and eventually died of cirrhosis of the liver. Oh, that's too bad. Yeah, that's always sad, but, you know, but, but she coped, and her her kids cope. So it works out okay. So you went to work for a pediatrician, and then what did you do? Jan Southern ** 07:31 Well, after my husband, after he graduated, was transferred to Dallas, and I went to work for a company gardener, Denver company at the time, they've been since purchased by another company. And was because of my experience in banking prior to the pediatrician, I went to work in their corporate cash management division, and I really enjoyed that I was in their corporate cash management for their worldwide division, and was there for about four years, and really enjoyed it. One of my most exciting things was they were moving their headquarters from Quincy, Illinois down to Dallas. And so I had been hired. But since they were not yet in Dallas, I worked with a gentleman who was in charge of putting together their corporate offices. And so we made all the arrangements. As far as we had a got a 10,000 square foot blank space when we started. And our job was to get every desk, every chair, every pen and pencil. And so when somebody moved from Quincy, Illinois, they moved in and they had their desk all set up. Their cuticles were cubicles were ready to go and and they were they could hit the ground running day one, so that, Michael Hingson ** 09:02 so you, you clearly really got into dealing with organization, I would would say, then, wouldn't, didn't you? Jan Southern ** 09:11 Yes, yes, that was my, probably my first exposure to to the corporate world and learning exactly how things could be more efficient, more cost effective. And I really enjoyed working for that company. Michael Hingson ** 09:30 I remember, after September 11, we worked to provide the technology that we were selling, but we provided technology to Wall Street firms so they could recover their data and get set up again to be able to open the stock exchange and all the trading floors on the 17th of September. So the next Monday. And it was amazing, one of the companies was, I think it was Morgan Stanley. Finally and they had to go find new office space, because their office space in the World Trade Center was, needless to say, gone. They found a building in Jersey City that had a floor, they said, about the size of a football field, and from Friday night to Sunday afternoon, they said it took about 36 hours. They brought in computers, including IBM, taking computers from some of their own people, and just bringing them into to Morgan Stanley and other things, including some of the technology that we provided. And within 36 hours, they had completely reconstructed a trading floor. That's amazing. It was, it was absolutely amazing to see that. And you know, for everyone, it was pretty crazy, but Wall Street opened on the 17th and and continued to survive. Jan Southern ** 10:57 That's a great story. Michael Hingson ** 10:59 So what did you do? So you did this, this work with the 10,000 square foot space and other things like that. And then what? Jan Southern ** 11:08 Well, once, once everyone moved into the space in Dallas. Then I began my work in their in their corporate cash management area. And from there, my next job was working in a bank when my my husband, then was transferred back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I went back to work in banking. And from that bank, I was there about three to four years, and I was hired then by John Floyd as a as a consultant for banks and credit unions, and I was with that company for 42 years. My gosh, I know that's unusual these days, but I really enjoyed what I did. We did re engineering work and cost effectiveness and banks and credit unions for those 42 years. And so that was where I really cut my teeth on process improvement and continuous improvement, and still in that industry. But their company was bought by a an equity firm. And of course, when that happens, they like to make changes and and bring in their own folks. So those of us who had been there since day one were no longer there. Michael Hingson ** 12:26 When did that happen? Jan Southern ** 12:27 That was in 2022 Michael Hingson ** 12:32 so it's interesting that companies do that they always want to bring in their own people. And at least from my perspective, it seems to me that they forget that they lose all the tribal knowledge that people who have been working there have that made the company successful Jan Southern ** 12:51 Absolutely. So I guess they're still doing well, and they've done well for themselves afterwards, and but, you know, they do, they lose all the knowledge, they lose all of the continuity with the clients. And it's sad that they do that, but that's very, very common. Michael Hingson ** 13:13 Yeah, I know I worked for a company that was bought by Xerox, and all the company wanted was our technology. All Xerox wanted was the technology. And they lost all of the knowledge that all the people with sales experience and other kinds of experiences brought, because they terminated all of us when the company was fully in the Xerox realm of influence. Jan Southern ** 13:39 So you know what I went through? Yeah. Michael Hingson ** 13:42 Well, what did you do after you left that company? After you left John Floyd, Jan Southern ** 13:47 I left John Floyd, I was under a I was under a non compete, so I kind of knocked around for a couple of years. I was of age where I could have retired, but I wasn't ready to. So then I found Ferguson Alliance, and I'm now a business advisor for family owned businesses, and so I've been with Ferguson just over a year, and doing the same type of work that I did before. In addition to that, I have become a certified Exit Planning advisor, so that I can do that type of work as well. So that's that's my story in a nutshell. As far as employment, Michael Hingson ** 14:26 what is Ferguson Alliance? Jan Southern ** 14:29 Ferguson Alliance, we are business advisors for family owned businesses. And the perception is that a family owned business is going to be a small business, but there are over 500,000 family owned businesses in the United States. Our market is the middle market, from maybe 50 employees up to 1000 20 million in revenues, up to, you know, the sky's the limit, and so we do. Do a lot of work as far as whatever can help a family owned business become more prosperous and survive into future generations. It's a sad statistic that most family owned businesses don't survive into the third generation. Michael Hingson ** 15:16 Why is that? Jan Southern ** 15:19 I think because they the first the first generation works themselves, their fingers to the bone to get their their business off the ground, and they get successful, and their offspring often enjoy, if you will, the fruits of the labors of their parents and so many of them, once they've gone to college, they don't have an interest in joining the firm, and so they go on and succeed on their own. And then their children, of course, follow the same course from from their work. And so that's really, I think, the primary reason, and also the the founders of the businesses have a tendency to let that happen, I think. And so our coaching programs try to avoid that and help them to bring in the second and third generations so that they can, you know, they can carry on a legacy of their parents or the founders. Michael Hingson ** 16:28 So what do you do, and what kinds of initiatives do you take to extend the longevity of a family owned business then, Jan Southern ** 16:39 well, the first thing is that that Rob, who's our founder of our family owned business, does a lot of executive coaching and helps the helps the people who are within the business, be it the founder or being at their second or third generations, and he'll help with coaching them as to how to, hey, get past the family dynamics. Everybody has their own business dynamics. And then you add on top of that, the family dynamics, in addition to just the normal everyday succession of a business. And so we help them to go through those types of challenges, if you will. They're not always a challenge, but sometimes, if there are challenges, Rob's coaching will take them through that and help them to develop a succession plan that also includes a document that says that that governance plan as to how their family business will be governed, in addition to just a simple succession plan, and my role in a lot of that is to make sure that their business is ready to prosper too. You know that their their assessment of as far as whether they're profitable, whether they are their processes are in place, etc, but one of the primary things that we do is to help them make certain that that if they don't want to survive into future generations, that we help them to prepare to either pass it along to a family member or pass it along to someone who's a non family member, right? Michael Hingson ** 18:34 So I've heard you mentioned the 3p that are involved in extending longevity. Tell me about that. What are the three P's? Jan Southern ** 18:41 Well, the first p is your people. You know, if you don't take care of your people, be they family members or non family members, then you're not going to be very successful. So making certain that you have a system in place, have a culture in place that takes care of your people. To us, is very key. Once you make sure that your people are in a culture of continuous improvement and have good, solid foundation. In that regard, you need to make sure that your processes are good. That's the second P that that you have to have your processes all documented, that you've authorized your people to make decisions that they don't always have to go to somebody else. If you're a person in the company and you recognize that something's broken, then you need to have empowerment so that your people can make decisions and not always have to get permission from someone else to make certain that those processes continuously are approved improved. That's how to you. Could have became so successful is they installed a product. They called it, I say, a product. They installed a culture. They called it kaizen. And so Kaizen was simply just continuous improvement, where, if you were doing a process and you ask yourself, why did I do it this way? Isn't there a better way? Then, you know, you're empowered to find a better way and to make sure that that that you can make that decision, as long as it fits in with the culture of the company. Then the third P is product. You know, you've got to have a product that people want. I know that you've seen a lot of companies fail because they're pushing a product that nobody wants. And so you make certain that your products are good, your products are good, high quality, and that you can deliver them in the way that you promise. And so those are really the 3p I'd like to go back to process and just kind of one of the things, as you know, we had some horrendous flooding here in Texas recently, and one of the things that happened during that, and not that it was a cause of it, but just one of the things that exacerbated the situation, is someone called to say, Please, we need help. There's flooding going on. It was one of their first responders had recognized that there was a tragic situation unfolding, and when he called into their system to give alerts, someone says, Well, I'm going to have to get approval from my supervisor, with the approval didn't come in time. So what's behind that? We don't know, but that's just a critical point as to why you should empower your people to make decisions when, when it's necessary. Michael Hingson ** 21:56 I'm sure, in its own way, there was some of that with all the big fires out here in California back in January, although part of the problem with those is that aircraft couldn't fly for 36 hours because the winds were so heavy that there was just no way that the aircraft could fly. But you got to wonder along the way, since they are talking about the fact that the electric companies Southern California, Edison had a fair amount to do with probably a lot a number of the fires igniting and so on, one can only wonder what might have happened if somebody had made different decisions to better prepare and do things like coating the wires so that if they touch, they wouldn't spark and so on that they didn't do. And, you know, I don't know, but one can only wonder. Jan Southern ** 22:53 It's hard to know, you know, and in our situation, would it have made any difference had that person been able to make a decision on her own? Yeah, I was moving so rapidly, it might not have made any any difference at all, but you just have to wonder, like you said, Michael Hingson ** 23:10 yeah, there's no way to, at this point, really know and understand, but nevertheless, it is hopefully something that people learn about for the future, I heard that they're now starting to coat wires, and so hopefully that will prevent a lot, prevent a lot of the sparking and so on. I'd always thought about they ought to put everything underground, but coating wire. If they can do that and do it effectively, would probably work as well. And that's, I would think, a lot cheaper than trying to put the whole power grid underground. Jan Southern ** 23:51 I would think so we did when I was with my prior company. We did a project where they were burying, they were putting everything underground, and Burlington Vermont, and it was incredible what it takes to do that. I mean, you just, we on the outside, just don't realize, you know, there's a room that's like 10 by six underground that carries all of their equipment and things necessary to do that. And I never realized how, how costly and how difficult it was to bury everything. We just have the impression that, well, they just bury this stuff underground, and that's all. That's all it takes. But it's a huge, huge undertaking in order to do that Michael Hingson ** 24:36 well. And it's not just the equipment, it's all the wires, and that's hundreds and of miles and 1000s of miles of cable that has to be buried underground, and that gets to be a real challenge. Jan Southern ** 24:47 Oh, exactly, exactly. So another story about cables. We were working in West Texas one time on a project, and we're watching them stretch the. Wiring. They were doing some internet provisioning for West Texas, which was woefully short on in that regard, and they were stringing the wire using helicopters. It was fascinating, and the only reason we saw that is it was along the roadways when we were traveling from West Texas, back into San Antonio, where flights were coming in and out of so that was interesting to watch. Michael Hingson ** 25:28 Yeah, yeah. People get pretty creative. Well, you know, thinking back a little bit, John Floyd must have been doing something right to keep you around for 42 years. Jan Southern ** 25:40 Yes, they did. They were a fabulous country company and still going strong. I think he opened in 1981 it's called advantage. Now, it's not John Floyd, but Right, that was a family owned business. That's where I got to cut my teeth on the dynamics of a family owned business and how they should work and how and his niece is one of the people that's still with the company. Whether, now that they're owned by someone else, whether she'll be able to remain as they go into different elements, is, is another question. But yeah, they were, they were great. Michael Hingson ** 26:20 How many companies, going back to the things we were talking about earlier, how many companies when they're when they buy out another company, or they're bought out by another company, how many of those companies generally do succeed and continue to grow? Do you have any statistics, or do more tend not to than do? Or Jan Southern ** 26:40 I think that more tend to survive. They tend to survive, though, with a different culture, I guess you would say they they don't retain the culture that they had before. I don't have any firm statistics on that, because we don't really deal with that that much, but I don't they tend to survive with it, with a the culture of the newer company, if they fold them in, yeah. Michael Hingson ** 27:15 Well, and the reality is to be fair, evolution always takes place. So the John Floyd and say, 2022 wasn't the same as the John Floyd company in 1981 Jan Southern ** 27:31 not at all. No, exactly, not at all. Michael Hingson ** 27:34 So it did evolve, and it did grow. And so hopefully, when that company was absorbed elsewhere and with other companies, they they do something to continue to be successful, and I but I think that's good. I know that with Xerox, when it bought Kurzweil, who I worked for, they were also growing a lot and so on. The only thing is that their stock started to drop. I think that there were a number of things. They became less visionary, I think is probably the best way to put it, and they had more competition from other companies developing and providing copiers and other things like that. But they just became less visionary. And so the result was that they didn't grow as much as probably they should have. Jan Southern ** 28:28 I think that happens a lot. Sometimes, if you don't have a culture of continuous improvement and continuous innovation, which maybe they didn't, I'm not that familiar with how they move forward, then you get left behind. You know, I'm I'm in the process right now, becoming certified in artificial intelligent in my old age. And the point that's made, not by the company necessarily that I'm studying with, but by many others, is there's going to be two different kinds of companies in the future. There's going to be those who have adopted AI and those who used to be in business. And I think that's probably fair. Michael Hingson ** 29:13 I think it is. And I also we talked with a person on this podcast about a year ago, or not quite a year ago, but, but he said, AI will not replace anyone's jobs. People will replace people's jobs with AI, but they shouldn't. They shouldn't eliminate anyone from the workforce. And we ended up having this discussion about autonomous vehicles. And the example that he gave is, right now we have companies that are shippers, and they drive product across the country, and what will happen to the drivers when the driving process becomes autonomous and you have self driving vehicles, driving. Across country. And his point was, what they should do, what people should consider doing is not eliminating the drivers, but while the machine is doing the driving, find and give additional or other tasks to the drivers to do so they can continue to be contributors and become more efficient and help the company become more efficient, because now you've got people to do other things than what they were used to doing, but there are other things that AI won't be able to do. And I thought that was pretty fascinating, Jan Southern ** 30:34 exactly. Well, my my nephew is a long haul truck driver. He owns a company, and you know, nothing the AI will never be able to observe everything that's going on around the trucking and and you know, there's also the some of the things that that driver can do is those observations, plus they're Going to need people who are going to program those trucks as they are making their way across the country, and so I'm totally in agreement with what your friend said, or your you know, your guests had to say that many other things, Michael Hingson ** 31:15 yeah, and it isn't necessarily even relating to driving, but there are certainly other things that they could be doing to continue to be efficient and effective, and no matter how good the autonomous driving capabilities are, it only takes that one time when for whatever reason, the intelligence can't do it, that it's good To have a driver available to to to to help. And I do believe that we're going to see the time when autonomous vehicles will be able to do a great job, and they will be able to observe most of all that stuff that goes on around them. But there's going to be that one time and that that happens. I mean, even with drivers in a vehicle, there's that one time when maybe something happens and a driver can't continue. So what happens? Well, the vehicle crashes, or there's another person to take over. That's why we have at least two pilots and airplanes and so on. So right, exactly aspects of it, Jan Southern ** 32:21 I think so I can remember when I was in grade school, they showed us a film as to what someone's vision of the country was, and part of that was autonomous driving, you know. And so it was, it was interesting that we're living in a time where we're beginning to see that, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 32:41 we're on the cusp, and it's going to come. It's not going to happen overnight, but it will happen, and we're going to find that vehicles will be able to drive themselves. But there's still much more to it than that, and we shouldn't be in too big of a hurry, although some so called profit making. People may decide that's not true, to their eventual chagrin, but we shouldn't be too quick to replace people with technology totally Jan Southern ** 33:14 Exactly. We have cars in I think it's Domino's Pizza. I'm not sure which pizza company, but they have autonomous cars driving, and they're cooking the pizza in the back oven of the car while, you know, while it's driving to your location, yeah, but there's somebody in the car who gets out of the car and brings the pizza to my door. Michael Hingson ** 33:41 There's been some discussion about having drones fly the pizza to you. Well, you know, we'll see, Jan Southern ** 33:50 right? We'll see how that goes. Yeah, Michael Hingson ** 33:53 I haven't heard that. That one is really, pardon the pun, flown well yet. But, you know, we'll see. So when you start a process, improvement process program, what are some of the first steps that you initiate to bring that about? Well, the first Jan Southern ** 34:11 thing that we do, once we've got agreement with their leadership, then we have a meeting with the people who will be involved, who will be impacted, and we tell them all about what's happening, what's going to happen, and make certain that they're in full understanding. And you know, the first thing that you ever hear when you're saying that you're going to be doing a re engineering or process improvement is they think, Oh, you're just going to come in and tell me to reduce my staff, and that's the way I'm going to be more successful. We don't look at it that way at all. We look at it in that you need to be right. Have your staff being the right size, and so in in many cases, in my past. I we've added staff. We've told them, you're under staffed, but the first thing we do is hold that meeting, make certain that they're all in agreement with what's going to happen, explain to them how it's going to happen, and then the next step is that once management has decided who our counterparts will be within the company. Who's going to be working with us to introduce us to their staff members is we sit down with their staff members and we ask them questions. You know, what do you do? How do you do it? What do you Did someone bring it to you. Are you second in line or next in line for some task? And then once you finish with it, what happens to it? Do you give someone else? Is a report produced? Etc. And so once we've answered all of those questions, we do a little a mapping of the process. And once you map that process, then you take it back to the people who actually perform the process, and you ask them, Did I get this right? I heard you say, this? Is this a true depiction of what's happening? And so we make sure that they don't do four steps. And they told us steps number one and three, so that then, once we've mapped that out, that gives us an idea of two of how can things be combined? Can they be combined? Should you be doing what you're doing here? Is there a more efficient or cost effective way of doing it? And we make our recommendations based on that for each process that we're reviewing. Sometimes there's one or two good processes in an area that we're looking at. Sometimes there are hundreds. And so that's that's the basic process. And then once they've said yes, that is correct, then we make our recommendations. We take it back to their management, and hopefully they will include the people who actually are performing the actions. And we make our recommendations to make changes if, if, if it's correct, maybe they don't need to make any changes. Maybe everything is is very, very perfect the way it is. But in most cases, they brought us in because it's not and they've recognized it's not. So then once they've said, yes, we want to do this, then we help them to implement. Michael Hingson ** 37:44 Who usually starts this process, that is, who brings you in? Jan Southern ** 37:48 Generally, it is going to be, depending upon the size of the company, but in most cases, it's going to be the CEO. Sometimes it's the Chief Operating Officer. Sometimes in a very large company, it may be a department manager, you know, someone who has the authority to bring us in. But generally, I would say that probably 90% of our projects, it's at the C Michael Hingson ** 38:19 level office. So then, based on everything that you're you're discussing, probably that also means that there has to be some time taken to convince management below the CEO or CEO or a department head. You've got to convince the rest of management that this is going to be a good thing and that you have their best interest at heart. Jan Southern ** 38:43 That is correct, and that's primarily the reason that we have for our initial meeting. We ask whoever is the contract signer to attend that meeting and be a part of the discussion to help to ward off any objections, and then to really bring these people along if they are objecting. And for that very reason, even though they may still be objecting, we involve them in the implementation, so an implementation of a of a recommendation has to improve, has to include the validation. So we don't do the work, but we sit alongside the people who are doing the implementation and guide them through the process, and then it's really up to them to report back. Is it working as intended? If it's not, what needs to be changed, what might improve, what we thought would be a good recommendation, and we work with them to make certain that everything works for them. Right? And by the end of that, if they've been the tester, they've been the one who's approved steps along the way, we generally find that they're on board because they're the it's now. They're now the owners of the process. And when they have ownership on something that they've implemented. It's amazing how much more resilient they they think that the process becomes, and now it's their process and not ours. Michael Hingson ** 40:32 Do you find most often that when you're working with a number of people in a company that most of them realize that there need to be some changes, or something needs to be improved to make the whole company work better. Or do you find sometimes there's just great resistance, and people say no, there's just no way anything is bad. Jan Southern ** 40:53 Here we find that 90% of the time, and I'm just pulling that percentage out of the air, I would say they know, they know it needs to be changed. And the ones typically, not always, but typically, the ones where you find the greatest resistance are the ones who know it's broken, but they just don't want to change. You know, there are some people who don't want to change no matter what, or they feel threatened that. They feel like that a new and improved process might take their place. You know, might replace them. And that's typically not the case. It's typically not the case at all, that they're not replaced by it. Their process is improved, and they find that they can be much more productive. But the the ones who are like I call them the great resistors, usually don't survive the process either. They are. They generally let themselves go, Michael Hingson ** 42:01 if you will, more ego than working for the company. Jan Southern ** 42:05 Yes, exactly, you know, it's kind of like my mom, you know, and it they own the process as it was. We used to laugh and call this person Louise, you know, Louise has said, Well, we've always done it that way. You know, that's probably the best reason 20 years in not to continue to do it same way. Michael Hingson ** 42:34 We talked earlier about John Floyd and evolution. And that makes perfect sense. Exactly what's one of the most important things that you have to do to prepare to become involved in preparing for a process, improvement project? I think Jan Southern ** 42:52 the most important thing there's two very important things. One is to understand their culture, to know how their culture is today, so that you know kind of which direction you need to take them, if they're not in a continuous improvement environment, then you need to lead them in that direction if they're already there and they just don't understand what needs to be done. There's two different scenarios, but the first thing you need to do is understand the culture. The second thing that you need to do, other than the culture, is understand their their business. You need to know what they do. Of course, you can't know from the outside how they do it, but you need to know that, for instance, if it's an we're working with a company that cleans oil tanks and removes toxins and foul lines from oil and gas industry. And so if you don't understand at all what they do, it's hard to help them through the processes that they need to go through. And so just learning, in general, what their technology, what their business is about. If you walk in there and haven't done that, you're just blowing smoke. In my mind, you know, I do a lot of research on the technologies that they use, or their company in general. I look at their website, I you know, look at their LinkedIn, their social media and so. And then we request information from them in advance of doing a project, so that we know what their org structure looks like. And I think those things are critical before you walk in the door to really understand their business in general. Michael Hingson ** 44:53 Yeah, and that, by doing that, you also tend to. To gain a lot of credibility, because you come in and demonstrate that you do understand what they're doing, and people respond well to that, I would think Jan Southern ** 45:10 they do. You know, one of our most interesting projects in my past was the electric company that I mentioned. There was an electric company in Burlington, Vermont that did their own electric generation. We've never looked at anything like that. We're a bank consultant, and so we learned all about how they generated energy with wood chips and the, you know, the different things. And, you know, there were many days that I was out watching the wood chips fall out of a train and into their buckets, where they then transferred them to a yard where they moved the stuff around all the time. So, you know, it was, it's very interesting what you learn along the way. But I had done my homework, and I knew kind of what they did and not how they did it in individual aspects of their own processes, but I understood their industry. And so it was, you do walk in with some credibility, otherwise they're looking at you like, well, what does this person know about my job? Michael Hingson ** 46:20 And at the same time, have you ever been involved in a situation where you did learn about the company you you went in with some knowledge, you started working with the company, and you made a suggestion about changing a process or doing something that no one had thought of, and it just clicked, and everybody loved it when they thought about it, Jan Southern ** 46:42 yes, yes, exactly. And probably that electric company was one of those such things. You know, when they hired us, they they told us. We said, We don't know anything about your business. And they said, Good, we don't want you to come in with any preconceived ideas. And so some of the recommendations we made to them. They were, it's kind of like an aha moment. You know, they look at you like, Oh my gosh. I've never thought of that, you know, the same I would say in in banking and in family businesses, you know, they just, they've never thought about doing things in a certain way. Michael Hingson ** 47:20 Can you tell us a story about one of those times? Jan Southern ** 47:24 Yes, I would say that if you're, if you're talking about, let's talk about something in the banking industry, where they are. I was working in a bank, and you, you go in, and this was in the days before we had all of the ways to store things electronically. And so they were having a difficult time in keeping all of their documents and in place and knowing when to, you know, put them in a destruction pile and when not to. And so I would say that they had an aha moment when I said, Okay, let's do this. Let's get a bunch of the little colored dots, and you have big dots and small dots. And I said, everything that you put away for 1990 for instance, then you put on a purple dot. And then for January, you have 12 different colors of the little dots that you put in the middle of them. And you can use those things to determine that everything that has a purple dot and little yellow.in the middle of that one, you know that that needs to be destructed. I think in that case, it was seven years, seven years from now, you know that you need to pull that one off the shelf and put it into the pile to be destructed. And they said, we've never thought of anything. It was like I had told him that, you know, the world was going to be struck, to be gone, to begin tomorrow. Yeah, it was so simple to me, but it was something that they had never, ever thought of, and it solved. They had something like five warehouses of stuff, most of which needed to have been destroyed years before, yeah, Michael Hingson ** 49:21 but still they weren't sure what, and so you gave them a mechanism to do that, Jan Southern ** 49:27 right? Of course, that's all gone out the window today. You don't have to do all that manual stuff anymore. You're just, you know, I'd say another example of that was people who were when we began the system of digitizing the files, especially loan files in a bank. And this would hold true today as well, in that once you start on a project to digitize the files, there's a tendency to take the old. Files first and digitize those. Well, when you do that, before you get to the end of it, if you have a large project, you don't need those files anymore. So you know, our recommendation is start with your latest. You know, anything that needs to be archived, start with the newest, because by the time that you finish your project, some of those old files you won't even need to digitize, just shred them. Yeah, you know, it's, it's just little simple things like that that can make all the difference. Michael Hingson ** 50:32 When should a family business start documenting processes? I think I know that's what I thought you'd say, Jan Southern ** 50:40 yes, yes, that is something that is near and dear to my heart. Is that I would even recommend that you maybe do it before you open your doors, if potential is there, so that the day you open your business, you need to start with your documenting your processes, and you need to start on your succession planning. You know, those are the days that once you really start working, you're not going to have time. You know, you're going to be busy working every day. You're you're going to be busy servicing your customers, and that always gets pushed to the back when you start to document something, and so that's the time do it when you first open your doors. Michael Hingson ** 51:29 So when we talk about processes, maybe it's a fair question to ask, maybe not. But what are we really talking about when we talk about processes and documenting processes? What are the processes? Jan Southern ** 51:41 Well, the processes are the things that you do every day. Let's take as an example, just when you set up your your files within your SharePoint, or within your computer, if you don't use SharePoint, your Google files, how you set those up, a process could also be during your accounting, what's the process that you go through to get a invoice approved? You know, when the invoice comes in from the vendor, what do you do with it? You know, who has to approve it? Are there dollar amounts that you have to have approvals for? Or can some people just take in a smaller invoice and pay it without any any approvals? We like to see there be a process where it's approved before you get the invoice from the customer, where it's been approved at the time of the order. And that way it can be processed more more quickly on the backside, to just make sure that it says what the purchase order if you use purchase orders or see what your agreement was. So it's the it's the workflow. There's something that triggers an action, and then, once gets triggered, then what takes place? What's next, what's the next steps? And you just go through each one of the things that has to happen for that invoice to get paid, and the check or wire transfer, or or whatever you use as a payment methodology for it to go out the door. And so, you know what you what you do is you start, there's something that triggers it, and then there's a goal for the end, and then you fill in in the center, Michael Hingson ** 53:38 and it's, it's, it's a fascinating I hate to use the word process to to listen to all of this, but it makes perfect sense that you should be documenting right from the outset about everything that you do, because it also means that you're establishing a plan so that everyone knows exactly what the expectations are and exactly what it is that needs to be done every step of the way, Jan Southern ** 54:07 right and and one of the primary reasons for that is we can't anticipate life. You know, maybe our favorite person, Louise, is the only one who's ever done, let's say, you know, payroll processing, or something of that sort. And if something happens and Louise isn't able to come in tomorrow, who's going to do it? You know, without a map, a road map, as to the steps that need to be taken, how's that going to take place? And so that's that's really the critical importance. And when you're writing those processes and procedures, you need to make them so that anybody can walk in off the street, if necessary, and do what Louise was doing and have it done. Properly. Michael Hingson ** 55:00 Of course, as we know, Louise is just a big complainer anyway. That's right, you said, yeah. Well, once you've made recommendations, and let's say they're put in place, then what do you do to continue supporting a business? Jan Southern ** 55:20 We check in with them periodically, whatever is appropriate for them and and for the procedures that are there, we make sure that it's working for them, that they're being as prosperous as they want to be, and that our recommendations are working for them. Hopefully they'll allow us to come back in and and most do, and make sure that what we recommended is right and in is working for them, and if so, we make little tweaks with their approvals. And maybe new technology has come in, maybe they've installed a new system. And so then we help them to incorporate our prior recommendations into whatever new they have. And so we try to support them on an ongoing basis, if they're willing to do that, which we have many clients. I think Rob has clients he's been with for ever, since he opened his doors 15 years ago. So Michael Hingson ** 56:19 of course, the other side of that is, I would assume sometimes you work with companies, you've helped them deal with processes and so on, and then you come back in and you know about technology that that they don't know. And I would assume then that you suggest that, and hopefully they see the value of listening to your wisdom. Jan Southern ** 56:41 Absolutely, we find that a lot. We also if they've discovered a technology on their own, but need help with recommendations, as far as implementation, we can help them through that as well, and that's one of the reasons I'm taking this class in AI to be able to help our customers move into a realm where it's much more easily implemented if, if they already have the steps that we've put into place, you can feed that into an AI model, and it can make adjustments to what they're doing or make suggestions. Michael Hingson ** 57:19 Is there any kind of a rule of thumb to to answer this question, how long does it take for a project to to be completed? Jan Southern ** 57:26 You know, it takes, in all fairness, regardless of the size of the company, I would say that they need to allow six weeks minimum. That's for a small company with a small project, it can take as long as a year or two years, depending upon the number of departments and the number of people that you have to talk to about their processes. But to let's just take an example of a one, one single department in a company is looking at doing one of these processes, then they need to allow at least six weeks to for discovery, for mapping, for their people to become accustomed to the new processes and to make sure that the implementation has been tested and is working and and they're satisfied with everything that that is taking place. Six weeks is a very, very minimum, probably 90 days is a more fair assessment as to how long they should allow for everything to take place. Michael Hingson ** 58:39 Do you find that, if you are successful with, say, a larger company, when you go in and work with one department and you're able to demonstrate success improvements, or whatever it is that that you define as being successful, that then other departments want to use your services as well? Jan Southern ** 59:00 Yes, yes, we do. That's a very good point. Is that once you've helped them to help themselves, if you will, once you've helped them through that process, then they recognize the value of that, and we'll move on to another division or another department to do the same thing. Michael Hingson ** 59:21 Word of mouth counts for a lot, Jan Southern ** 59:24 doesn't it? Though, I'd say 90% of our business at Ferguson and company comes through referrals. They refer either through a center of influence or a current client who's been very satisfied with the work that we've done for them, and they tell their friends and networking people that you know. Here's somebody that you should use if you're considering this type of a project. Michael Hingson ** 59:48 Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe explore using your services in Ferguson services, how do they do that? Jan Southern ** 59:55 They contact they can. If they want to contact me directly, it's Jan. J, a n, at Ferguson dash alliance.com and that's F, E, R, G, U, S, O, N, Dash alliance.com and they can go to our website, which is the same, which is Ferguson dash alliance.com One thing that's very, very good about our our website is, there's a page that's called resources, and there's a lot of free advice, if you will. There's a lot of materials there that are available to family owned businesses, specifically, but any business could probably benefit from that. And so those are free for you to be able to access and look at, and there's a lot of blog information, free eBook out there, and so that's the best way to reach Ferguson Alliance. Michael Hingson ** 1:00:52 Well, cool. Well, I hope people will take all of this to heart. You certainly offered a lot of interesting and I would say, very relevant ideas and thoughts about dealing with processes and the importance of having processes. For several years at a company, my wife was in charge of document control and and not only doc control, but also keeping things secure. Of course, having the sense of humor that I have, I pointed out nobody else around the company knew how to read Braille, so what they should really do is put all the documents in Braille, then they'd be protected, but nobody. I was very disappointed. Good idea Speaker 2 ** 1:01:36 that is good idea that'll keep them safe from everybody. Yeah. Michael Hingson ** 1:01:39 Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank to thank all of you for listening today. We've been doing this an hour. How much fun. It is fun. Well, I appreciate it, and love to hear from all of you about today's episode. Please feel free to reach out to me. You can email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast page. Michael hingson, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, but wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value your thoughts and your opinions, and I hope that you'll tell other people about the podcasts as well. This has been an interesting one, and we try to make them all kind of fun and interesting, so please tell others about it. And if anyone out there listening knows of anyone who ought to be a guest, Jan, including you, then please feel free to introduce us to anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset. Because I believe everyone has a story to tell, and I want to get as many people to have the opportunity to tell their stories as we can. So I hope that you'll all do that and give us reviews and and stick with us. But Jan, again, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun. Jan Southern ** 1:02:51 It has been a lot of fun, and I certainly thank you for inviting me. Michael Hingson ** 1:03:00 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. 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