40 Burst results for "DAD"
The Dan Bongino Show
Scott Presler: No Response yet From the RNC Chairman
"See at this point that leads these my next question is the r n c in any way helping you or is there any kind of effort there to kind of backup what you're doing i mean you're the kind of guy who would be a a dream for any political organization to be a part of you like a one -man uh... like a one -man voting military by yourself it's incredible so i went with anything and they help me out at all well you know today is day one hundred and sixty one that i have consecutively reached out to the chairwoman of the republican national committee and i still haven't received a response but you know what i believe in life you you lead by example my dad always taught me that and so i'm not going to wait for the rnc to reach out to me with all due respect and i'm not going to point fingers and blame instead at early vote action dot dot com we're going to lead by example we're going to focus on those six states that i just mentioned to you because we elections have this november and we're going to continue to drive the effort to register new voters get people to become registered republicans and we our efforts this year are going to sure make that next year joe biden is a one -term president scott can't thank you of uh... your twitter and handle again and if you're on true social your twitter handle is my twitter handle is at scott pressler as c o t t p r e s l e r and then
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "dad" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"It comes to making plans you are the best what about those round trips which are perfect on your way there and perfect on your way back or those meetings with friends surprise parties camps birthdays the same way you plan for the important moments start planning to protect you and your loved ones from a natural disaster sign up for local weather and emergency alerts prepare an emergency kit and make a family communications plan plan get started at ready .gov slash plan brought to you by fema and the ad council my dad he's a double amputee and uh with one of my favorite people in the world to me a hero is someone who fights for our country and freedom my
The Dan Bongino Show
Scott Presler: We Don't Need the Government, We Need Active Citizens
"Because I was mad but you know I wasn't mad at President Obama I was ultimately mad at myself I said Scott where were you registering where voters were you getting out the vote where were you helping to make sure that we were electing publicans into office and I realized that my inaction meant that I was the problem and so I became the solution by getting my first job in politics in 2014 I I moved halfway across the country to Texas to elect now Governor Greg Abbott and then realized how important it was that we win back the White House in 2016 because I was always forward thinking focusing on the Supreme Court and I never wanted Hillary Clinton to set foot in office ever again as you know and so I dedicated two years of my life to electing Donald J. Trump as the 45th President and it really was Trump who changed my life in 2019 because he was talking about the city of Baltimore Maryland and again the same inaction that I felt in myself in 2012 I was reminded of by society's reaction to Baltimore because because everybody was tweeting they were posting pictures they were getting likes and clicks from posting videos and of Baltimore I thought to myself okay you're gonna go do a trash cleanup and I I thought was it going was to be me my mom dad but the tweet that I posted on social media it went viral and I was oh but within seven days we organized a cleanup in Baltimore on on a Monday and we got 200 volunteers from all across the country that came together in an act of love and we picked up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours in one single day and I thought to myself Dan I don't need the government to solve my problems what I do need is concerned citizens coming together as a community and we can do
WTOP 24 Hour News
Fresh update on "dad" discussed on WTOP 24 Hour News
"Open. But... Come on, Dad. You can hold my hand. Ok. Stop by a Wegmans pharmacy for your flu shot today. Walk -ins are welcome and every vaccine is given with care. Learn more at Wegmans .com slash flu. Beautiful homes start from the floors at up FloorMax. All kid proof, pet proof, waterproof floors at their lowest prices of the year. Shop FloorMax's huge in -stock inventory and have your new floors installed immediately. Experience the difference the best -rated flooring company can make. Hurry and get the flooring you want at prices you deserve. Plus 0 % by financing. Visit the FloorMax location nearest you or FloorMax floors dot com. That's FloorMax floors dot com. See store for selection and details. It's one of the world's most beloved operas. Now see it on big screen at Nats Park. Saturday September 30th Washington National Opera presents a free screening of La Boheme. Arrive early for family
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from UNCHAINED: Why FTX Might Try to Claw Back Funds From Retail Customers
"Thanks for listening to Unchained, your no -hype resource for all things crypto, on the CoinDesk podcast network. You can also listen to the episodes on the Unchained feed earlier if you subscribe there. Plus check out all our content on our website, unchainedcrypto .com. These are all fraudulent transfers, potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming to lift funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is, like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? With Toku, you get unmatched legal and tax tech support to grant and administer your global team's tokens. Make it simple today with Toku. Today's episode is brought to you by Overtime Markets, your premier Web3 sportsbook. The innovative protocol is changing the game one match at a time. Powered by Thales, explore more at OvertimeMarkets .xyz. Arbitrum's leading Layer 2 scaling solution offers you ultra -cheap and lightning -fast transactions, all with security rooted on Ethereum. Visit arbitrum .io today. With the Crypto .com app, you can buy, trade and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code LORA. Link in the description. Today's guest is Thomas Brazile, founder of 117 Partners. Welcome, Thomas. Hey, Laura. Good to see you again. This week, FTX sued Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, the parents of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried. Alleging that Bankman was intimately involved in a number of the allegedly fraudulent schemes, such as silencing someone who threatened to expose the alleged FTX fraud, the purchase of property in the Bahamas, Barbara Fried encouraged the use of strong donors as campaign finance laws, or allegedly, and both were accused generally of either knowing or ignoring the red flags that FTX was insolvent. Was this development surprising or expected? Thanks for having me on, Laura. Good to see you, as always. Was it surprising? No, I don't think it was that surprising. I think what was in the lawsuits in bankruptcy referred to as adversary proceeding, but what was seen in the adversary proceeding was probably a bit shocking, the actual details, but I think people knew that they were pretty involved. I think that was some of the heat they were getting post him getting a criminal complaint against him was that, why is he hanging out with his parents? Weren't they involved in a lot of parts of the business and people were saying things like that. I don't think it's that unexpected. People, I think, long knew that there were some real estate transactions where they were gifted or given some certain real estate in the Bahamas, but to see it all laid out in the complaint or I should say in the adversary proceeding was interesting. Which items in particular really struck you? I guess just the involvement in the actual day -to -day stuff. I mean, if you come from a corporate background or were a tax lawyer, which his dad, I guess, was and is, that there wasn't more, I don't know, structure to the organization. I mean, the dichotomy between what people thought pre -petition, what John Ray sort of said post -petition and now some of the revelations coming out about the pre -petition activity. I mean, it's just kind of amazing to think about people that might have been a more corporate background and saying like, if the business was so profitable, why were you cutting corners? To be fair to these guys, like in the light of day, sunlight of bankruptcy court, which as people in bankruptcy say, like my parents would say, the last place you want to be as a criminal is in bankruptcy court because there's so much sunlight and everything. Everything gets scrutinized. To be fair to people, sometimes the stuff gets overly scrutinized and they cherry pick stuff that went on. But it seems pretty damning, some of the stuff and there's, let's see what the responses will be. I mean, it's good for the estate and it's good for creditors because I'm sure they want to see sort of retribution. But in terms of recoveries, I don't think it's going to be incredibly meaningful, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. I mean, that's, I don't know, maybe two months of bankruptcy fees. And so, earlier when we were talking about like how some of the things are particularly damning, like if you were to kind of say, FTX will win in court for these reasons, like which were the particular acts that you think probably will put things over the edge? Oh yeah. I think almost all the stuff though, the win on the merits of the fraudulent conveyance. I mean, these are all fraudulent transfers potentially while the debtor was insolvent, potentially while it was coming with funds, so clearly all that money has to come back. I think that's pretty easy. The question is like, what's it worth now and who can actually pay it back? Like if money was given to a charity, can you actually go and get it back? Like meaning, is it there? Has it been spent kind of stuff? And you can only squeeze whatever rocked so hard. So the question will be, what is the real estate in the Bahamas worth? The 10 million bucks or whatever that was gifted to them, where did that money end up going? Can they trace it? So, these things cost money to do and then the question is like, how much of an effort do you want to make? And of course, all that can be stopped by a criminal investigation, which there isn't a complaint, but clearly some of the activity could be considered criminal. And I think, I won't pretend to be a criminal lawyer or a lawyer at all, but when you're bringing lawsuits, I mean, basically these are kind of like preponderance of evidence standards versus like higher standards that you might have for criminal complaints. So, it's easier for John Ray to like stitch together some stuff they know and slap an AP and sue these guys, but it's a little harder from a criminal side. But all of it, just facially, I mean, of course, as my lawyer likes to tell me, like, facts matter Thomas. So, if more discovery happens than they take discovery, we'll see. But on the face of it, I mean, it looks pretty obvious that it's sort of slam dunk. Just the question is what they'll actually be able to recover. Yeah, I think one of the ones that stuck out at me, simply because I could very easily imagine myself in a similar position with my own parents and I could just picture what my mother would say. And it was when they purchased the Bahamas property and everything was just getting billed or allegedly in the complaint to FTX. And the parents didn't even make an attempt to pay to furnish their home themselves. And I could just imagine if something similar was happening with my mother, she would be like, wait, is this okay that we're doing this? Like, you know, she would have so many questions about the money and like what was okay, what was kosher, what was not. Like, I could just practically hear her in my head. But at least, you know, from what the complaint described, it didn't feel at all like the parents had any of those qualms. So that was... Yeah, it wasn't 100 % owner of FTX. So it is bizarre that those red flags wouldn't have been, or people wouldn't have been like, hey, I know that you think this is okay, but I don't. Like someone would have said something, maybe they thought it was a drop in the ocean, but if FTX was so wildly profitable and Alameda was so wildly profitable, they didn't need to cut in corners and have them picking up the checks. I mean, it would have been easy for Sam to just be like, no, I'm picking this up personally or something. Well, one thing that I also noticed is that the document hedges its language saying things like, quote, Banquin and Freed either knew or ignored bright red flags revealing that SPF and other insiders were orchestrating the scheme. And again, you know, I saw later again, it was like, they either knew or blatantly ignored. So, yes. Right. That's because the standard for these civil cases is much lower. You know, like if you were trying to criminally try them, you'd have to like really show that they knew because they're going to say they didn't know, they didn't know, right. But the standard for like breach of fiduciary duty or, you know, kind of unjust enrichment, it's a much lower standard. All you have to basically show is a reasonable person should have known, you know. Oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So, that's why they keep saying that. So, you're saying – So, basically, they don't know whether or not they knew, but it doesn't matter for what they're trying to do. Is that what you're saying? I will respectfully say that I'm not a lawyer, but a stress investor and what people usually say – is the standard is usually what a reasonable person should have known, steps a reasonable person should have taken, best practices that a board should have taken. So, like a board of directors, if somebody runs off with money in a company, they don't have to necessarily show that they knew the person stole the money, but did they take any steps a reasonable person would have taken to like verify that the money was there or that the person wasn't absconding with money or whatever. So, it's this reasonable person standard that I think you trigger under Delaware and there are a lot of jurisdictions for breach of fiduciary duty or breach of loyalty, duty of care that you have, mainly in the boardroom, but also I think as a C -suite executive and it sounds like he was sort of melding between the two. So, basically, yeah, they're just trying to meet that standard for their purposes. They don't need to go beyond. And Barbara Fried, you know, also – so, as far as I understand from reading this, you know, Sam Pinkman was definitely involved more in the day -to -day, you know, he was often listed with FTX management. He could make executive decisions on his own at one point saying, oh, I'm just going to make this decision without Sam, like we don't need to involve him, that kind of thing. So, Barbara Fried was not involved at that level. However, it did say that she was a key influence on the campaign donations and I wondered what your takeaway was in that regard in terms of, you know, her involvement there. campaign finance fraud. Yeah, I don't have too much to say other than it's just bizarre that, you know, so many corners were cut in regards to stuff. I don't have a real view on – again, it's like it helps them build a story that they can, you know, just slam dunk, take back any money that was taken out of the estate at any point in the last couple of years by Barbara and the husband. But I don't think that – I don't have a real view on that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as far as I understand, I don't think they're married, they're domestic partners. Just to clarify, yeah. All right. So, in a moment, we're going to talk about what the consequences could be after, you know, from this document. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Toku makes managing global token compensation and incentive awards simple. Are you designing your token compensation plan and grant templates with multiple law firms? Are you managing cliffs, vesting and taxable events in a spreadsheet? Are you distributing tokens to your team manually? 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Odd Lots
Fresh update on "dad" discussed on Odd Lots
"Right now because we've just had this like sort years of like inflation, which many people have never really experienced in their lives. And so, to my mind, that raises some interesting questions like, how is this going to like change people's behavior? And what should, what have people done in the past during periods of inflation? Like, there are really interesting sort of like personal finance, spending, investing questions that like will come out this of era? Well, absolutely. And also the prospect of just finally actually earning some interest a on basic savings account. I know it's still below the level of inflation, but for people who've been earning 0 percent for most of their professional lives, I think it's very exciting. I think now it's kind of positive, right? Because you could get like 5 % the in CD and maybe inflation will be three and a half. Right. You know, I asked my dad recently about his memory of the 1970s. I was like, what was it like? You know, the first thing he said was like, oh, you could really get a lot of money in a bank account. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So, you know, there's all kinds of interesting things about like how people actually deal with. Right. And also what happens when we have a sort of regime change and how do people react to it and how much have things actually changed? Well, you know, and we've been talking about some, you know, some of the real estate episodes. Yeah. Like how much people like anchored to the zerp era. They're like, you know, as if like that was normal. So it's like, when have people adjusted? Is there still a big adjustment left to go? Like there's just some really interesting questions. Absolutely. Okay. Well, I think we should them. talk about And we really do have the perfect guest. We're going to be speaking with Morgan Housel, long time writer, the author of the bestselling book, The Psychology of Money is more books coming out, especially in popular this area. Morgan, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots. Well, Joe and Tracy, happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Can I just say, all right, I'm going to just say something just to set the scene a little bit. Like I said in the beginning of the conversation, personal finance is a genre, it's a little hackneyed, it's kind of cliche. But Morgan does it well? Years ago, like 2011, 2012, I was a business insider. Morgan was The at Motley Fool, and I said to my former colleague at BI, Sam Rowe, is Morgan the first personal finance writer that I like. And now here's this huge... That's high praise, high praise from I Joe. was long Morgan House very early on. I was long Joe during that period as well. So this is... What have you been up to since then? I feel like I've always done the same thing since 2008 when I started this, which was... You mentioned most personal finance writing, kind of falls into two buckets. It's either the here's credit card you should use, or here's the hot stock you should buy. The credit card part, no, I was never that interested in it. And the here's the stock you should buy always felt almost immoral me to because you don't know who's reading your stuff. Is this an 18 -year -old day trader or a 90 -year -old widow? Who are you recommending this to? So because of that, I just kind of naturally fell into this bucket of like, what's going through people's I heads? don't want to give anybody advice. I don't want to tell anybody what to do because I don't know you, but I'm really curious what's going on inside your head. Particularly, I started as a writer in 2008, so the world was falling to pieces. And it was just this idea of like, well, what the heck just happened here? And I think once I kind of realized that you could not explain 2008 through the lens of a finance or an economics textbook. It's just not in there to explain the bubble, the bust, the bailouts, not an economics textbook. But psychology had a lot to say about it. Sociology, like keeping up the Joneses that perfectly explained the housing bubble. So there are all these other fields outside of finance that filled in the gaps. So that to me was like, I'm just really interested in how you can connect psychology and sociology and political science to try to explain what people are thinking rather than what they should do. Yeah, both Joe and I, we sort of started our financial careers journalism around 2008. And it was a great time to do it because you were sort of on the same level as everyone else. No one knew really what was going on. But talk a little to bit us more than about your approach. How does taking that sociological or psychological angle actually inform the way you think about personal finance investing? Let's say there's two elements to this. One is I'm writer a and then the other is I'm interested in behavioral finance. And you really have to mix both of those because in writing, particularly as a finance writer, if you're just writing about data and charts, like a lot of people, even in the industry, it's boring. So you've got to tell a good story. And so I'm always trying to find examples from fields that have nothing to do with finance that explain how people think about greed and fear and risk. Because not only do I think that gets you closer to the truth of what's happening in finance, if you can really get like, why are people thinking the way they are? But from a writing standpoint, I think it's more interesting if you'd be like, Oh, here's a story from World War Two that explains how people think about risk. And let me tell you how that, you know, bleeds into finance. I think it's more interesting as a writer to catch recording this at an event in Huntington Beach at Future Proof isn't one of your most famous stories about cars parking in Los Angeles at one point being a valet. So yes, it was it was a hotel here in Los Angeles that I was a valet at during college. And it was a high end five star hotel, a lot of rich people And coming through. there was one member who was just an absolute animal with money. He was very very wealthy. I think he was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And money has never burnt a hole in someone's pocket so fast. He wandered around. He was he was always drunk. And he wandered around with a stack of $100 bills, I swear six inches thick. And he would just flash money like no other. And we did a lot of errands for this guy as of LA, who tipped very well.
Crypto Critics' Corner
A highlight from Were SBF's parents in on it? Follow the Money
"Welcome back, everyone. I am Cass Pianci, and I'm joined as usual by my partner in crime, not of the criminal sort, Bennett Tomlin. How are you today? I'm doing well. How are you, Cass? I'm doing good. It's been busy. It's been a very busy week for both of us. But today's episode is going to be about SPF's parents, the Bankmans and the Freeds, and their what appears to be increasingly important role that they each played in the criminal elements of FTX and Alameda Research. They called it a family business. They accepted incredibly large salaries. His father was getting a million dollars after requesting it because he was only getting 250 ,000 before. Mom pushed and tried to ensure that any money getting sent to the charity arm of the company had two steps of separation, two degrees of separation. And just really shady, weird stuff going on over there with the Bankmans and the Freeds. But those are kind of vague descriptions of what's going on. Bennett, why don't you walk us through some of the seriously criminal elements and what is happening? There is a decent amount of allegations contained in this lawsuit from the FTX debtors in possession against Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried that at a high level alleges that they were involved in specific aspects of the business and were closely connected to various alleged criminal acts and criminal acts people have pled guilty to. Starting with Joseph Bankman, he was involved with Alameda Research as early as 2018, which is when it was founded, and stayed involved throughout the entire time. The first several years, this appears to have been relatively informal. He directed FTX towards their first law firm, suggested their first accounting firm, was involved in consultations for hiring of certain executives and things like that. But none of this was documented in any kind of formal way. Eventually, in January 2021, he decides that there should be some kind of piece of paper that describes his relationship with these entities. And so he creates a document that describes his work for Alameda Research and FTX and FTX US, saying he's doing a variety of pro bono legal work and consulting work for these entities. What's interesting, of course, is that he was the signatory for the FTX entities and for himself on this entity. Really has kind of vibes of that loan agreement between Bitfinex and Tether years ago, where JLVDV and Juan Carlo was signing for both entities. And so that was one moment that really struck me as I was going through that is that he felt the need to, after providing advice for several years, finally in 2021 documents it and says he's providing this pro bono legal advice. This did not stay pro bono for very long. Later in 2021, he would take a leave of absence from Stanford University. And after he took this leave of absence, he allegedly told an FTX US employee, I'm no longer getting paid by Stanford because I'm on leave, so you should have me on salary starting December 1st. In December 2021, this is when he finally entered into a formal employment agreement with FTX US, where his nominal title was Senior Advisor to the FTX Foundation. You said it was $250 ,000. It was actually $200 ,000 a year, plus bonuses he was supposed to be getting paid. And this is where we get to the fun part that you made an allusion to before. He went to FTX's head of administration after signing this employment agreement that clearly said $200 ,000, told this person that he was supposed to be getting $1 million a year starting in December, and then he sends an email over to Sam Bankmanfried, his son, that says, and I quote, Gee, Sam, I don't know what to say here. This is the first I've heard of the $200 ,000 a year salary putting Barbara on this, meaning he cc'd in Sam Bankmanfried's mother and his domestic partner to help him deal with this contract negotiations that happened after he signed that contract. And it worked. It worked. Within two weeks, Bankman and Fried were gifted $10 million in funds originating from Alameda. Within three months, they ended up getting their $16 million mansion in the Bahamas funded entirely by FTX. And over the period after they got that mansion, they were able to expense something like $90 ,000 in various other expenses. And before he signed that contract agreement in December 2021, I do want to make clear he was also provided with an option to purchase shares of FTX US and FTX trading in November 2021. Before he was even employed with FTX, he was getting large options of shares. So yeah, I think that kind of is a good initial overview and we can get into some of the details he was also involved in, but they were receiving a lot of this type of monetary compensation. Yeah, well, I want to specifically bring up here some things that really made a red flag go off for me were, for instance, how they were keen to keep the residencies, the properties that they were acquiring with these gifted funds and all this money that they were essentially taking from customers, to be clear on that, that they wanted to ensure that that money in those properties would be shielded from a bankruptcy. And I'm just wondering, like, why, if they're so confident in this business, if they're so confident in their son, if they're so sure this is the future of finance, and I get it, you want to shield your personal property from a bankruptcy, but you just got gifted $10 million. You have to know this isn't exactly personal property, right? Like, you have to know your son is giving this to you. Your son is making money from the company. How is he making all of this money? You haven't really nailed that down yet. And you still are just letting this all transpire. Nobody was asking any questions is kind of what I'm getting to. But the questions they were asking were about, like, ensuring that they were shielded from any problems in the future. Yeah. And we should clarify the timeline a little bit here. There's a 2021 email exchange where FTX's general counsel wants to set up a meeting with their law firm to discuss how assets, including primary residence, can be structured to be bankruptcy remote. And Bankman quickly kind of responds in this email chain the next day and says it would be great, all else equal, if we could have the founders put money into property in the Bahamas and sent them a link to a description of an offshore trust structure in the Bahamas. He then discusses this with a lawyer in the Bahamas, another Stanford law professor, and his brother -in -law, and then ends up saying something we might use when we buy property in the Bahamas. And the reason I'm belaboring this point is because it happens, I think, about a year before they actually end up getting the house. And then, five months before they get the house, there's another thing that happens, and that's that they apply for residency in the Bahamas, permanent residency in the Bahamas. In order for them to get that, there's a $15 ,000 fee. That's also paid by FTX. And so I think what that kind of shows is this kind of series of planning that went into them eventually getting this mansion. They started discussing how to structure this about a year before, and I don't think they ended up using those trusts, at least not at the time of bankruptcy. They had already gotten their residency months before they got the property, and then they got the property. They wanted to benefit from this. There's no doubt about that. I mean, there is no doubt. I just want to be clear, and we're going to link to the very thorough protest article that goes over all of this, but it is very obvious. I think before we get to the crux of this, I first want to delve into this a little bit more. So Stanford yesterday decided that they were going to return all of the donated funds from this family, which amounted to $5 .5 million, which is a lot. I mean, I know that they get a shit, a metric shit ton of cash every year, but the idea that they're getting $5 .5 million in a single year from one family, one company, you know, essentially one family. That's how you get your name on a building and stuff like that. So they were donating a ton of money to this educational institution. All I want to say is that I think Stanford is disgusting. I think we see this in a bunch of these higher education, these private institutions, probably equally common in great public universities as well, but the ones that we hear about are like MIT or Harvard or Stanford accepting money from Jeffrey Epstein or accepting money from these guys, and then, oh, okay, you're returning it. Great. Well, you know why you're returning it? Because you got caught. That's why you're returning it. You're not returning it because you thought it was the right thing to do. Now that it's all coming out in these court documents, Stanford's giving the money back. They didn't do it one minute before that happened, though. Isn't that interesting? And I, you know, I think you should get into kind of the details of those donations, which there were many over this period, but like, oh, what a nasty, nasty way for a university to operate. I think the elite private colleges are at a special risk for kind of this because so much of their, like, existing structure is based around taking in cash and converting it to some vague elite authority. Speaking specifically about the donations from FTX to Stanford that appear to have been directed by Joseph Bankman, there was one that came from Paperbird directly to Stanford University. And this one was interesting because there was a lot of discussion about which entity to use. And what Bankman ends up saying is that he thought it should come from Paperbird, which was one of the entities that Sam Bankman -Fried owned that held most of the stock for FTX that investors were buying into. The corporate structure of FTX is a mind fuck. But this shows Bankman was aware of parts of the mind fuck. He says Paperbird can use the deduction. And when he discusses alternatives, he says we can have another entity loan Paperbird money, but that requires some paperwork. Eventually they get it all sorted out. FTX transfers money to Paperbird into a newly set up bank account, which immediately sends that money on to Stanford. There was another four million dollar donation to a Stanford fund for pandemic preparedness that he described as pretty much a no brainer. Bitcoin were transferred from Alameda Research's FTX account eventually. There was another series of donations where it was proposed that they give 1 .5 million from the FTX Foundation to Stanford College. However, the initial 500 ,000 for this came from an Alameda Research bank account, and the second 500 ,000 came from an FTX US bank account. There was another donation they did for a Stanford blockchain conference so they could sponsor it. That one was only 10k. But again, it kind of points towards how Bankman saw these entities as interchangeable. He said 10k is so little it doesn't really matter. So if we think that having FTX US is easier or safer for some reason, we should just do that. And what's most interesting is you talked about your name on a building. And there was a Stanford University employee who provided comment as part of this lawsuit. And this Stanford University employee apparently says that internally in Stanford, these donations were categorized as directed by the Bankman -Frieds. And like when they specifically got the big $4 million pandemic preparedness donation from Alameda, this person even reached out, should this one be categorized like the rest as from you all? Or is this one somehow different? And so yeah, I think that those donations kind of point towards how they were specifically using these commingled customer and client funds from across all these different entities in this self -promotional activity of giving these donations. Yep, there's more to where this money went, how much was spent, why they were in control of this. But I think the question that everybody wants to ask and is wondering about is how are they not being criminally charged with anything yet? And will they? I think we should hold off on that question for just a moment, because I want to talk about how Joseph Bankman also made sure other people he was related to and friends with got paid while he was in this position, because I think that's kind of fun. They talk about one example where he got a Stanford law student a free trip to the French Grand Prix tickets to the race so they could go and visit that. But I think the more interesting one was a hackathon that they had planned that was run by his sister. Bankman freed Sam's aunt. They hired her at a rate of $14 ,000 a month to prepare the FTX million -dollar hackathon and crypto summit held at the Miami Heat Arena, which was the one they put their name on briefly. They spent a total of $2 .3 million on this event, which was attended by 1 ,200 people. They were spending crazy amounts. They said she was authorized to spend like without a budget, whatever it was needed to get this event done. There was so much of this kind of like self -enrichment here that we'll get to your question as to how are they not being criminally charged. That's just grift. Yeah, obviously. The other person we need to talk about, of course, is Barbara. Barbara Freed, Sam Bankman Freed's mother. In her specific role, she, as you alluded to at the very beginning of this episode, described herself as her son's partner in crime of the non -criminal sort. And Sam made sure to sing her praises to his team, making known to her that he intended to rely on her direction regarding who to give to, how much to give to, and how it should be disclosed and told them that it would be good for them to follow her advice as well. And what seems really interesting is she seemed to have a great deal of control. The lawsuit even alleges she was able to unilaterally commit funds of Sam Bankman Freed's to her political action committee, Mind the Gap, meaning without Sam's authorization, she was able to take Sam's money donated in Sam's name to her political action committee, which is a great deal of trust. And even inside her own committee, when she had to talk about some of these donations, she would say things like, I don't know exactly what interconnected entity he sent the money from, but the business is real and revenue -generating, which again, I think, points towards kind of the interchangeability of these entities for these folks. What I think really gets interesting is Nishad Singh, who has already pled guilty for conspiracy to defraud the federal election committee, as well as a variety of other conspiracy charges. He was one of the people who appears to have served as effectively a straw -man donor for Sam Bankman Freed, and was advised in this process by Barbara Freed, Sam's mother. At one point when they were discussing donations to her organization Mind the Gap, and she suggested that, now that my connection to Sam is publicly known, because we don't want to create the impression that funding MTG is a family affair, as opposed to a collective effort by many people, including some mystery guy Nishad Singh, which is when she was suggesting that on their end, they would prefer if his name was the one that was donating to Mind the Gap instead of Sam Bankman Freed's. And similarly, she was worried about a lot of their political donations. There's a really telling one, where she's warning him in an email, And again, later, just the last one to really put kind of a cherry on top of her seeming knowledge of some of the criminal acts that Nishad Singh has pled guilty to. She said, And I think this, as well as some of the more specific tax advice that Bankman Freed was giving on FTX their specific finances and stuff like that, point towards potential knowledge of criminal acts. I tweeted out shortly after I read through this lawsuit, or as I was about halfway through reading this lawsuit, if I'm being honest, And as you alluded to previously, that is kind of what this feels like. It feels like these two law professors, who should have known better, had high -level knowledge of things that people have already pled guilty to, and were deeply involved in the business. Bankman specifically was even mentioned on an internal document as a member of the management of FTXUS, along with only a few other names. They had knowledge, they were inside the organization, and they had some amount of presence. One last thing that I think really hammers that home. When we went to consensus, and we talked about this in our episode that we did after that, Anthony Scaramucci was talking about his experiences in the lead -up to and aftermath of the FTX collapse. And one thing he said that seemed to be corroborated in the lawsuit is that Bankman was involved in them attempting to get the emergency funding. And as we said, and we shared the audio clip of Scaramucci saying it, Bankman apparently told Scaramucci, Anthony or intimated to him, that there was an asset liability mismatch at FTX. What happened to me is I was actually speaking in Sarasota, Florida. There was rumblings that day, I think it was November the 6th or something like that, or 7th. The Monday was the 7th. And then I got back to New York and I spoke to Sam's dad about the problem, and it was intimated to me that it was an asset liability mismatch, that they were leading redemptions and there were assets available, but they weren't necessarily liquid, and they needed time to get the liquidity, and they were looking for some rescue plans. And so at that time, I was a good citizen and a partner in the business. In fact, they owned a piece of my business. I was certainly trying to help them on their fundraising round.
Mark Levin
Fresh update on "dad" discussed on Mark Levin
"Black caucus embodies all those values and of course he was talking caucus congressional hispanic not the congressional black caucus keeps talking about what his dad told i suspect his dad was as big of an quite frankly why keeps quoting his dad I'm but the doesn't really matter to me we have a man in the Oval Office who has stage five dimension as I explained in the book the gave stage five dimension. He's defended by his party Ignatius has called them all. And by the way notice nobody talks about it anymore it's like we have these little flashes in paying the where all the media has to talk for five days and all of a sudden they walk away They're not going to replace Biden unless Biden wants to be replaced. But he's definitely a head case. It's not funny. It's sad. And what's sickening is the Democrat Party couldn't give a damn. I'll see you next We have
Postcards to the Universe with Melisa
Meet Rebecca Whitman, The Magnetic Abundance Mentor
"So I wanna talk to my guest today because everything I talk about each week in the beginning of my show, Rebecca and I are gonna be talking about today. So Rebecca Whitman, she is called the Magnetic Abundance Mentor. I love that. She's an international best -selling author. She graduated with honors from Princeton University. She was awarded Life Coach of the Year and Empowered Woman of the Year by International Association of Top Professionals. LA Weekly Magazine featured her as one of the top seven entrepreneurs to watch in 2023. She hosts the top 1 .5 % globally ranked, balanced, beautiful, and abundant podcasts, which won the Positive Change Award. Her philosophy divides life into seven pillars of abundance, which include spiritual, physical, emotional, romantic, mental, social, and financial. She helps people achieve balance within these seven areas so that they can experience more fun and freedom in life. She has been featured in New York Weekly, Miami Magazine, and LA Weekly Magazines. In addition to her appearances on ABC and CBS, she has guested on over 100 podcasts. She has given keynote speeches at Columbia University and UCLA and has shared virtual stages with renowned thought leaders Grant Cardone, Jack Canfield, and Les Brown. You can find out more about her if you visit her website. It's RebeccaElizabethWhitman .com. Welcome, Rebecca. Thanks so much for being here with me. Thank you so much, Melissa. I'm so excited to be on your show with such a delight to have you on my show a couple weeks ago, and now we get to continue the conversation. Exactly, yeah. So I was on Rebecca's show on her podcast, The Balance Beautiful and Abundant Show, and it aired August 29th. And you guys who are listening, you can find it on any of the podcasting platforms, Apple, whatever you listen to, Spotify, Google, and yeah, you can listen to the show. And it's also, it's on YouTube too, right, Rebecca? I think you're on YouTube also. Yep, YouTube as well as Apple, Spotify, and all the podcast platforms. Absolutely. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. So yeah, so now she's here. So let's talk about you and like what got you into this kind of this abundance mindset, like starting to do this kind of work? What made you want to do it? Were you always doing this your whole life or is this something that you kind of fell into or came to, I should say? Yeah, I moved to Los Angeles 22 years ago to pursue my childhood dream of being an actress. And I had small parts on huge shows like Friends, CSI, and 24, and I never got that big break. So I supported myself at children's acting schools and the children were busy during the day at school. So I would attend spiritual lectures with great teachers of the law of attraction like Michael Beckwith, Esther Hicks, Louise Hay, Wayne Dyer, and I started applying it to my life and I got immediate results. I was making six figures working part time at a kid's acting school. And I didn't quite apply it as well to my love life. I had a series of really painful breakups with emotionally unavailable men. And I even married one thinking he would change. Three years later, I filed for divorce and my marriage was slowly and painfully unraveling as my dad was slowly and painfully dying in a nursing home. And in one of our last conversations, he asked me to write a book. And a few months later, my dad had made his transition and my marriage had dissolved and I was sitting across the desk from my financial planner. And he said, Rebecca, I find it interesting that you are making more money than you've ever made the same year that you lost your marriage and your father. And I think you should write a book. So I wrote a book based on the seven key areas of life, which I now call the seven pillars of abundance, and it's called How to Make a Six Figure Income Working Part Time. And now I help women go from burned out to balanced, beautiful, and abundant. And using these principles, I'm now happily married to my soulmate. And now I just coach women. I have the podcast and I just love this mission, teaching people they don't have to be burned out and overwhelmed to receive abundance in life.
Mark Levin
Fresh update on "dad" discussed on Mark Levin
"They have repair coverage for up to 5 thousand parts and you have your choice of A .S .E. certified mechanics. They have a price lock block guarantee this is big meaning the price will never go up no matter how many claims you file or even as the mileage on your car increases that's a big deal. Call Car Shield today 800 898 -6155 or go to carshow .com slash levin that's e slash l v i n to save 20 % that's 800 -898 898 or -6155 go to carshow .com slash l e v i n to save 20 % look Leven bringing the family together every night around the radio. These children are option. in need Come of an back with in show you right after what my dad taught me and i mean this in certain my dad used to say everyone everyone is entitled to be treated with dignity and respect congressional
Abundant Encounters
Reprocessing Your Experiences With Jesus
"Of an interesting perspective on dreams that I heard recently was just about how our subconscious finds a way to inform us of things that it's kind of become aware of. And I loved, I kind of enjoyed the way they personified the subconscious, just so you could understand a little bit of what was going on. And so when Joseph has these dreams about the stars bowing down to him and everything else, the sheaves bowing down to him and, you know, one can imagine that it would have a pretty massive impact on just the way that you conduct your life from that day forward. You know, sometimes our dreams are just ambitions as well, and those are also coming from somewhere. It's interesting to consider what is being interpreted or what is impacting our subconscious. Is it so that it's coming up with different images to communicate? And, you know, that can help us to understand. I mean, if it's a spiritual place, then that's one thing, but if it's a place of pain in our past, or maybe we just don't feel significant, for example, and if we don't feel significant, again, it may have something to do with a difficult experience that we had growing up, maybe even neglect or worse. And so it's important that we find a way to heal those broken places. And for some of us, right away, we know where a lot of the challenges came from, and it's Jesus. There's a lot of different reprocessing techniques and treatments out there that people do. EMDR is one that I'm really interested in personally. But, you know, even if we've had really, really terrible experiences, one of the greatest reprocessing tools that I've used personally and have is from the Sozo ministry, and it's called Presenting Jesus. And Presenting Jesus is really simple. We go to that dream, that memory, and we purposefully bring ourselves to that experience. And we ask Jesus where He is. And sometimes He surprises people, you know, He could be behind them, or sometimes He's just everywhere, or He's represented as an object, but He always has something to say about the situation, you know. If we have, you know, if our theology is that God is good, and that He doesn't agree with the fallenness of the world, then that makes it possible for us to understand that God wasn't for that terrible evil thing that happened. He didn't want it, He didn't agree to that, so that it would happen to you. He wasn't trying to teach you a lesson or trying to grow you up. He's just not an evil dad. He's not a psychotic father either. He doesn't go back and forth and just have so many issues like that. His intent in our lives is to continuously rescue
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep379: The 5 Fs Podcasters Shouldn't Neglect - Jerry Dugan
"Be consistent with who you're speaking to, what you're posting off. Still show yourself and be a guest on other shows, especially if the show is like yours, because those listeners will also want more and more variety and they'll come to you for that. Most hosts never achieved the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. What's up, podcaster. It's your host, Adam Adams. And today I'm joined with Jerry Dugan from Beyond the Rut. And Jerry's passionate about supporting business leaders, helping them with different things like work -life balance. So one of the questions that I'm going to ask, does work -life balance even exist? Because I'll tell you it's very polarized. On one end, everybody's like, you have to balance, you have to balance. And then I read this other book that said, no, it's not balanced. It's switch tasking. You go here all the way, then you go here all the way. And then there's other people that say you have to be out of balance for a certain amount of time. So I'm really curious just to start there. Jerry Beyond the Rut supports people with a life worth living in faith, family, and career. So a lot of the listeners that you have are probably around my age and your age that are probably struggling with the work -life balance and making sure that they are putting enough to their faith and their family and their career. And I love that. I want to ask, why do you think work -life balance is real? And what have the other people said? Yes, ultimately, I think they're all saying the same thing. Like if you really break down to what, like, even the folks that say there's no such thing as work -life balance, what they're ultimately saying is like, we make life choices based on our priorities. And when I talk about work -life balance, I'm saying the same thing. One of my hope is that when you're on your deathbed, I already know you're not going to say, man, I wish I did one more launch of my program or man, I wish I was at inbox zero more days in my life. You're going to say things more like, I wish I had one more day to spend with my grandkids and my great grandchildren. I would have loved to have been there for my daughter's wedding or for my son's wedding, whatever it is. And in serving in combat and knowing some folks who worked in hospice care, that is the thing that they hear over and over again, that people wish they had more time to be with the people they love and on the flip side, when they have the people they love, they wish they succeeded more in their career. And so it's like, what if you could win in all of that? What if you could take your career as far as you can and not sacrifice your family at the same time? And so you look at what's important to you and how are your current activities impacting those areas of your life? How are you doing with your family life? You know, okay, work's taking a lot out of me. Okay. Is that a permanent thing or is this a temporary thing? If it's temporary, then you talk it over with your partner and you decide from there, like, okay, yeah, this is temporary. What's the deadline? What does success look like? And what's the bailout trigger that says, all right, we're not hitting these measures doesn't look like we will let's scrap that and go another direction. So that to me, that is why I'm a big fan of work -life balance. It's not just strictly. I spend so many hours at work, so many hours at home. It really is. How is getting out early impacting all the things? Am I going to miss my children's big school events? What's that impact if I do? And what's the message I send? Because I'll tell you from personal experience, I was a lot of kids, superheroes, because I would volunteer my kids' school for a day and their dad had to go to work and it's not the same thing against their dad, because why did the dad go to work? Because he wanted to provide for his family. And so the motivation for a good thing for the family was there, but there wasn't that balance to, I also want to communicate to my child that my child is important. I want to communicate to my partner that she's important. And so it's, how do you win at all those things? And how do you find the right company that will support you as a person while also supporting you and your career growth and getting you to perform well to help the company also succeed? It's like, there's a way to find all that. I want to hear a tip or two. And I'm thinking you and I talked a little bit about this before we first press record. You were talking about the checkbox and a lot of us, we got a checklist and we're checking off all the boxes and it's seems like we're checking off all the boxes. It feels like when we look at the checklist, it's pretty much full, but we might not feel fulfilled even at the expense of checking off lots of boxes. So if that's us, we're listening and we're trying to think of what is it that we think we've had success on paper, but we don't really feel it. We don't really feel like we're everywhere we need to do. What's one or two tips for the listener to be able to feel like they're doing the right thing right now? I think the first thing is you got to know who you are and that's the big broad umbrella piece of advice. Know who you are, what is valuable to you? Like, what do you believe in? What do you not believe in? It's if you believe in respecting the dignity of every person, then that is key. If you value time with family, then your calendar should reflect that. If you value being a supportive person for your family, does that go beyond just monetary support? And so knowing your values, I think is very huge. What is your vision, your purpose in life? I have a couple of mottos I live by. One is the Dugan crest motto. So somebody around the 1500s and it's a miracle that the Dugans are still around because apparently these guys called the Saxons came into like Ireland and almost wiped us all out, but like good Irish people, we stuck around. And so that's not important. The important thing is somebody added to the family crest. Oh man, it's by virtue and valor. So for Tute et valore, and it sounds cooler when it's Latin. I hope I said it right. So that's one thing I live by is am I living my life according to my family's crest motto, am I living by virtue? Am I living by valor being courageous to do what's right when even nobody's looking. But then from there, I had a vision that I wanted my children to live a life that was better than mine, but also be set up to be better adults than I was to have better successes than I did to know who they are and to feel comfortable pursuing their own dreams. Like that's in a written vision that I have tucked away on Evernote somewhere. So you got to have something like that. Like, what do you stand for? What is life like for you when you die? And I love talking about these things called the five Fs, your faith, your family, your fitness, your finances, and your own future growth or possibilities. Like looking at your life through those lenses, what does success look like for you? So I guess that's the second one is defining a second, Jerry. I missed an F F that I got faith. I got family. I got finances. I got fitness. And what did I miss? Emily, faith, finances, and fitness, future possibilities, future possibilities, always growing to be better today than you were yesterday. And then what's that future state of yourself you'd like to become. And so being a constant learner is that future possibilities. One reading books that are outside your usual norm, listening to podcasts that are outside your norm, being open to ideas that are not typically in your bucket or wheelhouse either a, to see how your own ideas and beliefs stack up, because sometimes like I myself had gone through life and realized, oh wow, I held onto this belief and I met three people who completely challenged that is my belief wrong or is it just not as strong as I thought it was, is there more context? I needed to add. And, and so sometimes I realized I was completely wrong about something. And other times I realized, oh, I was missing a lot of context here. I believe this, but only in this context, because I also believe this and my belief should not undermine somebody else's right to be who they are. And so it's like, oh yeah, okay. I can wrap my head around that. And I can be a decent person in my community that way. And so that, yeah, the future possibility is that a bit more unpacked, I should have put that in. Have you ever heard of, I think it's Gino Wickman and I hope I'm not wrong. And he wrote like three books. One was like, I'm going to just type in Gino Wickman. This is going to be the easy way. Then I'll sound so smart instead of dumb Gino Wick man. All right. So he wrote three books. Yes. Yes. What the heck is E O S he wrote traction and he wrote what it's not showing me the last one traction, what the heck is EOS and there's another one called rocket fuel. Okay. So these three books are interesting and it kind of is what you're talking about, but in more of a business category. And so I think this is really great to extract it and bring us to the listener in rocket fuel, what the heck is EOS and traction, ultimately what Gino Wickman talks about is your business should have a culture or have values that you all live by. And so it's interesting because when we look at all of the things that we can value, let's just pretend that I don't know the number. I'm just going to say that it's 20 values. There's 20 things that are good. And most people would agree with 18 or 19 of them. So one would be honesty, but at what expense are we going to be rude and honest? Another one might be politeness. Another one might be doing the right thing. Even when it hurts, you kind of mentioned your integrity. Even when people are not looking, am I going to be doing this with my family crest and everything? So the Gino Wickman also talks about like all of these things that we can value. And most of them are important to everyone. Honesty, of course, that sounds right, but not everybody puts that at the top of their value. Maybe they put discretion, maybe they put kindness above it, or maybe they put honesty above kindness and et cetera, et cetera, they might put doing the right thing, even when it hurts as one of the top values. And so in RocketFuel and EOS and Traction, Gino talks about how we need to build our team, our company culture around where all of us agree on these main values. Like we value making money, we value serving the client, we value X, Y, or Z. All of them are good, but which one is in the hierarchy? And so when I'm hearing you, you basically gave me two things. The first one is you got to know who you are. You got to know your culture. You got to know your values. What do you believe in? And you talked about by virtue and valor. What do you believe in? What matters to you? And then you focus on it and you bring people along. And the second one is a written vision. Like you actually write down the vision where you put in faith, family, finances, fitness, and future possibilities, and you figure out how are you doing these? How does this work for you? And you write it down because everybody's vision, like a fingerprint has to be different. Everybody's culture or their values have to be a little bit different, how they put them. And for you, you're saying a way that you can check off the boxes is to just know exactly what the heck the boxes are in the first place. Know which things matter to you and get rid of the rest. So you can really focus on those. And I thought that was really interesting because not only can we do it in our business, we can do it on our podcast. And as you've illustrated, we can do it with our family, with our own lives, our personal lives. So I thought that was really, really beautiful. I appreciate you going into that before we move on to anything, something that I missed or something else you want to share about being able to check off those boxes and feel really good about it, even that person who might be listening might feel like it looks like they're checked off, but they don't feel completely fulfilled. Yeah. Similarly to how business, they have their strategic plan that pushes them and they make big decisions off of that. Does this activity support the strategic initiative of this organization? And the answer is yes, they keep pushing forward with some adjustments. If it doesn't, they're like, well, then why are we doing that? Let's cut that out and let's restructure and reorganize. And it's cool to see that there are these business and even podcasting principles and practices that help us create a better podcast, create a better business, and we don't realize how easily we can just transfer those same skill sets into our very lives. And so it's the same thing. You know, how many people do we know who are physicians who hate being a physician? I can think of two or three or somebody who became a lawyer because the money was good and they quit being a lawyer because they realized that wasn't fulfilling for them or me, I left my corporate job because I realized I didn't want to start all over again and build something that belonged to somebody else and it was time to go after my dreams. So even my mom like kept encouraging me to become a doctor. I was a pre -med student. I'm not a doctor now because I did not do well as a pre -med student, but I realized later on it's because that was never my dream. That was my mom's dream. She wanted me to be a doctor. She wanted to be able to live vicariously through me and what she wanted success to be, and once I realized, Oh gosh, I don't want to be a doctor. What do I want to be? Of course, now it took a 10 year journey for me to realize what I did want to be, but I got there, man. That's that's important. So anyway, that was it. Yeah. You're willing to walk away from something really good stuff. I want to move into just your podcast journey now for the listener. I'll point out a couple of things that I'm seeing with your podcast. Hey, I think it, haven't you been doing it for like eight years? Yeah, this particular year, eight years. Yeah. Amazing. So with eight years, over 400 episodes and a lot of traction, not going back to Gina Wickman, a lot of traction on your podcast success, I think that we've got a couple of listeners that haven't quite been doing it for eight years, they may have been doing it for a year or two, they're new. And they would like to have the type of success that you've got with your podcast. So I'm like to get a couple of takeaways, what you've done, what you've learned, what you would do differently. First, a quick word from our sponsor, but when we get back, I really want you to focus on what made your podcast successful so that the listeners podcasts can also be successful. We'll be right back. Hey, my friend, as you know, this episode is sponsored by my company, growyourshow .com. We want you to be able to have the best tools at your disposal without costing you a whole arm and a leg. So right now you can get a free list of vetted equipment that like mics, mixers, webcams, sound treatment, editing software, everything that you need. I created the whole PDF with direct purchase links, just to save you time and money to help it be more convenient for you. So this free PDF will help you skip all the guesswork. If it's on there, it's vetted and approved by yours truly. And if it's not on there, it's probably not worth the money. So go ahead and get yours at growyourshow .com forward slash PDF. Let's get back into the show. We're back with Jerry Dugan. And we've talked a little bit about work -life balance, helping leaders with work -life balance, making sure that you're checking all the boxes and feeling fulfilled and the five F's and his family crest, which I don't even remember what it said in Latin. I think it was Latin, but it really means by virtue and valor. And I wanted to talk about now, how is his podcast so fricking well known and he's doing a great job. He's getting a lot of success through the podcast. And hopefully you'll be able to take away a couple of things that can support you in a successful podcast as well. Jerry, what do you think made your podcast? Yeah, a lot of what I'm seeing really is in the last year, year and a half, really. So I jokingly tell folks, but I'm not joking that it seems like I did year one, seven times, and then finally I had year eight happen all at once. So it's no overnight success kind of thing. I think the first thing that really helped was when there was a team of three of us. So we started off with three of us. We all agreed on one thing other than the name of the show. And that was the avatar of the show. So we have an avatar that we named AJ. He's 35 years old, married to his college sweetheart. He has two kids that they both have together. One's in elementary school. One's in middle school. AJ has a mid -level leadership career going on with a corporation in a metro area. And got the car, got the house, got the six figure income, but feels stuck in life. And so from there, we start to unravel how AJ feels stuck. There's the commute to work. There's the no real future in the job he's in. Not really making any progress. Wants to be a good family man when he gets home, but he's just drained of energy. And this cycle is putting a strain on his marriage. The kids feel like he doesn't love him, which is so far from the truth. So how does AJ live the life that he really wanted to live in his faith, in his family, in his fitness, finances, and his future? And so that's what we did when we came together to start the show. Now where we had a lot of weak spots, and I feel we did the first seven years over and over again, was that when you listened to the early episodes, we were all over the place, we didn't really stick to that mantra. Like what does AJ really need? And I hate to say it, but it wasn't until like the other two guys quit from the show that I realized, Oh, we're so far from what we wanted to do, who we wanted to help. And so how do I get there? And so year six, really going into year seven was how do I niche this down? I worked with a couple of different groups that really helped me start to niche that down. Jerry, you're helping specifically this demographic. You're helping them specifically with things like work -life balance and really having a mapped out future or a vision for their future focus on that. Okay. What kind of guests should I have? And so this kind of leads into the second one, which was that pairing down that niching down. So the first one was having that vision of who I wanted to help. The second one was really paring down and niching down. How am I going to help AJ? And once I started to see that a bunch of doors opened up and the third thing was I needed to get the word out there. So the marketing piece, I threw stuff out there for the first seven years, but really it's in this last year that I've been more intentional about it. The posts that I put out there on social media are aimed at AJ. The shows I appear on are aimed at AJ and you know, as that guest appearance on other shows, I think so far in the last 10 months, I've been on almost 70 other podcasts and to the point where now I'm starting to feel like I'm in alternate realities down. Like, how do I know Adam Adams? Oh yeah, I was on his show. All right, there we go. We talked about this, this, and this, or how do I know, Deirdre? Oh yeah, I'm here, here and here. It's just all that starting to overlap. But anyway, those would be the big three is know who you're serving. The second thing is truly niche down. Even if you have a lot of passions, interests, try to stick to one thing and just kind of lit little dose of yourself, sprinkle into your episodes. That way people know what they're getting when they come to your show. And then the third thing, I know I just said it. Marketing.
Simply Bitcoin
A highlight from Robert Kiyosaki: Buy Bitcoin NOW, Before Market Crash | EP 828
"Yo, welcome to Simply Bitcoin Live, we're your number one source for the peaceful Bitcoin revolution, we cover breaking news, culture, and medic warfare, we will be your guide through the separation of money and state. Robert Kiyosaki, he is the author of Rich Dad Poor Dad, it was one of the most influential books that I read in my professional career, in fact it was one of the first books that I read in my late teens, early 20s, I dropped out of college so I took the non -normal path, the path where my parents are like, you're never going to make anything of yourself, and that book was a big inspiration for me, it motivated me and it really kind of changed on my mindset what is money, what is entrepreneurship, what is wealth, so I highly recommend that book if you haven't read it, and the reason I'm talking about this individual today is because he's pretty base, he likes Bitcoin, he likes Bitcoin a lot, and he tweeted something, something actually that he's been tweeting for quite a while, and essentially what he's saying is, you better get yourself some gold, you better get yourself some silver, obviously I don't agree with the gold and the silver, it's not that gold in itself is bad, I just think that the gold market is captured because of gold centralization, because of its physical characteristics it leads to a lot of people cussing their gold, and I think that inevitably leads to rehypothecation, that inevitably leads to manipulation. So, yeah, I think Bitcoin is the insurance, but most importantly, if this news was just on itself, you would say, Niko, this is a bunch of noise, what does it matter if another person is saying to buy Bitcoin? Well you guys know the deal, what we do here at Simply Bitcoin, connect the dots, remember all the people that are saying, buy Bitcoin, the other day I think it was yesterday's episode, you had Jordan Peterson, so you have another influencer, you have another person who has a huge following, who's the author of a very, very famous book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, it's a very influential book, also saying the quiet part out loud, buy Bitcoin as insurance, get on the life raft, so that is awesome, we're gonna talk about that today, and also in the European Union, European Union passed DAC8, and essentially what that would do is it would force crypto service providers to report all transaction information on EU clients, which is something very, very similar to the Elizabeth Warren bill that we covered on yesterday's episode, so yeah, we covered Jordan Peterson on Monday, we covered the Elizabeth Warren stuff yesterday, so you could see where all these countries, the direction that all these countries are heading, as the separation of money and state accelerates, and the nation state tries to maintain that privilege, the privilege, the control of money, the monopoly over money, but I don't think you can stop an idea whose time has come, so they're gonna have a very, very hard time stopping that, I'm very excited for today's show, it's Wednesday, we're halfway through the week, it's time to bring up my legendary co -host, who is literally smiling and laughing, this is Ati all the time, how you doing brother, what's up? I'm doing great, I'm just laughing at you, because like hey, you know, I was joking before the show, I was like okay, let's just get the show done, and you're like, I live for this stuff, this is what I do, and it still works, but we love to do this man, and yeah, to your point, you know, I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, my early days right before I found Bitcoin, and it was definitely one of those defining books in my life that, you know, I think I've come a long way since then, but it was one of those books that definitely got me reading, or at least thinking about money correctly, anyways, on that point, last week we had a kneel on, and someone asked, what are some of the Bitcoin fundamentals, and so I went on my Noster yesterday, and I asked people what they thought are some Bitcoin fundamentals, and shout out to Darth Coin, our simply Bitcoin Telegram group moderator, and he gave me one of his articles, so I'm gonna use that as a jump off point, so hopefully some new people that are in the chat, I saw someone say they just got their first, you know, their first Bitcoin, they just started stacking, so you know, we're new people in the Simply Bitcoin YouTube that maybe aren't as familiar with everything that we know, we're trying to get them on board, you know, I know you guys, I can hear you guys saying, you know, Opti repeats himself so much, but hey, we're trying to get everyone on the same page, not everyone understands as much as you do, and as I jokingly say all the time, I think I've forgotten more about Bitcoin than I remember, but all you need to remember is, stack sad, stay humble, stay solvent, take your Bitcoin off the exchange, keep it simple guys, so we're gonna kind of get back to some fundamentals, give you guys some, as Darth Coin says, some Bitcoin commandments, and we'll kind of have a little chat about that, I'd like to get, or pick Niko's brain about what he thinks are some of the fundamentals as well, so we got a good show, I think actually it's gonna be a fitting show with the Robert Kiyosaki news as well. Robert Kiyosaki man, it's absolute legend, love, love his work, love the book that he wrote, also guys if you're enjoying the show, help us break 100 likes within the first hour, I think yesterday, or the day before, we broke 200 likes, so if you're watching the live stream right now on Rumble, YouTube, Twitter, make sure to smash that like button, also join Simply Bitcoin's Telegram group, it's absolutely free, we're almost, we're about to hit a thousand people in there, so just go to t .me slash simply Bitcoin TV, join it, it's a party, you can tag Opti there with some memes and he'll feature them on the show. Alright everybody, no more delay, let's jump straight into the numbers, we got a lot to talk about today, let's check it out. The Bitcoin Numbers Is your Bitcoin and cold storage really secure? Is your seed phrase really secure? Stamped Seeds Do It Yourself Kit has everything you need to hammer your seed words into commercial grade titanium plates, instead of just writing them on paper, don't store your generational wealth on paper, paper is prone to water damage, fire damage, you wanna put your generational wealth on one of the strongest metals on planet earth, titanium. Your words are actually stamped into this metal plate with this hammer, and these letter stamps, and once your words are in, they aren't going anywhere, no risk of the plate breaking apart and pieces falling everywhere. Titanium stamped seeds will survive nearly triple the heat produced by a house fire, they're also crush proof, waterproof, non -corrosive, and time proof, all things that paper is not, allowing you to huddle your Bitcoin with peace of mind for the long haul. Stamp your seed on stamp seed. Alright guys, I literally made it easy for you guys, scan the QR code on your screen with your phone, it will take you directly to the stamp seed website, you can use promo code simply to get 15 % off anything on the stamp seed website, store your generational wealth on fucking titanium bro, titanium. Anyways, the Bitcoin price at the recording is 27 ,155, sats per dollar, 3 ,683, block height 808 ,601, blocks to halving 31 ,399, halving estimate April 21st, 2024, total lightning network capacity 4 ,829 Bitcoin, capacity value 131 million US dollars, realized monetary inflation rate, inflation 1 .75%, continuing to take fiat currencies to absolute school, market capitalization, 529 billion dollars with a B, Bitcoin versus gold market cap 4 .09%. In the grand scheme of things, Bitcoin is still a tiny little baby. Anyways, something to point out, something very interesting, which is the Bitcoin versus gold market cap. That will continue to go up if Bitcoin reaches the gold market cap, that is 500 million dollars sorry yes, 500 ,000 dollars per Bitcoin, rough estimate. So and we all know that Bitcoin is better than gold because of its physical characteristics. Again I know a lot of people that like gold in the chat and I appreciate you all and I'm a fan of gold too, gold bar like physical gold I'm a big fan of but problem is that most people don't like they don't they don't buy physical gold, they buy paper gold. That's the issue right? With Bitcoin you know it allows you to take self custody of your Bitcoin extremely easy, you know you don't have you don't have to wait for it to get physically mailed to you. If you go to El Salvador where Bitcoin is legal tender and you go to a McDonald's you know you could pay with your Bitcoin because Bitcoin has a bunch of decimal places you know it's divisible it's goes through the internet if you use lightning network it's instantaneous you know the main chain writes roughly 10 minutes settlement but you'll still see the transaction immediately.
Crypto Banter
A highlight from "They've Taken All My Money From Me!" | Ben Armstrong
"So is BitBoy broke. At least that's what he says. He says he's lost everything and he's asking people to help him. So listen to this. Let's listen to this together. Don't watch the video. Guys, I've been under threat of blackmail. I've been extorted for my Lamborghini. That's gone. I've been under literal death threat. That literally told my wife they were going to put me under the ground, put me under concrete over money. Literally said that I've got a recording of it as well as we have the police report. That's what said to my wife. Remember who's on it. We're all supposed to be protected here. So anyway, so BitBoy says he's broke and that he is getting death threats. We're going to talk about that. We're going to also show I'm also going to show you is asking people to help him and they are actually helping him. He's raised over $100 ,000. We're going to talk about that today. Also on the eve or on the day of the big FOMC, this is where we're at. We've got Bitcoin trading at $27 ,000. And if you look where that is, it is just, I would say, touching that resistance level that Gary spoke about. But I think that this is not the chart that everybody should be watching in crypto. In fact, let me show you another chart. And I don't think enough people are actually watching this chart over here because as long as this chart over here is going down, we can't get into a bull market. So if my predictions are going to come right for September, we talk about that chart that I just showed you. Also, what else have we got? We've got the SEC warning that they're coming after exchanges. Again, look at this. So SEC now warning that they're going to be coming after exchanges. And this time it's not the exchanges that you think they're coming from. They're not going for Binance and they're not going for Coinbase. They're going for the decentralized exchanges. And you may be in trouble if you haven't been using a VPN. So we need to talk about that. Then, I mean, if the SEC are attacking the DeFi and attacking exchanges, they are just blocking adoption in the United States. And I'm going to show you who's capitalizing in the adoption in Asia. You can see that Asia is really, really, really flying when it comes to adoption. We're going to talk about that. And then lastly, I want you to get this story. So there is a story or there is something that's come out of the FTX case. You're going to laugh when you hear this. But Sam Bankman -Fried's dad, Joseph, asked Sam for a million dollars salary and they were negotiating his salary. And what Sam said is, he said, I can't give you a million, I'll give you $200 ,000. And so you know what Joseph said? He said, I'm going to tell mommy. Now, look, if you're not Jewish, if you're not Jewish, now I can say this because I'm Jewish, but if you're not Jewish, you would never understand what it means when they say they're going to tell your mother. Because a Jewish mom can invoke so much guilt in her son that it's probably the worst thing in the whole world. So we're going to talk about Joseph, Sam, Barbara and the whole FTX debacle. And of course, we're going to talk about FOMC. So listen, we've got a huge show today and we've got Annie on the show as well because we've got to decide based on what you guys said. So look, yesterday I asked you guys whether we should join Annie's team, go alone or partner with Kyle. Those are the results. I've got Annie coming on and I think that I think Dylan's also coming on and Sheldon's coming on. OK, so there's a lot going on today, a lot going on today. So listen, let's let's get into the show. There's a hell of a lot to do here today.
What Bitcoin Did
A highlight from All Roads Lead to Bitcoin with Checkmate
"0 .1 % to 1 % is gargantuan numbers, just extraordinary numbers, right? If Bitcoin does, in fact, achieve 1 % balance sheet capacity everywhere, it makes a lot of sense. It's the perfect currency to settle between enemies for oil, which creates enemies. Hello there from Bedford. How are you all? Yes. I got back from Lebanon yesterday. What an amazing, profound trip. I cannot wait to get the film out to show you what I saw. Also can't wait to talk about it with people. You learn a lot about Bitcoin when traveling, things you can't read in the book, things you can't get from a podcast. And so, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about my experiences. And I also do, I just want to say a massive thanks also to everybody who helped. A whole bunch of people came out to Lebanon or were in Lebanon and helped us with making this film. So sorry if I forget someone, but massive thanks to Ralph, Tony, Francois, Ellie, Ralph's dad. Who have I forgotten? If I've forgotten someone, I'm very sorry, but you know I love you. And I thank you all so much for your hospitality and help in putting this film together. And speaking of which, I obviously want to say a massive thanks to Iris Energy because without them, I couldn't do this. They came to me last year, was it last year or this year? I think it was the end of last year, perhaps it was this year. I don't know. It's all blown into one, but said, how can we help you? What do you want to do? What do you need? What do you need to do Pete? And I said, well, I need to make a podcast, but I want to make some more films. And they fully backed this and they said, look, here's the money, go and make every film you want to make. So listen, a massive shout out to everyone at Iris Energy, specifically Dan and Will Roberts for backing me and Danny and all the things we want to do. Anyway, enough of that, welcome to the What Bitcoin Did podcast, which is brought to you by those massive legends at Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100 % renewable energy. Yes, I'm your host, Peter McCormack, and today I've got a banger of a show. One of the best ones I think I've recorded this year with my boy Checkmate from Glassnode. And we initially planned to talk about on -chain data and we touched on that a little bit, but we quickly moved into all sorts of areas from Bitcoin incentives to macro to politics. It was almost like just a couple of friends talking about all the bullshit in the world and figuring out the role of Bitcoin in this. So yeah, I love this one. I love Checkmate. What a guy, what a massive human as well. He's like six foot 11 or something ridiculous. Like he towers down on Danny. With Danny's next to Checkmate, it's like me being next to Danny.
The HUMAN Training
Setting Realistic Expectations For Your Dog Training Lessons
"So today we are going to be talking about lessons. So someone's needing a lesson or wanting to get a lesson with the dog trainer, or perhaps it's a board and train and they're going in for their first lesson. And what are expectations that dog owners should have of what they're going to get out of, what they're going to learn, what they're going to have to do in a lesson, a one -on -one lesson with the trainer? Let's go over what our lessons look like. Okay. So ours are what, about half an hour long, 45 minutes long, and it's very much, I'm going to show you with your dog, I'm going to show you with the dog, then you're going to do it in front of me, and we're going to really make sure we're all doing it correctly. We're going to tell you, then show you, and then watch you do it. And we do our - And then a tweet can help you. Yeah. Yeah. If you're struggling or anything like that. I know board and trains are a little different. They go home every Friday. So if you have a three -week board and train, you have a half hour, 45 -minute lesson every Friday. Every Friday. Yeah. And then - That's really a big difference because a lot of board and trains, they'll do a, they call it a go home or a send home lesson in their two, three hours because it's the only lesson quite often that person is going to get with their trainer. So the expectation, if I was the owner, going to that type of lesson would be overwhelmed. That would be my expectation because really who goes to a class for three hours without a break? I mean, you go to a seminar or workshop in about an hour and 15 hours and 30 minutes, they're taking a potty break for everybody because everyone's mentally checked out. Even if you paid to be there, you're mentally checking out. It's like death by PowerPoint. It's just too much information. And then you expect your dog to perform for two hours - Or three. If that dog is possible. Yeah. That's not possible. No matter what kind of dog you got. They can check out. Dog trainers themselves will check out. Yeah. And they, to be a dog trainer, you have to have some flavor of idioms. Because that really lesson, you know, that two, three hour lesson, they're still doing the same thing. Hopefully a good trainer is going to tell you what you're about to do, show you how to do it, hand you the leash and have you deal with your dog. Man, that's just, oh Lord, that's all time consuming. But why do we do that? Why do we do, why do we tell, show and deal? Retention. Retention. The hardest part about this entire industry is training humans. Dogs - Yeah. It's not for the dog. Not for the dog. The dog knows how to do everything. It's supposed to. Know how to do everything - That, you know, we're doing in the lesson - Yeah. With our client. Now it's to get the client up speed, but it's also a transfer of leadership over to that client. Yeah. Now we're showing the dog, yeah, mom and dad know how to do this too. You can't go home and look at them like they got a third eyeball growing out of their forehead because they said sit to you. Yeah. Because dogs will associate. That's how they learn. Just like humans. They'll associate all these new commands and skills they've learned here with us. So that lesson helps them, oh, I got to do this with my family too. Yeah. But it also makes it easier on humans too because it's never a question, does my dog know how to heal? Right. No, they can do it. They can do it very well and they can do it for you. Clearly we did it for you. Yeah. Now if there's a disconnect at home, it's probably a house problem. Yeah. Or handling the leech problem usually.
The Podcast On Podcasting
A highlight from Ep378: Ed Mylett's Simple Strategy To Reach Goals Faster
"Go out and have that one conversation, that one decision to make, that one coaching call, that one book to read, that one event to go to. And it's going to be completely, totally life -changing for you, for your business, for your podcast, for your help, for your spirituality, or whatever it is. Most hosts never achieve the results they hoped for. They're falling short on listenership and monetization, meaning their message isn't being heard and their show ends up costing them money. This podcast was created to help you grow your listenership and make money while you're at it. Get ready to take notes. Here's your host, Adam Adams. Hey, podcaster. It's Adam Adams, and I'm excited to share something with you, something that I think was like a real, something on Facebook or Instagram. And I believe it was Ed Mallette. I watched it a few times and it was really powerful. I shared it with a couple of friends and I thought it would probably help you as well. And so Ed Mallette, apparently, I think he was having a conversation with his dad. I think he was telling his dad like, hey, this is what I want to do. This is one day I want to do. And his dad said, you're not as far away from those dreams as you think. And Ed was like, what do you mean? As long as you look at it as that goal is far away, each and every day, and I'm paraphrasing, of course, each and every day, you will act as if it's far away. And so it'll have less urgency in your brain. The psychology that you have will hold you away from that because you think that goal is hard to find. It's hard to get to. It's almost unreachable. It's not today. It's a long time from now. But if you keep thinking that, if you keep believing that goal of yours is a long way away, you're going to keep acting as if it's a long way away. It's going to take way too long for you to find it, for you to achieve it, for you to experience what's on the other hand. So take a second, take a minute with me now, maybe even pause the podcast for a sec. And during that time that you are thinking, I want you to envision your goal. I want you to see where you want to be with your podcast or with your health or with your business or with your family or other relationships. I want you to visualize and imagine it happening right now. And then when we get off of this episode today, I want you to go directly for that goal and imagine that it's a lot closer than you think. And that's going to help you each and every day to do the things that you need to do in order to make that goal more reachable. Ed Millet goes on to say, the guy who interviewed him said, you know, what do we need to do in order to do that? What do I have to do? What does the listener have to do in order to truly imagine that? And says, first of all, the thing that you really need to do is you need to start believing that you're only one conversation away. You're only one phone call away. You're only one client away. You're only one book that you read away from a totally different life. You're only one decision away. You're only one day away from a different life. So jump off this podcast, take some time, close your eyes, envision that goal. Imagine it being much closer than you think that it is. Imagine it being reachable and then go out and have that one conversation, that one decision to make, that one coaching call, that one book to read, that one event to go to. And it's going to be completely, totally life -changing for you, for your business, for your podcast, for your health, for your spirituality or whatever it is. That was powerful for me. And I hope that you get off of the podcast episode, close your eyes and definitely just see what it is that you need to do. Because you're so much closer, like Ed says, you're so much closer to that goal than you really think. One decision away. I'll see you in the next episode. Oh, hey, because three of my clients came to me recently looking to find a way to have their podcast make the money instead of cost them money. We put together a resource for some of our clients and I want to give it to you as well. It's something that did actually seem to help because one of them is now making $2600 a month. Another one is $4500 a month. And the third is making between $5000 and $10 ,000 each month. And so it's been a resource that's been incredibly valuable to them. It's our sponsor sheet template. It's a template of a sponsor sheet. And it gives you something that you can hand potential to sponsors and hopefully also be making $2600, $4500 or between $5K and $10K regularly each month with your podcast. So this has been a contributing factor to helping all 3 of those clients turn their podcast into an additional income stream for them. And the way that you can find it is just go into our website, growyourshow .com. But put in forward slash templates, growyourshow .com forward slash templates. And then you can actually download that template and others that could be valuable to your podcasting experience. I'll see you on the next episode.
Andrew Tate Motivational Speech
A highlight from BE CONFIDENT - Andrew Tate Motivational Speech
"I use this analogy a lot, maybe I overuse it, but you need to find a way, to some degree, to escape the Matrix. And I say the Matrix because the Matrix, the way it is designed... And you're not just talking shit because you've actually done that. I've escaped the Matrix. I've literally escaped the Matrix in nearly every form. So any form of oppression no longer applies to me. I can't be cancelled, I can say what I want, my finances are secure, I've escaped the Matrix. And when I talk about the Matrix, it primarily applies to men because men are the backbone of the slave force. We always have been and always will be. And unfortunately now, if you're a law -abiding man inside the Matrix, your future and the life that is laid out for you is nothing but depressing. You're gonna go to school, you're gonna get in debt, you're gonna get a job, you're gonna get a wife, divorce is coming, you're gonna lose the house eventually, your job's shit, inflation's outpacing your wages, you're gonna work, work, work, no one's gonna appreciate it, now you're old and your life's over. That is the Matrix for 99 % of men. And you need to find a way to escape it. And I guess I was kind of fortunate from a young age that I always knew that the Matrix was coming and that the system is designed to oppress. The people who make the rules do not make the rules for the benefit of us, they make the rules for the benefit of the people who make the rules. And I knew that. And I think every person intrinsically knows that. Like if it's 4 in the morning and you're sitting in a gas station and a Lambo pulls up, you're probably thinking drug dealer or criminal. You're not thinking, oh he definitely went to school. So everyone knows this, right? That's true. So you have to find a way to escape the Matrix to some degree. Wait, let me stop you. When you say you intrinsically knew this, I feel like a lot of people would assume that somebody is giving you some guidance too. Like, did you have somebody that was, you know what I mean, kind of laying some of this out to you like a male figure that was informing you a bit? Yeah, I was lucky enough to have the most fantastic father on the planet. So my dad did make a lot of things very clear to me from a young age. My father was a chess grandmaster and he was a nomadic individual. So he lived in a car or in random hotels and floated around the world playing chess. And these chess grandmasters are all like so smart that that becomes like a common thing. They're so smart that they're socially weird. Yeah. So like my father was socially strange, but he was a genius. And on top of that, he's like a 6 foot 4 black dude. So it's very unusual like a chess grandmaster, but he's also physically intimidating. Yeah. But he's also socially weird. So he's a kind of weird guy to be around. Yeah. But he was nomadic and he was just hustling. Sometimes you have to go down to the local chess park and just hustle for dollars to eat. And other times he's beaten grandmasters for 20, 30 grand paycheck. So it's kind of it was an interesting life. And he taught me a lot about the fact that the system is absolutely broken, is designed to oppress, and that the majority of people who stick to the rules are going to lose. I don't want to sit here on a podcast that goes out to this many people and encourage anyone to break the law in any form. Of course. But the idea of the law abiding citizen has been decimated in real time. In the last two, three years ago, you could stand there and proudly say, I'm a law abiding citizen. The last two years, if they have not taught you that being a law abiding citizen is going to turn you nothing into a fucking experiment for big pharma, then you're an idiot. You can no longer obey the law. And I'm not saying you have to break the law, but you need to find a way to do what the elites do, which is bend the law. You can no longer sit there and go, I'm just going to follow the rules and it's going to be OK. No, it isn't. And if you're a man and if you're a man, it's your job to find a way to not be sticking to those rules enough to escape the matrix and become free. Because what's actually most crazy about this period of history is that it's actually the easiest time in human history to become rich. And the reason for that is because there's so many people inside the matrix being destroyed. Money has to go somewhere. I've made so much money during covid is absolutely incredible. Right. And a whole bunch of people got lucky. You buy a crypto coin and fucking goes off 100 X and this kind of crap. There's money just flowing around the world. May I ask, because the audience, you know, we've been following you and how how do you generate your income? Are you fighting? We know you're a fighter. I was a fighter. So there's there's my two primary source. I have three primary sources. I'm thinking of which ones I'll tell you about. I have four primary sources of income that I'm prepared to disclose to the world. OK, sure. Go ahead. The first thing is I own some casinos in Romania. Fantastic. The story of how I opened them is long, but I'll make it very, very short. There was a guy who owns 400 casinos, three brothers, mafia guys that owned 400 casinos throughout Europe. I came up to him and said, look, I want to do a franchise with you. They said, we're not interested in franchises. We have enough money. We just open them ourselves. We turn over 10 million euros a day. Why do I need your franchise? Eventually, I came up with a plan. I said, look, how about this? I'll open up your locations directly next to your biggest competitor. So I'll go to war for you next to the competitor. Worst case, the location doesn't pay any money, but at least it takes money from your competitor. I'll give you a percentage of turnover. So even if it doesn't make profit, you make money. I'll take all the financial risk. They agreed. I start opening up next to the biggest competitor. I actually did something that's kind of funny. What I tried to do was find ones in between their competitor and a Starbucks. I'd open in the middle and then offer loads and loads of free coffee with a barista and a sexy chick. So instead of going to Starbucks, you could just take your money, go get free coffee and gamble. And I ended up making a bunch of money. I took his competitor down. So I opened them up. That's the first thing. That's the first one. That's good business. Yeah.
Stuff You Should Know
A highlight from 10ish Worst Business Decisions Ever
"Get ready to dive into the future with Technically Speaking, the groundbreaking podcast from iHeartMedia's Ruby Studios in partnership with Intel. Each episode unveils the incredible ways AI technology is transforming our world for the better. Join host Graham Klass as he speaks with the experts behind the technological advancements that are powering a brighter and more accessible future for everyone. Listen to Technically Speaking, an Intel podcast, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Following in your parents' footsteps is never easy, especially when mom or dad happen to be superstar athletes. What kind of lessons do hall -of -famers like, oh, I don't know, NBA legend Tim Hardaway and NFL icon Kurt Warner impart on their kids as they chase professional sports stardom? How do they teach them the importance of prioritizing health and how to overcome adversity? Well, you can join Heart of the Game as they explore these questions and more with some of the greatest families in sports. Listen to Heart of the Game on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Real Estate Coaching Radio
A highlight from Real Estate Agents: 6 Top Income Destroying, Time Wasting Mistakes
"Welcome to Real Estate Coaching Radio, starring award -winning real estate coaches and number one international bestselling authors, Tim and Julie Harris. This is the number one daily radio show for realtors looking for a no BS, authentic, real time coaching experience. What's really working in today's market, how to generate more leads, make more money and have more time for what you love in your life. And now your hosts, Tim and Julie Harris. Three, two, one and Julie Harris. We are back. And today we're going to be talking about six of the worst income wrecking mistakes agents are making in today's market. But before we get to the first point, I think you have a really great story from our friend in LA, Federico. Yes. Who is not making the deal wrecking mistakes. In fact, this story, I hope the listeners pay attention because it's going to wind a whole bunch of things together. That's right. So we're starting off by telling you the story of what happens if you don't make six of the income wrecking mistakes with this story. And then we're going to get into the weeds as far as what you need to be avoiding. That's right. Okay. So this is a text from Federico who lives and sells in Los Angeles. He says, hi, Julie. This is hot off the presses right from maybe a couple of days ago. Federico says, I just finished showing clients a new construction community while the build rep was showing us the model, a lady walked in and asked if she could listen in on the build reps presentation. She communicated that she and her husband were looking to downsize and was asking the builder how the financing would work. Okay. So let's stop just for a second. How many of you listening in Los Angeles believe that there's no new construction around? We could just start with that point, but moving forward, uh, during that conversation, I asked her what her situation was and asked if she needed the funds from the sale of her property in order to close on the one she might be looking at. That led to the build rep stating that they would only finance her if her current home was in escrow. So there's a lot to that too. Which by the way, that's probably the build rep not really knowing anything about how to, you know, sell a house using financing because the reality of it is, is the builder wasn't actually using their own money. They were using a mortgage broker and she probably still could have worked that deal, but she was looking for the easier deals of people that had no home sale contingency. That's right. And we're using kind of a lame objection handler. No, you can't do that. Exactly. Which positions our friend Federico listening. That's right. Now, when the build rep exited the room, she thanked me for helping her articulate her points. This is the walk -in potential buyer and asked if I could email her all the information for the new build to which I responded that I was the agent for the other couple in the room, but that I would be happy to help her. That led me to, led me to asking her to, uh, how soon she needed to go on the market. When she responded, uh, we are still decluttering. I don't know where to start or how it all works. I asked her where the home was and what they were asking and asked when I could stop by and see it since I may already have someone. How many of you guys would have gone for the appointment right then and there? Think about that. She answered, that sounds great. We need to declutter first. So I won't, it won't be possible until at least later next month. Let me also work on my husband as far as the new purchase goes and then we can schedule an exact date for you to come by. I got her contact information. Another mistake that agents sometimes fall into. I got her contact information and stopped the conversation since I did not want to be rude in front of my existing clients there. When I left the showing, I called this lady. There's the immediate fallback, uh, follow up. I called this lady back to continue the conversation and to schedule a tentative day and time to go look at the property. She said that she and her husband will be going on a short trip and that we can circle back after my trip. We'll only be gone for a week. During the call, she asked me what commission I would charge. By the way, people don't ask that if they're not serious, do they? Okay. She asked about my commission to which I said, that's a great question. I actually have a flexible fee. What's the best email for you so I can send you a little bit about me and my team and about how we work. That'd be the pre listing package. That way when we meet at the house, we can focus on the items that are most important to you. Also part of the script you learned in premier coaching. It's a textbook. Totally 5 ,000 % textbook. She gave me her email, thanked me for helping her while at the new construction and expressed that she was excited to have me come by their house. There you have it. Now certainly by the way, dad, on what you said with regards to the people asking about commission that quick, 99 % of the time when they ask out of the gates like that, it's because they've got another agent in their back pocket, which it probably isn't a professional agent in the sense that maybe it's somebody they just know as their neighbor or uncle Bob who basically lists the house every thousand years or something like that, who will probably do it for free. That type of question was that the agent, I'm sorry, the seller was looking for a reason to take uncle Bob out of the equation because she really liked Federico and wanted to do business with him. Most importantly though, to your point, he used the scripts that we teach these guys to use in premier coaching and that was one of the obvious scripts that we use that you learn when you're presenting the pre -listening pack and the listening presentation. All this was woven together and what we're trying to express to all of you, so hopefully you're all understanding, is there's opportunity everywhere. You just have to go where the opportunity is and quit waiting for the opportunity to come to you. Which leads us, Julie, perfectly into point number one and remember guys, these are the top six income killing mistakes that agents are making now and frankly in a lot of cases have normalized. That's right. So point number one or mistake number one, and we're also going to have some action steps how to fix these problems ASAP. Mistake number one, playing the waiting game, waiting for the market to crash, waiting for interest rates to come down, waiting for inventory. Waiting doesn't get transactions into your pipeline, nor does it help your clients and prospects to achieve their goals. You must take control of your day, your week, your month, your quarter, and your year in order to defeat the waiting game. Say this at least 10 times, if it's meant to be, it's up to me, and then take control. We're going to give you some action steps here. All right, so first action step on this mistake, accept the fact that there are zero indicators that the market's going to crash. Zero. Remove it from your head. While there are some price ranges in some markets this year where it's set to, I'm sorry, where there are some price reductions is what that should say in some markets, this year is set to close with between five and 9 % increase in home values. I wonder how many people actually know that. I mean, with all these headlines that are supposed to basically make you think there's a housing crash, do you all know that real estate in the mainland United States is increased in value by at least 5%, in some cases around 10 % year over year? So yes, despite the headlines about prices falling, home values have still increased. That's right. Now, low inventory, stable demand, lots of new construction, and rising prices are not indicators of a housing crash. Those things do not exist in a housing crash. Now, if any of that changes, you can hear about it here, we'll let you know. So it's important that we remind them that we are at, what, a 20 or 30 year low for the number of mortgages that are in any sort of distress? Yes. It's like less than 3 %? It's less than 3%, a historic low, and that includes all of the forbearances and things that happened around COVID. That's all baked in at this point. Do you remember all the people that were, you know, of course, these real estate prognosticators were trying to sell you lists on how to get into REOs and all this other stuff? How they were saying, oh, you wait until all those people on mortgage forbearance, all those COVID mortgage forbearances, those houses are all going to default. None of them defaulted, did they? You see how there are some people, guys, who only think that they can make money, only think they can help people when the market's going one particular direction. So what they do is they wait around and hope and pray that the sky falls so that they can be right. And that is, I suppose, a business model. But the reality of it is you can help people make money no matter what direction the market is going. You don't just have to wait for the direction that it's been going. For example, a lot of you, to Julie's point, were waiting around for their interest rates to lower, waiting around for the mortgage stuff to clear, become easier, inventory to increase. Stop waiting around. There's inventory everywhere. It's not just where it's like what Federico discovered. It's hidden, in essence. You have to go to where it's at. You have to go to where the market opportunity is. Stop waiting for the market opportunity to show up on your computer screen. Yes. And when you go to new construction where he went, especially in those price ranges, go where the buyers are looking. You will also find listings. That's right. OK. So again, we're back to the waiting game. So you said that. So we have to drill down. Because I always have to remind myself and you that we have people that are maybe listening to us for the first time ever. And yes, this is the number one Listen To Dilly podcast for real estate professionals in the United States. Tens of thousands of people downloading it. But for the one person that's discovered this for the first time, defining what Julie just said, if you're going to, as Federico did, go look, essentially show buyers or go to a new construction area where the new construction is, say, $800 to, say, on up, chances are the person purchasing one of those new construction homes, they're going to have a house to sell. So that means that probably realistically 90 % of the buyers, air quoting here, that are interested in new construction actually also are sellers. But how many of you think like that? How many of you think buyer or seller? You can't be both. Always assume that your buyer is actually a seller and where you focus your energy is on the listing side of things, because that's what's going to be the juggernaut to them moving forward with any, you know, like they're not going to buy anything but to sell the home most likely. So you can't, if you just focus on the buy side of the conversation, you're never going to get to where the real opportunity is on the list side. Once you have the listing, you will obviously sell that house, well, we've done studies on this, you'll sell an average of six other houses off one listing. With a buyer, you will sell a buyer a house. So open your mind to the opportunities that are all around you. Stop thinking and stop sitting around waiting for, you know, something to change. You're the change that needs to happen if you're not liking your, you know, your project, your your momentum right now into the new market. Yes. And you uncovered another mistake, which is assuming that, you know, it's just it's another buyer. I already am up to my eyeballs and buyers and there's no inventory. So why would I want another buyer? You're missing the point. Buyers bring listings and in those price ranges in the right range, you can get buyers who have a listing that are less expensive than the new construction and more expensive than the new construction downsizing. You can actually work both ends of that. Well, it's a frustrating it's frankly the wrong way to go about it. If you're trying to sell a buyer a house and try to find them the right house, the perfect house, all the rest of it, yet they have a house to sell. I'll give you a little advanced coaching here. None of them are going to emotionally commit to purchasing something unless they happen to have the cash to pay for it, which is unlikely. You know, they're not going to have the cash without the sale of their current home. So they won't emotionally commit to anything until at least their first their existing home is listed for sale, let alone in contract. So this is the type of, you know, thinking you need to adjust towards and realizing that the best opportunity is always going to be on the listing side of the business. That's right. So here's the thing back to a point or mistake. Number one, waiting around. Well, what about interest rates? Interest rates will eventually get lower, but are not likely to go below five and a half to six and a half percent, maybe even for the rest of your career. What we just went through is not the norm. So stop wishing for the old market and embrace the new market. Now, that said, there was an interesting there are some political hubbub that's floating around about the fact that, you know, different politicians are starting to lobby for the idea that there's going to be I told you about this. I heard that crazy permanent 30 year mortgages at three percent, which I mean, it sounds great, right? Even if it were four percent, it would be pretty interesting. Well, yeah, they're going to sell like 100 year bonds and finance it and the whole thing and that could stimulate something. Oh, my gosh. But it's also going to well, so let's think about this. You're going to massively increase demand. And what that's what is that going to do to the cost of real estate as well as inventory available? Right. So you might have a low interest rate, but, you know, the four hundred thousand dollar house you're interested in buying is now worth two million. So anyway, I would circle the wagons back probably to new construction if that happens. We'll see. We'll see. We'll monitor that. OK, so the weighting gain. Learn about several ways to achieve a lower rate and a lower payment. What rates are higher than a lot of people want? Refer to last week's podcast about three ways to achieve lower mortgage interest rates. Learn about what the builders are doing. Many new home loans are closing today in our times where rates are over seven. The new construction loans are closing the mid five, five and a half range right now. So take action to find out where in your market is that actually happening? All right. So mistake number two, there was a lot wrapped up in number one, number two, expecting your buyers to send you what they want to look at versus finding the right homes for them yourself. We've done so many podcasts. I know, but this is such a mistake. You know, yes, we know that buyers can find listings online. There's five million different resources. But what happens when they take them to you? Isn't it already in contract? Aren't there already multiple bids? And then you believe there's nothing and you wait for them to go discover something. It is not their job to find something. And furthermore, well, let me get in my points. I probably talked about this. So get and use the buyer presentation, which drills down on specifically what your buyer clients desire in their next home. That can be a mistake is not knowing the specifics. What is a deal maker and what's a deal killer? Are both people on the same page? If you're working with a couple, can you handle objections like I want to wait for rates to come down or prices to come down or both? We talked about that previously. Now, once you know what they need, that they are motivated and they're qualified, it is your job to find them the right home. Think out of the box. Refer to our podcast series about how to find inventory. So, for example, consider changing the type of property, single family to maybe a town home or a condo or vice versa. And the price range, in fact, sometimes going a little bit down market can actually find good alternatives, expanding the geographic search or looking at new construction. And there's a counterpoint here. I've been working on this with coaching clients, OK, which is when a buyer does send you that magic listing. I got to see that. They're really juiced up about it. And that's the only thing they sent you today. OK, so why that one versus everything else that they saw? Ask them why that one and then have two or three backup houses set up. You can always cancel showing appointments. Right. Because what if they're wrong? What if the MLS pictures didn't have the power tower in the backyard? Have another plan. You have a showing appointment. Go sell something. Does that make sense? It does, of course. But I mean, I just we could talk forever about this point because there are so many different places where they can go and look for homes that are officially for sale. But really, I was thinking if I are coaching somebody right now, this you're gearing a lot of your points towards too many buyers, basically. Yeah. And your last point, I really like because you're in essence saying, well, make make it so that the buyers are working with because there's never a true have to buy buyer. There's always want to buy buyers. In other words, there's never a buyer. There's buyers will always change their mind. That's the problem. They're always going to say, I'll wait till next year to raise the fall, wait for pigs to fly, whatever it's going to be. Whereas if you're focusing on a listing, the sellers actually have to sell usually for financial reasons or, you know, whatever it just overall right now, obviously you're going to make more money and have more leverage and freedom if you're focused on being a listing agent. So what would happen if you decided to actually become a coaching client, actually follow our system, actually build up to your magic number of listings, which for many of you is maybe five or seven listings, sometimes depending on your price point, might only be three. And the only buyers you work with are those are the sellers that want to buy something. In other words, stop working with buyers that don't actually have homes to sell. Start valuing your time more and you'll get far better results. But it's also going to force you to become a far better listing agent, far better, you know, proactively generated for the sake of listings. And you're going to get vastly better at prequalifying because you're going to be, guess what, choosing who you're going to work with. So if you're finding yourself emotionally and financially burning it at both ends, it's probably because you just don't have any standards. It's probably because you're working with just about anybody. You're willing to pay referral fees. You're buying all your buyer leads. You're not really running a business, guys, in the sake that, you know, you're going to have any kind of, frankly, security going forward. So really pivot your thinking and ask yourself, would I rather be a really amazingly strong listing agent or buyer's agent? Every single one of you want to focus on being a listing agent in a lot of ways. You have to kind of choose because the buyers will suck up all your energy and your time. Now, if you want to transition from being one to the other, go back to the fact that, you know, you need to prequalify better. You need to actually ask those buyers if they have homes to sell. Depending on the price point, you're going to discover that most of them do. And then guess what you do? You pivot and focus on the listing side of it because that's when you're going to create the leverage. Joining our premier coaching program is free. The link to join is below, along with all the notes from today's show. So just scroll below and you'll see if it's on YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, it doesn't matter where. Scroll down their notes for today's show. Yes, Julie and I create outlines for every single podcast we do. For you. We do it so you guys can go back and you can read what we said. That way you can actually implement what we're asking and suggesting that you do. And while you're there, do join premier coaching. It costs you nothing. The link is right there below. Or you can just, frankly, go to premier coaching dot com or text the word premier to 47372. All right, Julie, let's roll up to mistake number three. Mistake number three. Yep. All right. Not having enough leads in the first place. Speaking of lead generation, if you're struggling with lead generation, it's time to get some help before it's too late. Now, more than ever, it's critical that you generate more leads than you think you need in order to do the business you need to do. To your point that no buyer ever actually has to buy. So you have to overdo your lead generation so that you can find those listing leads in particular. Well, if you want to sell, for example, if you want to sell 10 houses in the next six months or maybe it's the next 60 days or next 30 days. And normally, let's say you are you know, let's assume that you're somewhat efficient and you know, you have a ratio. Let's say, for example, if you have 10, well, let's say you have six seller leads, you know that statistically three or four of those are going to list with you in the next 30 to 60 days. You're going to need to double that in a market like this because people are there's going to be a lot of a lot of headwinds that you're not necessarily going to be able to control, mostly with lack of inventory. So you're going to have to pace out your expectations and increase the number of contacts and increase the number of leads you're working with. But it always goes back to really drilling down the leads you are working with. Otherwise, what you're going to quickly discover is that you have hundreds, if not thousands of unqualified, unmotivated, quote unquote, leads, and none of them are doing transactions with you. And why? Because you're not taking the time to go in there and prequalify them. If you're one of these agents who have falsely believed that the way to win this game is by having massive amounts of leads, I challenge you to do this. Go in, grab our seller prequalification script or our buyer prequalification script, which turns into the seller prequalification script, and call every single one of your leads. You'll discover many things. Number one, the ones you've been dripping on for a long period of time. Some of them don't even know why you're messaging them or have never even seen your messages, let alone know who you are. Number two, some of them already transacted months ago, but you didn't call them. So they didn't transact with you. Number three, you're going to find people that are actually motivated and they're waiting for you to call. You've been treating them like a buyer and sending them home buyer tips and all the rest of it through your drip campaigns. But now because you have them on the phone, they'll actually commit to working with you. You've got to stop being passive with your life, but especially with your lead generation. Well put. So that all goes back to not having enough leads in the first place. So sign up for Premier Coaching with our Harris certified coaches because they're going to start by asking some specific questions like, where did your past five transactions come from? Was it luck and hopium or did you connect with those clients through a proven system or strategy? If it was a proven system or strategy, why did you stop doing it? How many leads do you actually have in your pipeline? To your point, what your story, you were just saying, what I was thinking is a lot of agents think that they're leads, but they're just contacts. They're just people in your database. Why are you calling them leads? You don't know if they're a lead or not because you're not talking to them. Now you also might have a lead conversion issue versus a lead generation issue. That's something that the coaches drill down on. Where are you spending money to generate buyer and listing leads and what is that conversion ratio and how many contacts are you actually making daily where you're speaking with a decision -making adult about real estate? That's just the beginning of great coaching questions to drill down on why you might not have enough leads or appointments. Well, where you're spending money to generate buyer and listing leads. I mean, obviously it was assumptive, right? In other words, she's not suggesting you spend money to generate buyer and seller listing leads. Uh, but she's suggesting that you actually go in and question, frankly, uh, whether or not that money that you're spending to generate leads from those sources actually makes any sense because we know you're doing it.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from Joshua Stone Interview - Bringing Books To Web3, Book.io Books on the Blockchain, Mark Cuban Investment, Cardano ADA
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With me today is Joshua Stone, who's the CEO and co -founder of Book .io. Joshua, great to have you on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me here. Appreciate it. Well, Joshua, I think it's timely that I'm speaking with you because I'm in the process of writing a book. And so I'm very curious about Book .io and what are the other options for me as a soon -to -be author where I can publish my book on the blockchain and get some additional benefits. Before we get into all that, though, tell us about yourself, where you're from, where you grew up. Yeah, for sure. So I grew up in Oklahoma. When I'm traveling, I like to tell people I grew up in Indian territory and, you know, kind of encapsulates this sort of free spirit, unregulated environment that I just kind of grew up in. And my dad was an electronics engineer. My mom is a really incredible amateur artist. So I grew up in a very left brain, right brain kind of background. And what was your professional career before founding or co -founding Book .io? Yeah. I got online. Like I said, my dad with the electronics engineering, I got online really, really early and kind of got fascinated with this intersection of graphic and engineering kind of where they cross over. So I really gravitated more towards like a product design and user experience strategy side of things. So I actually got my first large job out of school. I went to Oklahoma State University and worked on the very first version of Fandango for Subark. And that was back in 99 and then worked at some larger internet companies that did a bunch of stuff for AT &T, led the product group for hotels .com with Expedia, and then kind of got more into the startup scene, was in a social media startup that sold. And that kind of got my interest into the book publishing industry. So I actually previously had co -founded an ebook company that we specialized in bulk distribution of eBooks to universities and really large organizations. And we sold that back in 20, I think we sold in 2015, I stayed till 2018. And so, I had kind of approached the book industry from a technologist sort of standpoint. And yeah, and then took some time off after that, really got just super deep into crypto and tried to kind of determine my next startup. I wanted to be a Web3 based company. That's awesome, man. Because you have a Web1, well, you have experience in Web1 and Web2, and now you're building in Web3. That's pretty incredible. What was your first encounter with Bitcoin? I'm always fascinated by folks' different stories, and what was your aha moment? Yeah, I feel like a lot of the story is always like a story of frustration of, I wish I would have. And so, I read the first white paper pretty quickly after it came out, just because I was in a social media startup. So that stuff like circulated quickly of like, oh, there's this internet money thing. And I talked to some engineers and I'm not heavy engineer. I've done some engineering stuff, but at that time, I wasn't capable of studying, I guess I could have really went and stood up a stack and tried to figure out how to mine it, but I tried to convince some engineers to mine it. And that happened a couple of different times. And it was a kind of classic argument of like, hey, this will cost us more in electricity than we'll ever make. And in hindsight, it's like, dang it, I should have just put them in a headlock and made them do it. So, it wasn't really until 2017 that I came around and jumped back in where I could actually start to buy from exchanges easily. I think at that time, maybe Coinbase only had like four coins listed. And so, I spent a lot of time on like foreign based exchanges and just really like diving super, super deep and through all the kind of ICO crazes of 2018 and the crash and yeah, I think I really was becoming more obsessed with what does blockchain mean at like a bigger level from a, just like a decentralized nature and like how, my entire career up to that point, just like sort of thinking like what all would need to be re -architected in this way of like a decentralized blockchain based way. Oh yeah, for sure. So, tell us about book .io, how did that idea come about and what are the different services? How does it work and so forth? Yeah. So, Yeah. you know, one of the biggest hindrances in crypto in my mind has always been just like mass adoptability, right? Like making it accessible to the masses. A lot of times, like I pick on my mom and just say, you know, my mom's not going to use this, you know? Yeah. So, you know, it occurred to me at some point that, you know, all books could be decentralized, like the actual contents of them and be blockchain based. So, you know, a big issue in the book industry, which you'll definitely experience now that you're working on a book is, you know, if you buy an ebook or an audio book from Kindle or Audible or iBooks, you're not really buying the book. You just buy a license to view the content. So, you don't actually own anything, which is why you can't sell it or give it away when you're done reading it. So, making it a book, a blockchain based asset actually changes from a digital licensing to a digital ownership model and that allows you to resell the book. So, you know, when you look at the entire landscape of crypto, there's like, you know, less than a hundred million total wallets, but there's over a billion people that buy digital books every year. So, like by far and away, like digital books are the biggest digital asset that people currently buy on like an a la carte basis since most of music and movies are streaming. So, you know, we have a focus that's very, you know, targeted at true mass adoption and, you know, experiencing the tech benefits. So, really more of a, you know, web two usability, but with a web three functionality. And then even in, you know, inside of that current licensing model, what's really radical, you know, once you buy a book, of course it's stuck on your shelf, but then it also gives the retailer, the author, the publisher, anybody, the right to remove that book from you. It's like literally coming in your house and just like taking a book off your shelf that you bought or changing any of the contents inside of it. So, our mission really became two things. One is to decentralize all of human knowledge and put all books on the blockchain so they can't be changed or taken away. And then second is incentivizing reading. So, really, you know, the core kind of the process of how it works is like we take any media asset could be, you know, a book or a music or video, we break it into a bunch of shards and we encrypt all those and store them in decentralized storage. Then we have a DAP web based reader and we also have mobile apps, mobile reading apps that basically stream those contents in, reassemble and decrypt them and then allow you to read it. So, we sort of, you know, while we use an NFT and decentralized storage and like, you know, smart contracts to program and royalties and all that, we sort of summate all that into an asset that we call a decentralized encrypted asset. So, then you truly own it. You could lend it out. You can give it away. Has huge impact, you know, not just for the end user, but also for the creators, because as you know, you'll experience with your book, you know, once, you know, the traditional model on the payment side is very, is very archaic, you know, like you, if you go the traditional route, you're going to be looking at, you know, you might get some small advance. It's not nearly what the old advances were. And, and then it's going to be probably a year to 18 months before you see anything, you know, from that book. Whereas, you know, when it's blockchain based, it's immediate, it's instant, it's paid out. So yeah, we launched the platform a little over a year ago. We've already sold over 160 ,000 books. And, and we've had some books trade as high as like $10 ,000 for like really unique books. Wow. That's pretty incredible. So, and I want to make sure I emphasize the benefits because I know there's going to be people who are new to blockchain crypto and say, oh, so what I get my book on Amazon, but, um, as the author, uh, there, this feature creates a secondary market, right? For the book is let's say, um, Joe down the street buys my book. He has on a blockchain, he finished reading it. He's like, oh, you know what? I'm going to sell this. Now, if he sells it, he's making a return. And then I, as an author also getting a royalty there. Yeah, absolutely. So that, I mean, that really is the big difference, right? It's like on a traditional print side, you know, I have the freedom when I buy a print book, I can take it to a secondhand, you know, resell bookstore, but I don't even really know what it's worth, you know, and then they're giving me, you know, pennies on the dollar and I'm happy to take it. Cause I have no way to substantiate if that's what that book is worth versus if it's digital, then I can see, you know, multiple global marketplaces and see what the trading, you know, what the actual trading price for that book is right. And then every time it sells and resells and continues, like it's giving you the creator, you know, royalties back, which is really cool from a social side too. Right. So, you know, current kind of, you know, opaque kind of wall with, with an Amazon and iBooks is that, you know, publisher author doesn't have any connection to their audience. So they can't see who owns their books. They can't market to those people. So with this, it's like, it's all on chain, right? Like we couldn't hide it. If we wanted to hide it, they can see who has their book. So then as an author, right. You could go airdrop like, you know, an extra chapter of a book to everybody that has your book, or you could allow them, you know, if they have that book, then in their wallet, they could, they could get a discount on the second book. Like you can begin to merchandise and do things that are just like impossible in the traditional version. Wow. So that's pretty incredible. You said you can airdrop like additional chapters or I don't know, additional information or anything attached to the book. That's, that's pretty incredible. Yeah. It can be a short story or, you know, extra behind the scenes type stuff, like how the book was created. It could be video stuff, author interviews, like all kinds of additional content that you can't get or deliver in a traditional method. Plus, you know, like a social interactivity of, you know, we're building out a structure for, for book clubs as well. Right. So, you know, there's not, there hasn't really been a good solve for like online book clubs. And like, part of the problem is you get so many trolls that come in and you see this on Amazon, like with reviews, right. It's like a book hasn't even come out and all of a sudden it's got, you know, 8 ,000 negative reviews in our system. We can see and verify if you've actually read it. So not only would you have to own a book, but we could, we could put it in place where you have to own it and you would have had to read it in order to get access to a book club and maybe the authors in there participating as well. Right. So it creates a richer, like, you know, environment for discussion. Oh yeah. I was going to bring up the reviews thing and verifying users because that is a game or something that is gained, I should say, with ratings and reviews and it could be manipulated. Now you mentioned that there's a lending feature. So let's say once again, Joe down the street buys my book, he, that person, he or she can lend the book out. And tell us how that, how that works. Yeah. So a lot of times what we say is, you know, everybody's a bookstore, everybody's a library. Right. Because if I, if I have the ability, you know, globally to lend out my book or to sell it, like then you could come and you could rent it for a particular price. Right. And we put that in a smart contract. You could either pay it or it could just be like a free thing. And, you know, one party's covering the transaction costs or, you know, in our method, like we haven't really talked about yet, but we have a token, you know, the person reading it could earn the token that the person that owns it could read the token that somebody else is who's, who's borrowing it is, is reading it. Like there's a ton of different ways to, to construct it, but it really changes the, the idea of, you know, it almost like makes micro libraries of everybody. Right. Then I could borrow from anyone. That's great. Yeah. Because I think about that sometimes I see different books and I'm like, I don't know if I want to buy this or necessarily, and I don't want to have a ton of books in, in, in my home. I do appreciate physical books, but I do have some digital books, but to be able to rent something and then just go see, you know, is this, is this good or whatever, and, you know, I actually want to own this. That makes sense. So tell us about the incentivization of getting folks to read. Is that how the token plays a part in the ecosystem? And if you can tell us about the book token. Yeah, definitely. So it really, it really does like an issue inside of, of the publishing industry, really. And when you start to look at the statistics behind it, it's like, you know, people do buy books and the publishing industry in general is hoping that people read those books, but a lot of times it becomes like just very commoditized. And it's like, they're just trying to sell you the next book and selling the next book. And so when you look at the stats on like how many people per year are reading and like averaging down, and it's like, what we're trying to do is build in an incentive program. So people actually consume this knowledge because very clear data, you know, supports when people read books like society, like definitely progresses, there's less crime, there's more, you know, GDP. So the, you know, that kind of secondary part outside of decentralizing the incentivizing portion of it is we have a read to earn system. So whenever you get a book, you read it, you're earning tokens while you're reading it. And we have kind of a whole distribution schedule and like how the mechanics of all that work. We just released a new white paper that details in kind of great detail, like how all that functions. And then we actually have a initial token offering going on right now as well. We waited a long time to do that. Like we launched the product, we launched all the apps. We started selling books before, you know, and a lot of it was just like from a regulatory reason of wanting to do things exactly the right way. Oh yeah. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Now there was news that Mark Cuban was collaborating with book .io to release an NFT ebook on the Polygon blockchain. Can you tell us about that and how that partnership came about? Yeah, for sure. So Mark was actually one of our earliest investors and came on board. And at the time we were Cardano based. So we argued back and forth a lot about other chains, which we had always had a very multi -chain strategy, which I'll say real quick too. Like our, you know, we deployed to four different blockchains. We deployed to Ethereum, to Polygon, to Cardano and to Algorand. But yeah, Mark was one of our first investors in. And so we worked through his publisher as well with him, created a bunch of different, the way that our construct kind of works is, we don't limit a book to like a single book cover, like it can have tons of different book covers. So that makes those different covers collectible for different reasons. So with him, I think we did about 400 different covers. Some of those were like rendered pictures of like him fighting sharks and stuff, like all kinds of fun stuff. And he actually thought it was really, really cool. So it just gives you a whole lot more flexibility. And I'll say too, like on the investor side, like Mark's been a great investor, like great advisor, lots of great like networking. I think I was a little hesitant, like just from all that, you know, what you see on Shark Tank, but like his group's fantastic. You know, we really only have two other investors. We have Ingram Content, which is the world's largest book distributor, and they actually distribute and warehouse all the books for Amazon. And then we also have Bertelsmann, which owns Penguin Random House, and they're the largest trade publisher. So we've tried to really be selective about our investors and working within the industry. But yeah, Mark's been great and all the guys at Polygon, the Polygon team has been great to work with as well. That's awesome. Are there other publishers that you're targeting and trying to work with and, you know, what's your strategy? Is it getting them to integrate book .io as another option? Tell us about that. And I don't know how much you can, you know, tell us about your strategy. Yeah. Yeah. So we've I think we, you know, we're somewhere around 20, maybe publishers or so that we've we've had sign up. You know, the publishing industry is very splintered. There's there's basically five main, you know, the big five publishers and they own a bunch of imprints and then there's a bunch of kind of mid tier and smaller ones. And so, like, you know, some total like our last publishing company, like we had close to 200000 different publishers signed with us. You kind of have to go like some of them you get like in big and big batches, right? Some of them are just like one on one. So like a lot of it right now, and especially over the last kind of beginning or last year was just a lot of experimentation, right? So it was going to publishers that we've worked with before in the past and saying, Hey, let's do like a test project together so we can like see what happens and gather some data and make some choices. So like this year's like much more on like the scale up side. We're going to be releasing audio books as well. And delving so into that and like how we do more mass ingestion. But, you know, ultimately, it's like what we're introducing back in is not necessarily say, you know, you know, we think we'll just dominate Amazon and it goes away or anything like that. It's more of a both end, right? Like you could, you know, I see that as like licensing and like streaming almost. And this is like ownership, right? So for the for the audiences and the authors and the people creators that care about ownership, like we provide like that mechanism and all the benefits that go with it. And it reintroduces the, you know, um, just the law of supply and demand, right? When it's digital licensing, there's, there's an infinite supply. It drives down, uh, you know, the price when there's a limited supply, then the price actually makes a difference. So then I can buy a book, you know, for $20, I can read it and maybe it's gone up in value and I can sell it for, you know, 25 or something. Even if I could sell it for half of what I bought it for, I still get more back than, than I do. If I buy that as an, you know, a licensed book. Yeah, no, that's great. And I love the secondary market options that open up with this new world of blockchain and tokenization. So Joshua, you know, you mentioned Amazon, uh, you guys are certainly a disruptive platform. Uh, if I could put it that way, let's say Amazon comes knocking on your door and saying, Hey, we want to acquire you. We want to integrate book .io into our, because we got the biggest marketplace, you know, what would be your thought process? And would you say yes, depending on the number? Yeah. I mean, you know, we get that question sort of semi often, which is kind of funny. Um, you know, I, I think that, uh, if, if this, if the situation was right and an Amazon was, you know, if, if we, if it was functioned in a way that like it kept the core model, right. So like if they didn't, uh, if, if the idea was to integrate and like expand what currently exists into digital ownership, right. Like, I think that makes sense. And some of the stuff they've done with like avalanche and, you know, some of the integration stuff, it's like, I think they, they see that, I think they're a bit more hesitant just from the regulatory perspective to like jump in to that kind of thing. And what we're doing is definitely, you know, quite, quite a bit different, but like, you know, we're, we're doing great. Like the team's grown in a bear market. Like we're adding employees and we're, you know, we're right at profitable. So we don't have any like reason to, to try to rush out and sell. And I think we're going to continue to grow. And I think we're, you know, we have an, you know, community that's, that has materialized behind it that just really agrees with the ethos of, you know, you really should own the things that you buy. So I don't see us, um, selling anytime soon. And even if we did, it would only be to like expand and, um, you know, continue the mission not to, to, uh, to end it or have it just shelved, you know? Oh yeah. I mean, I certainly, I think you and I being in this space, we can certainly agree. This is the future with block tokenization and fractionalization, secondary markets, and much more. It's just the adoption curve. And, uh, just like web one had its adoption curve web two, and now web three has its time. Um, you know, you mentioned Algorand, uh, polygon, Cardano and so forth. Are you planning to expand to other chains as well? Uh, yeah, we probably will. We don't have any plans to expand to any others. Right. Right now, um, we've done some interesting things with, with a few of the chains. Um, we gave a book away at consensus with Algorand to all the attendees. Like we're, we're doing some other expansion stuff or we'll be announcing some, some really cool stuff we're about to do with polygon as well. Um, so just trying to work with, with the chains that we have right now. And, you know, a big issue for publishers is really, uh, you know, I mean, when you get down to it, it's like they chop down trees to make print books. Right. So they, at first were very adverse to, um, to anything blockchain based, right. Especially when it was, you know, like when Ethereum was proof of stake. Um, so they, some of them have had corporate mandates where they would only work with it with a proof of work and they would only work with a proof of stake chain. So, you know, the ones that we've selected, I think, uh, encompass like a, a, a decent size portion of the market, not to say we won't integrate, but like, you know, kind of a thesis on being a multi -chain company is that we really want to be a platform. So creators could deploy to other chains. So we've talked to a couple of others as well. We just haven't put anything official on the roadmap yet. Hmm. Now more of a personal question for me and maybe other authors who are going to watch and listen to this, we'll have this question. So like I'm already in the process. I'm, I'm signed with a publisher. The book is right on tentative date launch next year. Could I go that traditional route, but also integrate with book .io and, you know, have you guys thought about a strategy for authors like myself who, you know, we would want to do both and how would that work? Yeah, for sure. So I think today, like of the hundred something books that we've done, like, um, a little over a third of them have been with, um, with publishers or with, um, with authors. So, you know, basically the way it works is, um, you know, you would just connect this with your publisher and then we work through like exactly what kind of program you would want to do. Right. So, um, we just kind of define those details. Um, we walked through with the publisher, what, you know, exactly how it works most of the time. Like, you know, we're doing limited quantity sort of collectible type stuff right now, but we have the capability to do like a mass, like we actually just, uh, sold a book yesterday that, you know, wasn't necessarily a collectible. It had just a regular singular cover. That's the same cover that's on the print book. Um, and, uh, you know, and it's sold out in like 20 seconds or something. Right. So the publisher's super excited because they've never seen anything like that in publishing. Um, and so it's a great way to drive, like kind of viral traffic and like excitement. So what we found too, is what ends up happening. We've seen this like multiple times in a row is like, we would do something with an author and then it will directly correlate to an increase in print sales because people get that book, they're excited about it. Then they would go and they're like, Hey, actually, you know, I want to own both. And so that's actually one of the things we're working on with our, our, um, uh, partnership with, with Ingram is what we call mint and print so that you could just buy the digital and automatically get the physical, uh, dropshipped to you at the same time. Oh, wow. Yeah. That's really cool. Um, so walk us through the user experience. Um, let's say someone's listening to this and like, you know, I want to go check out book .io. Maybe they have some books that I'll be interested in. Is there, obviously you have a website, is there an app and with purchasing, um, is it crypto and Fiat or both? Yeah. So, uh, so, I mean, we're trying to make it, um, very much, like I said, you know, web to functionality. So it's very easy to sign up. Um, we do take credit cards. So, um, on, uh, you know, you can, you can buy a book with a credit card. It's easy to set up an account. And actually like the, uh, the, the giveaway things that we're doing, the promotional stuff, like you don't even have to have a wallet. Um, we're getting to the point where you won't, you won't even have to have a wallet. You don't have to store seed phrase. You don't have to do any of that. All of it's like self -driven kind of in the background. Um, and so you don't have to buy with crypto. You don't have to know anything about crypto, um, and just making it real easy onboarding process for like, you know, the billion plus people that are honestly just not going to go take the time to learn crypto. Yeah. I've been talking a lot about that recently. With a variety of folks. Um, how do we make it easy for the next billion people? And like you, I've kind of used my mom, my dad as an example. Right. Cause like, they don't know that, like they see the wallet addresses. They're like, what the hell is that? They're scared of it. Right. It's intimidating. I still have to show my mom how to do certain things on her smartphone. So I, you know, but certainly like she's interested in, in crypto and blockchain and, you know, I've invested some of her funds in it, but yeah, to your point. How do we make it easy for the next billion people have the capabilities, but make it make the gooey easy for them. Right. Yeah. One of the funniest comments I got recently, which I won't say who it came from. Um, somebody within my family, um, was like, wait a minute, there's more than one blockchain. Cause like they thought blockchain was like internet, you know, thought it was one big blockchain, you know, which like from the outside, it was like, I never really thought about that, but it's like, if you really didn't know anything about it, you might think like, blockchain is just like internet. And they're like, you know, maybe there's only one and it's like, it's just, it's such a barrier. And so I feel like a lot of times, like in the crypto side, like we're in this bubble where it's like, you know, we're really excited about the technology and stuff, but other people just don't, they don't have the, it's not like, you know, intelligence thing. It's just like, they don't have the time to like onboard and figure all that stuff out. So like, how do we, how do we meet them where they are, bring the solutions and like the benefit of web three and what it actually provides to them, like directly to them. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think more, more companies building in a space need to think about that. Not just for the crypto native folks here, but yeah, like you said, the next billion people who, you know, they've heard about it in passing, they don't, they haven't used any type of crypto or done anything and we got to make it easy for them. So what's on the remainder of your roadmap for 2023? We do have quite a bit of stuff planned. So a lot of it, you know, like I said, you know, we launched like a year ago, so we're really trying to kind of scale up in a lot of different spots. So you know, at the top of that list right now is, is definitely audio books. And then we have a marketplace also that we're launching. And actually on the audio book side, we have one of the larger audio book companies that we just signed with, which is super exciting to have some like celebrity read audio books. And that's like a real growing market segment as well, just in general within publishing, which is very exciting. We have a lot of AI tools and development that are maybe more focused on publisher author, like, you know, helping them out you know, continue updating the reading apps. And then we have some really big author launches coming up that are going to be like, they're pretty massive, like celebrity level authors that are going to be launching some projects with us, which is super exciting. No, that's awesome. Well, I certainly after this conversation, you and I need to chat because of my own book. But yeah, that's exciting, man. And I love the idea of well, you know, you mentioned it's a growing part of the market of celebrity read books. Yeah, I certainly would want to listen to Morgan Freeman read a book.
Flight of ideas
The Consequences of Youthful Ignorance
"Young people frequently criticize the elderly without understanding that they only want what is best for everyone. They start with their dad, then move on to their teachers, then their professors, and finally their boss, all the while failing to recognize that these individuals possess knowledge and perspective that they lack. They refuse to acknowledge their lack of knowledge and continue to pass judgment on others without attempting to understand various points of view or putting themselves in the position of the people they are criticizing. They don't look at the wider picture and don't realize that although their service may help one person, it will hurt many others, so they continue down the same path and try to convince themselves that their poor choices are truly helping other people. The issue is not that they do not possess the intelligence of a stomach that can communicate to you when it needs food. They are unaware of their own foolishness since their brains do not alert them to it. Realizing how little they actually know helps people grow. The criticism of the young lacks wisdom, experience, and an understanding of the right context. As we get older, we acquire new information and a wider perspective, demonstrating how limited and inaccurate the judgments we made when we were younger were. When we look back on events and people in the past, we see how little we really knew about their complexities. The next time you feel the want to criticize someone who is older, wiser, or more experienced than you, take a moment to pause and think about how much you might be passing up. You might discover that you have been misinterpreting the situation all along if you listen before you judge. Recognizing how little we actually know is frequently the first step toward gaining wisdom.
Paul Vato Presents: A Celebrity Centric Podcast!
A highlight from Chasing Dreams: The Inspiring Journey of Singer, Actor, and Entrepreneur Afina Madoian!
"I think the only thing that made me so excited about that is my passion to music. Y en ese hombre, hold another bottle, look a little closer, cigar and Moscato. An actor in improv coming from Chicago, alto, make way for Paul Vato. Yay! Bravo! Welcome, welcome, welcome everyone. Welcome to Paul Vato Presents. Today, my guest is Afina Medoyin. I hope I'm saying that correctly. Afina, welcome and thank you so much for taking some time to be with us today. Right here, live on Fireside. Absolutely, thank you so much Paul for inviting me. Oh, it is my absolute pleasure. I fell in love with your voice when I heard you and saw you on Instagram. So it was wonderful. I was so stoked when you were like, yes, of course, I'd like to come on your show. But you have such an interesting story, such an amazing background. Would you mind telling us a little bit about yourself? Where you're from, a little bit about your background? Because I find it fascinating and thank you for sharing. Absolutely, thank you so much for all the kind words also. Yeah, so I've been singing all my childhood, probably all my teenage years. And let's start from the fact that I'm from Republic of Moldova. It's a very tiny country between Ukraine and Romania. Not everybody knows about it, but I think now there's kind of like a sad reason why many people know about it right now, because it's right on the border with Ukraine. But yeah, so I was raised aboard and raised in Moldova. And I've been singing probably all my teenage years. And competed I all my life. I performed on X Factor Romania, traveled in Sweden, Ukraine, Russia, and all other countries to compete and to perform. And then when I graduated school, I decided that, you know, it's time for me to move to the United States. And yeah, so I graduated school. I moved here by myself. I moved right away to L .A. And because I was studying in a Jewish school, I obviously was performing a lot. And director the of the school and the head of the school. And we kind of were in the community that is called ORT, which is an organization, a Jewish organization that has universities all around the world. So they saw my video singing, I think, or and then they came to visit us to kind of, you know, with a tour to see what we were doing. And they invited me to sing at the gala dinner of their board of directors in Washington. And it was 14 years old, I think, back then. And it was such a huge dream come true because for a little girl to come to the United States and sing there, that was a big, big, big deal. So that's how I got Mom a tourist visa. And pretty much when I graduated school, I said, Mom, Dad, I love you. It's time for me to, you know, go. So, yeah, I moved to L .A. right away. And the first years, unfortunately, I wasn't able to really do much when it comes to music because I had to kind of settle a little bit. So it took me a while. I worked at the company. I worked, I think, for four years. I've worked at least 14, 15 hours a day. Then I was trying also to open my own online business so I can finally, you know, have like an independent income. And then I could just quit everything, all the nine to fives and all that. I mean, my nine to fives were nine to nine or nine to two am. But anyway, yeah. And then at a certain point, I was like, okay, I've tried many things and I realized that nothing makes me happy as music. And that was another, you know, big deciding point in my life. And that decision was probably one of the most important and the most amazing decisions I've ever made. And then eventually, in four or five years, I quit everything. And I started doing music full time. And now I'm a full time singer trying to build myself, build my company and build my brand and write a lot of music and, you know, just go with the flow.
Bad To The Dad
"dad" Discussed on Bad To The Dad
"Dot com and at berman branding coach. Wanna thank gavin shoulder. The supervising producer of the fourth before of the today show with hoda and agenda bush. And i know what is really cool. Wash she's got a really great reputation for anybody who meets her. Learned a little bit more about jennifer bush by the former first daughter. And i think i'd like to spend a little time. Maybe at a cocktail party with jennifer. She sounds like fun. I gotta tell you. I think that was a really great interview. I thought was really great interview short periods of time. yeah really good interview. I also think that. I planted the seed for us sick time big time. Yeah i mean you know. 'c acorss compete delivering. But i will say. I think we'd be a great addition to the fourth hour because what we do about bad debt. I'll even take the fifth hour get assigned this between fourth and fifth thirty. Yes but i do think the target market fits. We all have to talk about the value. Moms and dads dad vice. I think will follow up with gavin. Might not be a bad idea. And the truth is thank god you have. A large family still wants to talk. Yeah well. We got weddings barmitzvah us. Fortunately you're very unfortunate. I've been meeting a lot of my family of funerals but it is a great place to catch a great face the catch up another great guest. thank you so much in. It was really as i said in the early part of our show are really proud of you. I'm really proud of what you do as a comedian as even being a dad as a as a true friend abuse the world's coach monopoly on this you know you do some great things to and you know again all the martyr. W we're talking about being softball. Dad i get it especially when you get into october and early november sitting out the you tend drove restored watching these girls walk batter after batter gets a little frustrating. But we do it at a love because we love best. Were bad to the dead so next week. We're going to have another great gas grade klein. And he is one of the operations heads of a casino harris casino which is part of the cesar's family and always wanted to know what kind of goes on the hunt healing to ask ask him..
Bad To The Dad
"dad" Discussed on Bad To The Dad
"I i do it all. I'm aware lately. My son just picked up a skateboard. I bought a skateboard too. So whatever he does i do and my wife supports every crazy idea. That pops in my head's that's you know whatever they kind of feed off of my family's energy so wherever they you know as long as we're together dinner whatever we go to wild would be you know our our family vacations whatever sport they wanna. My daughter's a painter. She paints portraits. Maybe i'll share one day with you. Guys portrait she painted or She painted me or not me but a photo of a sunset in iraq. It was just like ridiculous. My oldest son who's high functioning autistic as like a gamer programmer. He wants to make movies and digital movie. Some of his stuff he's on Is on. i'm not tech savvy. But he's on every you know what is at youtube. Take talk twitter. Lined up behind this podcast. He he's actually set me up to this morning. Chris us what our kids do their are. It department we you know in taking our interviews home the landing the plane as it. Were we ask all of our guests for something called dad vice and this advice for dads so you can take any way you'd like you can take it from the perspective of military veteran or you could just take it from the perspective of in every everyday dad who just loves his kids with his kids. What advice do you have for other dads who are listening to bad to the debt i would say a you know. This is all dad's everyone focused on your wellness is if you're not doing you know. Try different things. I've gone through acupuncture which worked from a. I've done the kreil. The freezer ray jump into a you know you get frozen for about for about two minutes. It's i've done things Works try different things. Focus on your wellness. And because if you're not you're it'll get you more engaged for that moment. Find a hobby. Find something like golf. Or if you're your veteran look at look into. Pga hope You're just normal dad. Get a hobby for that moment. That you're you know you're focusing just on yourself taking yourself out 'cause as a dad that you know the your play stack kyw and you're gonna wanna attack it full on. Give yourself a moment to regroup. Come back come back from a golf and most guys like arm tired. Do anything i'm like. What are we doing. Let's go out do something more engaged and i'm ready. I'm ready to take on the problem. Like giving the i'm ready. I gave myself that moment. So focus on your wellness. Give yourself give yourself outlet okay but good advice. You need time man time dead time. Your our guest today has been. Christopher sullivan is a military veteran marine veterans..
Bad To The Dad
"dad" Discussed on Bad To The Dad
"I volunteer you raised. You're actually raised both hands. It just didn't have a hundred games. Volunteers a i pay tribute volunteers tribute volunteer. When you were tribute from is everybody else that was lifting you a sacrifice but let's talk about this so You know we had about three or four guys lifting kayla and then. I called in for reinforcements. Just in case right some guys from the corner who don't wanna be in the video so they came in and they were very gracious enough to help us lift you. Yeah i i have to thank you for dropping some lbs because it was a lot easier getting off the ground then maybe pre cova density road admission right absolutely have dropped thirty five minutes. Go for that you know. That is definitely admirable coach. Raddy can do it with his busy schedule and the working from home. I tell you can too. But here's where Things got a little a little dizzy. I think it's funny because the placement of where you were. Yes yes now. I this is. No accident is strategically placed myself in the back of the chair. Correct right because if you're leaning back a little bit. I let me out of you back because you care about the person i do like the trustfall your trustful. You want to be there for me. In case i fall. Because i can trust you believe it or not. I also feel like if you have enough strong guys yet. The chair then. That's probably one of the easier places to believe or not being selfish. So so what happens. The deejay says you know what Randy don't you turn around and sit in the chair cowboy stash front. Yes actually facing the back of the chair act. We're on that when you already. That spot you already. You're already in your done coal. you've already sold yourself in that spot. So we start lifting you. And what's my line of sight your crotch absolutely and what a pleasure..
Dad So Hard
"dad" Discussed on Dad So Hard
"Giants. The his currently wearing my brothers police shirt that can be an advantage. That's rate as. I don't believe i don't believe his pockets..
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"And i think man for us as men who are trying to fall in love jesus to be disciples of jesus who lead our family. Well what happens when our gas tank runs low when our souls become weary. We get hyper focused on the things that get in front of us like my son. Not taking out the trash in hindsight dude. Is that a big deal. No i mean. I could deal with it and so many better ways but in the moment my tank is empty and i am focused on all kinds of little things in every little thing feels like a big deal. Right when you're driving in you feel like you've barely got any gas left and taking your to run out of gas and be honest i wrote. You're mad that the person in front of you is driving to slow. You're mad that the light turned green fast enough. You're mad that there's five more stop signs between you and where you need to go. You're focusing on any to turn off. The lights are turned off the ac or turn the heater. I got your focus on you become hypersensitive. You've lost sight of the destination and just panicking on all the things around you and man when your soul is empty. You've lost sight of where god is actually trying to take you and your focused on all the little things around you. That don't actually matter for the kingdom of god. He find yourself snapping at your kids and frustrated with your wife and mad at the guy who cut you off on the freeway and super matt at the dude are at your boss at work. You're frustrated with people on social media. You're mad at the news. And you get overly hyped up about things. That actually won't matter even one year from now let alone for eternity and so my encouragement to you and really to myself. Even as i listened to myself ramble today is what does it look like for me to come back to the living water and have my tank filled by the goodness of god to find rest in jesus to wake up earlier than the rest of the family to not react to my day but spent some time to be proactive and spending some time with the lord allowing him to speak identity and truth over me through his word to spend some time in prayer to be a man of peace and joy and of steadfastness. Maybe a man who talks less and listens more to have his tank filled by jesus and not by the things the world a man who's like a tree planted near the living water that yields fruit in it season and it's leaf does not whether the destination that we're trying to get after is to be men who run the race. Well who fight the good fight who run the race to win who finish strong to lead our families and our wives and our kids to be salt and light everywhere. We go that we would actually bring joy and peace and patience in goodness to our kids into our wives into our work into our communities into our neighbors. And you cannot do that when your tank is empty. Who is getting the brunt of your stress of your frustration who is getting poured out the consequences of all the things that you're dealing with because your tank.
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"I talked about this at the conference. I was just. I said there's a difference between having tired of body and a tired soul like dude. All of us were men who are working hardward. Dad's we're trying our best to provide for our families and be a good dad and be a good husband and be a good worker like we should be exhausted physically like when you put your head on your pillow at night. All of us are going to be tired. Dad tired right like all of us resonate with that phrase but our soul shouldn't be weary. There's a difference between a weary body and a weary soul. And you know this like when you go to vacation right you go on vacation and you rest and you don't do any work and you you just hang out somewhere for a few days and then you come back and you feel more tired. That's an indication that maybe there's something deeper going on a cow come. That didn't give me rest. I think it's actually because our souls need arrest. It's not that body's just need to take a few days off and rest are week often. Rest our souls neat rest because we've moved away from the streams of living water and frankly that tree the our souls are dying. They are withering. They not producing good fruit. And when i feel like that. When i feel like i'm a tree that's withering that i'm a tree. That's moved away from the streams of living water. I just feel like it's an indicator on my soul's dashboard. That's telling me something has mu says something wrong. That have moved away from the water at something is not right. I want you to ask yourself right now. Like wherever you're listening to this. I don't know if you're working out or you're on a commute. Maybe you're mowing the lawn Whatever you're doing right now man. I just.
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"We're all about which is making disciples like helping men fall in love with jesus and helping their family to the same now. The cost of the joining this new platform is two dollars and ninety nine cents a month and you know some of you guys have heard that some of the guys on facebook heard that just got land blasted because we're charging two dollars eight cents a month. I did that for a few reasons number. One a cost us money to host on this platform number two. It's a way for us to earn money as a ministry to date. We have twenty four guys donate every month to the data and ministry twenty four donors twenty four guys who sacrifice every month of those twenty four guys and they give a combined nine hundred and thirteen dollars. It's less than a thousand dollars at those twenty. Four guys contribute every month to the data mystery. All that to say we are not funded by donations. And we have never been and i'm trying to learn and grow as a fundraiser. Because i think a lot of guys wanna give. They just haven't done a good job. Maybe some learning to try to grow in that area but we've never been able to sustain our ministry and our team through donations. And so i thought okay to nine cents a month. That's not a huge amount of money. I think guys would be willing to pay a little bit to get into this. And it also helps support the ministry. So that's my heart behind that some guys we're like man this guy i land blasted man. I literally got messages calling me a selfish mother effort. I got called joel osteen. I got called selfish. I've been told that this is just a giant money. Grab and charged for discipleship and so on and so on and so on. I just wanna say a man. It's been a honestly if i'm totally honest with you dude. It's been a really really hard week. It's been hard. I you know i laugh at it because i have to otherwise. I'm in my room. Just like like dude. Do i still want to do this because this is exhausting. And i i just feel like people. Just don't understand at all what we're trying to accomplish. And the name calling me in the how much guts people have behind a screen on a keyboard. I know that you know we all know that. But it's just when it's directed personally at you. It's just really really hard so anyway. I'm actually really excited. There's been hundreds and hundreds of you guys have already joined this new pro the new platform and i just think that with when a couple of guys when you guys put some skin in the game a couple of bucks a month i just think you.
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"In today's episode of the dad tire podcast talking about how to recognize when your parenting from an empty tank. Even if you might not know you are before we jump into that though..
Bad To The Dad
"dad" Discussed on Bad To The Dad
"She designed the bone daddy logo. That's our totem. That's what you see on all of our social media platforms and on our website and soon all of our t shirts. she doesn't impeccable job even doing an impeccable job with our good friend coach randy and his business coach randy says coach. I wanna thank daniel. Goldberg p of corporate development of levion bio synthetic canaveral at. I think by. Now you have nailed the pronunciation. But i i was fascinated that there is actually a business for this that yes in bio bio synthetic yes avenue did not know i think they need to do bio synthetic podcasting mean we can we can get reasonable facsimiles of ourselves to wake up early on sunday morning to record the show with are real gas. But it's actually right buddy just hearing the business side of this kind of a product was really wild. So it's really nice best of luck you know what's really nice is someone who takes the canal annoyed business as seriously as he does. Yes you know you get good product when you care that much somebody. Somebody has to take it seriously. Because i'm sure there's a lot of people in that business who are probably just walking through completely burned out and are just because you know they enjoy cannabis but when you care enough to send the very best right since um bio synthetic cannabinoid. That's the way to go so next week we had. I am a A really inspiring and incredible guest. I always say we have incredible guests but this one. I think you're really gonna wanna tune in for we're going to have david lewis and david is one of three single dads who have opened up an organic deli in asbury park new jersey. We know about asbury park. That's where the stone pony. As bruce springsteen got his start and these three guys opened up this deli. All three ex-cons so you've got three ex cons. Who are single dads running a deli trying to give back to their communities and just hit the reset button on their lives so it just goes to show you anybody can start overdue. Some good in the world coach. you know. i've been thinking. This could be one of those podcasts that we have it becomes a defining moment in our podcast. The dad life. You know we've had several those like you said. Every week we have new dads that come in and we get the a great play were were high in gem. You know. France still great park topic to get debt right the target market but this has the potential. I mean this. The you're going to want to you. You don't wanna listen to next week to the hereabouts dad to a probably have gone through their fair share of challenges but to come out and recalling it delhi dad's dead. Yeah i'd say. You can't judge when i met david. I mean he's extremely well. Spoken got a really good business mind. He very curious talking about..
Dad Hard With A Podcast
"dad" Discussed on Dad Hard With A Podcast
"Yeah it's a wild thing. I always think about that. I never thought of my life of having a girl right. It was never. I always wanna have kids. My vision was always having you know at least the boy. I could never be had him. Sorry to all the dads out there that have boys start all little boys out there. I could never imagine it any other way than having a girl i. There's just something. I say all the time. There's something so in djelic about them the way that they just like. These big bright is looking up at you that you'd never feel anything better than like then that from it. I couldn't think my my life any other way. But one of the things i never thought about having navigate. Was this the growing out of adolescence. Into t preteen teed college like what how how. How do i do that. I it was just. It's wild wild thing and it's hard. It's really like hard to navigate because certain things like. I know how to react guy right like if i had a son how to like because i i was that age of point girls. I genuinely don't know also like that age. We were like as a boys. Someone or immature. Like i like the are more mature at that age than boys are and so it's hard to navigate. It's also like somewhat like weird for me at times weird in the sense like it's unlike embarrassed about really weird stuff like as a dad you're reacting in sort of adapting to these things. We're you start realizing that they're always going to be these little kids to mean. I am not seeing them grow up. That's that's what that's what the this fatherhood adventures all about is just is finding out the ways. Navigate this stuff. This has been so awesome. I really appreciate you coming on and doing the whole thing is great to talk to you. Great see you at least feel about this video chat life that we live in. Now you're clearly just like love being a dad so much enter are adamant and practice of a good dad. It's beautiful thing to see. I know it's a hard road to walk as a in as a single dad. You know raising two girls so bravo. I really really appreciate you coming on and sharing. Thanks thanks for having having me on. It's honestly but like a really fun. Such also like just be able to share some of these stories with other dad or even like your listeners. It's like i. it's really fun in look. Here's my commitment to you. If bobby deniro ever respond. I promise you will be invited to that fokkers please. I'll make up my own story line. I'll have dang kids will will do the whole thing. It'll be fantastic. I can't wait..
Dad Hard With A Podcast
"dad" Discussed on Dad Hard With A Podcast
"You know that that is like you're standing there in the kitchen going did like last night just happened and i just hide all the evidence but after a while i think you do get used to it Also for me. At least at some point. I was like hey i need more stability especially being a single dad i i. I have these responsibilities and in my personal life. I need someone who like. Initially i was like. I didn't care if they if they cared that i like. I was like whatever. I'm just gonna go on dates and i was like you know what i need to find someone that is going to be just as invested in me being a father in my kids and i'm not saying oh i need you to come in and step mom i i do want you to be because this is a big part of my life and you know it's not like all fun and games and also the funding game stuff like you know when you're coming off with divorce like it's great for your ego but then at some point you're like it's super shallow after a while to your in their going. I can't believe this is my life right now. You know like this is kinda sad especially when you have like you have two girls. You're like oh man. Like i want them to like grow up like feeling good about their dad and like know like teach them morals all the stuff. That every father watson aspires is of their daughter. Yet like you're like jecklin hiding it all agree we put like do you do you. Do you have any rules as far as if you met somebody that you did really like and you did see that. There's potential there to expand into a deeper situation. Did you have rules about when they were going to be. The girls like did you. Did you make sure that girls are never going to wake up. And there's some you know random other random woman..
The Military Veteran Dad Podcast
"dad" Discussed on The Military Veteran Dad Podcast
"This potential mark could be in. The same boat could be devastating. There could be another mark out there listening. This did lose his dad. That situation is the same. I miss my dad. And i don't know what to do. I don't know how to get rid of this feeling of emptiness that i just want to be connected with my dad again because those memories fueled got me excited. They got me. They may be feel. Like i was being led somewhere in life and now he's gone. I don't know how to feel. I don't know where to go. I've talked coach. So many men that have lost their father at a young age and the most common thread that they speak to is they feel the lack of being led somewhere if their father maybe as a teenager or even younger once they're dead leaves their life. There's almost like this off point where there are no longer being led on this journey of life and understanding and connection and curiosity adventure the all get stuck and then they get stuck where they're not being lead anywhere and now we are talking to bobby dove back in november and he brought up that he felt like he was twelve years old for most of the time they went into the army and he lost his father to cancer around twelve and he never grew up from twelve his life mentality kind of just stopped growing because he stopped being led in so that's a huge component of that. Feeling that you miss your dad. Because he was leading you somewhere. And i felt really exciting but man when that's gone. What do you do. Heavy heavy feeling to work through nets. What mark's going through and his dad's got the same thing on the other side where he's deployed..
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"With i do. I wanted nothing to do with the church. Like i said. But i didn't want anything to do with with this particular church Lower casey this this particular place and There have been all kinds of events that have been happening this year. Some restoration some some hard things. Some things have come to light this year that had been buried for a long time That's all been happening in my personal life behind the scenes. I haven't mentioned any of this on the podcast. I tell you all of this because this week somebody from that particular church reached out and asked if they could meet with me. They actually asked months ago. And i said no Because i didn't want to be part of it. I still didn't feel like that part of my heart was completely healed. And i wasn't ready to do that. And they reached out again and they said Not really. i'm not gonna let this go. I really wanna meet face to face and Here's the thing this this is. Why i'm telling you all of this as a man as a dad as as a disciple. Of jesus i am trying my best to figure out what it looks like to follow jesus specialty when god calls us to hard things. Do to be honest man. It's easy to sit in front of this computer and to record a podcast episode. It's easy to write a. It's not really. It's actually really hard to do that. But you know what i mean. It's like it's way easier to do these things to talk about. The things of god to actually live out the things of god and i don't wanna be a hypocrite. I feel all the time. Like i'm how in the world do i have any kind of right to tell you guys anything about god when i personally feel like. I'm struggling all the time with my own journey and following jesus and i just want to every time. I'm challenged with the situation to step outside of my comfort zone. I want to run toward it. Because that's what jesus followers do. We moved hoard heart things. We don't run away from hard things. This is what jesus meant when he said. Take the narrow road. Many will choose the wide path. But it's hard to follow me and very few people will choose to do it. This is why the road is narrow for all kinds of reasons. It's hard to follow. Jesus but this particular week was one of those moments rioted. Decide if i want to actually be a follower of jesus it will mean me doing what jesus told me to do and it will probably be really really hard Before we move on. Before i get kind of the main point that i want to make i want you to stop for a second. I wanted to ask yourself. What hard thing are you call to step into right now. Is there something hard that you're running from as something hard that you're avoiding. Is there something you feel like. You need to step into but just makes you a little bit uncomfortable because the truth is dude a good leader as not somebody who is never scared. A good leader is someone who runs towards the things that they're scared of. The reality is when it comes to spiritual leadership. It's really really hard to train your children and qualities that you don't currently possess If you think back with me to deuteronomy six you've probably heard this passage human. Maybe you're not familiar with the scriptures. That's okay But there's this passage that's used oftentimes when we're talking about you. You'll hear this a lot in parenting conferences. Or when we're talking about parenting. I even wrote about this In my book and when we're talking about parenting but listen to this verse. In deuteronomy verse. One says this these are the commands decrees and laws the lord. Your god directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the jordan to possess so that you your children and their children after them may fear the lord. Your god as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that i give you and so that you may enjoy long life here israel and be careful to obey so that it make a well with you and that you may increase greatly and land flowing with milk and honey just as the lord the god of your ancestors promised you and then listen to what he says is very famous verse. Hero israel the lord our god the lord is one love the lord your god with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your strength these commands. I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road you lie down and when you get up tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses in on your gates. God is saying the writer of genesis. Here of deuteronomy is saying listen. Love god with everything you've got and then teach your kids about god every opportunity you get but listen. Did you catch that first part before. God wants you to teach your children about him and talk to them about him. He first commands that. You love the lord with all your heart all your soul in all your strength bro. Listen this may be the most important parenting advice you hear all week the prerequisite for teaching your kids about jesus is first that you are in love with god yourself. It's really hard to pass on something that you don't have and so if i want to be a dad who teaches my children how to forgive than i must be a dad who's willing to forgive and then that is way easier to say on a podcast and an empty room with this microphone into computer in front of me. It's way easier to tell you when you don't know about my personal life and i can just kind of go do whatever i want and just tell you that you should forgive. It's way harder to sit across the table from somebody somebody that has potentially hurt you deeply to look them in the eye and to genuinely forgive them. That's way harder man. It's hard to pass on something that you don't have in so this week as i thought about manual. Want to be the kind of man that god is calling me to be. Do i want to be kinda dad. That i want my kids to be one day then. I personally have to step in to some hard things. It's hard to tell your kids to love. Jesus when you don't really love. Jesus it's hard to tell your kids to obey when you aren't obeying your heavenly father. It's hard to tell your kids to forgive when your holding onto hate. It's really hard to tell your kids to remain pure when you're looking at porn. It's hard to tell your kids to be patient when you're constantly losing your temper. If all of these sound hard to you maybe even impossible. I don't worry. I have good news for. You're in good company. Jesus wants taught a lesson to his friends about how hard it is for. Rich man to enter the kingdom of god. His disciples heard that teaching and they thought the same thing. You're probably thinking right now. What in the world like who can do it. Then who's going to be able to go to heaven if it's hard for this guy who's going to be able to do this. And jesus looked back and he said this with people it is impossible but now with god for all things are possible with god. Here's the truth man. You can be the man. God is calling you to be for your kids but it's not gonna be because you tried harder. It will be by the grace of god and his spirit working in and through you. I want you to stop. Whatever you're doing right now. Man i want you to pray just pause for a second and just pray this with me. God i want to be the man that you're calling me to be but i cannot do it by myself. I can't do it in my own strength. i need you god to be. the dad. threw me that you would be to my kids. I need you god to be the husband to my wife that you would be to her through me. God do things in and threw me that are bigger than myself. Give me the courage to step into hard things. I desperately need you got him. May we be men who don't just teach our children about forgiveness. Would we be men who have a reputation of radical grace. May we be men who don't just teach our kids not to lie. Would we be perpetual truth tellers. We not just be men who tell our kids not to look at inappropriate things. Would we be men of integrity. We be men who are beat up and running out and wore out for the sake of the gospel at the end of our lives but men who pass on a baton that we actually carried ourselves. Not just one that we read about. If you want your kids to be in love with jesus you. I must be in love with. Jesus you want your kids to forgive than you must forgive you. Want your kids to be pure than you have to chase after purity when your kids to be truth tellers than be a truth teller. This is what spiritual leadership looks like. It means that we actually live out what we believe. And that kind of experience builds deep character within us that we share wisdom. Not from a book but from something that we've lived out..
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"Hey guys welcome back to the dads hired. Podcast it's good to be with you. we're going to dive right in here man. I don't have any ads for today. I don't have any introductions on nothing really to talk to you about other the family leadership program which i'm always stoked about if you wanna come join us over there That'd be great. You can do that by going to data dot com slash lead with love to have you but we'll just dive right in dude To be totally honest with you man. It was kind of an emotional week for me A little bit of a heavy week. If you've been listening to the data podcast for a while. You've probably heard me allude to the fact that dad tired really started out of a really painful season in my own journey Just personally and i have purposely. Never really shared details about that. Didn't really feel like they were relevant or necessary especially for you. I know that you turn on this podcast to try to figure out what it looks like for you to be the best husband and father and disciple that you can be and so you're not always interested in my own personal story which i i totally get man I totally understand that But i want to share a little bit about why this week was heavy for me And then kinda give context How dat tired started. And i'm only doing that really to context of kind of the bigger thing that got us late on my heart for you this week So if you bear with me as i share some details from the past. I think it'll be helpful for you Just context wise as we jump into what it looks like for you as a dad to leave your family well Six years ago. I had been a part of a church For a long time. I i been church world ministry for thirteen years and then i was asked by a good friend of mine He said hey. Jared if you ever want to come be part of some church planting i'd love for you to come join me In in planting some churches. Which i have a very entrepreneurial spirit i think that's how god wired me and so i was excited about the opportunity. We had been friends for years and but we had never worked together and so i was excited to move on It it was hard for me to leave the church that i was currently acts as a wonderful church. Many of the top. If you've heard me say hey my mentor or mental once told me or any tummy the word mentor on the likely talking about some of the guys from that previous church Who were just deeply impactful in my personal journey with jesus man. They were just so so intentional. About pouring into me as a young pastor and so i left that church. Which was hard. But i was excited about the new things that we're gonna come In in the future with church planting. And so i step out of my role at the previous church and moved into this new role with my friend to plant churches. I was there less than a year and a new pretty quickly that this was not a good fit for me personally and how and it wasn't going to be a good fit for me and Pretty quickly me. And this person and i'm purposely being confidential here for the sake of it. It's the details. Really aren't the point of what i'm trying to get at here But i but i m trying to paint a good picture for me and this person We started to butt heads and We started to see things differently. And it came down to A final conversation where. I was blindsided by things that this person said and I've heard people talk about this in in the past been in the church world for thirteen years at heard a lot of people say that they had been hurt by the church and That that maybe somebody in leadership at hurt them and my experience in the church was good. And and i had met many wonderful leaders servants humble men and women who were giving their lives for the sake of the gospel and the glory of jesus and that was my experience and so when i heard people say that they'd been hurt by the church. My kind of default subconscious thought was always probably you. You're you're probably the one that did something wrong here because the church leaders. I've never been awesome well on this particular day After months of kind of friction. I sat down with this person. A friend and And my boss at the time and i was blindsided by what they said to me It was the most without a doubt the most hurtful words i've ever heard somebody say to me Deeply attacking my character who i am as a person My worth my value and just for context sake. I heard things about how i am not fit for ministry I'm not. I don't have a future in ministry not very good at this whole thing I mean it in these are giving you that the g. and pg version of how that day went And to honest man it was just. You can't under like. I can't overemphasize how hurtful that day was. I left and shock. And i left in pain that sent me that. That moment really sent my life into a tailspin. i came home. My wife asked me how that day went. I said that i had got fired. And these really hurtful things were said to me. I was blindsided completely and she laughed because she thought i was joking. I'd been ministry thirteen years at always had been going great so it. It was truly seemed unbelievable and And she laughs. Serious like today was terrible. And here's what happened. And that day started a season in our marriage that was by far the worst season that we've ever experienced deeply painful. I wrestled with identity. I moved into a deep season of depression. I pulled away from my wife. I pulled away from my kids. I hated the church. I hated being around anything. Christian or in god's ministry a hated all of it. And i had vowed i never want to be part of any of this ever again. I vowed i'm going to be in business. I'm gonna go do business stuff. And i will make my life outside of church because this is messed up and i never wanted to be part of that any of that ever again and and in the middle of all that i did not know if our marriage would continue in fact there were times where i thought for sure we were going to end in a divorce and there was one day in particular where Layla and i've shared the story in books and things before. But i wanted to give you some more context here. there was one day when layla we were in the middle of a fight and she was staring at me as i was saying really hurtful things to her and she started tears in her eyes. And she said jared. I just want you to know that. Every morning i get up at two in the morning and go into the living room and i pray that god would capture your heart again and that was a slap in the face to me man that was the holy spirit had used that moment had used her faithful prayers to start to turn my heart back to his to start to soften my heart toward all the walls ahead been built up and And and that was really the start of tired. Not that i was trying to start any kind of ministry but i just happen to write on my facebook page I wrote a little blog. That basically said that story. I told him i in this blog. I talked about how layla praying for me. about how i didn't wanna be the man that i had been the last several months i was depressed and that ended up me one. I ended up in counseling leyland. I went to counseling together. I started to find some healing. That blog ended up getting going viral. And you nothing about blogs or podcasts. Or anything like that. And i'll spare you all the details here man because i'm rambling a little bit. But that is how dad tired started. More and more people started to be interested in the idea that men could be broken and still want to follow jesus in lead their family. Well and so. I was just processing in the middle of all my heart..
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"Sixty eight five as a man who is stumbling forward in spiritual leadership. What would it look like for you to expand your influence to the fatherless. Who do you need to sacrificial. Bring into your fault the way. That god's sacrificial brought you into his. I want you to know man that this is my prayer and my focus for the data community and twenty twenty one. I want so badly to be a community of men who are not only leading our families well but also stepping into the giant need fatherless-ness in the world. I don't know what that looks like. I'm not exactly sure what it looks like right now but i just want to invite you in to join me in prayer. Lets fast together. Let's dream together as a community of men. There's thousands of us. Dude imagine if thousands of us just pray about this dream about this and then begin to ask. God god what would it look like for us to not just lead our families well but to start to love on the kids who don't have dads. I just have a feeling that that would bring a lot of light to a very dark reality. The truth is you. And i were fatherless in god brought us in. May we be men who bring in fatherless or.
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"To be about six and a half feet tall. Just this big man and he comes up to me and walks up to me and he puts his hand out for me to shake. It and i was super intimidated so just stared at the floor while i she usually put my hand in his and he immediately said nope. That won't work. Give me a good handshake. A squeezed a little tighter. And then he said now looking in the eye tell me your name and so i looked up and i remember hugest so big giant guide of so timid. I remember telling you my name. Why squeezed his hand and he wasn't being mean or like overly aggressive us just trying to teach me the kinds of things at confident. Men do that. That man has named steve. He actually went on to me my first job. He spent years of his life really investing into me. He had his own sons and he was doing his own thing but he really brought me in and taught me a lot of things. And i sat there thinking about steve. A bunch of other guys started to come to mind like my youth pastor kayla. Who taught me with a real apology. Sounds like Or my friend. Michael's dad who taught me not only how to play drums to serve in church to like show up on time to not be the star of the show to listen more than i speak or randomly make noise or i thought about my boss. Bill who taught me how to negotiate with kindness and firmness at the same time or had this mentor. Monty who tell me what it looks like to say. Hard things in love. That was so foreign to me. I'd never experienced that as a kid. Especially from a man discipline always felt like somebody didn't love me and he really showed me that discipline and love. They aren't two separate things but they're actually one in the same and all these men that really liked took me in. I was taken back honestly man. I had this flood of memories in this at the same time this flood of like emotions. Because i thought to myself man. I am who. I am today because of these men. I wouldn't be the guy i am today. I wouldn't be the kind of father i am. The husband the disciple or leader. That i am if these guys didn't bring me into their fold. They all had their own kids. They were all doing their own thing. Had their own jobs had their own. Like you know problems that they're figuring out in their own marriages all that stuff that they're they're working on in their own lives in yet in some way. They sacrificed to bring me into their lives and to teach me what it looked like to be a man. I didn't have a dad growing up. And they brought me in to teach me these things. And i was as i was thinking about them and i was like really brought back to these motions because honestly i say frankly i suck at this kind of thing reflecting i suck at reflecting like i'm not good looking back at like taking the time to pause and to reflect back on my life my childhood i think some of that has to do with my god given wiring just to be a dreamer and You know wanna look forward to exciting things that lie ahead but also i don't like looking back because i know that there's part of me that behind me as pain. I think there's a part of me that knows when i look back. I'm gonna find pain. I'm gonna find i'm gonna find insecurity and so it's just easier for me to look forward but there was power from me and looking back even healing honestly. It was humbling for me to recognize that these men went out of their way to pour into my life. And some way you know. i'm. I'm not sure dude like the kind of personality you are How wired you but highly encourage you to stop for a minute and to think about the guys that have poured into you for a lot of you. I know that it was your dad. Like you guys had your dad's around and he was the driving influence her in your life as a man. He was the one that helped shape you to become a man but i know they're also a lot of you guys who are like me didn't have data around or maybe your dad was around physically. But he just. He wasn't that like a role. He was intentionally shaping you to be a godly man and so when you think about your own life your own childhood when you think about these guys who helped shape you like who comes to mind even right now as i'm talking. Is there a particular guy that sticks out to you in your head because the truth is even if your dad was around and he was engaged in your childhood it's still takes a village to raise a child and so who was in your village. I who what what guy brought you into his circle in some way to help shape you who who would you look back on and say i am the man i am today. Because this guy or these guys really pour into me. I was reading romans this week in some struck me in a way that it had before. It's crazy man. How you can like read the bible multiple times or the same verse multiple times but somehow when you read it again you feel like you're reading it for the first time. This happened to me. I was reading this verse. Romans and just hit different. Listen to what. This verse says in romans. Nine twenty two. What if god although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known bore with great patients the objects of his wrath prepared for destruction. What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy whom he prepared in advance for glory even us whom he also called not only from the jews but also from the gentiles as he says in hosea. I will call them. My people who are not my people. I will call her my beloved. Who is not michael of it and in the very place where i said to them. You are not my people there. They will be called dron of the living. God do this is incredible this him he had. I've read this verse one hundred times in this. Hit me so different this week. I don't know if you caught that man. But the writer of romans as essentially saying this god is showing off his glory and his mercy not only to his chosen people his children the jews but also to us the gentiles us a random guys who aren't part of the quote unquote holy lineage. Have been brought into the fold of got expanded. the circle to include people who should have never been included. He expanded his circle to include you and me. To put it more bluntly the reason you in high are even here. Today as followers of jesus is because god made a tremendous sacrifice to bring you into his family. He expanded his circle to include. You do that is really really good. News and here's the thing. It isn't just good news. That god brought you into a circle and he called you his son but it's also that he's helping you grow as a mature followers him. Want you to ask yourself this right now. As a son of god who's been brought into the family of god are you growing in spiritual maturity. And i know dude i know that's a tough question to answer honestly like if if somebody asked me that question right now. I'm i don't even know if i'd know how to answer that. But try to over complicate it. Think about spiritual maturity in the same way that you would think about your children growing immature when you. I have kids your just excited. That they're part of the family. You're not like when you're we're about to have a newborn next month You know this will be our fourth child when when this baby comes in she's gonna be up all night. She's gonna cry for two hours because she wants to. Eat to have to change your diaper. I'm not mad at any of that. I'm not getting mad at her. Because she's waking up in the middle not you expect that she's a baby. She knows nothing. She's brand new into the world and we're just happy she's here. We're just happy to have a part of the family. We rejoice we have so much joy because she just part of our family doesn't matter like that she doesn't know anything doesn't matter that she's going to poop and pee her diaper and she's going to wake up in the middle of night shows and know how to sleep through the night shows know how to eat properly how to do any of this stuff. It doesn't matter we're just happy. She's here but eventually two years from now five years from now ten years from now if she's pooping and peter pants waking up every two hours. We've got a problem right. Like we want her. To mature one her grow and maturity eventually she will grow through the season She'll she'll get to the point in her life where she learned how to use the restroom when she learns how to eat on her own she to have manners and then she'll go through this like she'll go through this season. All your kids do this where they're very selfish. They're trying to figure out who they are and dude. That's okay sometimes. My son wants to be a soccer professional soccer player. And then yesterday he wanted to be a professional rapper and then a firefighter in the my daughter wants to be an artist today and maybe cut hair tomorrow and a babysitter. The next day like they're they're figuring out who they are in two. That's okay. I don't we don't get mad at them. Like oh you better figure out your life. You better figure out who you are what you wanted to know. It's okay for them to learn to explore to like figure out. Who has god created me to be what are the personalities and characteristics and unique things that god has given me that. Make me me. it's okay to look internally but listen in five years from now ten years from now twenty years from now. i don't want them asking those questions. I want them to start to expand their thinking and start to realize okay. The world is not just about them but they're part of something bigger. They're part of a bigger family. They're part of the bigger story. And so we want our kids to grow immaturity eventually there to the spot as young adults and that when they hit their late teens and twenties hopefully by that time they realize. Okay god is now using me to be part of something much bigger than myself. And they begin to serve and to give sacrificial they know who they are. They've learned they're not ignorant anymore. They're not selfish anymore. They're starting to use the knowledge that they have to recognize that they're part of a much bigger story and they serve in ways that are beyond themselves right. This is what all of us are hoping for our kids. This is the same thing and spiritual maturity man. If you just think through maturity for your kids think through the same thing and spiritual maturity when you first come to know jesus when you make a decision and god brings you in and you say. I'm following cry. Believe jesus is god as hard as that is. It's like crazy as it sounds. Is that you know. I've got so many questions in my head. I'm i believe. Jesus is god. I believe he is who he says he was. When you make that decision do it's there's so much we're just happy to have you here. We're just happy that you've made that choice that you're part of the family that god's brought u. n. Nobody's getting mad at you. You don't know all the lingo and you don't have bible verses memorize who cares. Just we're stoke that you're here man. We're still that you've made that decision. Don't feel guilty about that eventually. You'll go through really st- selfish stage in your spiritual maturity okay. That's totally okay man. You're going to be asking yourself like you know. What does it look like for me to pray. And what kind of church do. I like to go to an kind of bible. Should i get and you're just you're like learning it's all about you. I think i like this kind of music. And i i like this kind of teaching and I like this version of the bible. Like all that. That's okay that's totally okay. But eventually what it looks like to grow and spiritual maturity as you'll start to recognize. God didn't just save you. It's not that. I christians and non christians and that's it like now that you're christian you just wait till you die no goddess growing you up and spiritual maturity and so as you grow you become more you have more knowledge of what it looks to be a follower of jesus you kind of move past the selfish stage. Which again that selfish stage is okay a little bit but as you move past that and you start to recognize oh man i got his redeeming the whole world. He's doing something way bigger. This story is bigger than just me. My personal relationship with god and my own little family like god is using me or wants to use me for something much much bigger and this is when you know that you're starting to mature in christ that god is now using you for something. Bigger you're having is that are beyond yourself. So where am i going with all this now. The like talking on. It seems maybe like. I've been going all over the place i mean. Just get straight to the point. The reason you and i are here today is because god expanded his family to include you. That's what that verse was saying. You are not my people and now your children of the living. God you are not my beloved but now you are my beloved. You are not my people but now you are my people. God did not have to call you into his family. He had his people. Unless you come from the lineage. Of abraham unless you're part of the jewish people That you know has claimed now jesus as your savior unless that's your lineage. God didn't like you were part of it and got expanded it out to not just include his children. The jews but also us gentiles. The ragamuffin people that have been called and saved by jesus got has expanded his family to include you. You weren't part of his family and yet he made a huge sacrifice for you to be adopted in many of us have been on this journey for a little while. now we've got some kids. Were learning how to stumble our way towards spiritual leadership. We're our best to mature and to grow as a disciple. And i guess i'm just wondering if god is calling some of us to expand our circle to invite others who aren't part of our family in i am the man i am today because god invited me into his family. But i'm also the man. I am today because a lot of other guys invited me into their family as well. If you were to read the bible cover to cover front to back you would quickly realize that. God has a heart for a lot of people but he has a special place in his heart for fans widows and foreigners these phrases come up over and over and over again in the scriptures. You can't read the bible without recognizing man like really loves and he cares for and as a heart for the orphans the widows and the foreigners that comes up so much in the bible and maybe spiritual maturity isn't just memorizing more verses or tithing more and listening to more kayla maybe spiritual maturity means that your heart starts to look more like the heart of god. This is probably why. James says in james one twenty-seven religion that is pure and faultless in the eyes of god. Is this listen anytime now. Writer says this is what god accepts as pure religion. We should probably listen. Listen to what he says. Religion that is pure and faultless in the eyes of god this to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. Here's what i want you to ask yourself right now. Who is not part of your family that needs the love and influence of a godly man. A lot of you guys have been part of the dad tired community for longtime were stumbling our way through this stuff but maybe for all of us spiritual maturity means that we start to take our eyes off of our self for a little bit and we start to look at the world around us and see where god's heart is hurting and how our heart can start to look more like his. Is there a kid at your church. Doesn't have a dad. What single moms dino. That need help. What kids around you and your neighborhood on your street at your kid's school that are fatherless who comes to mind. Here's the thing bro. The the world isn't going to be impressed by our fancy. Lingo are eloquent words. That won't be won over by political policies or extravagant church services with cool lights and fog machines and cool music. But you know what i think might get the world's attention you know what i think might make them stop and look twice at christians. Seen thousands of men from around the world. Say not only am. I gonna lay down my life for my own kids but also for the kids who don't have a dad. Maybe then the world might get a glimpse of our father because what is the father like. What is this god like that we serve his name is the lord rejoice in his presence. He's the father to the fatherless. The defender of the widows. This is god whose dwelling is wholly psalm..
Dad Tired
"dad" Discussed on Dad Tired
"In today's episode of the data tired. Podcast i'll talk about what it means to expand your influence as a dad. But i wanna take my friends over at make a fort for sponsoring today's episode one of the key indicators to me as a dad that i've purchased a good christmas gift for my kids is the fact that they're still playing with it weeks later literally as i record this episode. My kids are upstairs building. Four using the mak- fort kits from make fort dot fun when leyland. I are searching for good gifts to give our kids. We have three things that we look for number one. Does the toy require batteries. I hate batteries. I hate replacing them. I hate All the noises that battery operated toys create. I just don't want anything with batteries in the house. I want my kids to use toys. That don't require the number two. Does it require my children to use their imagination. I want to get them toys. That require them to think not toys that do the thinking for them and number three. I know it's a good toy. It can capture their attention for hours on end. This is why i love. The forts that make fort company provides. Their forts are made from durable cardboard. They can be used over and over again. They can be configured countless ways. So your kids can create something new every time and it's easily cleaned up and stored with their provided carrying case when not in use if you're wanting to get your kids off screens and allow them to be creative with their imagination. You must check out. Make a fort dot fun right now for a very limited time you can get five dollars off your purchase by going to make four dot fun forward slash. Dad tired again will put that link in the show notes. But it's make a dot fun ford slash dad tired and you'll get five dollars off your.