What happens when children lose their connection with nature, and how can storytelling help bring it back? Vardhini Amin, a children's book author and professional photographer from India, joins me to explore the power of imagination, creativity, and reconnecting with the natural world. Drawing from her childhood, her love of gardening, and her experiences as a mother, Vardhini shares the inspiration behind her fantasy book Forest Borns, where trees have souls and nature comes alive. We discuss how screen time, structured schedules, and changing family habits affect children's creativity and their connection with the outdoors. Vardhini also explains why storytelling can teach empathy and environmental awareness more effectively than lectures. Our conversation reminds us that nature is not separate from us, that children need the freedom to explore, and that even one person can make a meaningful difference. I believe you'll enjoy Vardhini's perspective on helping children and adults rediscover the wonder of the world around them. Highlights: 01:30 - How Vardhini's childhood inspired her creative career. 20:32 - Why children are losing their connection with nature. 29:00 - How storytelling helps children develop empathy for nature. 35:53 - Why unstructured play builds creativity and imagination. 40:33 - How gardening inspired her children's book Forest Borns. 44:58 - How one person can make a difference in protecting nature. About the Guest: Vardhini Amin is the award-winning author of The Forestborns, a fantasy novel for children published by Hachette India in 2024. The Forestborns tells a story of courage, healing, and the invisible ties that bind all living things. Set in a hidden realm where the souls of trees and plants slip from their rooted bodies after sunset, it follows Siah, a young sandalwood tree soul forced onto a dangerous quest to protect her kind. Nearby, a girl named Avni, who finds comfort in the forest while grappling with her own grief, begins to sense a growing threat to the woods she loves. As their journeys quietly converge, ancient magic stirs and a fragile bridge forms between two worlds, leading to a miracle the forest will never forget. A portrait photographer with over a decade of experience, storytelling has always been Vardhini’s true calling. She grew up on a steady diet of fables and fantasy, and that early love for imaginative worlds continues to shape her writing today. Her stories often explore the quiet magic hidden in everyday life- trees that speak, forests that remember, and unexpected friendships that change the way characters see the world. As a writer, she is drawn to the emotional worlds of children and young readers. Her work blends imagination with emotional realism, exploring themes of fear, belonging, resilience, and hope. Through her stories, she hopes to create spaces where young readers feel seen and inspired to look at the world around them with curiosity and empathy. Through The Forestborns, she hopes to rekindle a sense of wonder about nature and encourage young readers to see forests, plants, and wildlife as living companions in the shared story of our planet. When she isn’t writing or behind the camera, she finds calm among her indoor plants—a peaceful counterpoint to the joyful chaos of life with her two sons and their two adopted cats. Ways to connect with Vardhini**:** Website: www.vardhiniamin.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/vardhiniamin About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hello, everyone. Wherever you happen to be today. I'm glad you're with us. I am your host, Michael Hingson, and you are listening to and or watching Unstoppable Mindset, which is our podcast. We're really glad that you're with us today, and we're talking to someone who's quite a distance away from us today. We're talking to Vardhini Amin, and Vardhini is in India, and I'm in Southern California. Boy, it's amazing what technology allows us to do. But we get to do it and and have a lot of fun at it. Vardhini is a professional photographer. She is also an author. She has written a book for children and is writing another book for children, we're going to talk a lot about that. I'm really interested to to hear her perspectives and so on. So we'll get to all that. But for right now, Vardhini, I want to thank you and welcome you to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Vardhini Amin  01:55 Thank you so much for inviting me, Michael. This is Unreal, and I'm so glad to be here. Michael Hingson  02:01 Well, we're glad you're you're here as well, and looking forward to today. Why don't we start? I love to start this way. Most everybody's probably familiar with what I'm going to ask you. I'd love to learn kind of maybe about the early Vardhini growing up and so on. Tell us about that. Vardhini Amin  02:16 So I've been very fortunate, I can say, because I've had a very happy childhood. I have I was born in Nagpur, which is part of like the central India, and I grew up with my mom and dad and a huge extended family of you know brothers and sisters around me, and my cousins were my best friends growing up. I have a younger sister who's now actually living in the U.S. And I grew up, and my childhood feels like a blur, and it feels like a big box of happy memories because it was like that. You know, I think my parents put a lot of work towards us having a great childhood. So those years were very, very lovely for me. And I used to always love, you know, my imagination has always been very strong. So I still love watching, you know, your animated movies. You know, drawing characters and trying to learn how animation is made-that was a lot of my focus growing up. And then I did get into animation. Actually, I studied animation, and I worked in that for a while. Then my son was born, so we've traveled a lot in time. My son was born, and I had to take a break from work. So then I started exploring photography, and I got into photographing children and families. So, and then slowly the journey took me. You know, I always wanted to write. I had a lot of stories inside me, so eventually that happened too, and now I'm also an author. Michael Hingson  04:09 So, why did your sister move to Laramie, Wyoming? You had mentioned that earlier. Laramie's a good Laramie's a good Western town. A lot of history there. But anyway, go ahead. Vardhini Amin  04:23 Yes, yes, yes. So I've heard. So she got married. My brother-in-law works here, so they are currently living in Laramie, and I've heard it's a beautiful, beautiful town. Michael Hingson  04:37 You haven't been yet, huh? Vardhini Amin  04:39 I really, really hope to come, maybe in the next year or so. Michael Hingson  04:45 It's worth doing. It's worth going there. Laramie's a nice city, and there's a lot to photograph around Wyoming. It's a nice open country, and definitely, I hope that you get a chance to come over and and see it. Vardhini Amin  05:00 Yes, yes, I really, I really can't wait to come. I've heard so many beautiful things from my sister, and she actually visited there quite, quite for a longer time now, and her experience was running into an eight feet elk on her first walk in the woods. So that is awesome. Like I love animals, and I would love to experience that as well. Michael Hingson  05:26 I don't know whether the elk was really excited about her, but obviously they they must have got along because she's still with Vardhini Amin  05:34 us. Yes, they walked backwards slowly without spooking him, and then you know, just bolted from there. Yeah, Michael Hingson  05:46 yeah. But still, now bears would be different. I I wouldn't want to really get too involved with a bear because they tend to not be overly friendly. But that's okay. Vardhini Amin  05:59 Right, right. Thank you. I heard. I heard for the first time that there's a bear spray, and I had no idea that there's thing called a bear spray. Michael Hingson  06:10 There's a bear spray which is supposed to help protect you if you run into a bear and need to use it. You can you can spray them, and that will make them make them leave you alone. So there is that, but there are so many different kinds of animals. There there are a lot of animals and a lot of fun things. So I hope you get a chance to come over and and experience some of it. Yeah, Vardhini Amin  06:36 I I really hope so. Michael Hingson  06:39 You can come over and ride a horse. Vardhini Amin  06:42 I would love that. I would love anything to do with animals. Yes, I'm in. Michael Hingson  06:49 Well, so did you go to college? Vardhini Amin  06:52 I did. Or university? Yes, I did. I studied something that I do not use now. I was bachelor's in commerce, and then I did not use that as a background. I completely dove into the creative fields somehow because that's where my interest lie. But I did have a formal education where I went through school and high school and university, you know, high school, college, university, all those things I've done that, but I did not advance more into that. There was a time where I wanted to become a CA, a chartered accountant, but I'm glad I didn't go that route, and I quickly diverted to what I love doing. Michael Hingson  07:38 Yeah, unfortunately, the creative accountants are usually not the honest ones, so I'm glad you didn't go that way. Vardhini Amin  07:44 I have a family, a lot of chartered accountants in my family, so I can't say that. But this was the path for me, and I'm so lucky to be one of those people who can follow their passion and really love what the field that they are working in. It's something I really love doing. So not everyone can say that, and I feel very fortunate. Michael Hingson  08:10 So what what is your day job? What do you do for work? Because I'm sure that book sales don't totally support you by any means. Vardhini Amin  08:19 No, they sadly don't, and so I am a photographer. I have been doing it for the last 12 years, and I photograph children. Anything to do with children, like from newborn babies to you know older children, families, you know, portraits and lifestyle mainly, and then I also do some events related to children. You know, the kind of events that we have in India, also the birthdays, and then there are some other traditional events that happen around children. So we cover that, and pretty much I am I work alone. I hire a team when I need to, but usually I'm working alone the entire time. Michael Hingson  09:08 What kind of people hire you to take photographs? Vardhini Amin  09:12 So I think many people have this love because you know nowadays it's very easy to you. You have your iPhones and phones have started taking very good pictures, but I think there's still a love for you know the professional. I don't know. I can't say professional photography, but somehow I I can't prove it to you, but it's better because it also comes with a skill to photograph. It's not just pointing something and thinking. So, and it's a whole process where you arrange. You have the perfect lighting. You have some props going on, or you are at a location. You're dressed to the you know to fit the. Location and to fit the character, the themes or the setting, and then there's a lot of post processing that goes through it, where you know you make them as beautiful as possible. And I think I don't know about the future, but till now, I don't think phones can match that yet. Michael Hingson  10:18 So Vardhini Amin  10:19 and people also love, yeah. People love, you know, being photographed and those memories, and then we create albums of it, and you know, prints and frames to go on the walls. And I think people still love doing that. So I'm hired by basically families and people who love photography, who love to be, you know to love to have those memories to look back to, so anybody basically you know whoever wants to be photographed. Michael Hingson  10:48 Have you done any photography or work for like magazines and so on? Done any professional work to get pictures for for some of those places? Vardhini Amin  10:59 No, not for a magazine or a newspaper or that kind of thing, but I've done professional shoots like you know designers and boutique who make kids' clothing or apparel, and we have those kind of photo shoots where you have child models and then they come in and you have to you know follow a schedule. There are changes, and it's a whole production. So I've done those kind of shows. Michael Hingson  11:26 Well, I know that you focus on on children, but some of us who are classified as adults are children at heart. Do we count? Vardhini Amin  11:34 Absolutely. Oh, I would. So when I come to the U.S. I'll come and find you, and I'll take your pictures. Michael Hingson  11:42 Oh, and and I'll have my dog and my cat here. So Vardhini Amin  11:47 absolutely, I want to give a shout out to your dog Roselle, and I've been reading about her and such a beautiful dog. I mean, I've saw I've seen her pictures, and I had a dog like her, who passed away three years ago, and he was such a such a beautiful, beautiful addition to our lives. You know, we miss him every day. And let me tell you a small funny thing about him: when he was a puppy, he had this habit of sitting in our laps. Me and my sister, I'm talking about, and then he grew up to be this giant dog, and he still would do that when we visited. So he lived with my parents, and we used to visit, and he would come and sit in our laps, you know, this giant dog, and we were tiny in front of him after a while, so I really miss that about him. We used to laugh, and my current my Michael Hingson  12:47 current my current guide dog does that. He still likes to sit in laps, and he's almost 10 years old. One of my favorite stories about him, though, was once soon after I got him, we were on an airplane flight going from Ontario, California to Dallas, Texas, and we're actually going further. But this flight was going from Ontario to Dallas. And one of the things I like to do is to, if I am able to to get on early enough, take the dog up to the cockpit and let the dog visit with the pilots because they they love to get a dog fix. Well, we had the chance to do that on this particular flight, and so we went up to the cockpit, and the pilots didn't even notice us. They were busy doing their pre-flight checks and so on. And my dog this and my dog decided that this was not acceptable. He literally jumped in the pilot's lap, and and the and the pilot just loved it. And we actually and he said, "I've got to get a selfie of this. And so he did. He got a picture. I have the the picture. It's really cute. But yeah, my my dog Alamo loves to sit in laughs. Vardhini Amin  14:02 Oh, that's so sweet. I think this is the only kind of hijack that's allowed. I guess. Michael Hingson  14:07 Yeah. Well, yeah. That that works. Now, Roselle, Roselle was interesting. Roselle figured out what cameras were all about, and she loved to get her picture taken, she always-if if somebody had a camera, she would sit down and she would stare right at the camera. And there were other times that we had other experiences relating to to cameras and television shows and so on. And she was always ready to perform or do things for the camera. Speaker 1  14:38 Oh my gosh, Michael Hingson  14:38 she was funny. Vardhini Amin  14:41 Dogs are such a joy. I mean, you know, every day is like you just watch them. I actually have two cats right now, but I mean, I love them to death. But dogs are something else. I mean, the an energy that they have is something else. Michael Hingson  15:00 Yeah, they're different. I like cats too. I have a cat. We rescued her 11 years ago when my wife was still alive, and my wife passed away. But Stitch, our cat, is still here, and I think it's going to be here for a long time. We we all get together very well, and at night she sleeps right up against me, which is which is fine, and Vardhini Amin  15:24 that's so comfy. Michael Hingson  15:25 I have the door closed now, though, because she'll probably be getting hungry in a little bit. And one of the things about Stitches, she likes to get petted while she eats. And if the door isn't closed, she's going to come in and bother me until I go in and pet her. And I can't very well do that while we're doing a podcast, so the door's closed. Vardhini Amin  15:43 That is what I have done, Abell, because I have locked them out. Otherwise, they would be roaming all Michael Hingson  15:48 around. Yeah, that's kind of funny, but you know that that's great. So, so photography has been working for you, which is which is great, and I'm I'm glad that you know that you have been a been able to make all of that to make all that work, but you know you you do you have any notion why you really decided to go into the creative world, both photography and authors and and so on. What what made you decide that you wanted to do that? Vardhini Amin  16:27 I I never decided actually, Michael. I I just was inclined to, you know, do stuff. So from as a child, I've I've done. I still love doing art all the time, I have learned, you know, some classical singing. I used to do that for a while. I used to love dancing and anything creative is what got my attention. You know, any kind of art in in in India, we have this powdered, colored powder, which is called rangoli. I don't know if you know that. And when there are festivals, we generally use that and create art forms in front of the door. It's considered auspicious. So I used to make those, you know, rangolis and anything art. You know, I used to love reading books. I used to write stories. My English teachers had, you know, it happened to me twice or thrice, but they had crossed out the essays on my, you know, exam paper and written too long, and they wouldn't grade it. So I used to always pick, you know, you know, things that could tell a story. So I think I never decided. I never sat and decided it. My parents knew as well. So when I eventually thought, and you know, what was the really a point which was like a catalyst for me was watching the movie The Lion King, which I love, and I just wanted to tell stories or be able to make animation, something related to making those kind of you know stories. I wanted to be part of that, so I got into that's why I got into animation. But then I soon realized it was a you know corporate machine where I was stuck in one department, and I couldn't contribute to the actual pre-production of the story making. So I I started pushing myself in that direction more and more. Photography was again my dad, you know, had that camera when we were young, you know, he used to he used to love taking pictures. So we used to take his camera. We had those reels back then, right? The film roll, and we used to get to click the last five pictures of our choice. Me and my sister. So we used to do all creative stuff, you know, with that. So it was never a conscious decision where I decided, okay, I want to go the creative route. It was how I am programmed, I guess. So it had to be that. It had to be that. Yeah. Michael Hingson  19:14 Yeah. Well, that's there's nothing wrong with that. As long as you're able to live out your passion. That is that is really great, and and you're you're continuing to take pictures and and so on. Does your sister work? Does she do anything? Vardhini Amin  19:31 She has just taken a break because she had to move to the U.S. and the visa thing now thing is a thing, but she has been a corporate girly, so she is. She has worked for corporate companies. She's in HR, but she has that creative gene in her as well. She she takes amazing pictures, and she's good at art, and she has the creative side. She's just. Not surrendered herself to it yet. Right. I hope you know. I don't know if she'll do it, but she has that bone in her body. Michael Hingson  20:09 Has she taken any pictures over there in Wyoming and sent them to you, showing some of the country and all that? Vardhini Amin  20:15 Every day, every okay. Michael Hingson  20:19 But but she didn't get a she didn't get a picture of the big elk, huh? Vardhini Amin  20:23 She didn't, but I I did get pictures of like a really really active baby moose, you know, dancing on a lake when they visited the. Yeah, they did visit the. I think it was Mount Rushmore and then Yellowstone National Park. Yeah, yeah, that was breathtaking. I mean, I've seen those pictures, and it was. I can't wait to go there. Michael Hingson  20:49 Yeah, well, I'm I'm sure you'll you'll enjoy it. Well, in writing your book, and and some of the things that you talk about relating to being an author and so on. You talk about the fact that there's a disconnect between children and the natural world. What made you start to think about that? And tell me a little bit more about what that's all about. Vardhini Amin  21:13 So you know, as children, we used to play, you know, a lot outside when screens did not exist. When you know, so me as a parent can compare it to me as a child and how I grew up. Of course, it's never going to be the same. But you know, nature used to be such a part of our childhood, and now I feel like it started to become something like a background for the children of today. I don't know how how it is in the U.S. but I'm talking specifically about children. My own children. I have two two sons, and you know my son was two, and I took him out, and he I made him remove his shoes and step into the grass, and it's he said it's pointy. I do not want to get on the grass, and you know it makes you think. It makes you think that you know children today experience nature almost like it's a background in their lives. You know they see you know trees and parks or forests, and they don't always feel connected. We are more and more in a box, we have boxed ourselves. Not just children, even you know adults. I'm talking about everyone. Yeah. So you know, when I was thinking about writing stories for children, I kept wondering, you know, what would happen if, you know, how do I not make nature as just a backdrop, you know, how do I make it a character? How do I, you know, try to bridge the gap between, you know, the slow disconnect that is happening between nature and humans? So that became the idea of my first book that I wrote, and that's how I, you know, it was just me observing around me how there's a growing disconnect, and I thought I had to, you know, write something about it, you know, do my little bit to see if I could bridge the gap. Michael Hingson  23:21 Why do you think that there's a growing disconnect? What do you think is causing that? Vardhini Amin  23:26 I think it's more mainly the urban life that's contributing. There's a lot of technology screens, and also as a parent, I feel like children have very structured childhoods now than we had when we were younger, so it's very structured. Where you have your school, your classes, your this, your that, and you know this is your TV time, this is your gaming time, this is your screen time, and this is your. So it it is kind of like that where I am around right now. I see my friends, their children, other people around me, and it's too structured. There's no free play. There's no, you know, doing what you want. So childhood has simply changed, and you know, many children grow up in cities. They spend more and more time indoors. So I think that is why I felt the need to, you know. Do Michael Hingson  24:24 you have a Vardhini Amin  24:25 think like that? Do Michael Hingson  24:26 you have an idea of why that is happening, though? Why is it that people are spending less time outside? Why is it that life is so much more structured, especially for children? Do you have any thoughts about why that Vardhini Amin  24:42 is? This is a very hard question, but I think it's it's the fear is more now. You know, if it was my mom who would let me out, you know, to go and play outside, she wouldn't worry about me unless it's dark. Did not have a phone with me, but the same thing me as a mother. When my sons go out to play, I'm constantly worrying about where they are, and you know they have their, you know they have a phone with them. My older son has a phone with them, so I'll make sure I'll keep calling them at intervals, and you know, so I think I think technology does play a part where it's the sense of community has declined, where we have each one has their own preferences going on in their own screens. You don't have you don't even watch TV as a you know as a family. You each have your own preferences going around, so I think technological advancement is one of the reason, and also we've grown very. The sense of community has reduced as well. I feel like we are more nuclear, we are more separated into families rather than you know the whole community being. I'm sure it's not like that everywhere. But where I come from, this is what I observe on a daily Michael Hingson  26:08 basis. Well, you know, it used to be when when I was growing up, which is a long time ago now. Although we had more than one television in the house, most of the time we watched television together. That was part of community because we didn't have several televisions that could pick up all the channels and so on. So we watched television together. Now it's so easy for everyone to have their own TV. It's so easy for everyone to have their own devices that it tends to be an issue where people just are off doing their thing, and and I think you're right. There is a lot less community than there used to be. I don't know now with a lot of families whether even dinner time is is a family event. Maybe it is. I don't know, but but I know that a lot of people tend to just like to go off in their own direction, and it does it does create challenges for for everyone. I think, Vardhini Amin  27:14 and also the technology. You know, even if you're eating as a family, the TV is playing in the background. So half of us, you know, we still have our phones beside us. So I think that is playing a huge part where entertainment is personalized to each person and each their own. And also, there's a growing culture. I don't know if I'll sound, you know, I don't know, controversial for the English, but people are promoting a lot of, uh, you know, be content in yourself, be, you know, find your, you know, love within yourself. But you know, growing up used to be such a family thing where you rely on other people, and you need other humans. You need that bond. You need that structure. But I don't know. I've seen a lot of people promoting, you know, being okay to be alone and being okay being, you know, by yourself and being content with that. That kind of a culture is also on the rise. If Speaker 2  28:23 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  28:57 Yeah, I I hear you. I know that for me, I'm the only one in this house, but I do like it when other people are around. I I am capable of doing things alone, and I think that's important to be able to do. But I also value very much the whole concept of community, and I think that it it is an art that somewhat we're losing. People are just not forming communities like they used to, and I think that that is creating more of a challenge for a lot of people. Vardhini Amin  29:32 Yeah, and also it's not about living alone. I live alone as well. I'm just saying to just to have some, you know, have our people to have people that we could call when we need them to have the sense of community. They may not be around you all the time, but just to have people that you love and trust and depend on-that is very important. Michael Hingson  29:59 So why did. Do you feel that it was important to write a story about connecting and and rekindling connection Vardhini Amin  30:08 for the same reasons? Because you know, I just kept noticing how when I was thinking about you know writing for children, I kept wondering what would happen? You know, I could create empathy. So my whole idea was to create empathy. And how do you create empathy? Is you care about something that you love. You care about things that you feel empathy for. So, if I am able to make nature or trees as characters that you know have their own voice, have something to say about their situation and lives, I thought you know it could create the tension that is needed, and it would create empathy. It would create some kind of connect that would make people feel, you know, that they need to protect or they need to care about the the nature around us. So that was the whole idea, you know, to create empathy via storytelling, to give them a to give nature a voice to give to make them like characters that you would care about you know to for them to have you know I know it's not scientific and they do not have feelings but there's more and more research about plants doing amazing and wonderful you know things they are capable of. So, you know, I just went one step above and added feelings for plants as well. So people could see people, especially children who are, you know, growing up. If they grow up with the sense of empathy towards nature, they would care more. So that was the whole objective behind writing this. Michael Hingson  32:02 Do you feel that that writing this as a story is a lot better than just presenting facts and having children listen to lectures and so on? Vardhini Amin  32:13 Oh, definitely. I think you know if you think back, who who were your most favorite professors or teachers, the ones who you know told stories. They did not just pass on the information. I think storytelling is in everything that you hear. You know, you pick up a nonfiction book, which is like telling you, you know, how to live your life and all. They will also include stories. You know, humans are hardwired to respond to stories, and I don't think anything is not storytelling. If you want people to listen, it is in the form of storytelling. So whatever you you know, whatever way you're presenting the information, it has to be in a form of a story. So storytelling is the greatest weapon. It's the greatest tool to have get people's attention. I feel Michael Hingson  33:09 well, and I I think there's a lot of evidence to support that. I think that storytelling and hearing stories is so important because when you're telling a story, you're you're making it personal. If you're if you're doing a good job with the story, you're drawing people in, and you're you're talking about it in a way that nothing else can equal. I know for me as a keynote speaker, on on one side, people want to hear my story. Although there's more that a lot of corporations and organizations want to hear, which is also okay. But I know that when I'm telling the story, I usually hear afterward people say, "We were with you in the World Trade Center, we followed you with every breath that you took, with everything that you said. We followed you, and we we were there for every moment. We forgot where we were. We were with you, and I think that is so important. Yeah, Vardhini Amin  34:21 and that feeling stays also. It stays with them for so much longer. They cannot forget, you know, when you tell it like a story. So any kind of, and you know, it it stays with the children. It stays with the people if you present it in a form of story. Michael Hingson  34:43 I think the important thing is that when you're telling it as a story, or however you're doing it, that you're telling something that's real, that's personal. You're not just making up something to try to convince somebody of something. It has to be a real, true story because people can sense when you're. When you're real and when you're not, and children especially can sense when you're real and when you're not. Vardhini Amin  35:06 Absolutely, I agree with you. Even when I write fantasy, fantasy is something. It's just not true, but you always start at a place which is believable, and then you build on that. So it's never that you you start with a fantasy. You have to begin with a real thing, and then you build a fantasy on top of that. That's when it becomes believable. Otherwise, it is not going to connect with people. Michael Hingson  35:33 Yeah, it's really important to to do that, and I think there's so much value in telling stories. I was before I became a speaker when I was living in New Jersey and before that in California and selling. I learned that having stories to tell about what I was doing and and the products that I was selling and relating customer experiences and doing it as stories was so much more substantive and was so much more real to people because they could picture themselves in those same situations. It's it's not the same as you're just giving people a bunch of facts because they're not gonna they're not gonna pay attention to that. They want, they want to know how they relate. Vardhini Amin  36:24 Absolutely, I agree 100% Michael Hingson  36:28 Yeah, so I think it's really important to be able to do that. Well, one of the things that you and you talked about it a little bit earlier. You talked about children, and I and I would say I think adults too. But you talked about spending time outdoors unstructured, without an agenda. Why is that important as opposed to just being a little bit more structured? Vardhini Amin  36:53 I wouldn't say that it's important or less important or more important. I feel like it takes away the pressure. It takes away the, you know, because if you have a structured, even us, you know, as adults, if we have a meeting later today, it's gonna always be on our minds, even though we are doing something else right now. So when we put that on children, you might you a structure is needed, a routine is needed for children, but I cannot make it very rigid. You know, making it rigid it really affects their brain. So if you let them be free, you know, I think it grows Their imagination, it would you the brain would have its free time to you know think about things, imagine things, come up with new ideas, and you know I think that would really help their personality grow, their their imagination grow, their world grow a little more. So if you put them in a you know tight schedule and too structured, I'm I'm not against you know completely unstructured. I mean not against complete structure, but you know there has to be free play. There has to be unstructured time where they really can grow into their personality, they can grow their imagination and so on. So yeah, that's why I feel it's important. Michael Hingson  38:30 Well, there is there's a lot to be said for having time to play and pretend, and having the the freedom to be able to do that. As as you point out, it's all about being able to use your imagination, and if everything is structured, you don't get to do that. Yeah, which is which is too unfortunate. Well, so oh, go ahead. Vardhini Amin  38:53 No, I just wanted to add a small point to that. Where I think books do that more than TVs and screens do that because when you watch something on TV, it might be the greatest film of all time or the greatest show, but it is telling you what to think. It is telling you to see what they are showing you, as opposed to when you read a book, when you read a story, you are free to imagine. You know, there's no limit to. So I think that is kind of a really cool thing where children who read books Michael Hingson  39:30 can have a more developed sense of imagination. Yeah. No, and I think there's there's a lot of truth to that. I just think there's a lot of room for imagination. That's that's all one can say, and so I'm I'm glad that you're really promoting imagination with what you do. So important to do. Thank you. So, tell me about yeah your your childhood and how that. Helped in and how that was involved in writing forest borns. Vardhini Amin  40:05 So the forest borns is a book about tree souls. So there's a concept like we all are familiar with, where every living being has a soul inside of them, and the book has these souls because their bodies are the tree, the tree and plant bodies are rooted to the earth. The souls have evolved to be free beings. So, when the tree sleeps at night, the souls, you know, emerge from their rooted bodies, and you know. So this concept came from, you know, my own love of gardening, and I've grown up with my grandmother and my aunts and my mom being amazing gardeners. They their love for plants and that was passed on to me. And I've always seen them caring for plants, talking to plants. There was so much, you know, love overall for plants and garden and having your own, you know, little garden in a balcony or in a yard. So I think I I just took it forward and I did, you know, there was a time when I had hundreds of plant in a very tiny balcony in my apartment. So you know, I used to talk to them, you know, and and from there the idea came where you know animals can move and emot and talk, and animals, including humans, as humans are animals too. And then why can't you know why did plants evolve like that? So maybe their souls are free to experience life the way we do, so that's where the idea came from. Michael Hingson  41:47 Well, when did the book actually get published? Vardhini Amin  41:51 So the book came out late 2024, so it's been around for a year, year and a half now. Michael Hingson  41:57 Okay, Vardhini Amin  41:58 and I found an amazing agent in the U.S. as well, so she is also working with me to hopefully find a publisher for it in the U.S. as well. It's been around for a while, though. Michael Hingson  42:14 So it isn't actually published in the U.S. yet. It's in India, but not in the U.S. Vardhini Amin  42:19 Not in the U.S. Michael Hingson  42:20 Okay. Well, hopefully it will be. We're putting the book cover up in in our show notes, so people will be aware of Vardhini Amin  42:29 it. But thank you so much. Michael Hingson  42:30 That that is definitely you know interesting. You you talk about some some challenges in the book. You talk about things like forest fires, Environment issues and so on. How did you bring that in and not make it a preachy, teachy kind of thing? But how did you how did you bring those kinds of elements into it in just a way to naturally add to the book? I Vardhini Amin  42:58 think it goes back to what we were discussing before is if children are very quick to you know sense when they are being lectured or you know just tore back. So I think we have the the the challenge for writing for children is definitely stop being preachy and stop turning it into a moral, you know, a lesson or something like that. So instead of focusing on those messages, I I usually focused on the characters and the emotions. And when the readers care, you know, the children or any, you know, my book has been read by all ages. So when they care about the characters. They naturally begin to see the message behind it and care about the world that those characters live in, which is our world, which is you know nature around us. So yeah, so being preachy it doesn't get us anywhere. So if we focus on the emotions, I think it is where the message is easily, and then people and children are smart enough to see the message behind it by themselves. Michael Hingson  44:09 I think that's a really good point. They are smart enough to see the message behind it without you having to force it on on people. Do you do you hear often that people relate to the characters in the book. Vardhini Amin  44:23 I did, I did. So there is a there is a character. So there's a few things I wanted to tell, and one of the things that I really believe in is one person can make a big difference. You know, you cannot say that you know I am one person and I cannot do anything. Or what would I, you know, accomplish by making a change? So that was a huge point that I wanted to focus on. So the protagonist, although is a tree soul, the. There is a very important second protagonist, which is a 12-year-old girl, who you know, despite of it seemingly looking impossible, where she cannot bring a change to whatever situation she's facing, which is actually, you know, relating to deforestations. There's going to be a huge part of the force cut down, and you always see it as a 12-year-old girl not being able to do anything. But she does it anyway. She does it anyway, and that was a one of the messages that I wanted to give through this book as well. He, you know, one person can make a difference. You have to try, and you never know what wonders might come around. Michael Hingson  45:48 I think that's a very important message that that in reality, one person can make a difference. When you're dealing with something that's right, when you feel very strongly, and you can get other people to relate to it. I think it's very important that people realize that one person can make a big difference. Vardhini Amin  46:06 Yeah, and unknowingly, because it's a human character, the reader or the child who's reading it automatically relates to this character, and you know, I think it. I hope it. You know, puts that sense of you know bravery in them that you know I can accomplish anything that I put my mind to. Michael Hingson  46:30 Yeah, which is which is a good thing. What what do you think happens when children grow up and and don't have a strong relationship or involvement with nature, you know, which is what we've been talking about-the fact that that that doesn't happen. But what do you think happens to to children when that then that occurs? Vardhini Amin  46:54 I think so. When you know, I went to these book festivals promoting my book and talking about my book. So I I got the I had the privilege of signing a few books, and I used to write on them that you know you have to love nature because your nature and nature is you. So it is not something separate from us anyway. We are part of it, so I think if we do have a disconnect, I think we lose something. We lose the sense of belonging. You know that I also used to tell that when you say home, we talk about our you know four walls, the home that we've built, but actually the earth is our little home, and we are all part of, you know, everything is interconnected, and everything is part of each other. So, without that feeling, it becomes easier, you know, to see nature as something separate from us rather than you know something we are a part of. So, I think we are inherently losing a part of ourselves if we grow up without a relationship with nature, is it is it too? Did it sound too preachy? I don't know. I think I really do. No, Michael Hingson  48:09 I think I think it's. I think you raise a very good and very valid point that that I hope people will think about. Well, when children and I'm going to say adults as well read your book. What kind of a relationship with nature do you hope that people will develop? I know you want. I know you want your book to make a difference. What kind of a difference will it make? Vardhini Amin  48:35 I think you so immediately you start to see nature in a different light, you know, with more curiosity, with more wonder. Since the I have used anthropomorphism for this book, so the cat, the the trees are alive. They have their own voice. They are so automatically, even though if you love the book or hate it or don't care about it, whatever it is, if you've read the book, you will immediately you know look at a tree differently. You'll see, you you'll wonder. It it might create a little more curiosity, a little more wonder. Maybe you know you just start noticing a plant or a tree where they pass every day, or maybe they imagine what stories might you know, exist, you know, in a forest after a sunset, or maybe, you know, watched the potted plant in my, you know, living room thinks of me. Anything of that sort, you know, it might just spark, you know, a different way of thinking, you know, that they are looking at us, and what do they think about us? You know. So I hope, I really hope, it makes them look at nature differently. It makes them look at plants and trees differently. Michael Hingson  49:52 I know that in reality there are studies that are showing that buildings or places where there are a lot. Plants tend to bring out more happiness in people. That when there are a lot of plants, people tend to be happier and a little bit calmer. And I also know that there have been studies that talk about how plants behave when people think positive or not positive thoughts, and so I think there's a lot more communication capable, and there are a lot more ways that we could be involved with, with nature, with plants, and so on than we tend to really think we we are doing or we can do. It gets back to the whole idea of we tend not to really focus nearly as much on the value of those things that are different than we are and what they bring to the world. Vardhini Amin  50:50 Troy, we are very right. I think there's a lot to discover about plants and trees that we don't know yet, and year after year we we hear a lot of things. They they react to light. They react to vibration. They send out signals. They send out. They care for each other. They are like they live in a you know they they create the the micro environment around them. They help you know weaker trees send out warning signals. There's so much of scientific studies coming out about plants and trees, I think we are just scratching the surface there. Michael Hingson  51:28 Yeah, and I think it's really important that we do more to recognize this. It's it's so important, I think, to do, and I hope that people will will do more of it, but you know we'll see. I hope that your book will make a a difference in the in the minds of people. Yeah, Vardhini Amin  51:51 I hope so. Michael Hingson  51:53 Well, if children and adults tend to learn to see the world is more alive, and that we're all part of of a bigger picture. How might that change the way they treat the world? Vardhini Amin  52:09 What do you hope will Michael Hingson  52:11 happen? Vardhini Amin  52:13 I think we'll just treat it differently if we if we think they they are more if they're more of course they are alive. So we've just forgotten. We tend to forget they are alive. So if we start, if it is reminded to us, it we we remember when we see them that they are alive. I think we'll definitely treat them with more respect. We'll treat them differently. I think empathy, you know, naturally just grows when children feel that connection, or anybody feels that connection. So I think the whole idea is there'll be more protection laws. There'll be more, you know, we'll start caring about it more, and that that is the whole idea. Michael Hingson  53:00 Yeah. Well, with forest borns to start with that, what if you were to summarize it? What's one thing that you want people to take away from the book? Vardhini Amin  53:12 I just I just want them to realize that there's a world around them which could be brimming, you know, with stories, it might be full of quiet stories, and we are a part of that story too. So that's a beautiful thing to take away from the book. That you know, it's not. You know, humans have a lot of main character energy, and we need to look beyond that, and we need to see a bigger picture that we are part of. So, yeah. Michael Hingson  53:45 So, do you talk to your plants and flowers every day? Vardhini Amin  53:48 I I do not talk every day, but I do talk to them a lot. I sing to them a lot. Michael Hingson  53:54 Yeah, I I will say that when I go into a room where where they are, if if I remember or if I reach out and I touch the pots, yeah, I talk with them and I I love to think positive thoughts. I think that's important to do. Vardhini Amin  54:09 It's back and forth. It's it is going from you to them and then to you. Michael Hingson  54:14 Yeah, it it does go both ways. So so your your next book you think will be out near the end of the year. Vardhini Amin  54:22 Yeah, yeah, I hope so. Michael Hingson  54:23 And what's what's its name? Vardhini Amin  54:26 It doesn't have a name. We have a working title called "A Friend in the Clouds, but I think that'll change because it's still in the Michael Hingson  54:36 works. What? That's okay. You've got time. That's the the privilege and the right of being an author-you can wait and make the name at the last minute, but but you'll get there with it. Are you are you going to write more books? Vardhini Amin  54:48 Absolutely, I I want to write as many books I can as I can. I just I love writing and and I think it is such a good. It's like opening a you know. A wall or a tap that has, you know, you let out everything that's inside you. It's like a, it's like you know, putting my imagination out there. So it it is something that gives me a lot of joy. So I will definitely keep writing forever. Michael Hingson  55:17 Well, you're writing mostly about children. What about adults? What can what can you do, or what do you think that might be able to be done to help adults also change the way they view all of this? Vardhini Amin  55:30 So when I so I strongly believe that we shouldn't dumb things down for children at all. I think we should present because we kind of underestimate the intelligence of children, so I think we should, you know, treat. So when I wrote this book, I did not write it for children. I wrote it with a sense that this is also for children. So there is no age limit to who can read this book. I have had, you know, people my age and people your age read it and say wonderful things about it. So it is something to take away for everyone. So I think anyone who loves nature would love to read this book, and it really doesn't have a specific age, you know, where I would put it, you know, it's for everyone, is what I would say. So I tend to write that kind of ideas where I'm not targeting a specific age group. I'm just putting a message or a story up there, and anyone can read it Michael Hingson  56:36 for everyone. Yeah. So by the way, how old are your sons? Vardhini Amin  56:40 So my younger one is eight, and my older one is 14. Michael Hingson  56:44 Now, have they read the book? Vardhini Amin  56:46 Yeah, my older son has read the book. My younger one, I think he's it's for two advances for his reading level. So maybe in another couple of years, he should. Maybe he Michael Hingson  56:56 will. Well, that's cool. Well, if people want to reach out to you and and talk with you and learn from you and so on, how can they do that? Vardhini Amin  57:08 They can always reach out over email. I can share my email, which is my name, Vardhini Amin. Can you spell that email? So it's V A R D H I N I. i a m i n at rate gmail.com. Michael Hingson  57:28 So  at gmail yes.com okay Speaker 3  57:34 yes Michael Hingson  57:35 well I hope people will um will reach out to you and I think that would be a good thing. You have a lot of good messages, and I think that it's important that people do have the opportunity to consider them, and that they'll consider them in a positive way. I will also say that if anyone out there would like to reach out to me, I'd love to hear from you. I'm easy to reach at [email protected]. That's s p e a k e r at m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com. And please, wherever you are, write a review for the podcast. We really would love to get your thoughts, and we and I think everyone who watches or listens to the podcast, or might be considering watching or listening to the podcast, love to see reviews that people put out. So we'd appreciate it if you would do it. And for all of you, including you, Vardhini, if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on Unstoppable Mindset, we'd love an introduction. I think that would be great. But for now, we're going to say goodbye, and Vardhini Again, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful. Vardhini Amin  58:46 Thank you, thank you so much for having me. I had such a fun time, and it's an honor really to be talking to you. And you're doing an amazing and wonderful job with this podcast. And I've been listening to the episodes, and it's it's a really really great way to connect with people all over the world. Michael Hingson  59:10 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back, and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people. Differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

How can we protect children from sexual abuse without raising them to live in fear? My guest, Joelle Casteix, is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who turned her painful experience into a lifelong mission of advocacy, education, and prevention. After uncovering how her Catholic high school covered up abuse, Joelle became a leading voice for survivors, helping change laws and hold institutions accountable. Today, she works to prevent child sexual abuse in schools, churches, and communities while helping parents raise empowered children. Joelle and I discuss how predators use grooming and trust to target children, why organizations sometimes protect their reputations instead of victims, and the simple steps parents can take to teach body boundaries, recognize warning signs, and encourage open communication. We also explore survivor healing, the importance of believing those who speak out, and how better training and stronger reporting policies can help prevent future abuse. Joelle's journey reminds us that even the most painful experiences can lead to meaningful change and that protecting children begins with awareness, courage, and a willingness to listen. Highlights: 02:12 - Joelle shares her journey from childhood abuse survivor to advocate. 13:53 - Simple ways parents can teach boundaries and protect children. 23:12 - How survivor advocacy can create healing and lasting change. 30:54 - How institutions cover up abuse and predators build trust. 41:21 - Warning signs of child grooming and online exploitation. 48:42 - Why child protection policies need training and accountability. About the Guest: Joelle Casteix is an award-winning author, journalist, podcaster, and internationally recognized speaker—and one of the leading global advocates for survivors of child sexual abuse and institutional cover-up. A survivor of abuse in the Catholic Church, her own pursuit of justice catalyzed a decades-long career dedicated to protecting children, amplifying survivor voices, and holding powerful institutions accountable. A trusted media voice and go-to expert for legislators, journalists, and policymakers, Joelle’s work focuses on how institutions—including religious organizations, public schools, and other youth-serving systems—enable and conceal abuse; the essential role parents and communities play in prevention; and how survivor-centered laws, accountability, and emerging technology can disrupt cycles of harm. She has testified in support of victim-friendly legislation in numerous states and was the sole survivor selected to testify on behalf of California’s landmark AB 218, which opened a three-year civil window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Joelle is a founding board member and current Board Chair of the Zero Abuse Project, where she has helped shape national prevention and accountability strategies. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the National Center to Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation (NCSESAME), supporting national efforts to prevent educator sexual misconduct and provide resources for survivors, families, and professionals. She is the host of the Crossing the Line podcast, featuring conversations with journalists, lawmakers, survivors, and experts working at the intersection of abuse prevention, accountability, and justice. Through national print, broadcast, and podcast appearances, Joelle translates complex institutional failures into clear, actionable insight for the public. A leading voice on digital accountability and ethical AI in child protection, Joelle has presented to United Nations member agencies and international audiences across Europe, including at The Hague. She is the bestselling author of The Well-Armored Child: A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and The Power of Responsibility, based on her widely viewed TEDx talk, as well as The Compassionate Response and Scram!. She is a former adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. Ways to connect with Joelle**:** Website: Casteix.com Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcasteix/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joellecasteix Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crossing-the-line-the-ncsesame-podcast/id1851485137 Zero Abuse Project: https://zeroabuseproject.org/ NCSESAME: NCSESAME.org About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. Today our guest is Joelle Casteix, and Joelle has an interesting story to tell. She's been involved with child abuse at the in the Catholic Church, and I'm sure she'll talk some about that. But that turned into, for her, a career that went in a lot of different directions in dealing with child abuse and so on. So, I'm I'm anxious to to hear her story, and and I hope everyone else is as well. I only will say about all of that that my cat says she's constantly abused because she doesn't get enough food, but that's a different story. My dog says that same thing, and and I don't listen to either of them very well. Joelle, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Joelle Casteix  01:54 Thank you for having me. Yeah, all animals do that. My my dog consistently thinks that I'm starving him to death. Yeah, actually, my Michael Hingson  02:02 cat doesn't so much complain about not having enough food, but she wants to be petted while she eats. So, when I do podcasts, I have to close the door and put her on the outside, unless she's just eaten and she'll stay on the back of my desk chair for the whole podcast episode. And she has done that a couple times. Joelle Casteix  02:22 Oh, that's pretty cool. Michael Hingson  02:23 Yeah, it is. It's kind of fun to have a a cat wrapped around your head. Well, anyway, welcome to the the podcast. We're really glad that you're here. Why don't we start with kind of the early Joelle? Tell us about Joelle and some of the early stuff, and we'll go from there. Joelle Casteix  02:39 Well, like you said, and I want to clear up. I when you say involved in sex abuse in the Catholic Church, I'm not a perpetrator. I am a I should have made that Michael Hingson  02:50 clear. Yeah. Oh Joelle Casteix  02:51 no, that's that's okay. It's one of those words like, want to make sure you make that clear. But so I have a Michael Hingson  02:58 son that messes with your microphone, but that's a Joelle Casteix  03:00 different story now. Oh yeah, so. I live in Orange County, California, where I was born and raised. And when I attended a very prestigious high school here in the area called Modern Day High School, it's still very well known. I was sexually abused by the choir director over a period of two years, and it's one of those things that you know you think that survivors think that they're the only one, but as time passes, you realize that you know there were other victims, there were other victims of my perpetrator, there are other victims of many perpetrators at the school. There was an extensive cover-up. Kids like me were targeted by these bad guys because, you know, I didn't have the greatest home life in the world. My mom had drinking had drinking problem, and my dad was in denial and trying to fix all that. So, you know, kids who fall through the cracks often fall into the the palms of child predators, Michael Hingson  04:03 yeah. Joelle Casteix  04:04 And so I was abused over a two year period. And what made it worse, or I guess what made the effect so much more profound, was that the school knew about it the whole time and did nothing. And so, you know, time time goes on. I'm blaming myself. I think it's all my fault because this is the late '80s. You know, we didn't have the knowledge and understanding we do about abuse now, and I had been told by the school and my peers and my parents that the abuse was my fault and it was something that I had asked for and wanted. And as time passed, I began to realize that what happened to me might have been wrong. It might have been a crime. And so, in 2001, I had finished college, you know, and I had a lot of the aftereffects that a lot of survivors have. I was, you know. Suicidal. I was a mess. I had a broken marriage, and so by the time 2001 rolls around, I'm you know 30 years old, and I'm like, okay, you know, I think I got my life together. I'm working for a PR firm, and there was this big settlement here in Orange County against the former principal of my high school for sexually abusing this guy who was oh probably five or six years younger than I was when at a different high school, and I was furious because I'm like you know we all knew this there's something wrong with this guy we all knew he had inappropriate relationships with kids we all knew that you know you're not supposed to take a bunch of 17 year olds to Hawaii for two weeks and you're not supposed to, you know, all this like strange behavior, and have boys over at your house and watch movies late at night and feed them alcohol and things like that went on. And so I wrote a letter to the Diocese of Orange, which is the body that over because modern day is a Catholic high school, and so I wrote a letter to the Diocese of Orange, saying, you know, I want to be a part of the solution. We all know this abuse happened, so on and so forth. And they proceeded to see that I might be a real problem because I was a PR executive by this time, and so they invited me in. Like, oh, Joel, why don't you serve on our lay review board and you can, you know help and so on and so forth? And the lay review board for your listeners, if they look up lay review boards in these dioceses, they've just been a disaster from day one. And I realized that we were just being used as a basically as a beard to cover up abuse. Michael Hingson  06:36 Yeah. Joelle Casteix  06:37 And one day I came home from the meeting, and my boyfriend at the time. Now my husband was laying on the couch, and I'm like, you know, something just feels wrong about all this. And and Mike says, you know, Joelle, why are you doing this? You don't need to help them. You are not helping them. And this is this is stupid. And I'm like, God, yeah, he's right. So I I step down, and at the time, California had opened up a one-year window for survivors of child sexual abuse to come forward civilly to file complaints against, you know, file lawsuits against the person who abused them and the in the institution that covered it up. And for me, that would have been the Diocese of Orange in modern day. And I'm like, you know, I have a lot of good information now from sitting on this committee, so I'm gonna, you know, talk to one of the lawyers who's handling a bunch of these cases because I might be able to help him out because you know I'm not I wasn't an altar boy I'm not really a victim so on so forth and so I met with this attorney and he was the first person who sat down across from me and said you know Joelle what happened to you was wrong, and what happened to you was a crime, and it wasn't your fault. You did nothing wrong, and that was like the first person to say that to me. Yeah, not my parents, not my peers, none of that. So I ended up taking advantage. My boyfriend Michael Hingson  07:58 sort of did. Joelle Casteix  07:59 Yeah, my boy. Yeah, Mike. I hear Michael Hingson  08:01 what you're saying. Joelle Casteix  08:01 Yeah, he and he was at the time, and he fully understand because when I first you know was talking about it and you know working with the diocese, he would say, "Well, she's not a victim, victim, because he saw altar boys, you know, and but he's come full circle. He's a good dude. We'll keep him around. Yeah. Oh, good. Anybody with the Michael Hingson  08:22 name of Mike has to be at least. I Joelle Casteix  08:24 know. So he. So I ended up taking advantage of the law of the law, and I filed a lawsuit against the school in the Diocese of Orange, and basically all I wanted were the documents because the Catholic churches are excellent document keepers. They write everything down, and I wanted the documents in my case because I knew they knew about it and my abuse, and I knew they covered it up, and I knew there were other survivors, and I wanted to expose all that. And the diocese kept saying that you know I was crazy and didn't know what I was talking about, and so on and so forth. So after two years of litigation, we ended up settling, and I got all the documents in my case, and I was able to make them public, and they're on my blog, The Worthy Adversary. But the things like I have a signed confession from the man who abused me, I have signed confessions from administrators who covered it up, I have signed documents from the principal of the school to the diocese saying that you know, Joelle has emotional problems, so we should be able to clean this up quite quickly. And so this is 2005, and and now I'm I'm married, and and I had been a very outspoken public advocate. I did a lot of press conferences. I did a lot of you know you saw people protesting out in front of churches. That was me, you know. You saw people passing out leaflets and and trying to build awareness and standing in front of the courthouse. And when you do things like that, you kind of shoot yourself in the foot professionally, especially in the communications sphere, because you know, as a communications professional, you're a spokesperson for an organization and. Someone looks you up on the internet and they see, you know, what at the time was, you know, pretty scandalous stuff. In Orange County, I was seen as a pariah for quite some time, and a, you know, a rusty nail that needed to be hammered down. And so I thought about it, and I'm like, well, I, you know, I can take what I have learned and help other people, or I can try to go back into communications. And I decided that you know the best thing I could do, and the best way to heal for me, because it's it's really all about the the healing journey and making sure that you know this kind of activity stops. And so I decided to make this advocacy my career, and I have found that you know through because I was able to I understood media and communications, and because I was able to do press conferences and interviews, I could help other survivors come forward. Michael Hingson  10:55 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  10:55 and it has been a crazy, crazy 20. Well, actually, it started in 2002, so it's like 24 years now, and it's been. I have been able to meet survivors in you know above the Arctic Circle in Alaska and help them. I've been able to meet survivors on Guam. I've been able to travel all over the country and help people who didn't think that they had a chance or a voice, I've been able to, you know, help change laws in states like yeah, we got a new window here in California. I testified on behalf of that. I've helped change laws in New York and Arizona and Delaware and New Jersey, and I have been able to reach out to survivors all over the place, and it's been tremendously healing. And I've been able to to really like diversify too, because it's you know for the first you know 15 or so years, I was very devoted to my work of abuse in the Catholic Church, and I guess I had blinders on because I didn't realize there was also a great big problem in schools in public schools. And so I've been able to now I do a lot of work with a group called NC Sesame, and they're the organization that helps prevent and expose educator sexual misconduct. And because I was a survivor of educator sexual misconduct, it's a perfect fit, and we're getting a whole new crop of survivors coming forward from that. And so it has been a a tremendous journey. And I I veered into when I had my son in 2006. You know, I didn't want to parent in fear, because I found that a lot of survivors parented in fear, and I didn't want my kid to be scared. I wanted him to be empowered, and so when I would meet with other parents, sometimes they would like look at me and panic and say, "Jewell, you know, I'm so scared of child sexual abuse. What do I do? And I'm like, you know, I've talked with hundreds, probably 1000s of survivors, and they're very easy things you can do. And so I wrote a book about it, and they call the Well Armored Child. It's 10 years old now. It needs to be redone because some of the things are a little out of date, especially when it comes to the internet. But it's like it's so easy to keep your kids safe, and I found that prevention allowed me to reach out to a whole new group of survivors because the parents who wanted the most help and information about keeping kids safe were usually survivors themselves. Michael Hingson  13:30 Yeah. What are some of the well? First of all, before we go to that, what college did you go to? Joelle Casteix  13:37 I went to UC Santa Barbara. I'm a gaucho. Yeah. Michael Hingson  13:41 Wow. Didn't didn't go to UCI, huh? Joelle Casteix  13:44 No, I wanted to get as far away from home Michael Hingson  13:48 I couldn't by that Joelle Casteix  13:49 time. So can Michael Hingson  13:50 understand that. Yeah, nothing wrong with going to UC Santa Barbara. Joelle Casteix  13:55 No, it was a beautiful place to go to school. Yeah, that's a Michael Hingson  13:57 good school. Speaker 1  14:02 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  14:34 Well, so tell me about some simple, and you say it's simple, some simple things that the parents can do to help keep children safe. Because I, I mean, clearly this is a very insidious sort of thing, and I must admit, growing up, I never, I, I didn't face a lot of bullying as a as a blind kid in school. A little bit, not enough to to really talk about, and certainly. Not any of the kinds of abuse that that you're talking about, but I appreciate it and I understand it, and and I know that it's a an epidemic of of sorts. So, what are some of the things that parents can easily do? Joelle Casteix  15:15 Well, a lot of it is putting aside the feelings of other people and understanding your child needs to under to learn their own boundaries. So I tell parents when their kids are toddlers, you know, when we're all kids, oh, go hug Uncle Seymour or go hug Auntie Joanne, and you're like, no, I don't want to. You know, she smells like mothballs. So I always tell parents never force your child to hug someone that they don't want to, because what that tells them is that they don't have power over their body. Michael Hingson  15:49 Yeah. Joelle Casteix  15:50 Another very very simple one is to teach your children from day one the biological names of their body parts, because you know we call our arm our arm and our kidney our kidney, but once we get down to genitalia, we have all these you know saccharine words because parents are embarrassed to say words like vagina and penis and labia and testicles and so on and so forth. Michael Hingson  16:14 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  16:15 and so I mean, in fact, I was talking about this lesson on TV in San Diego about eight or nine years ago, and they bleeped out vagina. I'm like, really? You know, how can you teach people if you're gonna bleep it out? Because what we found is that when you normalize giving the biological names to body parts, you normal normalize to your child that they have a proper biological function, and it's okay for your kid to say no. And we have found in studies that predators are more likely to prey upon kids who do not understand the biological names of their body parts, because it's it's very easy to like. Here's an example. You know, I worked with a survivor, and she's like, "Oh yeah, you know, I was abused by my my uncle, and it was awful. And I said, "Well, so can you tell me about the grooming process? And she's like, "Oh, you know, I had a you know an UTI when I was a little girl, and I said, 'Oh yeah, my ha ha itches. And he goes, "Oh, your ha ha, I like to laugh. Can I see your ha ha? And because she didn't know, had she said, "Oh, my vagina hurts, a predator would be like, "Oh yeah, this this is a kid who knows their names, and they're going to know how to report if I touch their vagina, if I touch their labia. And so what it does is it puts predators on alert, makes your kid a hard target, and those are the two easiest things I tell parents of little kids, and then of older kids, it's really empowering them to report. You you know because nine times out of 10, if a kid is being sexually abused, they're going to go to their peer and tell about it. Then they are going to go to you know an adult, and so we tell you know kids, especially starting in middle school, how to report sexual abuse. And you don't have to be graphic about it. You know what, mom is safe. You come to mom, find five adults you can trust. You never have to keep a secret, and it's always safe to come forward, and you won't get in trouble. Michael Hingson  18:18 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  18:18 and because when a kid feels empowered to report, they're also empowered to be like, "Oh, this has happened to me as well. I need to report it. So, I mean, there's a whole litany of things, but those are those are the easiest and the the least, you know, intrusive. Michael Hingson  18:34 Well, you had, you know, you talked about your parents and you had some some challenges there. Who would you have gone to talk to if you really felt empowered earlier on. Joelle Casteix  18:43 Well, you know, one of the big things we teach kids starting levels have five people, five trusted adults that they can go to because you know one's going to be a flake, one's not going to understand, one's not going to be home, and and oh, maybe one of those people will be around. And so for me, I went to a school administrator and I said, "Hey, this something's happening. It's weird. I don't understand. And she's the one who came and told me, "You know, Joelle, this you don't say anything about this because you could get in trouble, and this is what love is, and you just need to, you know, understand that this is how adults show love, and people think I'm crazy when I tell this story, but I have all the documentation about it as well. And so I stopped right there. I didn't go to any other adults. Michael Hingson  19:31 Got it. Joelle Casteix  19:32 So I went to a peer, and I told her, and she didn't have the tools and capabilities to be able to say, "I need to tell my parents. I need to report. I need to do this or that. And so she carried it as a secret, and it ended up destroying my entire community of friends. And so you know, all that would have needed to happen is if I'd gone to the administrator and she had followed the law, and reported it, that could have helped. Number two. If my peers knew how to report, then you know, then they would have at least known that there were safe adults to go to, and this could have stopped, and I wouldn't have been abused, and the other girls wouldn't have been abused. So Michael Hingson  20:13 maybe the answer is obvious, but typically speaking, when dealing with sexual abuse and so on, more girls than boys. Joelle Casteix  20:23 Um. Yes, and in the Catholic Church, that's flipped because access to boys is much easier, and so it's we are seeing more girls than boys, and we are seeing the majority of abusers as being men, but then also, you know, you look at the Boy Scouts. Everyone abusing the Boy Scouts was a boy, and there wasn't a method in place for them to be able to report and for the reported individuals to be turned into law enforcement. Instead, they had their Their files that they kept internally and knew about all the people who couldn't volunteer again, and I know you were an Eagle Scout, so I, Michael Hingson  21:09 but I, Joelle Casteix  21:10 yeah, but it's interesting because most of the survivors I've worked with in the Scouts ended up being Eagle Scouts and Order of the Arrow. They loved scouting. They still love scouting, and so they are very dedicated into making sure that you know scouting is fixed and continues. Whereas a lot of survivors in the Catholic Church aren't like, oh, I love the Catholic Church, but you know, there's a lot of loyalty in scouting. Michael Hingson  21:40 At the same time, they're not going to tolerate that kind of stuff going on. Joelle Casteix  21:45 Yeah, Michael Hingson  21:46 yeah, which is the issue. Joelle Casteix  21:48 And we're seeing more instances now of female predators and male teenager and younger victims. And I don't think it's because we all of a sudden women are getting out of control. I think it's because we as a society are seeing that it is not cool, and because for years and years, you know, you would hear about you know famous people saying, "Oh, I was a young, I was 15, and I was seduced by this older woman who taught me the ways of the world, and it's like no, that was abuse. You know, hot for teacher. No, that's like that's bad. And what we didn't do as a society is realize the severe damage that's done to boys who are sexually abused by women. And so there are now a lot of organizations that really focus on that. Like one of the ones I work with is one in six, and because you know the the men are not as likely to talk about it, and they are shamed if it's a male perpetrator, and they are confused if it's a female perpetrator, and so the pain is just it's it's horrific, and so finding support and other voices where you can get understanding is vitally important. Michael Hingson  23:06 Do you think that the number of sexual abuse cases, if you will, is increasing, or are we just becoming more aware and we're seeing it, although it's always been there? Joelle Casteix  23:19 I think we are just seeing it, and more kids are empowered to come forward. We, you know, 20 years ago, if a 25-year-old teacher was sexually abusing a 15-year-old student, she might not have been turned in at all. Now she's definitely turned in. Michael Hingson  23:37 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  23:38 we have the internet. You know, you think 30 years ago, every every survivor in the Catholic Church until the internet thought they were the only one. The internet made them say, "Oh goodness, there are many of us, and we need to come together. And it's the same thing with with sexual abuse. It's because we have access to so much information that, on one hand, it's like, "Oh my God, it seems like this out of control epidemic, but on the other hand, it's empowering people to come forward younger and younger, and we're finding that the age of disclosure is coming down. And when that happens, that allows law enforcement to do their jobs much much better because they they get evidence and they can put people behind bars. Michael Hingson  24:17 And they're doing that, Joelle Casteix  24:18 yeah, Michael Hingson  24:19 yeah. So you you have learned over time how to go from being a survivor to a strategist. What did you have to learn to to make that happen? Joelle Casteix  24:32 You know, I already had the the strategist side going. I mean, I think it's a part of like my thinking process. Have you done the Gallup's Strengths Finder survey? They they get 36 strengths, and you you know, and they figure out. And then if you're in a strengths organization, then you can see how other people work, and so on and so forth. It's really cool. You should do it. And my number one strength is strategic. Because I've always kind of been able to see the big picture, and it you know works against me at times that you know I'm really not into you know minutia tasks. Like I love data, but don't make me sort through it. Just give me the numbers, you know, and let's see where we're going with it. You know, don't make me balance my checkbook. Just let me know how it's been growing over the past 10 years. Yeah. So what happened is it's really there's there's two sides of it. One is understanding, you know, I had strategy as a strength, and the other is to understand that it's a we're part of a movement, and especially any survivor led movement is going to bring with it the pain of the survivors, so it's going to be tough, and there's going to be a lot of trauma involved and a lot of you know long-term suffering and stuff like that. So it's really important to be able to step back and say, you know, what is what is best for the or what can provide the most healing to the most people? And there are times where you know they say, "Oh, is doing X Y Z good for the movement? And I'm like, "Well, is it going to give people healing? And I mean, it might be great for the movement, but if it causes more trauma, we don't want that to happen. You know, we really need to take a Hippocratic oath that they do no harm, and so it's really understanding, you know, what the role of civil law is, you know, getting survivors to come forward. What the role of criminal law is, and how do we change laws so that law enforcement is more able to prosecute these crimes? How do we train law enforcement to to be able to get the information they need to prosecute these crimes? Because that's you know the secondary trauma that our first responders face when it comes to dealing with child sexual abuse is profound. And so you know how do we give these people the training they need so that they have the resiliency to be able to help as many people as possible? Yeah, Michael Hingson  27:08 and that training is so important, and I can understand where it it has to be. I guess the best word is traumatic for so many people who don't realize what's going on, and I'm thinking of like a law enforcement people, but hopefully the training helps them build up. I don't want to say a resistance, but at least the ability to deal with it and build up the stamina to be able to to face it and understand that it's something to be addressed. Joelle Casteix  27:39 Yeah, because especially on the on the law enforcement side of things, when we're looking talking about prosecutors and police officers and stuff like that, the stuff that they have to deal with and face is really awful and gross. And especially when we're talking about child sex abuse materials, which we used to call child pornography, I mean that stuff. I it's horrible, horrible. So there are. I work with an organization called Zero Abuse Project, and we have an organization called CAST. It's Child Advocacy Studies and Training, and basically, it is a, or essentially, it is a college or university minor or certificate program, and it's offered in schools for anyone who is going into the child protection field, so you're a law enforcement, you're going to become a police officer, you're going to become a doctor, you're going to become a nurse, all stuff, and so, and they offer real world training. You know, like they have they have the house, and you go in, you have to find the evidence, and they talk to you about you know how do you do a forensic interview so that you get as much information and evidence from the child as you can without traumatizing the child and only interviewing them once. So it's it's a great great program. So that you know things like that are are vitally important. And then also it's community education too. You know, letting the community know number one, you can't live in fear, and number two, the more we support survivors, the more we will stop the cycle of abuse, because when you believe survivors, predators are like, oh, this is this is not my place to be, and so they will go elsewhere because there will there will always be sexual predators. Unfortunately, humans are we have issues. There will always be these broken human beings who do these horrible things. Michael Hingson  29:27 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  29:27 our goal as a community is to make our children hard targets for these people. Make our churches, our schools, our you know our communities hard targets, and it's it's just so. There's this great article that was in Psychology Today about 10 or 15 years ago, and it was written by a psychologist, and he talked about why predators are attracted to careers in the clergy, and it talks about how you know when you're in the clergy you have you know people you have this higher place in. Society and people tell you their secrets, and you are in charge of you know a lot of things. You have charisma and stuff, and so when people say, you know, oh gosh, are all teachers bad? Are all clergy bad? It's like no, no, no, no. Our clergy and our teachers and our scout leaders and these are the people who are going to help our community heal. What we need to do is make all those jobs unattractive for predators, and so Michael Hingson  30:24 how do you do that? Joelle Casteix  30:26 Well, number one, you train people how to report. Speaker 2  30:29 Got it. Joelle Casteix  30:29 You you train you know teachers in California. We just passed SB 868. I probably screwed up the number. Great law, and it's it beefed up reporting requirements and training, and so I went through the training for California. And man, it's like how to report, and and they, you know, in these videos, they say, you know, it is vitally important that you report because it can mess up your career if you don't. And I'm like, wow, that's that's a way to to get through to teachers. And so you you train people to report. You train people to understand what disclosure is. If a survivor comes forward to you and says, "Yeah, my God, you know, I I I was sexually abused as a child. Do you know what to say? Most people don't know what to say, and that's okay. There's a free book on my website, castex.com, and this little ebook, the Compassionate Response, and you tell people, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry. It wasn't your fault. I believe you. What can I do to help? And those are the easy things you can do. And when you, you know, when you do things like that, your whole community learns a resiliency and becomes a real hard target for predators because if you're again if you're listening to survivor disclosures and believing them, predator is going to be like, I don't think I'm going to hang out here anymore. Michael Hingson  31:50 You know, I assume that this is somewhat the case, but you've worked with a lot of different kinds of organizations and so on. Are there similarities in all of those organizations that have had a lot of sexual abuse and so on? Are there similarities in how people do what they do and how they conceal Joelle Casteix  32:13 it? Oh yeah. So the reason that the Catholic Church got busted and the reason that the Boy Scouts got busted early, is because both of them were meticulous record keepers, and so in both of those organizations, I forget what they called the files in the Boy Scouts. It was a horrible name, but like in the Catholic Church, they had personnel files on every single priest, and so from the time they even they even had like their high school transcripts in there and stuff, and they documented absolutely everything. And then we were able to see, and this AI will be able to do an amazing job to pick up the patterns of behavior. We're able to determine and see patterns of how the institution responded when someone was accused of abuse, as opposed to helping the victim. They helped the perpetrator for the Catholic Church. It was you know they had a huge investment in this guy, so they're going to you know move him somewhere quietly because the kid is a short term problem. The kid's going to go away, and so in the Boy Scouts, we're seeing the same thing. We saw meticulous record keeping. We saw a institutional loyalty, like you do in the Catholic Church, where they're like, "This would never happen here. We're seeing the charisma of the leader, because you know, in any sexual people who sexually abuse kids, are have to be attractive to kids. So they're charismatic, they're interesting. All the kids love them. All the kids hang out, and that's in the part of that process of bringing kids in is called grooming, predatory grooming, and they also groom entire communities. So when you saw, you know, a prominent Boy Scout leader or a prominent Catholic church leader or a prominent teacher is accused of abuse, the community says, "Oh no, he would never do that. Yeah, Michael Hingson  34:00 because Joelle Casteix  34:00 he's so wonderful, and that's that's a very calculated move on the predators' part because they are like, hey, you know, I got to make sure that I have everyone on my side here. But yeah, there are big similarities, and it's also very similar to organizations that cover up any kind of fraud. I mean, if you look at you know Enron and stuff like that. I mean, is people have this weird? They protect the institution over the people who are being victimized, and that could be financially, that could be sexually, that can be all these different things. And it's it's a part of the human condition, but it's a changeable part of the human condition, and the more that we train people and support them to to stand up and report and to be brave enough to say, "Hey, you know, I don't like this, and I'm not going to tolerate it, and then it then it helps fixes fix these organizations. Michael Hingson  34:55 It is amazing to me. I guess it's my upbringing and and. The way I approach life, but it it just amazes me that these larger large organizations will cover up things like this. You know, the the church and so on doesn't pay attention to dealing with it. And I think you, as you point out, it has to do with financial kinds of things and so many other kinds of things. Oh, this guy's got a this great. We don't want to lose him. We'll just relocate him. I just don't operate that way. But that's me. Joelle Casteix  35:29 Yeah, it's it's interesting, especially in the Catholic Church and a lot of public schools as well. The kids are seen as short term problems. Michael Hingson  35:40 Yeah. Joelle Casteix  35:40 So, for example, at Modern Day, where I was abused, Joelle was a short-term problem. I was only there for four years. I was only abused for two of those years, and then I graduated and gone. And then they could say that I had emotional problems, and I didn't have any legal recourse. So they knew that you know by the time I was 19, I couldn't come after them civilly or criminally, and so I was a short-term problem. They get rid of me. They ask the teacher to leave, and he goes on and does his thing. Michael Hingson  36:09 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  36:09 in in public schools, is called passing the trash because what we find is is that it is very very expensive to have a big investigation into a teacher. It's very expensive to fire a teacher. It's very potentially expensive to expose the teacher because the district doesn't want to be known as the district that had this big scandal, and so it's much easier. They they think it's easier, and they think it's more financially rewarding to have their lawyer draw up a non disparagement agreement and punt the guy on his way. And instead of standing up saying, "Okay, we're reporting this to law enforcement. We're doing, we're telling law enforcement to do an extensive investigation. Then we're going to do a Title IX policy investigation, and we're going to get more help, more survivors come forward, and we're going to take care of the problem, and so this is you know a factor of lawyers getting involved and insurance companies getting involved, and and it's like it who cares about dollars and cents if kids are being sexually yeah Michael Hingson  37:12 that's the way it should be Joelle Casteix  37:14 yeah and it's it's getting there it's slowly getting there Michael Hingson  37:17 so are we given everything that's happened in in the Catholic Church and so on, and and of course it's been in the news a lot over the years. Are we seeing progress? Joelle Casteix  37:30 Yes, we are seeing progress. The the Boy Scouts we're seeing really good progress. They are working very diligently with you know organizations to do audits and bringing in survivors to help with that process. That being said, I would I would not put my kid in the scouts until I had verification. Oh Michael Hingson  37:51 yeah, that yeah, it's understandable. Joelle Casteix  37:54 The Catholic Church is doing better because of the legal exposure they have had, like in California, we've had numerous dioceses have to declare bankruptcy in light of hundreds and hundreds of sex abuse lawsuits. Everyone is on alert now. They do have policies. I can't tell you how they're being followed. I can tell you they are not treating the litigation process lightly. They are really, it's is pretty awful what they're doing to the survivors who are coming forward, but I think that a kid who is in a Catholic school today or serves as an altar server today is far safer than they were in the 80s and 90s and even the 2000s. Michael Hingson  38:36 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  38:37 and that's because they were they they had to make those changes at the point of a legal gun, you know. When 500 victims have the right to come forward in your diocese, you things have to change. Things just have to change, and it's because of the survivors that things have changed. So yeah, and in public schools, we're seeing big changes. We see some legislative efforts moving forward. It's not perfect by any stretch. There's still a lot of loopholes. I work with groups that you know find those loopholes and go to legislators and be like, you know, this this is this is an easy fix. You know, it's all you have to do is change the wording here, and then kids between 14 and 17 will be protected. Yeah, Michael Hingson  39:21 yeah. Joelle Casteix  39:21 So there, it it is better, and it's it's because of awareness, really because of awareness. Michael Hingson  39:28 Well, do you find that? Well, let me do it this way. What about organizations who say, "Well, this is an isolated incident. What happens next? Joelle Casteix  39:38 Ugh, that that happens all the time. Yeah, and I Michael Hingson  39:41 that that sounds so disgusting, but yeah, the Joelle Casteix  39:44 it was just one bad apple, you know, just just one bad. This is not our organization, so on and so forth. And again, it's that desire for institutional protection, and and so we still see a lot. Of churches do that. A lot of schools do that. And the thing is, is that it's never an isolated incident. And the reason it's never an isolated incident is because, as I said, predators are everywhere. And if you have one predator in your school or church or community center, you might have attracted other ones that you haven't found yet. So there needs to be some serious changes. You need to, you know, expose what's going on. You need to reach out to survivors. You need to make sure you're adhering to the law when it comes to reporting and policies and procedures. Because a lot of these organizations are going to say, "Oh, it's just an isolated incident, and then you look and say, "Well, you know, you're required by law to have posted policies and reporting and this and that, and they'll be like, "Oh, we don't have those. So it's it. I always recommend that you know if someone's sending their kid to a new school or you know join a new organization, that you know ask the tough questions. What are your policies? What is your reporting strategy? You know, how do you how do you report child sexual abuse? Know what the law is in your state. If the law says that the like in California, the the if you just have a suspicion of child sexual abuse, and you're a mandatory reporter, you report it. Just suspicion. That's the that's the barrier, and most people don't know that. And so, an organization needs to know that. Yes, we report at suspicion, and we launch. You know, we we want a law enforcement investigation, and then we do a policy investigation of our own to make sure that this won't happen again. Speaker 1  41:41 Yeah. Joelle Casteix  41:41 But yeah, it's it's it's expensive. It's tough. Organizations don't have the line items in their budget to cover it. But I think with more awareness and the more that we are sharing information, so you know, school district X Y Z does all the policies and everything else, and they publicly talk about those policies, and then they help smaller, poorer school district, ABC, implement the same thing because every kid has the right to a safe education. Michael Hingson  42:11 What are some of the symptoms that parents might see or or can see that their child is is facing some of this, Joelle Casteix  42:22 well, it's interesting. It's it's changed dramatically over the past 20 years. Actually, since what 2006 when the smartphone came out. So what we're finding is that children have the world in the palm of their hand, literally. Michael Hingson  42:38 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  42:38 and so between you know, smartphones, tablets, computers, gaming systems, any kind of texting mechanism. I mean, even we're finding that predators are grooming kids via Google Docs. You know, sharing a Google Doc back and forth. So, is your child being secretive about technology? Is your child spending a lot of time alone with technology? Does your kid have technology that you did not purchase? Is your child being more secretive? Is your child spending time at an activity that is above and beyond the the the time that other kids are spending at this activity, and so like for example, you know, Johnny and Susie are in the choir, and Johnny comes home after after practice, but Susie hangs around in the choir room for another two or three hours. Those are the things you look for. Then you also look for behavioral changes, you know. But again, these behavioral changes are stuff that parents should be on the lookout for anyway, because it could also be a signal of eating disorders, drug addiction, bullying. You know, is your child isolated? Is your does your child seem depressed? Does your child well? In sexual cases of sexual abuse. Does your child have a sexually transmitted infection that you don't know where it came from? Does your you know is is your child spending too much time alone? Just all the all the things, all the alarm bells that any parent would see for any of those things, and when it comes to sexual abuse, the better part is to look for signs of predatory grooming, and because the a new study came out by Elizabeth Jeglick a year or so ago, and they found in their study that 99% of child sex abuse cases had grooming involved, and predatory grooming is how a predator tricks a kid into manipulates them into the abuse. Because what do all kids want? All kids want to be loved. Michael Hingson  44:51 Yeah, Joelle Casteix  44:52 and all kids want to be loved by adults. It's a kid's job to fall in love, and a predator's like, great, they can fall in love with me. So how do they do that? Gifts, you know, does your child have gifts in the house? You don't know where they came from. Expensive gifts. Is does your child have secrets that he won't tell you? Is he being he or she being showered with attention by an adult that just doesn't quite seem appropriate? Is there an adult that seems to be blurring lines by telling jokes about sex, in inappropriate jokes about sex, or is an adult sharing personal information about their lives with your kid? You know, your algebra teacher should not be talking about their divorce with your you know 15 year old algebra one student because that is a boundary violation, and they should not be normalizing talk about sex, and they should not be normalizing touch. So, is this person known for giving big long hugs to students? Is this person be behind closed doors with students? So, these grooming mechanisms are the things you really want to look into because they are a much better way to find a predator who might be targeting five or six kids. So, and then seeing those in your kid as well if your kid is being groomed. Michael Hingson  46:14 And I would assume that an important thing for a parent to do would be to talk to their children if they're observing things and try to strengthen their own relationship with with the child and get the child to to talk about what's going on, Joelle Casteix  46:29 exactly. And that's interestingly enough a really tough one for a lot of parents. I have no problem talking about things with my son because you know I was a sex abuse lady, but I'm constantly meeting people who are like, I don't feel comfortable talking to my kids about sex. And I said, you don't have to talk to your kids about sex. You have to talk to them about abuse. And how you define abuse is that it's when someone uses sex in a in a hurtful, damaging way. Any sexual contact between adult and a child is hurtful and damaging, and so it's very. And you start the conversation small. It's like I always found that like car rides were a great time because that was when you know it's like oh it just kind of seems because you're not looking at each other, you're kind of looking ahead, and so that's when I could get my son to like really give me the dirt. I found that bedtime was a good time. You know, you have 1015, minutes, and just chit chat. And you always tell your kid, even if it makes you swallow really hard. It's like you can always come to me, and it's always going to be safe. And another thing I I do tell parents, and this is important, not to be reactive and fly off the handle at anything. Try to be as calm as possible because we found that a lot of kids don't come forward and report if their parents fly off the handle. Yeah, because it's it's hard enough to deal with what's going on without dad flipping his lid and doing all the stuff. So it's it's all about communication, and we don't really teach people communication. You know, when they we hand them the baby, so it's really a it's a it's a lifelong lesson to you know take a deep breath as a parent, know you're okay, open up the doors for communication, and always be safe. Always be safe. Michael Hingson  48:19 That's the real tricky part because people tend to fly off the handle when they hear something that's horrible, and they're trying to protect, but it it doesn't doesn't help. Joelle Casteix  48:29 Yeah. There's a story. There's this great movie called Deliver Us from Evil. It was a documentary that came out in 2006 about this priest named Oliver O'Grady, and he was this bad dude in Northern California, and there's an interview with Angiono, who is one of his, you know, 300 survivors, and her parents were devastated. They're like, "Why didn't you tell us that, you know, Father Ollie was doing this to you? And she said, "Well, I heard my dad say once that if anyone did anything to hurt me, that he'd kill him, and I didn't want my dad to go to jail. And that's a tough one that her dad lived with. He's he's passed now, and he's like, God, had I just not said that, maybe she would have disclosed, and we could have stopped it. And you know, I parenting is is a lifelong lesson in guilt and mistakes, and so we try to make as few mistakes as possible, and feel you know try to alleviate the guilt as much as we can. But even the smallest effort to talk to your kid has huge ramifications because you don't think your kid is listening, but your kid is listening, and you don't think your kid hears you and understands, but they do, and and that's what's important. Michael Hingson  49:47 So you know, I'm sure there are a lot of people who believe in the concept that compliance equals safety, but policy alone doesn't really necessarily deal with the issue, does it? Joelle Casteix  49:59 No, it doesn't. You can have the best policies in the world, and if you file them in a drawer and you don't train people on them, they don't work. So it's and this is where a lot of legislation has fallen flat because they're like, oh, you know, you have to have a policy. Okay, we have a policy, and then they just stick it in the drawer. Michael Hingson  50:14 Yeah. Joelle Casteix  50:15 So it's the policy needs to be clear. It needs to be posted. It needs to be readily trained, like numerous times a year, just like a fire drill. You know, you get a fire drill, you hear it, you get up, you go outside, you know what to do. And we need to have those same kind of that same fire drill mentality when it comes to policies and procedures to prevent and expose child sexual abuse, and what it will require for a lot of people, the younger generation is far more hip on it because we've been working on them. But getting rid of the ick factor, people like, well, I don't want to talk about it because it's weird and gross, and I don't want to talk about it because then people come forward and so on and so forth. We got to get rid of that, you know. You got to take a viewpoint that you know child sexual abuse is as common as cancer, and so if we treat it in a way that it's like okay, it happens. We're going to get these survivors' help. We're going to get the predators in jail, and and you deal with it that way, then we can get people to really, you know, okay, here's our posted policy. Here we follow the policy. We have drills on the policy, and it just becomes like a normal, you know, we want to create muscle memory. That's what we want to do. Michael Hingson  51:34 Yeah. So you are involved, and you testified with AB 218 here in California, but you know the bill is great. But how do you ensure that that people follow through and and deal with it, or are their weaknesses still be even with the bill? Joelle Casteix  51:55 Well, AB 218, it there okay, so it has done amazing, wonderful things! 1000s of survivors have come forward. 1000s, and they have come forward in public schools, private schools, Boy Scouts, churches-you know, all this stuff. But what we have found is that we didn't have a mechanism in place to litigate all these cases, so it's it's been a bit of a quagmire. You know, it's the courts are a little overburdened, and then there have been law firms who have done less than scrupulous things to get clients who were less than honest, and so there was a big settlement against the the juvenile jails in LA County, or something huge, like $4 billion. I'm like, I'm probably screwing up all the details. But what we found out is that a lot of these cases were not accurate cases. Law firms just scooped people up and signed them up, and that is unfortunately there's bad actors in every arena. But the good that the law is doing is so much more important because we're finding that you know we're uncovering all kinds of abuse in all kinds of places, and what it does is it makes it makes California a harder target for predators, and it forces institutions because if you have you know 500 cases, you're going to change your policies, and you are going to you can't have this happen again. So you are going to button up, and you are going to do better background checks, and you are going to do better screening of people, and you are going to make sure that everybody is trained, and everybody is, you know, everyone knows the policies, and so on and so forth. So it's, you know, it it's kind of you know the the slap across the face to get your act in order. So the the good far outweighs the bad in all of this by all means. Michael Hingson  53:49 Do you find that there are some organizations that are just totally flabbergasted when it's discovered that there's been some sort of abuse going on, and then they do the right thing to deal with it as opposed to just trying to hide. Joelle Casteix  54:02 Yeah, we have. There are a lot of great, or you know, there's a lot of organizations out there who have faced this very, very well. I can't think of an example offhand, and that's not because they don't exist. It's just I can't think of one. But that's Michael Hingson  54:16 okay. Joelle Casteix  54:17 There are a lot of good people out there, there are far more good people than there are bad. And when you have organizations that are open, that are and you know, so like part of the reason we had such a problem in the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church and in the Mormon Church as well is because they're very Hierarchical, they're all men, and when you have a hierarchical, male-dominated organization, it tends to you know so not not to bash on men, but if so, if we when you have an organization that is not so hierarchical, that is not based in secrecy. That is, you know, open to all kinds of people, and something like this happens, you find that oh, the the the way they address it is far far better. Michael Hingson  55:11 Yeah. Well, you have a podcast crossing the line. Tell us a little bit about that. Joelle Casteix  55:16 So it's a it's with NC Sesame, and again, that's the National Center to Stop Educators' Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation. And they're they've been around for a million years, but they're now picking up their game. And so the podcast is called Crossing the Line, and I host it, and I bring in survivors and experts and journalists dealing with the issue of educator sexual misconduct, and it's been you know it's just it's just a baby pot. I don't have like 9 million episodes like you do. I only have like five or six right now, but it's been very very interesting because there's so much out there that is unknown and so many experts in the field of educator sexual misconduct, the study of it and how it happens and the data, that I think it's going to be a tremendous resource for people to, you know, for survivors to help realize they're not alone, for legislators to learn, oh, this is the way we need to change the law, and for parents and the community to be like, oh, okay, this is this is a problem that can be fixed, and there are people out there who are experts and know what's going on. Michael Hingson  56:30 So I'm sure there are institutional leaders who feel overwhelmed and they want to do better. What's the first question they should ask themselves, Joelle Casteix  56:41 how do I get help? You know, and and the thing is, is that there is help out there. For example, you are a school administrator, and you now have this case of child sexual abuse, and it's like you know you're supposed to do, you know, the you know. So maybe law enforcement said there's wasn't enough for criminal charges, but you don't know what to. There are organizations like Sesame out there that can help and be like, okay, this is how you do it. There's Title IX. Every school district should have a Title IX person. So there are people out there more than willing to help with the services and and everything necessary, and some of these things available to help are free through like NC Sesame. There are organizations out there who you know that are for profit that do these trainings because they find that you know when you are when you go to school to be a teacher and then a principal, they don't get you don't have classes in how to do an investigation on policies and Title IX when it comes to child sexual Speaker 1  57:45 abuse. Joelle Casteix  57:45 So, the more that we can, you know, make sure that people know that these materials are available and out there, and you're not alone, and that you know you don't have to be the bad guy, and there are resources available, and and I think that people are beginning to to realize that, but yeah, there is so much help out there. So many people who want to help. No administrator, no church leader, no community director should ever feel like they're fighting this battle alone. Michael Hingson  58:15 And one thing that seems to me to be pretty clear is that if people ask for help, if they'll talk, if they'll communicate, that really is probably one of the most major steps that people can take that will start to to address the issue, and if it is occurring, we'll we'll stop it, and if it's not occurring, it'll prevent it from starting. Joelle Casteix  58:38 Definitely, just you know, picking up the phone, raising your hand, anything you can do to ask for help and communicate your need and your problem in any aspect of life, not just when it comes to child sexual abuse, is is the number one way to stop the crime from continuing and to help the survivors and victims who need help. Michael Hingson  59:01 Yeah, and the bottom line is that we we just tend not to be nearly as communicative as we ought to be, and I and I realize that sometimes it's a matter of finding the right person to communicate to, because we haven't really learned nearly as well as we probably should how to trust or who we can trust, but but the reality is that if we're not open to at least starting to explore it, then we're not going to go anywhere. Joelle Casteix  59:30 Yeah, I think sometimes we just get in our own way too much. Yeah, we're so worried about what people are going to think about us, and and to be fair, no one's really you know I I you know if I get upset, what do people think about me? You know what? No one's thinking about me. Everyone's thinking about themselves, and that's okay. So when you raise your hand, don't worry. You know, put your ego aside and don't get in your own way. And everything can be a a learning beneficial experience and a healing experience and something that. Keep a kid safe from abuse. Michael Hingson  1:00:01 There you go. Well, Joelle, I want to thank you for being here. We've been doing this an hour. Joelle Casteix  1:00:06 I know, huh? Michael Hingson  1:00:07 Time flies. Well, if people want to reach out to you, and I hope they will, and and I hope mostly not because they have a problem, but because maybe they want to help. But both, how do they do that? Joelle Casteix  1:00:20 Well, they can reach out to me through my website. It's casteix.com, c a s c n c a s t e i x.com. And if you just look me up on the internet, Joelle Casteix, you can find my contact information, email, and all that stuff is out there. And my cell phone works, and my email works, and I love to hear from people, and I love to help out. Michael Hingson  1:00:40 And one thing I think is true, I don't think you've sent me a picture of your book cover. So if you would, I want to make sure we put that in the show notes. Joelle Casteix  1:00:51 I will do that too. Michael Hingson  1:00:52 Yeah, got to have it in the show notes. Joelle Casteix  1:00:54 Okay. Michael Hingson  1:00:56 Well, thank you, and I want to thank all of you for watching and listening today. We really appreciate it. Wherever you are, please give us a five-star rating in your podcast system. But even more important than a rating, please give us a review. This has been a wonderful and a very important episode, and your reviews will help other people be interested in watching this or listening to this podcast episode and others, so please do that. If you know anyone who needs a guest, Joelle, including you, or who who might want to be a guest, we're always looking for guests. So please don't hesitate to introduce us. But again, I want to thank you for being here, Joelle. This has been absolutely wonderful. Joelle Casteix  1:01:36 Thank you. I've really enjoyed it. Michael Hingson  1:01:40 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

Sometimes the biggest setbacks in life lead us to discover what we're truly capable of achieving. My guest, Michelle Mekky, knows this firsthand. A former broadcast journalist and television producer, Michelle spent 12 years working behind the scenes at Fox before moving into public relations. Her journey took an unexpected turn when she faced ovarian cancer and later lost her job. Rather than allowing fear and self-doubt to hold her back, she started Mekky Media, which grew into a seven-figure PR agency. Michelle shares how she built her business through storytelling, hard work, trust, and a strong team culture. We also explore the importance of public speaking, media training, authentic communication, and learning to believe in yourself. Michelle's story reminds us that confidence doesn't always come naturally. Sometimes we have to face the things that scare us most to discover our own potential. I believe you'll find valuable lessons here about leadership, entrepreneurship, overcoming adversity, and finding the courage to share your story. Highlights: 01:21 – Discover how Michelle's passion for journalism shaped her career. 06:41 – Learn why believing in yourself is key to overcoming fear. 16:06 – Hear how Michelle overcame her fear of public speaking. 30:23 – Explore how cancer and job loss led Michelle toward entrepreneurship. 36:53 – Learn how trust and team culture helped build a seven-figure PR agency. 56:40 – Discover how AI and digital media are changing storytelling and communication. About the Guest: Michelle Mekky is a veteran, award-winning broadcast journalist and public relations executive, and the founder and CEO of Mekky Media Relations, Inc., a boutique PR agency with clients in Chicago and coast to coast. She began her career as an overnight newswriter for the morning shows at Fox-TV in Chicago, before eventually growing to become Senior Producer, overseeing all morning show content. After 12 years in the media, she transitioned into PR and marketing, working at top agencies prior to launching Mekky Media in 2016 after she survived ovarian cancer. The agency partners with organizations across a broad range of verticals, including nonprofits, technology, healthcare, restaurants, retail, fitness, financial services B2B and more. Michelle leads a team of experienced PR professionals who help clients tell their stories, reach new audiences and fuel growth through PR strategy, media relations, media training, social media strategy, integrated digital and PR programs and personal branding. Building on nearly a decade of growth and demand for executive coaching, Michelle also recently launched Elevated by Mekky Media, a sister company specializing in personalized media training, public speaking coaching and executive presence development for leaders and teams. Michelle and Mekky Media have been widely recognized for their success, earning multiple Gold and Silver Stevie Awards between 2018 and 2023, a PR News Top 100 Agency Elite Award, recognition as one of Expertise PR’s Best Chicago PR Firms and several Publicity Club of Chicago Gold and Silver Trumpet Awards. Michelle has also received numerous individual honors, including being named one of the 2025 100 Women to KNOW in America, PRSA Chicago’s 2023 Professional of the Year, the 2023 Daily Herald Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, a 2021 Ragan and PR Daily Communicator of the Year Award, a 2020 PR News Top Women in PR honor, a 2019 Crain’s Chicago Business Notable Entrepreneur recognition and the 2018 Bronze Stevie Award for Women in Business. Michelle is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Council, Forbes Agency Council, WBENC and the International Public Relations Network, where she serves as North American regional chair and a member of the Executive Committee. A Forbes blogger and motivational speaker, she is also a cancer survivor, a spokesperson for the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition and serves on the board of the Business Executives Association and the Strategic Advancement Committee for Start Early. She earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Northwestern University’s renowned Medill School of Journalism. The daughter of immigrants, she is the first-generation in her family to go to college. Michelle also is most proud of being a mother to her children Adam and Hannah, who are getting ready to launch their own careers as they finish college and graduate school. Ways to connect with Michelle**:** Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mekkymedia/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mekky-media-relations-inc./ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mekkymedia/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Note Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everyone, and a gracious welcome to you wherever you happen to be. I am Michael Hingson, your host on Unstoppable Mindset. Today we get to chat with Michelle Mikky, who is a PR person. She's been very much involved in the past in broadcast and so on, but very actively involved in media. And we're gonna get to the bottom or to the top of all of that, as we go forward, yeah. But either way, Michelle, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Michelle Mekky  01:27 Thank you so much, Michael. I'm very honored to speak to you today. Michael Hingson  01:31 Well, I'm I'm glad that we get the opportunity to do this. And before we started this recording, Michelle and I were talking about Chicago and Garrett popcorn and I miss it. Oh well, I'm gonna have to figure out a way to fly through O'Hara to go get some Garrett popcorn somewhere. Yes, well we got to do. Michelle Mekky  01:50 It's always waiting for you here. There you go. Michael Hingson  01:53 Well, anyway, thanks very much for for being here. Why don't we start a little bit like I love to do? Tell us, kind of maybe about the early Michelle growing up and all that. Michelle Mekky  02:03 Okay, wow. Well, let's see. I am a long Michael Hingson  02:06 time ago when a long time ago Michelle Mekky  02:09 feels like forever. I am a Chicago native. I was born here and grew up here. My parents were immigrants. My dad. Where were they Michael Hingson  02:18 from? Michelle Mekky  02:19 My dad was from Dublin, Ireland, and my mom's from Poland. They met here in a singles immigrants group in Chicago back in the day, and you know they got me, fell in love, got married, and raised me and my two brothers over on the north side of Chicago. And you know, I was a a very ambitious child, always a good student, and fell in love with journalism really when I was in high school. I was editor of the newspaper, and I had a column, and I wrote a story about my grandmother passing away, and people came up to me, and that was the first time I experienced death. And people came up to me and said how, you know, I really affected them. They loved the writing. They they really related to me. They cried, and I think that experience maybe wanted journalists. So that was back in high school. So that was really where it all began for me. Michael Hingson  03:19 Wow, did you did you go to college and continue that in college? Michelle Mekky  03:24 I did. So you know we didn't have a lot of means growing up, and you know my I wanted to go to a great journalism school, and I looked up Northwestern University right here in Evanston, Illinois, had Medill School of Journalism, one of the best in the world, and you know, my dad looked at me and said, "How are we going to afford that? You can't go there. You know, you you have to go to state school. And I said, "No, I'm going to make it happen. So I was determined. I went to the library. I researched scholarships, and I found a way to get into Northwestern, pay for college, and get an incredible journalism education. I actually continued on then to get my master's, and I specifically fell in love with broadcast journalism when I was at Medill. It was really just mesmerizing for me at the time, and I wanted to be an anchorwoman on television. So didn't exactly end up that way, but it I was I did still get my foot in the door. Where my very first job was as an overnight news writer, coming in on the one a.m. shift for Fox here in Chicago. Now I wanted to be in front of the camera, but I lost my confidence kind of quickly when I didn't get a couple reporting jobs I went for. You know, you have to start in a small town in our industry to really work your way up you don't just start in Chicago Michael Hingson  04:47 yeah Michelle Mekky  04:47 but I I didn't really have the courage to do that back then and so I ended up as a news writer and worked my way up on the production side. Michael Hingson  04:56 Well, Oprah Winfrey started doing weather in Chicago and went somewhere. Happen with you? Michelle Mekky  05:01 I know you're right. She was really, she was an idol of mine. I mean, I looked up to her so much, and really always wanted to work for her. Honestly, it didn't exactly end up that way. I, you know, really made my way in television at Fox. I started, like I said on the one a.m. shift, but quickly grew to becoming a segment producer, and then a a senior producer, and then finally was really overseeing all the content on the morning shows and filling in for our executive producer, and it was just incredible 12 year career. I loved every minute of it, Michael Hingson  05:38 but you never really did get to get in front of the camera much? Michelle Mekky  05:42 No, I didn't. You know, I I produced for Tamron Hall, who went on to host her own talk show out of New York, and you know, incredibly successful. And I was her right hand producer, and her and I would go out and do these segments together, and I was like her workout partner, and we would do feature stories together. And so I, I sort of got on camera that way, but I didn't fully get a chance to realize my dreams of being like in front of the camera. I think until to be honest, recently as the owner of my own business, yeah, and the explosion of social media, it's like now I'm I'm doing things on camera all the time, but in a different way. So Michael Hingson  06:23 I had never heard of Tamron Hall until a few years ago, when I guess she started her show on now on ABC. Michelle Mekky  06:30 That's right, Michael Hingson  06:30 and so in fact she comes on at one in the afternoon here in LA. So so yes, she's on. Michelle Mekky  06:39 She's incredible and has made a real impact in the industry, and you know we remain great friends even until today. And that-that's the thing about working in this industry is you build so many relationships, and you know there's nothing like producing live television. I mean, the team of people that I did the work with, like you're like in the trenches together, you know, and it's it's no matter how much you prepare, it's like the minute you go live, it's like you you know whatever happens is going to happen, and so I think a lot of those bonds I still have from today or until today, actually, Michael Hingson  07:17 yeah. So for someone like Tamron Hall or Oprah Winfrey, why are they so successful? What what is it that they have, or what is it they do? That's a Michelle Mekky  07:28 great question. I mean, you know, I think it takes obviously a ton of hard work and tenacity to get to where they are, but it's a magical skill. I mean, it's interviewing is a skill, and and getting the people you speak with to really open up to you and and share, you know, relevant information that's going to impact the world, I think is a is a talent that each of them, of course, have, but in different different ways. And you know, it's something I've always admired. I aspired to do that when I was younger, but it also takes like incredible confidence. And I didn't really, I did not have that as a young child. I was very insecure. I, you know, I had super crazy curly hair, and my parents didn't know what to do with it, so they cut it short. And I was bullied, and you know, I just didn't ever feel like I found my groove until until much later in life. And so, like now, when I speak to a lot of young people, I say, you know, you have to believe. Believing in yourself is all it takes. Sometimes you just have to believe. And I think so many of us lack that in those early years, it took me a long time to find Michael Hingson  08:43 it. One of the things that I talk to people about when we're talking concerning them coming on the podcast is that I believe everyone has a story to tell, and people say, "Well, my story wouldn't be interesting, and they underrate themselves. And people so often do that, and then they come on the podcast and and and leave with a different attitude, but but the bottom line is, you know, it's it's it's what we face. Michelle Mekky  09:07 I I love that, Michael. I I agree, and I you know everybody is walking around with these big stories that none of us know about, and that's one thing I love about what I do is that you know, our job is to pull these stories out of our clients' businesses and lives, and and tell impactful stories that that really make a difference and inspire others. I mean, your story alone completely blew me away, and it made me so excited to speak to you. And and I myself am very committed to telling my true story. Like I never pretend like oh I have this great life. You see me on social media. I'm in PR. I go to all these parties. It's it's not like that at all. I mean I we've faced incredible obstacles and challenges that we've had to overcome, and I feel like everyone has. Their story, and it's about encouraging people to have the the the ability to tell it, and it's actually quite therapeutic when you really do. I'm sure you would agree. Michael Hingson  10:10 Oh, absolutely. I I tell people all the time when they ask me, well, after September 11th, did you go through counseling? And I said no, but I and my wife decided to allow me to be subjected to all the press that wanted to come and interview us, and we learned a lot about how people do things. Everything from a Japanese television station that came, and there were like two or three people all together, to an Italian film company that came with 14 people to our house. Don't the head configure that? Yeah, I mean, most of them just sat around and didn't do anything. Michelle Mekky  10:46 I know. I mean, it when you see the behind the scenes of how the media really works, especially broadcast, it is it blows your mind. I mean, I remember when I first walked into the newsroom, I said, "What time do I have to start? One a.m. You know, there's people that actually work on that shift, producing, you know, the the content in the morning news that starts at 5 a.m. 6 a.m. I walked in and I saw it was like a whole other world. It was like all these people were wide awake and writing news and listening to the police radio and creating the content that was going to be in the shows, and it was really exciting and fascinating. And you feel like you're this big part of putting something important together every day. Yeah, and and you do it with a team, and so it's it's really an amazing industry to be a part of. Michael Hingson  11:38 Oh, I can I can imagine, and I've I've not done it directly, but I've been enough involved on the other side and so on that I have seen it, and I've been and round TV stations and and seeing how some of the technology works, and of course for me, I worked at our campus radio station when I was at UC Irvine, KUCI, as program director one year, and so I I also got very familiar with radio, and I think the in in in thinking about the question I asked about Oprah and Tamron Hall, I think the the the key to their success is that they really are themselves on the. That's very true. You know, when they really are themselves, they're not pretentious, and I think that's so important. That's a that's an excellent Michelle Mekky  12:30 point. You know, I I I truly believe that that comes across on camera. You know, I know Tamron in real life, and I know her on TV, and it's not that different of a person, you know. Yeah, it's it's really the same human being, and you know, I have so much love for her because of our history, but also just seeing you know her natural talent come to life every day. It's it's really remarkable, and so now, with what I do for a living, which I know we haven't gotten to that part of the story, I I coach people and teach people how to do that because all those years behind the scenes, I was booking guests and taking pitches from PR people and walking who I thought would be a great, confident spokesperson into a studio, and the minute they walk in and see the lights and the cameras and hear the countdowns, you know it's extremely terrifying for most people. And so it's that just goes to show you how how much talent it does take to like to overcome that and really be yourself. It's like crossing a barrier that most of us feel, but when you can really, you know, embrace it, it's very powerful and an incredible thing to be able to do. Michael Hingson  13:48 Well, for me, I know I I still have a hard time intellectually. I can understand it, but I have a hard time truly understanding why it is that public speaking is one of the top five fears in the country. Getting up on a stage. Oh, Michelle Mekky  14:03 I know. Michael Hingson  14:04 And especially since, in reality, unless you're just a real scrounge, audiences want you to succeed, and they're out there rooting for you. And when you have a story to tell, or you go out and you talk, yeah, they want to hear you. Michelle Mekky  14:19 They really do. I just. It's it's something innate in so many people. I mean, even my husband. Look, we're like exact opposites. I can get in front of a camera and have the time of my life, and he is like terrified of it, you know. And he has to speak often on Zooms and in meetings, but it's not his favorite thing to do, and I think some people just they just are filled with anxiety when the thought of it comes. And I don't know if it's about just being in the spotlight or having all the attention on you or what that is, but it's not a natural for the majority of people that I have trained, and so it's it's such a. Important part though of our lives is to be able to to speak and communicate and and authentically tell your story, whether it's on camera, whether it's on social media, or just in front of a room or at a cocktail party. You know, those are the things that I've really those skills I've honed on over the years, and now luckily I get to do that. I just launched a new business aside from my PR firm, which is focused strictly on public speaking, coaching, and media training because of the need for it. It's so great. Michael Hingson  15:34 Yeah. Well, as as good as humans can be dealing with cameras and dealing with visibility in the media and so on. I think the best creature that I ever knew that dealt with a camera was my guide dog at the World Trade Center, Roselle. She loved she loved it when cameras started taking pictures. We were on Larry King Live. It was, I think, our second interview. Oh wow! They actually built a platform that she could lie on, so that she would be in in the pictures because you know they do it like from the chest up. Yeah. And about a minute before the the show was to start, the director comes over and he said, "Look, is there anything you can do to get your dog to be a little bit more responsive and active? And I said, "Why? Well, she's just laying there. I said. But are the Klieg lights on? No. Then just wait. And the lights go on. Roselle's head pops up. She's blinking and yawning and looking around and just having a good old time. She knew. She she was just always that way. Michelle Mekky  16:39 That is so funny. What a talent that is. That's Michael Hingson  16:43 amazing. She Michelle Mekky  16:44 just-that's amazing. Michael Hingson  16:45 She just absolutely loved it. I always wanted to be in the picture. Michelle Mekky  16:49 And you know what's also crazy? I-I got very passionate about teaching this because of my own personal fears. When I was in fifth grade, I used to be terrified of public speaking, and I was a very shy young girl. And in fifth grade, my dad was always trying to push me to like do more, to go for things I was afraid of. And he said, "You know, I want you to run for student council president. And I said, "Are you crazy? Like I can't run for student council president. He just pushed me, and we made the campaign posters. Ring the bell, vote for Michelle. And I thought I'm never going to win. And then I had to make a speech in front of the whole school, and it was me and my competitor. You know, the other candidate. And I go up there to speak, terrified, and my hand can't stop shaking. You know, I'm holding the speech, and my hands are shaking like crazy. So much so that I can't even read the words. That my opponent reached out, and he held it for me so I could finish the speech, which was really nice. But I went home crying. I said, "There's no way I won. I tanked. I couldn't speak. I don't know why you make me do this stuff. I hate it. And then the next day, what happens? I found out I won. I won. I couldn't believe I won. And oh my gosh, was that like an amazing moment for me? And ever since then, I thought that's it. I'm going to do whatever it takes to overcome this fear, and it takes. It took me a lot of years, Michael. It wasn't like that was just one moment. I actually decided to go study broadcast television, and I had to do live shot reporting as part of our class, where they give you a script and say, "Give us a one minute report on camera, and then we had to all watch it back together in class. I mean, those were moments that terrified me, but it was pushing myself to be uncomfortable that made me get over it. And so that is a lot of why I do what I do now, because I know people can if they just commit to it. Michael Hingson  18:56 Well, I tell people that I probably learned not to be afraid of public speaking when I was in school, it was after we moved from Chicago out to California. But you know how they always did spelling tests where Michelle Mekky  19:10 yeah, Michael Hingson  19:10 you got to learn how to spell the words, and then when the spelling test comes, the teacher dictates the words, you write it down or do whatever. And back when I was going to school, then kids would exchange their papers, and the teacher would write the words on the board so that then they could be graded. Not in my class because since I did, since I wrote Braille and the teacher and nobody else wrote Braille. Michelle Mekky  19:32 Oh yeah, Michael Hingson  19:33 I had to spell the words out loud for the class. Michelle Mekky  19:37 Oh my gosh! Michael Hingson  19:38 So the teacher would say the word and I would spell it, yeah. And I guess in general, the the the real part about that that's relevant is I didn't miss. Except I can. I remember one time I missed a word, and somebody said something, and then I corrected it. But I'm but I missed that word, and it was the only time, and all the the times that I was involved in spelling tests because my. Mom and I every week would study all the words, and I learned how to spell them. And I I grew to not be at all concerned about standing up or whatever in front of the class and spelling the words. So maybe that's how I started to learn about public speaking. But it's a lot of fun. Michelle Mekky  20:15 Interesting. Yeah. Well, good for you. I mean, that's you know a lot of people shy away from it, and later in life really struggle. And you know, I have two kids now. One one finished college, and the other one's graduating this year. And I remember lucky them when they were, you know, going through school. I was always quizzing them and having them do their presentations in front of me and telling them to look up and now look down, and I was sort of training them, you know. But it helped. It helped. It really does. Michael Hingson  20:48 Well, being a collector and a and a great fan of vintage radio, old radio broadcasts, I listened to some of the politicians like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and so on, who were up through JFK, who were really good speakers by comparison, and and and it was just part of their natural talent. Yeah, I think it's something that unfortunately our politicians today, to a large degree, have just lost, which is unfortunate. Michelle Mekky  21:16 Oh boy, yeah, yeah, we could go on and on about that. I don't want to go into that area? Michael Hingson  21:21 Yeah, but but I I I listen to Roosevelt all the time. Michelle Mekky  21:28 Oh, that's that's really Michael Hingson  21:30 cool. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, and I've I've I've collected old radio, and I do collect old radio shows. I don't have too many, you know, just a few, like about 90 terabytes. But you know, I collect all radio shows, and it's a lot of fun. Michelle Mekky  21:42 That's awesome. Yeah, I mean that would be we can learn from those guys for sure. Michael Hingson  21:47 Well, we could, and and what's really fascinating about radio, which we which we've lost in most television, is so many of the radio programs were live, and that's they had to be perfect, and they had to be right. Yeah. And when they messed up, they integrated it right into the show. So you probably knew that they messed up, but it was so much fun. Yeah. And they just went right on with it. It was great. It Michelle Mekky  22:16 was great. Yeah. And I, you know, I when I teach this, I tell people, you know, most most radio segments these days are taped or they're podcasts, you know, and run at a later date. But when we practice, we always practice as if it's live because that's the absolute best way to be trained in this. You know, is to really get comfortable where you can't say, "Oh, can we start again? or "Oh, wait a second, I want to change my answer. You know, you really just got to learn how to roll with it, and that'll make you that much stronger of a speaker. Michael Hingson  22:48 Yeah. If Speaker 1  22:52 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset community. Michael Hingson  23:24 So you did so much work in broadcast journalism and so on before you moved into what you're doing today. What lessons did you learn from the newsroom that still kind of guide you or that control what you do today? Michelle Mekky  23:39 Yeah, you know, I really learned so much during those years in television. You know, things like producing live TV on a daily basis makes you move fast. You know, there's no time to really sit around and think about who do we want to book the next day. It's it's following the news and the the flow of news, which changes by the minute, right? Yeah. And when we were producing guest segments and taking video that was pulled from you know the street that day, covering a story had to be edited and turned around fast. You know, things move very quickly. So I sort of became a almost just quicker on the job, no matter what job I had. Where I like to find a resolution, I like to move through it, and I feel like that's helped me in my career. But what's the the real source of why I went into PR is you know other than having little kids working on an overnight shift, live TV is exhausting, was was that I was pitched by so many PR people on a daily basis who all wanted to be on my show, and I would get these pitches in my email, and they they most of the time were, you know, too wordy, too long, or too promotional, or not really made for TV. And I thought to myself, "Gosh, you know, I would be so good at PR if I had the chance to do it, because I knew what people like me needed. Like I knew what I was looking for as a producer and what I thought was a newsmaker and an interesting story. And you know, I felt like a lot of that was lacking at the time. And so, and it was a skill that I really refined being on the inside for that long, and so when I finally got out of the newsroom and decided to take a chance in PR, I was naturally really good at it because I knew what is a good story and what makes news, and not everybody fully understands that. You know, sometimes it's just a commercial. It's too promotional, or it's not that unique, and it's not that interesting, and it's hard to tell somebody that who thinks that you know they deserve to be on the front page. But it's our job and my job is to shape those stories to make them something unique. And I think you know you have a lot of understanding of that now, given all the media you've done and what that takes. Michael Hingson  26:04 Sure, I you know I know that I've never totally gotten used to the concept of speaking in just small sound bites, right? Because I have stories, but I can do it, and I and I appreciate it and understand it, but it just doesn't always necessarily happen that way, but I work at it, and I and I realize the importance of it. But at the same time, the problem with speaking in little sound bites is you don't necessarily get all the information, no matter how hard you try. Michelle Mekky  26:32 That's very true, and that is one of the key parts of the media training I do: is how to speak in sound bites. But knowing how to get the right information out and when to take a pause so you're not cut off and the essential information isn't you know hidden from what you were trying to say, but also doing a podcast like this versus a five minute segment on television is very different. It's a different pacing, and you know we have time here, so we can breathe and really have a great conversation. When you're doing a quick interview, five minutes, even less than that, sometimes they're only three minutes. I mean, it is very, very high speed and tough to fit in everything you want to say. And so that's where a lot of the skills come in of three to five talking points. You know, really thinking about what it is you want to get out because you're not going to get out nearly as much as you think you can. Yeah, Michael Hingson  27:25 yeah. Or you you can get out as much as you think you can if you really learn how to do it. Because Michelle Mekky  27:31 if you right, it it Michael Hingson  27:32 is true that you can speak in sound bites. But I also I know a lot of times that there's there's only so much one can do, and I'm I'm used to it and I appreciate Michelle Mekky  27:42 it. Yes. Michael Hingson  27:42 So so I can make it happen Michelle Mekky  27:44 exactly. But at the Michael Hingson  27:45 same time, I love to do podcasts because you're not limited to being exactly at one hour or 45 minutes or whatever your podcast length is. If if you want to go a little bit longer, and I've had I've had a couple episodes that actually went 80 minutes because we got so involved, and that's the beauty of podcasts. That's awesome! Michelle Mekky  28:05 Yeah, yeah. I mean that that's the like podcasts are incredible. Like it's it's amazing the explosion of them and the abilities that we have as PR people to get our clients a variety of media these days. That's been one of the big changes in the world of media is that you know we we have so many different types of outlets now that we can pitch to, and podcasts are an amazing way for experts and thought leaders and just human beings to to tell their story and and get their moment to shine. Michael Hingson  28:39 Yeah, and and it's fun to be able to do it, and and Michelle Mekky  28:44 yeah, Michael Hingson  28:44 and as far as I'm concerned, every time I get to to do a speech or interact with the media, as far as I'm concerned, every one is a learning experience, and so I love to get a chance to listen to the the broadcasts and so on because I'm always going to learn something from it, and Michelle Mekky  29:04 yeah, I I completely agree. Even if it's someone that just wants to learn how to speak better in a sales meeting, or you know, learn how to just stand up with confidence. I mean, that's really a big part of it. It's it's not only about doing television interviews, but we teach, you know, it's it's there's different techniques for each type. But I think everyone should get that training because it can help you in many aspects of your life. Michael Hingson  29:31 Well, as I've told people, when I was working in computer sales and was the Mid-Atlantic region sales manager for Quantum, you never knew on any given day whether you'd be talking to somebody from the board of directors of a company or an IT person or whatever, and you have to learn to be prepared and and be focused and calm. Michelle Mekky  29:49 That's right. That is absolutely right. And and really understand how do you get there? You know, yeah. How do you control the nerves? How how do you calm yourself? You know, how do you project? A room, when all you feel is that you want to pass out, you know, which a lot of people do, which a lot of people do. I know, or they get so thirsty that their mouth is, you know, super dry, and that's all they can think about because that's what happens when we get nervous, you know. Michael Hingson  30:15 Well, I I suppose I do have the advantage of having a dog with me, and of course, the dog promotes a lot of questions and a lot of curiosity, and that's fun. Yeah, and and so I have figured out over the years that that since guiding is very stressful for these dogs, they love times to relax. So if I'm going to be in a in a meeting for a while, and and I'm doing the major presentations, I at some point will take the harness off and let people interact with the dog because it relaxes everybody. That's my man, and especially the dog. Michelle Mekky  30:46 Yes, that is amazing. When Michael Hingson  30:49 when I sell books at at speaking events, there is no better salesperson than a dog who oh Speaker 2  30:55 yeah Michael Hingson  30:55 out there tied to a table who's visiting everybody and stretching out in every direction to get as much heading exposure as possible. Michelle Mekky  31:03 That's incredible. I agree. He loves it. He loves Michael Hingson  31:06 it. That's Michelle Mekky  31:06 amazing. Yeah. Michael Hingson  31:08 Well, so you you eventually though left broadcast journalism. Michelle Mekky  31:12 That's right. Michael Hingson  31:13 And and I know you you talked earlier about that you thought that you ought to be able to do pretty well on PR. So tell us kind of about that transition, and especially what kind of mindset shifts did you have to make when you switch from working for someone and working at a at a TV station or whatever, and now you're going out on your own. That's a big step. Oh Michelle Mekky  31:35 yeah, now that's a huge that's a huge question on its own. But I know Speaker 3  31:40 I'll Michelle Mekky  31:40 start with the the transition into PR. So, you know, so I decided after 12 years to finally make the change. I found myself at a small agency in Chicago that only had three clients at the time, and I was really put in charge of helping grow that company, and I never did sales before. I'm a journalist, but you know I have a pretty good personality. I like people, and I know how well, Michael Hingson  32:09 and you know how to tell stories, and I know Michelle Mekky  32:11 how to tell stories, and yeah, and I believe in what I do. Like I believe in the ability to to get on television and tell those stories, or get in the media and really use it as a way to grow and tell your story, and you know, give give your business exposure through storytelling. And so, I was very good at PR. It was a great fit for me. I ended up helping grow that company from three to 30 clients, and then eventually went on to another firm, which had a lot of bigger national clients. I spent about four years there, and then two years at a third company before starting my own company. So I've started Mechi Media 10 years ago. It's interesting. There were a couple twists and turns that happened in my life. This is kind of the heart of, you know, when you talk about being unstoppable, I had a couple, you know, moments where the universe really kicked me down, and one of those was being told that I have a growth in my ovary, and there's only a 10% chance it's benign. I went in for an annual exam, and out of nowhere, was told to go see an oncologist. Like I really did not even expect that. I would just work. I was working 80 hours a week back then. I dedicated my life to my job, which really is unhealthy, as we all know in today's world. But you know, back then, I just thought that was what I was, you know, set out to do, and that's what was meant for me. And so, so I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. It was now 12 years ago, and it changed my life forever. You know, I ovarian cancer-they call it the silent killer. It's most people do not survive ovarian cancer. If you get diagnosed with it, it's usually too late. So I was very lucky that I, you know, had immediate surgery. Woke up from the surgery. I really thought it was going to be benign, but my husband told me it was a seven-hour surgery. It was only supposed to be four hours. I had a full hysterectomy, and it was cancer. And I thought, oh my god, like my life is over. I was shocked, but one week later, found out through the results of the pathology test that every every biopsy that was taken was clear in 39 spots in my abdomen. And my oncologist said, "Michelle, someone's watching over you. You're only stage one, which I rarely ever get to anyone with ovarian cancer, so it was really like a moment in my life where I thought, okay, like now I need to do something bigger because why did this happen to me? Why am I so lucky? You know, and you know, it still was a very tough recovery, but I decided to move. On to another agency, hoping to have a little more of a family-friendly atmosphere, a little less demanding of a schedule. But you know, the the PR is PR. It's a very demanding career, and it still was very hard on me. And after a year and a half to two years there, suddenly lost my job. The agency lost some business. They made changes, and I found myself home that day. Looked at my husband and said, "Oh my God! Like I, I don't know what I'm going to do now. I, I cannot believe that happened to me. And you know, Michael, I was a very, very hardworking perfectionist. Like I never thought that would happen, even though it happens to people every day. Yeah, I was that was all it took. That that was almost worse for me than being told I have cancer. I was lost, and in that moment, my husband looked at me and said, "You're going to start a business. We're going to be fine. And I said, "Okay, second time in my life, I'm like, are you crazy? I can't start a business. Like I don't know how to do this. I don't have an MBA, you know. I'm a journalist, and he's like, I believe in you. I know you can do it. You know everyone. You know everything about PR. You have a ton of contacts. He's like, all you need is three clients, and and you'll be great. You know. By the way, Michael Hingson  36:18 what kind of work did he do, and does he do Michelle Mekky  36:20 sales? He's in sales and technology sales, but you know he's been doing that forever. But he he Speaker 4  36:27 knows Michelle Mekky  36:28 he believed in me, like he knew he knew that I could sell, and before I knew, you know. So, so anyway, I put one foot in front of the other. I cried for seven days, and then I finally wiped my tears, and I went to see a family friend, who and this is one story I love to tell because she was so integral in my life, is she said, "What is it, Michelle? Like, what's holding you back? Like, why can't you just believe? I said, "I don't know. I'm afraid to fail. And she said, "You know, what's it going to take? Do you need money? Is it money? I said, "I think you need money to start a company, don't you? So she took out her checkbook and she wrote me a check for $10,000. She handed it to me and said, "It's a loan, no terms on repayment. Go start your company. So that was the beginning of Mecky Media, and I love to tell that story because that was 10 years ago now. And people who think they can't start a business like or look at me and think, "Oh my God, she's so successful. That's how it started. You know, it started with me being really terrified to do it. Well, fast forward. You know, here we are now. After five years, it became a seven-figure business. I have 10 full-time people on my team. We have clients across the country and the and some even internationally, and I am so proud that I did it. And I've worked, of course, extremely hard, but I'm really proud of how it's grown and what I've built. It's it's my probably been my you know aside from having children, my greatest achievement in my life. Michael Hingson  38:00 Wow, why do you think that you have been so successful with it for 10 years? Michelle Mekky  38:05 You know, I think there's a lot of reasons. I think number one, I'm just built to work really hard. I learned that from my father, who was an electrician, an immigrant, as I said, and I watched him just work all the time, and it became inherent in me because, and he struggled a lot. He didn't like his job, and I said to myself, "I need to do whatever it takes so I have a happy life and I like what I do, you know. And so for me, I that became working a lot and and learning how to do what I do, and so I think to be an entrepreneur, it takes a lot of grit. It takes a lot of, you know, sleepless nights in the beginning, especially. And you know, I was willing to just do whatever it took at that time. But then I think I realized quickly I'm not the type that wants to be alone. Like I don't want to do this by myself. Like I loved working with a team when I was in agency life. I loved the relationships I built, the friendships, and I was missing that. And so I started to hire, but with a a lot of intention for building a good culture because that's what I think was really missing in a lot of my years of my working years was feeling the culture and the team really being unified towards a common mission or value or values, and so I I became kind of obsessive about that. And if you ask anyone who works for me, like culture is number one for me, and I spend a lot of time on you know really making sure the team is happy. We have wellness initiatives. We have retreats. So that's from a culture perspective. And then the work perspective is that I really built it based on all of my years in the industry in news, understanding what takes news, what you know, what stories make news. And how to get them to come to life, right? And so we built a strategy that works. And I'm, you know, it's it's it's really understanding how to have a great team and the right people around you, and then knowing how to get the work done. And so I think the combination of us just continually, you know, putting great stories out there and landing great media coverage in an in a in an environment that's actually very competitive. I will say that there's amazing PR people all over the place, sure, and agencies, and so it's a it's a competitive field. It is not easy, but that's why we're constantly trying to just innovate, but also just do our jobs the best we can and continue to grow from there. One Michael Hingson  40:42 of the things that that I find is that it's amazing how much we learn as we go through life, and only when we listen to our inner voices as we learn, and and and our our inner cells are trying to communicate with us what to do. If we learn how to listen to that, it makes us a whole lot more successful because there's so much that we learn that we observe. I I know that I've learned a lot about companies, startups, and and how to deal with that, how to deal with culture and so on. Just because I've been involved in various aspects of of different kinds of companies, and I never thought about the fact of how much I learned until suddenly I'm put in a position one way or another where I have to actually put some of those skills to practice. But I've also learned how to listen to what my inner self is saying, and I think that's so important because we already know answers to things if we work at it. Michelle Mekky  41:40 That's that's such a great point. I I feel like I took a little bit from every thoughts I've had to build what I've built. You know, things that I liked, things that I wanted to do differently. You know, every company kind of teaches you along the way until you get your own moments. You know, to create your business or your mission, as far as listening to your inner voice, that that is not an easy thing for everyone to do. It definitely was hard for me. I would say because I I have a lot of self doubt, especially in those earlier years. So I started working actually with an intuitive coach who teaches people how to tap into their own intuition and your own gut. You know how they say go with your gut all the time. Yeah. Well, because we do have the answers. You know, if you quiet, if can quiet your mind a little bit, you know what to do. And it's been fun for me to to grow a business, not knowing like what's coming next, but really kind of going inward and thinking, okay, Michelle, like, what's your instinct about this? And can you trust that you're making the right decisions? And you know, what's going to happen if you don't? It's not the end of the world. Everybody makes mistakes. I still make mistakes, right? We're human, but it's about really tapping into hearing, okay, what feels good, and that's what I've learned through the work I've done, and it's helped me. It's really helped me in finding success today. Michael Hingson  43:05 Well, and the the reality is that the more that you work at listening to what's going on inside of you, and the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. But it is a process, and you have to do Michelle Mekky  43:18 it. Yeah, you're going to be Michael Hingson  43:19 successful. Michelle Mekky  43:20 It's so true, and I don't think I realized when I started a company. It was sort of, kind of, I felt like I didn't have a choice in the moment. But as I've continued, you you're hit with you know 1000s of decisions to make on a daily basis, and everyone's looking up to you to make them, and you can't waver. You know, you need to be the leader of the ship. You know, so it's it's the pressure is on when you're in leadership, and I think it's it's been a great practice to really be able to tap into my own instincts and intuition to get to get through it, and and also you know having a good team around you of people you can bounce ideas off of, people you trust, people that you know are in your inner circle. That's been a huge part of our growth as well. Michael Hingson  44:11 Well, and the other aspect of it is, it's not a bad thing to be confident as as long as you're you're doing it for the right reasons. You're not doing it to show your own ego or anything like that, but rather you're trying to do it to help everyone be successful and you to be successful. And it's all about attitude. But when when you develop that attitude and you use all the things that you've learned and your inner voice is telling you what to do, it's it's a wonderful world. Michelle Mekky  44:41 It it is it really is, and I will always have to remind myself, even today, like okay, like stop and be grateful for a minute. You know, I know you're always going to work, and what's next? What's next, right? Or we calculate in our head all the time. Okay, what else should I be doing? What else am I missing? What else am I not? Today, what's the to-do list? But we really need to take a moment and be like, "No, okay, we're alive. We have great things around us, you know, and everybody, you know, wants different things. But to take note of what you're grateful for has also made a huge impact in my life. Michael Hingson  45:16 Yeah, and as it should, because it's not really about you. It's about the process, and it's about what you've learned that you, for the right reasons, put into practice. Michelle Mekky  45:28 Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I can't tell you how good it feels to when I know that I've you know made an impact on a team member in a positive way, or you know they thank me for something that happened in their lives that I'm responsible for, or you know I'm able to provide amazing benefits and and take care of people in that way. It's been so rewarding, and a lot of people you know who aren't in my field, you know especially some of my media friends look at me and they're like, "Oh my God, you're so good to your people! Like that, you spoil them. You spoil them, you know. And I think, my God, it's not spoiling. It's it's about valuing, you know, who works for you. And sure, have I been told sometimes I'm too nice? Sometimes, but you know, I feel like the risks I've taken to invest in the team who are now with me almost the whole time I've had the business means a lot, you know. And I was just looking at a presentation today about generations, and I think they said like millennials stay an average of three years typically in companies. You know, I have millennials who've now been with me for almost seven years, right? And I've only had the business 10 years, so I do feel really, you know, responsible to them. And but I also feel like the the investment I've made in the in the people has really continued to pay off. Michael Hingson  46:56 One of the lessons I've learned over many years is something I learned from working with all of my guide dogs, which Michelle Mekky  47:04 is Michael Hingson  47:05 we tend to be worried about everything in the world, and and with everything that goes on in the world, we've also learned not to trust because everybody clearly must have their own hidden agenda. So I can't trust anyone, yet dogs do really fine. I think dogs love unconditionally, but I don't think that they trust unconditionally. But I think that the difference between dogs and people, by and large, is that dogs are open to trust, and when you develop that trusting relationship, and for like me with a guide dog, it is a two-way street. We both have to learn to trust each other. We each have a job to do on the team. The dog's job is to make sure that we walk safely. It's my job to know where to go and how to get there. And also, the the in a sense almost scary and awesome part of it is the dog is looking to me to set the rules and to to establish the relationship. And so, when that relationship works that way. It works. It it it really is something that is a sight to behold. Yeah, because everybody works together, and and the team is great. Michelle Mekky  48:10 I I love that. Actually, trust is one of our core values at the company. It's all. It's been a core value since day one, because I also feel that that's the only way that a client relationship is going to go well is if we trust each other, and also as a manager and an owner, I need to trust my team. And the minute there's that lack of trust, and you feel like you have to micromanage, and you feel I have to check what they're doing and doubting, you know, that's when it's not going to work out. Yeah. So, and they need to trust me. They need to trust that I'll be there for them, that I have their back, and you know, and take care of them. So, I agree with you. It's it's key to a relationship, and not always naturally there, you know. But I can only imagine what that's like for you with your guide dog. I mean, that's essential. Michael Hingson  49:02 Well, it is. I think some people do a better job of learning to trust and and honor the teaming relationship than others. But I know for me, it's one of the things that I've learned, and it's has helped me in building human human teams as well. Yeah. So it's all about trust and so on. Well, for you, for you, how did you turn a boutique agency into a competitive advantage? Michelle Mekky  49:30 Yeah, I mean, I mentioned that PR is so competitive, and you know, there's so many options for businesses to to find agencies, but I feel that given that we're small still, we can really be nimble. And and what I mean by that is, you know, we can change, we can shift with the needs of the clients. I don't have you know a huge board or 100. People to answer to, you know, and layers upon layers, you know, the from intern all the way to, you know, vice president. Like everyone is involved and gets a chance to think of ideas and move the needle. And so, I think it it's helped us stay competitive, where we can, you know, move with the client's needs. If, for example, during the pandemic, you know, a lot of agencies really struggled, and we actually grew during the pandemic. And I think it was because we didn't really lose business; it was just shifting focus. You know, like maybe help us write some crisis statements that we need to put on our website to encourage safety, or help us, you know, speak to our customers about why we have to cancel the gala and what we're doing to continue fundraising online, and or or come up with a creative way to, you know, continue the fundraiser, but not in person. You know, there's just a lot of different ways we had to move and switch. And I said to everyone, don't tell a client it's not in scope. You know, like we we need to figure out how to find the answer for them and and get the work done. And so I think that's been a competitive advantage. And and if you pay attention to any of you know the big news in our industry right now, there's a lot of the big agencies that are struggling that have gone through acquisitions, that have merged, and a lot of people have lost their jobs. And so, I think being a smaller firm has been helping us right now. In that, you know, again, we can move with the times and be able to address, you know, the needs of clients in a in a much more impact, you know, quick and impactful way. Michael Hingson  51:40 Do you think that you could, as an agency, grow and become much larger and still keep the same kinds of attitudes and processes that you have? Michelle Mekky  51:51 Well, that's a great question. I don't know that I have the exact answer. That would be hard. That would be hard. But I will say, I do feel that if you have the right operating procedures and and ability, you know, people in place to manage that, I think you you could. It the the the issue becomes, you know, obviously the the cost of doing the work, right? But I think for me, the values, the you know, the dedication to the culture is really, really inherent in everyone that works for me. And I think, you know, maybe doubling in size would work, but I don't know if we can get much bigger because I feel like that's when things get really difficult to manage, you know, and Michael Hingson  52:43 and maybe there's a lesson there that too many companies have have yeah done that, and that's a problem. Michelle Mekky  52:49 I I know, and I you know people want human beings and and connection. I think it gets harder. I've always been amazed at at people I know who have grown their businesses that large, and and I I'm in awe, honestly. But as a small business owner, you know I I love what I do. I love the people that I've attracted to the business and the clients. And we definitely want to keep growing. We're we're on a growth, you know, trajectory. But I I think about those things, Michael. Like how big do I really want to get, and how what will change if we grow as far as our culture? Because I do see that that would be very hard. Michael Hingson  53:29 So the trick is to really monitor that growth, and Michelle Mekky  53:32 yeah, Michael Hingson  53:33 and don't don't let it affect or or make sure that the growth that you you do decide to undertake doesn't change the the whole direction or process of the way the company works, and I'm sure that you can do that. Michelle Mekky  53:48 Yeah, I mean, why not? Right? Look at all I've done so far. But I think I think you know one change I've made in the last year, which was really significant for me, is that I pulled out of being on all the day-to-day phone phone calls with the clients and meetings, and really trusted the team to to manage that and move things forward, so I could focus on growth and culture and be the visionary that I want to be. And that was a huge adjustment for me as someone who has been involved in every aspect of her business, you know, from day one, it was like I finally decided this is the only way we're going to continue to grow, and also that I can grow the people that work for me to elevate them as well to the next level. And those kinds of changes are scary, but they've worked. So I'm very proud of how the team's performing, the leadership has really continued to grow, and it took me having, you know, a little bit of courage to let go the reins a little bit, but but also trust that with the right direction and oversight, like the the right things are happening at the business, Michael Hingson  54:56 and they will bring you in when they need you. That's. Yeah, they will. I'm Michelle Mekky  55:01 always reachable. Michael Hingson  55:02 Yeah, never part of dark trust. Yeah, Michelle Mekky  55:04 yeah. I never go dark, so they know where to find me. So the other Michael Hingson  55:07 thing that you did that I think is really clever is rather than just making it part of the same company, you also launched Elevated by Mickey Media. Michelle Mekky  55:14 Yes, Michael Hingson  55:14 as a separate company, which I think is is kind of fascinating. Tell us about that a little bit. Michelle Mekky  55:19 Yeah, so you know, I've always had media training under the Mecky Media umbrella, but I felt that most people didn't understand that they could just come to us and hire us for media training or public speaking coaching or executive presence building. And I am really proud of our training, it's myself and I call him my work husband, David Vigiano, who is a former reporter for Fox and actor. And the two of us together, I was the you know I was the producer, he was the reporter. We've built an incredible training process and program, and so I decided to I had actually a contest at the company to name it, and Elevated was the name of the company that won Elevated by Mecky Media because it really speaks to what we're trying to do. You know, we're trying to elevate people to get to the next level, to be able to speak more confidently, as we talked about earlier, to be comfortable doing media interviews, and even help with executive presence. You know, do you want to be more of a force on LinkedIn? Do you want to understand how to be better at your social media videos? So that's really what Elevated is all about. And we've started even training individuals who, you know, a nonprofit head that has to do a big speech at a gala coming up and fundraise and just wants to really be crisp in how she speaks to you know the the storytelling aspect of the nonprofit and and be effective. And so those are the kinds of things Elevated does. I'm I'm really excited about it, Michael Hingson  56:55 which really does sound exciting. That's that's pretty cool. Do you so do you you have clients all all over the the country. We're elevated by Miki Media. Michelle Mekky  57:04 Yeah, we can take anyone across the country. We do it virtually. I was going Michael Hingson  57:08 to say virtual really helps you. Michelle Mekky  57:10 Yes, we do it virtually. We can travel to you, and so and and again, we can really you know train and we in any type of format because we we cater it to the person, so it's not like a template that we just throw in. It's it's really very unique to what that individual needs. And I love teaching. I've always wanted to be a teacher. I never got to be a teacher, so this is my moment. I'm there. You Michael Hingson  57:33 go. Michelle Mekky  57:33 I'm stepping up and and and helping teach something that again I'm super passionate about, and and I know that almost everyone could use. Michael Hingson  57:43 What excites you most about the futures of storytelling and communications? Michelle Mekky  57:49 You know, I would say a couple of things. I mean, the fact that there's so many different formats for us to tell stories in now, the explosion of social media, digital media, podcasting, blogging, social media, television streams-you know, there's so many different aspects to what we do now that it's gone way beyond just the traditional, you know, print and and TV segments that we all know of, and magazines. I mean, everything is online, and so I think for what we do that gives us a lot of opportunity and I think it's going to continue to evolve. The other thing is AI, so we can't ignore AI. Oh, it's going to be absolutely incredible what we can do with AI now when it comes to communications, right? And so it's just a matter of not being afraid of it and learning how to dive in and use it. So we actually have worked with a specialist who has helped us build our own enterprise, you know, learning language model. Basically, I call it the Mecki GPT, which knows our clients, has all of our style, our values, our writing samples, and can work. You know, we can work with it to help us do our job. Now, it never replaces exact writing, as we all know, but it it can really help save time with a lot of the research, a lot of the audits. I have a tool that even measures now how you're performing in AI because people find me and they say I found you on ChatGPT and I think yes that means I'm doing something right right so you need to be found on ChatGPT people need to know you're there and the only way they know you're there is if you're really active in social media in content and in in PR in the media so I think that's an ever-changing landscape now that we're still trying to, you know, continue to grab our hands around. But it's it's making an impact for sure, Michael Hingson  59:50 right? What advice do you give to professionals who want to find their voice but are just hesitant to speak up? Of course, we talked about fear a while ago. Yeah, Michelle Mekky  1:00:00 you know it's more than fear. I think you know it's it's it's belief. So believing that you are worthy of telling your story. Number one, number two, like what you said, Michael. Everyone has a story to tell. It's so much fun to dive in and get to know people and hear their stories because we all are changed by them, we're inspired in different ways, and so I believe everyone has a story. And you know, if you have a business and you are hiding behind it, you know that's a mistake. Like every business has a human aspect to it, and the public wants to hear the about the person behind the business, you know, it's not just about the service. It's about who started it. What's your story? Why did you do it? And you know, what what do we need to know about you? And and then being able to to come up with what what angles can you talk about? It isn't just about your business. Maybe it's about something that's you've overcome. Like I shared with you, my cancer story, my job loss story. We're we're we're all more connected than we think we are, right? We all have a lot of battles that we've faced, and when you have courage to share them, I feel like making a difference is really, you know, what in the end will carry you even farther, and so whether it's to grow your business or to become a speaker or just to you know be more known, everyone has a different goal, and we love what we do because we get to learn about so many different stories and and make an impact every day in people's lives through our storytelling. It's amazing. Michael Hingson  1:01:40 Have you written any books yet? Michelle Mekky  1:01:43 Funny you ask that. No, I haven't. I've thought about it many times. I've only written a chapter here, a chapter there, but not my own. I haven't found the time yet, but I I would like to. I have I have a lot of things I'd love to to share. Michael Hingson  1:01:56 I think there would be fantastic stories in it if we do that. Michelle Mekky  1:02:00 Thank you. I haven't even told you all of them yet, Michael. But you know, we can go here for hours if I do. Yeah, I Michael Hingson  1:02:06 know. Well, we'll have to do another episode to do that. Yeah, Michelle Mekky  1:02:08 that would be awesome. Michael Hingson  1:02:09 Well, if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Michelle Mekky  1:02:13 They can find me all over social media. I'm on every channel at Michelle Mekky or MekyMedia.com, our website. Michael Hingson  1:02:21 Mekk is M E K K Michelle Mekky  1:02:23 Y media.com. Yes, Michael Hingson  1:02:25 there you go. Michelle Mekky  1:02:26 Would love to hear from anybody. Michael Hingson  1:02:28 There you are. I hope people will reach out, and I am glad that we did this. And I'm very serious. We need to do another Michelle Mekky  1:02:34 one. Oh, thank you so much, Michael. Anytime. Michael Hingson  1:02:37 We will plot about that. But I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for listening and being a part of this with us today, if you'd like to, and I would appreciate it if you would, I'd love to hear from you as well. Feel free to email me at speaker at michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com. Love to hear from you wherever you're finding our podcast. Please give us a five star rating. But even more important than that, please give us a great review. We love reviews. People who are interested in listening or watching podcasts also love to see reviews that say that so and so is really good, and we want you to say that about us. We would appreciate it a lot. So, if if any of you also know of anyone who ought to be a guest, and Michelle, including you, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on Unstoppable Mindset, we'd love it if you'd introduce us. We appreciate that and would would love to make more friends and hear more stories. And would love to. Well, thank you once again. This has been fun, and I'm glad we were able to do it. And thanks for being here. Michelle Mekky  1:03:40 Thank you so much. It was great speaking to you today. Michael Hingson  1:03:45 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others. I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset. :

What does it take to survive the impossible and come back stronger? My guest, Vincent Van den Broeck, is a Belgian entrepreneur whose life has been filled with unexpected challenges. From losing his mother at a young age to building restaurants, facing bankruptcy, and finding success in the hospitality industry, Vincent has never allowed setbacks to define his future. Then, in October 2024, he was struck by a car and spent three weeks in a coma. Doctors warned his wife that he might not survive. Yet Vincent defied those expectations and began the difficult journey of learning to walk and talk again. I enjoyed hearing how his experiences shaped his views on overcoming adversity, personal growth, gratitude, and the power of positive thinking. We also discuss his book, Everything Feels Impossible Until It's Done, and why preparing yourself for life's challenges matters long before they arrive. Vincent's story reminds us that we have more strength and ability than we often realize. Highlights: 01:38 – Discover how personal loss led Vincent to a career in hospitality. 10:30 – Learn why curiosity and passion are keys to success. 18:39 – Explore the challenges of entrepreneurship and business failure. 34:43 – Hear how a devastating accident changed Vincent's life. 45:48 – Discover the challenges of recovery and the power of support. 56:35 – Learn how gratitude and positive thinking help overcome adversity. About the Guest: Vincent Van den Broeck is a Brussels-based entrepreneur, restaurateur, and survivor of a near-fatal car accident that changed his life forever. On October 11th, 2024, he was struck whilst riding a scooter in a collision at 55 km/h in a 30 zone. The impact left him with multiple fractures and major brain trauma. Doctors gave little hope with most injuries of this severity having only a 10% survival rate. He spent weeks in a coma and three months in intensive rehabilitation, but recovery didn't stop there — it became a daily mission. Against all odds, he not only regained his strength but came back stronger than before: working out 7 times a week, running a business, and building new creative projects. Today, Vincent shares his story as living proof that resilience, mindset, and community can make the impossible possible. About the book: On October 11th, 2024, I nearly died. Surviving was one thing. Understanding why became another. This is the story of how the life I built became the life that saved me: the sacrifices I made, the small daily habits, the challenges I faced, the days I kept going anyway. And how all of it took me from a 1% chance of survival to a full recovery. No one sees those moments, but when everything breaks, they're what hold you together. And sooner or later, life tests all of us. So if you're going through something difficult right now, or searching for something more, this book is for you. Because everything feels impossible, until it's done. Everything Feels Impossible Until It's Done is more than a memoir. It's a testimony of survival, perseverance, and hope — told with raw honesty and humility. The book takes readers through: • Before – the years leading to the day of the accident. • The Accident – a life-changing moment in Brussels. • The Coma & Rehab – weeks unconscious and months relearning life. • The Recovery Journey – rebuilding body, mind, and spirit, far beyond the hospital. • The Rebirth – lessons in resilience, purpose, and creating again. Ultimately, this is not just a story about survival. It's about awareness, responsibility, and perspective — toward yourself, and toward everyone who plays a role in your journey. For fans of David Goggins' Can't Hurt Me, James Clear's Atomic Habits and Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air Ways to connect with Vincent**:** https://www.instagram.com/vincentinthekitchen/ https://www.tiktok.com/@vincentinthekitchen0 https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincent-van-den-broeck-b9b275103/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset  Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet, and the unexpected is definitely a significant part of our guest today, Vincent Van den Broeck, and he wants me to just use Vincent, so I will. But you're going to see that there's a lot of unexpectedness in in Vincent, and a lot of creativity as well. And definitely, Vincent is a person who is unstoppable in so many ways. So we'll get to all that, though. We've got lots of time, and we hope that you'll stay with us because Vincent's story is fascinating. So, Vincent, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here, all the way from Brussels. Vincent Van den Broeck  01:45 Thank you for having me, Michael. For real. And by the way, after this introduction, you're literally boosting imposter syndrome. I'm like, unstoppable. Am I that creative? No. Thank you for those words. That's too kind of you. Thank you. Michael Hingson  02:00 Well, you're absolutely welcome. Why don't we start as I love to do? Tell us about the early Vincent growing up. That's always fun. That way, people get to know you a little bit more. Vincent Van den Broeck  02:10 You know what? I'm gonna quickly take give me two seconds. I'm gonna take my book because the first line of the everything feels impossible, and then it was done this project perfectly, which is I was 16 and life had been planned out. My mom had made sure of that the schools, the programs, the grades that were acceptable, what success was supposed to look like, and that was the and those were my early years. Like I was considered this market. I was studying Latin. Then I went when I went to university. University I went for engineer because it was considered cool and smart. And then my mom got diagnosed for the second time with breast cancer. This time terminal, she she was given two years left to live. And in those last months, she went from bad to worse. So we had to help her go to the toilet, put her in bed, and I was never allowed to work in hospitality like hospital. And by the way, until today, has like this negative connotation. Like when you work in hospitality, that's weird. And so when she got worse, I saw that as an opportunity to land a student job in hospitality. And from day one, I loved everything about it: the adrenaline, the rushes, the energy, the taking care of customers. And so from that day on, I built my whole life and whole personality on hospitality, and that is also the moment I learned that every negative has a positive. Yeah. So I'm back then when one years young when my mom passed away finally a couple of days before my birthday. Michael Hingson  04:02 Well, I wasn't quite so young when my parents passed away. My father passed away in 1984. I was 34. I had been married for two years, and then my mother passed away two and a half years later. It was like May or so of 1987, and I had a brother. We were pretty close, and and he lived until 2015. Then he died of of breast cancer, actually. But now it's me and my wife and I were married 40 years, and she passed in November of 2022, but as I tell people, we've got lots of memories and lots of wonderful things over 40 years that I get to treasure, and so you know, there's there's no reason to be upset. Things go as they go, and I don't control everything in the world. I wish. I did, but now maybe not. That would be a lot of work. So I don't need to control everything in the world. Well, so you got involved in hospitality. So did you pretty much start to do that out of college and university? Vincent Van den Broeck  05:14 So when I landed my first student job, I just did it at a as a student job, And then in December, so I think I started it as a student job. It was like September, October, and then in that December, when my mom getting, she spent her last month in in hospital, and in December, I was studying for the exams in January. And I think a week or two weeks before, I had a conversation with my then manager, asking him like, "Hey, would it be a possibility for me to come work here full time? And he was like, "No, keep on studying, but should you want to? Yeah, of course. You're doing a great job. And so I was studying. I was in front of my book, and I was like, "What in? What on earth am I even doing here? And on the spot, I dropped out of high school, out of university, and then started working full time immediately, and in the beginning, I was like ashamed to tell people around me like I was working in hospitality full time. Again, going back to the negative connotation, me being considered this market, and then until a certain point, I was like, "Wait, I love this so much. Why would I be ashamed telling people that I work in hospitality full time, and so then I started telling, and we're then 2021, 13 years ago. Where wow, 2013. That seems a while ago. Michael Hingson  06:58 Yeah, it's 13 years ago. Vincent Van den Broeck  07:00 Yeah, crazy. Michael Hingson  07:01 So, what were you doing? What was your what was that first major job that you were doing in hospitality? What did you do? Vincent Van den Broeck  07:08 I was just a simple waiter. I was doing more. I was waiting tables. I was cleaning tables, and then I worked. Not yeah, I worked my way up until I was 24, and so my old bosses they plan on opening a restaurant in Brussels, and they offered me the opportunity to open the place with them and manage it, which for me was like big. Michael Hingson  07:43 Yeah. So where were you at the time? You weren't in Brussels at that point until. Vincent Van den Broeck  07:48 Oh no, not at all. I grew up in Antwerp. I lived my whole life in Antwerp. In Antwerp, okay. Natsworth, yeah. Michael Hingson  07:55 Okay. So then you moved to Brussels to open the restaurant for them. Vincent Van den Broeck  08:02 Exactly. The thing is, like the first months I went back and forth, I did Antwerp Brussels, Antwerp Brussels, Brussels, Antwerp Brussels, and then in the same. So we opened in August when I was 24, so it 10 years ago. This is 2016. We opened in August 2016, and in that same month, I got to I met my wife, my then girlfriend, and so for the who is from Brussels. So in those first month, I worked three to 400 hours a month, and at the same time, I was seeing someone that was from Brussels. I was like, "Hey, my life's in Brussels. Why not move? And so I moved for love for work to Brussels. Michael Hingson  08:47 There you go. She she lived in Brussels. Vincent Van den Broeck  08:51 She she's from Brussels originally. Michael Hingson  08:54 Well, that means you had someone who who knew the city. Vincent Van den Broeck  08:58 Exactly. Exactly. Michael Hingson  09:00 Well, that's that's pretty cool. So you opened the restaurant, you you managed it. Vincent Van den Broeck  09:07 Yep. Michael Hingson  09:09 And then what? Vincent Van den Broeck  09:11 And then so things were great. Things were amazing. First, yeah, I think we did 4 million in revenue net. The The thing is, so my bosses they took in a partner from Russell's because she had connections, she had the money, and it was like a big investment. A woman, things went great with her too. And then at a certain, which I learned afterward, at a certain point, they were they asked her to take Minion as a partner investment, and I think she took it wrong, because from there on, like our relationship went sideways, and it got so bad that my boss called me in the office one day and he told me, "Yeah, Vincent, I think it would be better for you to come back to Anna." Work for things to cool down, and when things are have cooled down, we can come back to Brussels. And I was like, "Yo, I literally moved to Brussels for this job. I'm not going back to Antwerp. And then it got so bad that they let me go. Unfortunately, Michael Hingson  10:20 yeah, that's that's that's never fun when somebody feels so threatened that they they can't create a better teaming relationship. That is always extremely unfortunate. So when did that happen that they let you go? What year was that? Vincent Van den Broeck  10:36 That was I'm 26. So this is I managed the place for one year and a half, so this is 26. This is eight years ago. Late 2017 Michael Hingson  10:49 or early 2018? Vincent Van den Broeck  10:51 Exactly, exactly. Because yeah, early 20 late. It was actually December 2017 because we opened our first place in April 2018. Michael Hingson  11:03 Well, what before you left? That that happened, and well, to put it this way, that had to be a great adventure. Moving to Brussels, being the manager, and so on. What did you learn from all of that? Vincent Van den Broeck  11:15 Hard work always pays off. Michael Hingson  11:18 There you go. Vincent Van den Broeck  11:19 Honestly, if this, if I have to, I learned a lot. But I learned that being curious is an important skill to have. Asking a lot of questions, learning, being eager to learn, and then hard work always pays off. Always. Michael Hingson  11:38 Yeah. Well, and I think that is that is so true. And and hard work doesn't necessarily need to be hard, but it that does mean working pretty seriously and so on. But the other part about it is that hard work had to be a lot easier because you were curious and you you worked to learn a lot, and so you you progress a lot because you were willing to be curious and ask a lot of questions. Vincent Van den Broeck  12:08 Yes, sir. Yes, sir. the The thing is, when when you do something you love, you can never go wrong. Yeah, it's that easy, and it's it sounds cliche, but it's it's the truth. When you do something you truly love, like you're ex, you wake up and you're excited about your day. Yeah, could be whatever. Could be you're a public speaker. Could you could be you working in hospitality. You're working in insurance. You're. It does not matter what, but when you do something you love, you can never go wrong. Michael Hingson  12:45 And it and it becomes less of a job and more of, as you said, something that you're excited about doing. And it becomes less hard because you become excited by it. Vincent Van den Broeck  12:57 It's see, I've been working for many years with Gen Z, and I've heard this sentence so many times. I really need vacation, and I've and I find it so fascinating because it would be the same saying. I really need to go out for dinner. No, you're just hungry, or you feel like eating, and like it's it's this thing of we've been creating lives for ourselves that we need escaping from, and I find it so fascinating. And I've been lucky lucky enough to have lived the life until today that I do not need escaping from. And sometimes you work a lot, and then there's times that you work a little bit less. Going back to yeah, when you do something you love, it is it doesn't feel like work, and you can work. You can do three to 400 hours and still not have the feeling of having worked too much. At the same time, though, what about this thing that people talk about-work-life balance? You you Michael Hingson  14:07 you got married, and and so you had someone else who was a part of your life. You had to devote some time to that as well, I would think. Vincent Van den Broeck  14:17 Don't get me started of work. I do. I do not believe in work. I balance this. Let me let me put it like this: this times you work, and this times your life, and this times you work more, and this times your life more. Okay. And it's this, and it's and it's this balance Of again, when you're surrounded with people, they get you because I've never, my wife never had the impression. I never had the impression that we didn't see each other enough. But again, there's times you and. We got so caught up in this in this work life balance thing in 2026. Like, stop it! Like, if life is not working out for you, I can tell I can guarantee you, work won't neither, and vice versa. If work is not working out for you, life will not. Michael Hingson  15:16 What's so? What's the secret that you and your wife have that that makes for a good marriage. Vincent Van den Broeck  15:25 Isn't that a question I need to ask you? You've been married for 40 years. We've, by the way, we we've been a couple of days ago, the 20 july 28. We've been married for eight years by now. We got married when we got married when we were 26, and what I learned through time, good communication, good conversation, okay, understanding, and it again, it seems so cliche, but it's the true conversation, talking about things that matter, not what, not about what you want to hear, but what you need to hear often, and not only talking but also listening-it's Michael Hingson  16:06 all about communication first and foremost. And you know, and yeah, you're right. I've been married 40 years, and we went through a few tough times, but we talked about it, and we had also made a commitment To work together, and we did love each other, and and the key really was to communicate, and and it's important to be able to do that because that's what makes for a solid marriage. You you guys talk to each other, you know each other, and you can be honest with each other and figure it out together, and that's what it's really about. Vincent Van den Broeck  16:45 Yes, sir. The thing is, like I always use examples that are easier to understand, and the thing is, it's like a business when you have the same goal, meaning making the business work. If you're aligned on that, no matter what happens, because you know what shit always happens. Yeah, tough tough times always gonna happen. As good times will always happen, and there's gonna be ups. There's gonna be downs. There's gonna be plenty of money, and then there's gonna be times where there's less money. But when you have the same, when you're chasing together with your partner, the same goal, meaning spending the rest of your life like truly, like you're not pretending, like you truly want to spend the rest of your life together, then things work out pretty well. Michael Hingson  17:37 You you have to have that commitment, and you each have to know that the other one has the commitment. So it's more than talking about it; it's living it. But when you do that, and then you open up with each other to communicate, that's as good as it gets. And you can always make things succeed. So, what does your wife do? Does she work today? Vincent Van den Broeck  18:00 She has her own company in music industry. She does label consultancy. She manages artists, project management. She does a lot of things. She works in the music industry. Michael Hingson  18:14 Couldn't get her into the restaurant industry, huh? Vincent Van den Broeck  18:17 No, I did. I did, and but this is like this is this is this has always been for at least the past years her passion and she has always been there since day one for for me she has always supported and she even until today she still works in the restaurant from time to time but that's that's that's her thing music is her thing Michael Hingson  18:40 well again you get to share so many things, and I think that is that is so important. Speaker 1  18:49 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  19:22 Well, you opened your first restaurant. You said in April of 2018. Tell me about that. That that again, having moved to Brussels, having opened a restaurant for someone, that certainly was an adventure, and obviously you had to learn a lot. So that gave you some skills that you were able to use. But still, opening your own place is is a whole different level to go to. Vincent Van den Broeck  19:46 100% and I made a lot of bad decisions. No, the thing, the the fun fact is, so I was already thinking about. So when things got bad at my at my job, I was already thinking about. Okay, why not? Up from my own place, and then there were customers in that same restaurant, and I heard I overheard them talking about I think it was hospitality, and so I stopped them in the hallways of the place I was working, and I asked them like, "Hey, can I? Are you in hospitality? And they told me, "No, but we have a building, and we're looking for someone to rent out the place. And I was like, okay. So we exchanged numbers, and I went visiting the the building in which we opened then our first restaurant. And then because I got fired, because the goal was not to open the restaurant immediately, it was just like opening a door, and because I got fired, things had to go three, four, fire. Yeah, way faster. So I get fired in December. I have no money on the side. My wife has no money on the side, and that's why we opened the pre the place already in April 2018, so I had to go visit banks and find investors. Managed to to have the owners of the building invest in the business. My best friend invested in the business. I think a week or two weeks before opening, found a bank loan. So it was it was something. It was something, and then we opened the place. And the thing is, my idea was, yeah, I'm gonna run this thing in the same way as my bosses did with their places. The thing is, the the experience was different. The budget was the investment was different, so I made, so I was running it from the corner office, while at the same time we did not have money, so I hired a manager. And the thing in Belgium is like taxing is crazy, like hiring staff. Let's say you pay someone 15; it costs you as a business owner 30. So we went into a lot of debt due to me, due to bad management decisions, due to life, and so I was so I had to ah yeah, and then also fun fact 2020 2019 comes around. I get in touch with a lawyer to restructure the business financially. We open the second place hashtag in May 2019, and then good news, COVID hits, but we go into lockdown. Michael Hingson  22:43 Yeah, Vincent Van den Broeck  22:44 and and this is you have to know. So this place was huge. So we did first year we did despite the debt we did more than 1 million net in revenue. We had a so we had the restaurant on the second floor. We had a reception room. Then the third and fourth floor, we had luxury apartments that were rented out on Airbnb and booking. COVID hits, and we're in a business area, so there's no more. Everyone is working from home. Yeah, because I don't know if you remember, but it was the first lockdown, and then we were able to reopen for a couple of months, and then it was a second lockdown. And in that reopening period, revenue dropped from one under 50 a month k to 60 a month, and we were paying 17k in rent alone. So it the math didn't add up anymore, unfortunately. So we had to close the a file for bankruptcy the end of 2020, and then we were we still had a hashtag that we didn't still own until today. So end of a chapter. Michael Hingson  23:56 Yeah, and so when were you finally able to reopen and really start to build the business, Vincent Van den Broeck  24:05 the first restaurant or you need hashtag, Michael Hingson  24:09 whichever. Well, the first business. The the Vincent Van den Broeck  24:12 first business was so the lockdown. I think the lockdown was announced in February 2020. Then we had we could reopen. I think it was summer 2020, and then we had to re close October or November 2020, and then we filed for bankruptcy. I think it was December or January 2020 2021. Michael Hingson  24:36 Now, during that time, did hashtag close or did it stay open? Vincent Van den Broeck  24:42 Yeah. So that again, fantastic. So we opened hashtag May 2019. We opened for a couple of months, and again, lockdown. So it shut down also for almost a year, and then in that first lockdown, again, every good has a bad. In that first lockdown, like I've never been diagnosed, but I'm convinced I have ADHD. Sitting still is sitting still is not for me. So I don't know if you remember, but those first weeks of lockdown, you could not go out. Yeah, you had to stay at home. So after week three or four, I was like, "Okay, I'm not doing this. What do people eat when they're depressed and at home? And I was like, "Yeah, sugar. Yeah, chocolate. Yeah, indeed, sugar. And I've always been a big fan of donuts since a very young age. So what I started doing is I started doing trials at my kitchen at home for homemade donuts. My wife was had to taste them all until I found the perfect recipe, and so we started selling homemade donuts from Instagram, and we delivered it to people's door. Michael Hingson  26:11 I was wondering if you were going to get to delivering. Yeah, go ahead. Vincent Van den Broeck  26:14 Yeah. So, and this is month two or three in lockdown, and it became so big, so quick that we were doing at a certain point. We were pushing out three to 4000 donuts a day. Wow! And we were delivering them all out of all over Brussels. And then, me being me, I've always been very big on being solution minded, everyone was at home, so I called up friends that were living all over Belgium, like Ostend Antwerp, yes, and I asked them like, hey, would you be down to sell to your network our donuts and you get a cut on the sales? So we were selling all over Belgium. It it was crazy. So while everyone was at home, we were pushing 1000s and 1000s of donuts. We we then opened shops a bit all over Belgium. We started doing B to B, so it became way bigger. But again, my big flaw in the beginning has always been I'm crazy good in starting new business, new concepts. But when it comes to the foundation, I've always been pretty shitty. So it went crazy for six to 12 months, and then lack of experience revenue dropped. So yeah, file for bankruptcy for beat and kept on doing hashtag, and then we called it hashtag bakery the donut things because hashtag was already Open, right. Michael Hingson  28:04 So you, you, but you kept hashtag and in the donut business. So do you do donuts today? Vincent Van den Broeck  28:14 We no. So we're. It's funny that you ask all the questions because I started a series on our social media building hashtag with a weekly episode coming out, and everything I'm telling you right now, I've been posting on for the past couple of weeks, and so in 2022, I think I was delivering donuts all over Belgium. We had an hashtag, and I had this conversation with my wife where we were telling each other like we're running all over Belgium for very few money at the end of the day. Wouldn't it be better to just close everything and just focus only on hashtag, which we then did. So we decided to close everything down, focus only on hashtag. And again, we're I think we're summer 22, and at that point we're only doing waffle burgers in hashtag. And the good thing is, I'm there because everything is closed. I'm there every day because we're open since for seven days a week. My wife is there every day, so experience was on point. Quality was on point. Dishes were beautiful. Service was clean. We decided to then add on top of the waffle burgers all day brunch, all day brunch salary, and things popped off again immediately. Revenue. I'm not gonna lie; those first months were kind of tough because we were dragging that from COVID, right? Unless revenue was coming in, so I still remember I have some, I have some. Memories of moments where I had to decide between buying still or sparkling water for the customers because there was no money for both. I remember my wife and I taking the bike to go buy at a night shop 90 cent noodles because there was no money for fancy food. So it was again it was a struggle, but again, in thinking all struggle, there's beauty, and all of a sudden, month after month, revenue got up, and it got up, and it got better, and it got better, and it got better. So, why do you think that Michael Hingson  30:35 was, Vincent Van den Broeck  30:38 Michael? It's I do not have to explain it to you, like quality, it all goes back to quality. Like when you give quality, one day it hard work again always pays off. Like if you give what people are looking for, it's not that difficult. And the the thing in the thing what is hard in hospitality? It's it's the final of the World Cup every single day. Yeah, because a customer can a customer can come over 20 times and be super happy, then come for the 21st time, hate His experience, and he will never come back. Yeah, and you understand that, which is so important. Of course, that you you you you do not do this if you're not customer obsessed. You're doing this for the money. Go find something else. It's not in hospital being going to do that. Michael Hingson  31:42 Well, so quality got better, and I asked you this before we started. So now we might as well explain why is it called hashtag. Vincent Van den Broeck  31:51 Because a hashtag. Because a hashtag looks like a in itself looks like a waffle, and because waffles is our yeah because it's it's our main product. I decided to call it hashtag because it's easy. Hey, let's go to hashtag. It's easy to say, easy word to mouth. Yeah. Hey, let's go to hashtag. It makes people like this. Michael Hingson  32:17 And it sounds good. And you so the restaurant. Well, and your email is hashtag Brussels, which makes perfect sense. So I'll be waiting for you to start a hashtag in California, but that's probably a ways off yet. So that's okay. Vincent Van den Broeck  32:30 It's so funny because you have to know that 95% of our audience is tourists, and I've been hearing so many times from from Americans, people from England, from all over the world, like you should open this in Quebec, you should open this in Kellogg, you should open this in New York. It would go crazy. Just a matter of time. Michael Hingson  32:56 And and maybe that's true, and maybe not, but it still is something that's worth thinking about. But but the reality is, it's a whole different thing to bring an enterprise like that, especially to another country, and understand the same quality, or keep the same quality, or keep the quality that people in the new country will like, and and it can be a challenge. I know one of my favorite restaurants is a restaurant in New York called Virgil's. It's a barbecue restaurant. They have the, I think, the best ribs in the United States. And I've tasted ribs around the around the country. What I learned was at one point several years ago that Virgil's was going to open a restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada. Vincent Van den Broeck  33:42 Okay, but Michael Hingson  33:43 one of the things that they required before that restaurant could open was that the people who were going to open the restaurant had to come and spend six months working at Virgil's in New York because they wanted to have the same quality. They wanted the the same sort of thing, and having now eaten at both restaurants, I could tell you they did a good job. But you know they they learned the business, and it and it worked out really well. And what Virgil's originally did was traveled around the country, looking at different barbecue restaurants in different places, learned what they did, and they put it all together to make the ribs that that they sell, and they're wonderful. Vincent Van den Broeck  34:25 Everything you just said, literally everything you just said. Could you imagine the worry that goes behind it? If you want to be invest in hospitality, good luck. Yeah, good. Michael Hingson  34:37 Yeah, there is there. You know, there was so much behind it, but the people were committed, and and they've done a good job. I actually ate at Virgil's in Las Vegas. The last time I ate at Virgil's in Las Vegas was earlier this year, and it just reminded me of how good their food is because it's not just the cooking of it; it's the kind of ribs they use. It's just everything. And and it's wonderful, so I certainly can't complain. But I imagine it's got to be a lot of worry, a lot of work, and major challenges to go to a whole new country. You know, moving and having a second restaurant in Belgium is one thing, but opening it in another country-that's got to be a big challenge. Vincent Van den Broeck  35:18 Yeah. Good luck with that. It's not really overnight. It's not something you do overnight. Michael Hingson  35:24 Well, so you have been running hashtag for a while, but of course we got to get to the fact that something happened in 2024. Why don't you start to tell us about that, if you would? Vincent Van den Broeck  35:38 It's funny because when people say like you need to go all in for your business. It's literally what I did, meaning October 1120, 24. Two weeks after sending my account, and hey, did you see our revenue? We just did our best month since forever. The same day we're having a catering at Abbe, which is a famous concert room here in Brussels, which I always wanted as a client because I think since the end of 2023 we started doing catering. They became a good client of us, so we're doing catering events at Abbe, and I had to send a last important file because, again, I was reorganizing, restructuring the business because the debt we were dragging from COVID, from business partners that that framed us, and I had to send the last file to our lawyers that same evening, so I'm on my way to the Hoxen, which is a hotel here in, who's also in the States, by the way, who's a hotel here in the center of Brussels, and I've always been doing admin from that from that place because the restaurant we own is kind of small. I'm on my way to the to the Hoxton to send that last file, and in front of the the hotel, I get hit by a car, unfortunately, which was a pretty bad accident. So I fall. I fell on the front window on the roof, and then the person who found me, which was by the way the same comment I was just talking about, found me 11 meters further than the than the car. My skull was already open because I wasn't wearing a helmet. I was already suffocating on the spot, telling Tacoma immediately and then stayed in coma for for three weeks. For three weeks, and the narrative back then was to my wife, your husband is not gonna make it. Probably stop prepping the funeral. So found it challenging. Wish that, of course, didn't happen. Michael Hingson  38:02 Well, I certainly would expect that it didn't, since we're here talking. But that's a good thing. So, but but she had been told to expect the worst. What did she think? Vincent Van den Broeck  38:14 She um, she's she believes in God, so and she's a big believer, and she's good. Destiny's Destiny's Destiny, but she was she stay convinced weirdly enough. Like she was delusional, and we talked a lot about being delusional. She was delusional about the fact that I was going to survive. There was no way I was gonna pass away, despite the medical facts, despite the the bad news that she was getting, and at the same time, there were a lot of a lot of my friends, a lot of my family that told her, if there's one person that is gonna survive this, it's Vincent. Don't worry about it. And so everything came together to me. Then eventually waking up on the on October the 31st, and I think I'm I've I also believe a lot in energy, like the body, the brain, the body, the universe works in mysterious ways, and they feel like super pessimistic about the fact, like, yeah, okay, not gonna make it. The room just feels it. The patients, which in this case was me, would feel it, and then again afterwards, nah, go. a little bit sideways, but no, she was convinced. But I was gonna, I was gonna make it. Michael Hingson  39:47 Well, that that had to help. Vincent Van den Broeck  39:52 Until this day, I I tell her, I tell everyone, she's the reason I survived. Michael Hingson  39:57 Yeah, I can understand that. My wife, in 2014, went into a coma because she had caught bronchitis and it went into pneumonia, and her lungs were 90% filled with ammonia. With pneumonia, and the doctors kept saying, you know, there's a very small chance that she could survive, but not likely. I never felt that we were going to lose her, and I would occasionally. We had two dogs. I had my guide dog Africa and Africa's. I have Vincent Van den Broeck  40:34 a question. I have a question for Sergeant Sure. But and why not? Why were why were you convinced that you were not gonna lose. Michael Hingson  40:42 It was just the way it was. I I never felt as much as I heard what other people were saying. I felt she is stronger than you think, and I'm gonna do all I can to help her. And as I was gonna say, we had two dogs, my guide dog and her, my guide dog's mother, Fantasia, that was also Karen's service dog. So occasionally we took Fantasia over to the hospital, and she was very gentle about it. But she would get up in the bed with Karen and lay down next to her, even though Karen was in a coma. And I just think we we worked to to tell Karen you're gonna be okay. It's entirely up to you and and God to to come through this. Well, she eventually started waking up, and she did. Vincent Van den Broeck  41:33 Right, that's amazing. Michael Hingson  41:35 Yeah, and it's it's the same sort of thing, but I I know That I just listened to my inner voice that said she's going to be okay, but you got to do your part, and I did my best to do my part, and so that's that's the way it worked. Vincent Van den Broeck  41:54 Yeah, that's amazing. How long did she stay in coma? Michael Hingson  41:58 It was an induced coma after a while, and she was in an induced coma for about three and a half weeks. Vincent Van den Broeck  42:05 Ah, same as me. And Michael Hingson  42:07 the the issue was that her lungs were very full of pneumonia, and it was very difficult to get the fluid out. But they eventually were were able to do that, and so you know she did fine. But you know, she's always been a very strong person and a very committed person. So I was just very confident that she would be able to be okay if that's what she chose to do, and she did. Yeah. So on Halloween night, you you came out of your coma. You know, an interesting question that I think about is, you know, people basically said they wrote you off and they basically said it's impossible. He's not going to survive. What did you think about being impossible before the the event? Before you lost, well, before you went into a coma, and and how has your view of impossible changed, or has it? Vincent Van den Broeck  43:04 Oh, that's a good question. Impossible before the accident. Yeah, the I'm gonna try to find a good answer. the The thing for me has always been impossible is just is just a word, and you know what? The before the accident, I went through so many bad things and difficult periods that, for me, and again going back to the delusional part, for me, I've always been someone that impossible does not exist to me. That did not exist and does not still exist, and that doesn't mean that it does not exist. But to me, if you would ask me back then in 2018, yeah, but Vincent, what if the rest of it doesn't work out? Yeah, it's gonna work out. No, no, but what if? No, it's gonna work out. Which eventually it it did not, but everything I was able to control, I did, and impossible was giving a new definition because right now it's it was linked to my health, which is of course a complete different thing, but in a certain way, it did not really. The definition of it did not really change. It just for you to overcome impossible. And again, I do not need to explain it to you. You need to be delusional about it. Whatever again you chase it, you you you will seem to people around you like crazy. Yeah, which is again, which is hard. Which is hard. It it Michael Hingson  44:56 is, and it's really hard to explain it to other people. Because what you're ultimately doing is listening to yourself and to your inner voice, to your subconscious. Thank you. It's telling you you can do what you need to do, and that is is difficult to explain to people because they'll write it off until it happens to them. It's it's a personal experience by any standard. Vincent Van den Broeck  45:20 Yes, sir. And then, and then, there's life is life, you know. And then they will always tell you, "Oh, you're so lucky, and it's hard because you're the only one that knows what you really did, what it took you. And as human beings, we we want the accolades, we want the applause, we want the credit. We want the recognition, but it's it's just about you. If you manage to figure out whatever you've figured out, the impossible. That's enough. That's enough. And for me, and for me, two years ago, that was just surviving, learning to walk again, learning to talk again. Okay, yeah, that has. Michael Hingson  46:07 What was the biggest obstacle you had to face mentally speaking when you woke up? Is that you know you woke up? I don't know what you were thinking. Probably wondering what was going on, but what was what? What challenge did you have? Vincent Van den Broeck  46:21 Being completely dependent on everyone. I've I've always been super independent. I've always managed my own stuff, and being dependent for even the most basic stuff on everyone around me, like going to the toilet. I had to ask my wife to help me. Help you! Yeah, I could. She had to feed me. She had to wash me. She had to put on my clothes. Could you even imagine? For for a boy that built businesses that have been that has been figuring it out for the past 10 years, all of a sudden going to the total he needs his wife. That was difficult. I was in a bad place, Michael Hingson  47:01 but somehow you accepted it. Vincent Van den Broeck  47:03 That's the only thing you can do. Yeah, that's literally the the only. Like again, it got even tougher today, 2026, because we all think we're the exception on the rule, and we have a hard time accepting reality. But reality is reality. You you can okay complain. The only person you're fooling is yourself. Is yourself. Yeah. Exactly. Michael Hingson  47:33 The reality is, working as a team is is is always a good thing. There are things you know. There are things that she knows, and when you put it all together, that makes it a whole better system all the way around. Vincent Van den Broeck  47:46 Exactly, exactly. You need you need you need people around you that lift you up, that make you believe that there is more to life. Because I can tell you, if you're around people long enough that always complain, and it's always someone else, and it's always society and the weather, and it's no matter what, I can tell you, you're gonna be grumpy like crazy. Yeah. But be but be around people that be like, "Hey, Michael, you're so amazing. What you only did that? I think you can do better. Hey, Michael, why you're not smiling? Yeah, no, Michael, you can do better. Yeah, but it is. And I was lucky enough that the accident happened when I was 32, meaning I had built an entourage of people that when I was in a bad place, those first two to three weeks after my after me waking up, I was in a bad place, and I had people around me that told me even I was missing part of my skull, even though I was in a hospital that that told me, "Hey, Vincent, stop complaining. This is not you. I I didn't want to walk because walking for me was like running a marathon. Every tiny effort felt like a huge one, and they told me, "This is not you. You want to walk? But you Speaker 2  49:13 did it. Vincent Van den Broeck  49:15 Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And that's why I always say, "This is our win. This was never just my win. Michael Hingson  49:22 Well, so I would presume that all of this that you went through definitely was a positive strengthening of your marriage too. Vincent Van den Broeck  49:33 Oh, 100% We're in the best place ever. Michael Hingson  49:37 Does she make waffles, or do you do all the cooking at home? Vincent Van den Broeck  49:43 No, she she cooks she cooks, but she's more like a pancake person. So oh well, we do not eat we do not eat waffles at home. Michael Hingson  49:50 Yeah, you got to go out to the hashtag to eat waffles, right? Vincent Van den Broeck  49:54 Exactly. Michael Hingson  49:55 Yeah, that makes more sense. So, have you become a more patient person because you had to exhibit a lot of patience as you were going through all this recovery? Vincent Van den Broeck  50:08 Oh, far from! I've always been super impatient. Even when I was when I was in hospital, people would complain like, "Be more patient. This is not good. Be more patient. When it comes to the short term, I'm super patient. When it comes to the long term, like I know business they take 1520, 25 years to build, but when it comes to the short term, like waiting in line to buy a donut, I do not do that. Yeah, waiting in line for a table in a restaurant, I do not do that. I go eat somewhere else. I'm super impatient when it comes to the short term. Michael Hingson  50:48 Has that changed at all since the accident? Vincent Van den Broeck  50:51 No, not at all. No, even worse. Even worse, I think. Oh well, there you go. Michael Hingson  51:00 Well, you said that the accident didn't change who you are, but it reinforced who you are. Tell me more about that, Vincent Van den Broeck  51:06 Michael. Listen, you better be, and again, I do not need to tell you this, but you better be ready when opportunity presents itself, and it could be whatever. It could be a business opportunity. Could be a new your your dream job, the woman of your life, the man of your life could be whatever, because again, life is life. There's not 1000s of them of those opportunities that present that present themselves in a lifetime, and it was not not even as if, but it was. I was I was more than ready to go into coma, go through rehab, and everything that came after. I had built everything around the, and and also when I think about when I think back about those months, I'm proud of myself. I took it with the most grace possible. I was ready for this opportunity. My mindset, my body, my brain, and I took it with the best way you could have taken it. And so, indeed, the accident taught me nothing. It reminded me of everything. Everything I went through, everything I learned before I used during the most. Because the problem with opportunities, it's not like the opportunity presents itself, and then you're like, quick, quick, quick, let me get ready. In my case, it was not. You don't get hit by a car and be like, okay, quick, quick, let me build resilience, let me build recovery, let me build this, let me build minds, and then no, you build that years before, yeah, not hoping you're going through, you're gonna have an accident and you're gonna need that, but like you never know, like we, we, we, we both went to COVID. Nobody expected it. Well, all of a sudden locked down. Michael Hingson  53:07 Yeah, Vincent Van den Broeck  53:08 and and I didn't expect the morning of the accident. I didn't expect to go to found Tacoma for three weeks. But okay, life is life. It happens. Shit happens. Michael Hingson  53:18 But you were you were prepared, and you know, I I I feel the same way in so many ways. People ask me all the time about being in the World Trade Center and what do I think about that. And my response is, September 11th validated everything that I believe. It wasn't like it was a whole new thing. It validated so many things because I had learned so many things, I didn't expect to have an emergency. I didn't expect to be in a building that was struck by an aircraft, but it happened. And and the fact is, we can deal with so many things if we learn how to prepare, and if we learn that we can do so many things that we never thought we could do. Vincent Van den Broeck  54:04 Thank you. Michael Hingson  54:05 So your wife documented a lot about the accident and so on. Tell us more about that, and what was it like for you to to see all of that, see it through the way she looked at it. Vincent Van den Broeck  54:16 It was. It made me writhed for a very long time. As in, when I think back about everything that happened, what makes me really sad is when I think about what my what she went through, what my family went through when I was in coma. Like I could not even. I was just sleeping for three. I was I was just sleeping. Yeah. But the bad news that they got day after day after day. That was, and so the docu fun fact is the documentary part was just because a lot of my friends lived abroad. They they did not live in Belgium, so she was just filming it to send them send them an update like she. Has been. She has been amazing. She was like super rational. She was like with me emotionally, but like she made a visitor list on a word document. Like because there was so many visitors, and she was like, "You can come that day. You can come that. People had to register. Then she filmed. She sent recaps of the whole situation to friends, then she has been she has been amazing. And seeing all that, it's it's like today, we're july 31. Today is just a reminder. It's literally a reminder, and I'm even happy. And that's why I always say that I'm happy that the accident happened because before the accident, I went to hell and back multiple times, and I know because my personality, because my way of talking, I make people believe that life is easier for me. And the right now the images are there, and I know even right now because the way I recovered and the way I progressed so fast, I make people even today believe that. But right now the images are there. The Vincent with a with a part of his comb missing that cannot walk, that is sitting in a wheelchair are there, which then adds credibility to everything I'm preaching. And the only thing I'm preaching at the end of the day is get more of out of your life. Whatever you're chasing, the world does not owe you nothing. Nothing is given, but everything is there for the taking. Go get it. Michael Hingson  56:34 Yeah. This may be kind of redundant to that, but if somebody feels that they're trapped in their own life out of illness or unexpected things, and so on. What do you want them to remember from your story? Vincent Van den Broeck  56:48 Ask yourself. the The key takeaway would always be for me. Start asking yourself the question, "Why not me? Instead of "Why me? Yeah. Why not? Why can I have this and that or that and that? Why not me? It's that easy. And you know what? Three simple changes that any listener could do after listening to this podcast Is one start talking positive about yourself? Is two think highly of yourself, and three choose gratitude every day. And those three things might simple because they are, but might be harder in reality. But you do those three things on a daily basis, life all of a sudden starts becoming more sunny, yeah, more beautiful, yeah, Michael Hingson  57:56 and it becomes easier. and the The more you do it, the easier it becomes. Vincent Van den Broeck  58:01 Exactly. Thank you. Michael Hingson  58:03 So your book is entitled "Everything Feels Impossible Until It's Done. Tell us about the book. the The Vincent Van den Broeck  58:13 book came to life, of course, after the accident, and so there was so many, as I told a bit earlier in our conversation. So there were so many people telling my wife when I was still in coma, if there's one person that is going to survive, this is Vincent. And then when I was already awake, so many people told me, "Yeah, Vincent, your mindset made the whole difference. And then I was like, "Huh, where does that come from? And so I analyzed my day-to-day life, and I was like, "Wait, I can teach that. And then my auntie, when I was still in reading up, she told me many times, like, "You should write a book about all this. And then I got inspired by a story. His name was 2019. His name is Elliot Kipchoge, who's until 2019, it was considered physically impossible for a human body to run a marathon under two hours. Elliot Kipchoge came, and this is an unofficial marathon, so he never got registered. Runs a marathon in one hour 59 minutes 40 seconds. A couple of months ago in London, London Marathon, two runners run a marathon under two hours, and so I put all the the puzzle pieces together, and I was like, "It is indeed that. Everything indeed feels impossible until it's done, because no matter what you're going through, your situation-it could be a divorce, you just failed an exam, it could be an accident, you just lost your job. Your situation in that moment always feels like. Like the worst worldwide, and it always feels like impossible to go through. And so the the book became sort of like a success story, not not as in accolades for me, or credits for me, or recognition for me-sort of like a hold on for the person reading the book. Like, finally, indeed, Michael Hingson  1:00:33 yeah. And I would assume that for people who read the book, you would want them to, after they finish it, have that conversation with themselves. Why not me? Vincent Van den Broeck  1:00:44 Yes, sir. On the spot. On the spot. Michael Hingson  1:00:47 Yeah, it's it's very important. I think I think it is so important. We we find so many things that we just berate ourselves about. We we yell at ourselves. You you know, I and I still hear today. Why did God allow the World Trade Center attacks to occur? And and do you regret surviving, or why did you survive? You know, my responses are things like, God gave us free will and choice. How could He? How could He not let the World Trade Center happen. It's not his job to deal with that. That's why we're we're put on the earth, and we need to grow going forward to make sure that sort of thing doesn't happen again. But for me personally, as as I tell people, as a survivor of the World Trade Center, I was given an opportunity and chose to take it. And the opportunity was, what do I do after the World Trade Center? What can I do that may be helpful for other people? And for me, that has led to being a keynote speaker now for almost 25 years, and I enjoy it. It's fun, but I also think that it's important for people to to hear the story and hopefully take away lessons from it. That's really the key, and and I hope that that people do. They say they do. I hope they do because I think it's so important. So, for for you, what do you think that success will look like for you or for other people in five years? That's an arbitrary time, but yeah, Vincent Van den Broeck  1:02:22 for me it's it's pretty easy, Michael. Like I'm not chasing nothing in particular, but there's one thing I'm chasing, by the way, on a daily basis, and it will be in five years, as it will be in 1015, 2025, years. Is my last moment on this earth. I will be able to tell myself, "Wow, what an incredible life did I have! Yeah, I did everything I wanted to do, and I said everything I wanted to say. It could have been, and when I was 32, I I would have been able to tell myself that, and that is exactly what I'm chasing. Yeah, isn't that should shouldn't that not be the goal for everyone? By the way, what else are we chasing? Money, homes, cars? No, chase that feeling of being able to tell yourself in your last moment to people around you, "Wow, thank you for my life, I had an amazing, extraordinary life, Michael Hingson  1:03:24 and I love my life, and I I believe in living it to the fullest. Well, if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Vincent Van den Broeck  1:03:33 You can pre order the book on Amazon already today, which I suggest you to do, and my my Instagram. I'm super active on Instagram. Vincent in the kitchen. I'm I'm on LinkedIn. Vincent Vann Brook, my my whole name. I'm on TikTok, YouTube, and I'm documenting everything. By the way, everything I just we spoke about during this conversation. I'm preaching online like this. You're gonna see online. This is gonna be in the book. The visit you're gonna see by himself walking to the seats of Brussels. Exactly the same. When will the book be out? The so pre-orders are open right now. They will start sending out the pre-orders as of September 15, but the official release party will be the day of the accident two years later. So this year, 2026 October 11. Okay, Michael Hingson  1:04:30 well, we'll we'll have to have the podcast come out right around then, so that people will will learn about the book. But I want to really thank you for being here, and I think you've you've demonstrated unstoppability by any standard, but more important than that, I think you're talking about it. Hopefully, will help a lot of people. I've learned a lot and been reminded of so many important life lessons that we all should should remember. So, thank you for being here, and I want to thank all of you for being out there listening to us or watching. Yes, love it if you'd give us a great review wherever you're observing the podcast. And if you'd like to, and I would appreciate it if you would, I'd love to hear from you about this podcast. Please feel free to email me. It's really easy. Email me at [email protected]. That's s p e a k e r at m i c h a e l h i n g s i. O n.com. Love to hear from you, and love it if you'd help us find more people who want to tell their stories. I'm always interested in getting introductions from people. So, Vincent, if you know anyone else, and and so on, love to hear from them. But I want to thank you all for for being here, and I appreciate that. But for you, Vincent, thank you very much for being here today. This has been absolutely wonderful. Vincent Van den Broeck  1:05:48 Thank you so much for the opportunity. By the way, Michaela, I loved it. I loved it for real. Thank you. Michael Hingson1:05:54 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by fear, it explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

The people who adapt best to new technology are often the ones willing to experiment before everyone else is ready. I talk with Dutch entrepreneur and communication strategist Eric van Hall about a career built on curiosity, from competitive windsurfing and video production to web design, copywriting, ChatGPT, and AI technology. Eric shares why entrepreneurship requires persistence, why understanding your audience matters more than chasing tools, and how AI can support creativity when humans stay accountable for the results. We also explore AI accessibility, automation, human values, and why keeping an open mind may be one of the most useful skills for navigating rapid technological change. Highlights: 01:28 - How windsurfing opened the door to Eric’s creative career. 15:07 - Why persistence and drive matter in entrepreneurship. 23:04 - How discovering the early web changed Eric’s career. 30:58 - Why curiosity and experimentation fuel innovation. 43:58 - How AI can expand human creativity. 59:38 - How AI could improve accessibility for people with disabilities. About the Guest: Eric van Hall is an entrepreneur and communications strategist with nearly four decades of experience at the intersection of creativity, technology, and media. He is the founder of CopyRobin, an AI-driven creation agency that helps organizations produce high-quality content at scale without sacrificing strategic intent or human nuance. Eric began his career in the 1980s as a freelance copywriter and video producer, working with international extreme sports brands such as O’Neill. His early work in storytelling and audiovisual production led to the founding of The Box Office, an independent production company. In the mid-1990s, as the commercial internet emerged, he pivoted again—this time launching Mediaweb in 1995, one of the Netherlands’ first web design agencies. After more than two decades building digital platforms, Eric identified a structural weakness in digital organizations: content production consistently lagged behind design and technology. To address this, he founded CopyRobin in 2015. Originally conceived as a “copywriting as a service” platform, CopyRobin streamlined collaboration between organizations and professional writers, removing friction from content workflows. When generative AI entered the mainstream, Eric once again adapted. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to creative work, he repositioned CopyRobin around a hybrid model that combines AI efficiency with human judgment, strategy, and editorial responsibility. His core belief: AI can accelerate production, but authority, meaning, and trust remain human responsibilities. In addition to his commercial work, Eric is co-founder of the Scriptorium Initiative, a thought-leadership platform focused on responsible, human-centric communication in the age of AI. As a speaker, writer, and moderator, he explores how organizations can use technology not to replace human voice, but to sharpen it. His career reflects a consistent principle: those who adapt with intent can turn disruption into leverage. Ways to connect with Eric**:** LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericvvanhall/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/copyrobin/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/scriptorium-initiative/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everyone. Wherever you happen to be, I want to welcome you to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host, Michael Hingson, or if you prefer, Mike Hingson. But anyway, I really am glad that you're here with us today. Our guest is Eric Van Hall, all the way from the Netherlands, and Eric has been very heavily involved in a lot of tech kinds of things, and he is an entrepreneur, a communication and a communication strategist. He has been involved in a lot, a lot of different endeavors. He has formed a couple of different companies. Clearly, an entrepreneur, as you will see, and I think he probably has a lot of good business advice and business strategies and other things to to talk with us about. So I'm really glad that we get a chance to chat with him. So Eric, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Eric Van Hall  01:55 Well, thank you, Michael. It's it's an honor to join you here in this podcast, and I hope that I'll be be a good guest for you and for your for your listeners, especially. Michael Hingson  02:07 No doubt, I have no concerns at all. Well, why don't we start? Tell us a little bit about maybe the early Eric, growing up, and so on. Eric Van Hall  02:16 All right. So I was born in May 1960 in the Netherlands, and my father was a doctor, a gynecologist, and my mother an artist, sculptor. And the first what is it? 12 years of my life, we moved seven times. So because my father was always, always his career was progressing. So then we went from one place to the next, and we actually stayed for a year in the United States. When I was nine, we we moved to Chevy Chase. That's in Maryland, near Washington D.C. yeah, because my father did research at the National Institute of Health, and so I spent a year in the primary school in in Chevy Chase, Maryland, and that also put a good basis for me connecting with the United States, and also for being able to speak English, and from there we moved then to the place where I live now, and we've been very steady there. I I went to high school, and then I went to what you would probably call college in the United States, which is university here in the Netherlands. Yeah, I. I just I I wanted to become a journalist, but I was yeah. We had a like a a system where you would get a lottery to get accepted in the journalism school, and I missed it twice, and then I decided to study history at the university. And and when I did that, I started windsurfing very phonetically. So I I was actually a semi-professional windsurfer in the early '80s. I got sponsorships and was competitive, not the main, not the real top, but but competitive, and I had a great time going from competition to competition, and that was a bit difficult to combine with with my studies. So I managed to get quite far in the study, almost all the way, but in the end, I got. I started working basically. So I I started as a windsurfer, and then when I was no longer really competitive, when I was in my late 20s, I was I became a giant. For the International Windsurfing Association, the professional windsurfing. So these were events where people jump and ride waves and do tricks, and I was I was judging that, you know. And so I went to Hawaii and to well all over the world. So it was a great time, and and there I started also writing about windsurfing and making doing photo shoots, and I got a big client called O'Neill, which is you know there it's it's a Californian brand that is specialized that builds makes wetsuits, but in Europe they also had a big fashion brand, and I did a lot of their advertising work, and that sort of launched me into my into my career. Michael Hingson  05:50 So curious, you said you went into history. Was there a lottery for history that you you made it through, or they didn't have lotteries for history? Eric Van Hall  06:00 They did not have lotteries for history, so journalism was Michael Hingson  06:03 just very popular, and so they had to have a lottery for it, huh? Eric Van Hall  06:06 Yeah, or the school was smaller; there were less less seats. Yeah, but I lost that twice, and then, but then of course, if you study history, it's also a good way to get into into journalism. Michael Hingson  06:20 Sure, sure. But either way, you were definitely interested in writing, and so you you did windsurfing. You you you began judging it, and so on. And and you also, I would assume, wrote about it as well. Eric Van Hall  06:37 So yeah, I wrote a lot about that. That's where it started. Well, it's actually a funny story. One of my best windsurfing friends was also a photographer, and he was specialized in windsurf photography. So he did a lot of photography where I was the subject when I was still windsurfing for my sponsors, because that was one of the reasons why I got sponsors. Is that I so often got a really good picture into in the magazines through this guy that this friend of mine who was a photographer because he was always in the water with a with a camera that had a water housing and we would jump over him basically and he he took the really good pictures and on one day I told him hey you make so many pictures, but you only sell maybe one or two every month to the magazine because it's the spread and it's the cover. But if maybe if we if if if you write some stories with the other pictures, you will get more exposure. You get you will probably sell more more pictures. But he he couldn't really write. It wasn't wasn't his thing. So I took a bunch of his pictures and I started just writing stories around those pictures. and And he submitted them to this to this magazine to the editor in chief there. And then the editor in chief said to him, "Hey, these are really nice and these stories are really nice. I don't think you write them yourself, do you? He said, "No, Speaker 1  08:02 no. A Eric Van Hall  08:03 friend of mine who writes those stories, and he said, "Well, I'd like to meet this friend because he's got a really nice style, and that's how basically it started. Because there, the I started writing for this magazine about yeah, it's all about windsurfing adventures, but also courses like you know how to do stuff, like how to do a certain jibe or certain maneuver. So I did and or testing equipment. So I did a lot of writing for them together with the photographer. I was traveling all around the world, and and then the marketing director of O'ER. So the O'Neill is the brand that makes wetsuits and and fashion, surf fashion. He contacted me. He said, "Hey, I think you've got a really nice way of writing about this subject about windsurfing. And he asked me if I could write advertising copy and also you know magazine, sponsored magazine, and stuff like that. So that's how I started there, and got a lot of work from that. And basically, because I'm a, I'm always interested in trying stuff. You know, experimenting, trying new stuff. And at a certain time, they asked me to write voiceovers for video productions that they made from O'Neill about windsurfing, but also about snowboarding and catamaran and sailing and other extreme sports. And so I started writing, and I really liked that writing text to the pic to the images, time coded, so that somebody else with a really nice voice would then narrate the the story, but I wrote the narration exactly timed for each shot. I really like doing that, and from there, suddenly, somehow, within two years, I ended up having a an audiovisual production company. With a with a with a friend of mine who was a real filmmaker, and so I did that for about six years. Michael Hingson  10:07 What was that company called? Eric Van Hall  10:09 That was called the box office. That Michael Hingson  10:11 was the box office. Okay. Yeah, Eric Van Hall  10:13 yeah. So that started in 1989 and lasted through 1995, and in that time, I traveled to basically all major windsurfing and snowboarding events in the world and made made productions. I also did other work, but that was the main thing. I had a really good network of broadcasters around the world, that in those time you know now everything is digital, but at that time we would still send tapes with couriers, and it was a whole logistic. Well, I don't want to say nightmare, but it was yeah. It's a lot of work compared to how you would do stuff today. You would just upload it, but then that time it was sending tapes. It was expensive using couriers. Yeah. Michael Hingson  11:07 Well, the internet was not in its own yet, and by 1995 that started to happen. But Eric Van Hall  11:12 exactly, exactly. So that's where my next phase started. Yeah. Michael Hingson  11:17 So, by the way, just out of curiosity, do you windsurf at all today? Eric Van Hall  11:22 Not now. For the last three years, I I tried maybe once or twice a year, but to be honest, my knees are are hurting so hurt so much after I windsurf or after I snowboard nowadays that it's it's no longer really attractive to do it. Yeah, unfortunately. Yeah, Michael Hingson  11:44 I I have a brother-in-law who's a skier, and and it used to be that in the summer he was a master cabinet maker, and he also became a general contractor, building homes and so on up in and remodeling homes in Ketchum, Idaho, Sun Valley, but he is now seeing that he is slowing down some, but he still skis for right now, and and and enjoys it. But he he points out that he is now getting older, and he's gonna probably retire from his business, and or at least to a degree, and he'll continue to try to ski some, but it still isn't the same as it used to be. So I hear you. Eric Van Hall  12:27 Yeah, yeah. It's it's it's especially when you're over 60. These extreme sports become a bit more challenging, especially because between your ears you're still 25. You know that's you think that you can still do it, and then you find out Michael Hingson  12:44 that there are challenges. Eric Van Hall  12:45 You pay a price. The price is pain, and I don't really like it. I actually did visit the orthopedian today. Yeah, not today, but this week. And so he says, "Yeah, you you just have arthrosis in your knees and you can if you want you can still windsurf or snowboard but if it hurts yet just take just take pain medication but there's not much they can do yeah so that's where I am Michael Hingson  13:17 you got a lot of good memories and so on Eric Van Hall  13:20 Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. So, Michael Hingson  13:22 so how did you transition from the box office to doing something else? Yeah, so you already owned your own company. You were an entrepreneur. What what was it like when you decided that you wanted to start a company and you started the box office? What was it like becoming an entrepreneur? Because that's a little bit different than, in a sense, what you used to do. Eric Van Hall  13:43 Yeah. So at first, I was like a freelance writer, so like a one-man band, and then I started getting work doing videos, and I I met the the so the the future at that time, the fiancée, let's say, of of one of my nieces, and we and he's a real filmmaker. He's a bit older than me, and he's made some really famous Dutch movies, like for like for theaters, for and and we talked about you know making videos about windsurfing and other extreme sports, and he was really into it. So we made it. We we we teamed up and started the box office, and so I was more the the field director and the producer and always traveling. And he was the did more responsible for the post production, and very importantly for the quality of the final product, because he was a real professional, and I was more like a a wild kid, you know, just experimenting and over over confident, obviously. So. So and that was a good match. So for for several years we we made a lot of productions that way, and we were successful. It was was was was great fun. Michael Hingson  15:10 So he handled a lot of the business. Eric Van Hall  15:13 No, I was more the business, and he did the post production. He he he was really the technical guy who, and he was like also a perfectionist, so he always made sure that the final product was up to par to be able to send it out to broadcasters and television stations, etc. Michael Hingson  15:31 What did you learn though that helped you be successful for well over six years running the company? You were you were running a business and you had to make money and so on, which meant you had to have some business sense. What did what did you learn that helped you as you did all that? Eric Van Hall  15:50 Well, in that at that time, I think important learnings were that you keep you keep things a bit lean and mean. So we worked with with freelance production teams. So we had a very small business. We did not have a lot of overhead. And I think the most important thing is be creative and and very very motivated, very enthusiastic and driven. I think drive is really from entrepreneurship. Drive is very important, you know, because it it sounds like a like a like a dream, you know. Oh, you have your own company, and yeah, everybody only sees the success stories. Michael Hingson  16:35 Yeah, Eric Van Hall  16:36 but it's really really hard, and you need to be very persistent and be and be able to deal with disappointment and and and setbacks all the time because every day something will happen that you know that you didn't see coming especially when you when you do productions like this where we took all the risks or we had a budget but all the costs, you know, if we went over cost, a production would cost us money rather than than make us money. So, so you learn to also be savvy with with with your purchasing, with your sourcing. That's very important because it's it's more difficult to make make your margins by selling at a higher price than by being careful about about how you spend your money. Did you have Michael Hingson  17:32 a did you have a lot of fear? Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Eric Van Hall  17:35 No, no, no. At that time, I was I was fearless. Yeah, I did. You didn't have a lot of fear. You Michael Hingson  17:41 you just were very confident. We can talk fear because, Eric Van Hall  17:44 yeah, at that time when I was late 20s, early 30s, I I had I actually had no fear. No, I was very confident. I was I thought that I could I was going to rule the world. In the end, it didn't happen. Fear comes comes definitely comes back later in this story, yeah. But at that time, no, that was not an issue. Michael Hingson  18:06 But you you still also learned enough along the way to be pretty successful at it. Eric Van Hall  18:13 Yeah, it it was it was successful in this niche of and and So I think in in in the states success is probably more than here in Europe. Always connected to money, to and and from that point of view, maybe people will say it's not really very successful. But for me, it was very important that I had a really cool lifestyle and I really enjoyed my work, and I really enjoyed every day, and I got to do really creative stuff. We're always pushing the boundaries, you know. I was, for example, in 1989, I was in in Cupertino, California, writing writing for a Dutch publication for a youth publication is what they call the agenda, where you write your homework, or you you know if school kids-I don't know how that is in in the states, but in in in in the Netherlands at that time, these were like really important stuff for high school kids to for the for the identify you know for the identity, and one of the brands was O'Neill where I was working for made a made the coolest one and I did a lot of the writing and a lot of the production for that, so I was writing about Apple in in Cupertino. So I was visiting Apple, yeah, and and and there, the lady that that that showed me around in the Apple headquarters in Cupertino at the time. This so this is in 1989. She said, "Hey, but you you also make video? I yes, she sort of found that out, and I said, "Yeah, yeah, I would." Just starting with that, and then she said, "Well, we've got a machine here that you will probably find very interesting, and it was called the Avid, and this was the first Avid. It was sort of a prototype still, and she showed it to me, and it was like where you start editing video nonlinear. So back to the so at that time when we were editing video, you always you know you had to copy from a source tape to a master tape, and you could not split the tape and then put something in between. So you had to really plan out every shot and and and and time it really good because otherwise it will the video would become too long, and it was very difficult, basically editing video. And with the digitization, they they brought back the the flexibility and the freedom of splicing film, you know, real film, old-fashioned film, and cutting that to editing that into a final product, and and I did that digitally, and that was very very innovative at that time. was really new, and I was I was blown away by it, by the idea. But the the the quality of the images, you know, the digital images was still there. Was like really small, small images. It was really you could not really make a good quality production that way. But I could see the potential. And then two years later, there were when I was when I was just working in the Netherlands with my production company. We did buy one of the first Evids in the Netherlands when it was the quality had been improved a lot, and so we were one of the first companies using that new Apple editing machinery in the in the early 90s, the 1990 1991. Michael Hingson  21:56 Yeah, I I'm familiar with Avid. I of course never used used one, but I I've heard of it through the years and and and understand the capability. I guess I never knew it was made by Apple, though. Eric Van Hall  22:09 Yeah, at that time it was. I think Apple Apple purchased it. Oh, they okay. Yeah, yeah. But Michael Hingson  22:17 still, the very fact that now they were starting to open. The concept of doing digital editing was was absolutely worth thinking about, and and you saw the potential of that, which was pretty good. Eric Van Hall  22:35 Yeah, yeah. And so you you did Michael Hingson  22:37 things with it. Speaker 1  22:42 If you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Michael Hingson  23:14 Well, so your your company, the box office, was around for like six years, and then you moved on from that. What what caused you to move on, and and where did you go? Eric Van Hall  23:28 Yeah, so in 1994, when I did a lot of research for for a video production, that was a big production that would take place in the Seychelles and and Ethiopia. I I I started using CompuServe, which was an online. You you know about that? It was online yeah online database. Basically, you could you you could find a lot of articles there, a lot of information, and and they also had a web browser, and that's how I got into contact with the World Wide Web in 1994. Did you use Dead Sniper? Michael Hingson  24:07 What browser did you use at that Eric Van Hall  24:09 time? It was Mosaic built into CompuServe. Yeah, Michael Hingson  24:13 yeah, Eric Van Hall  24:14 yeah. It was built into CompuServe. Michael Hingson  24:16 Right. Eric Van Hall  24:16 And well, again, that was something that totally blew my mind. I mean, when I first started browsing the well, the the nascent web, I thought I needed to do something with it. I thought I really need to do something, and so I I started Media Web, and it was a company that was a digital. You would now call it a digital agency. So, building websites, digital experiences for customers, and so I did that. I had I hired a team, and I you know I went out and got got clients, and we built websites for a lot of companies in the Netherlands. Michael Hingson  24:57 Yeah, Eric Van Hall  24:58 for many years I did it for 20. Michael Hingson  25:00 Okay, so you did that. So you you basically left the box office and went to MediaServe. Eric Van Hall  25:08 MediaWeb, yes. MediaWeb, yeah. So so my my my my partner and I we we we well. So we we how do you say it? We just stopped with the with the box office and stopped with the audiovisual productions, and he went on his own way as a freelancer, and I started MediaWeb, and and that was a journey of 20 years, and it was a roller, also a bit of a roller coaster because it's yeah when you're always sort of in the front you know your early adopter the really earlier adopters you still have to convince so many people and it's it's a lot of work it's a lot of and that's a bit of story of my life I guess I'm always when something new comes out. I get fascinated, and I will get probably back on that subject a bit further down this this this this this talk. But so that's I was just so enthusiastic about the the possibilities of the World Wide Web that I thought I had to make my own. I had to start making websites, so I started building websites myself, and then I found out that it's actually quite difficult. So I hired a programmer and a designer and a project manager, etc. etc. And then I had to focus more on the sales and and the marketing of the company. Michael Hingson  26:42 Well, one of the things that's an interesting parallel. So you started filming windsurfers and so on, and dealing with people who were riding waves, and then later, of course, you have the whole technological world of the digitization and everything relating to the internet. What do you think about parallels between dealing with the the waves of the ocean and so on, and the waves of digital industry as it's as it's been growing? Do you think that riding the waves is kind of the same in both cases? Eric Van Hall  27:17 Well, I can I can say one thing for certain is that a lot of the my windsurfer friends that I knew from the 80s that ended up in the digital business as well. A lot of them also did fell on sort of the same path as I did, experimenting with with digital and especially online businesses. So I think there's a how do you call it an overrepresentation of of former windsurfers in that in that world, and why is that? Well, I think it's a bit people that are a bit ahead of the curve, like innovators or experimenters. You know, like windsurfing. I was there also very early, you know. It's and and then it becomes really big, and you ride the you ride that wave for a while, and then it gets too big, it gets too corporate, it gets, and then you start looking out for other stuff because you're surfing life basically, right? And you're not you're not a corporate person. You're not a real a person that is only you know that lives in spreadsheets. You you know you live in experiences, and so then you may there's always a risk that you could get a bit bored. So when something new exciting comes there, then you you jump onto that and latch onto that, and and it's because it gives an enormous creative boost as well. You know, if you first for me first it was writing, then it was making video, and then it was building websites, and and and then of course from about just over 10 years ago there was the next next move. I don't know if we're if we're already there, but yeah. So well, so in 2015, I was basically getting bored with having a digital agency. I didn't like it. Like I didn't like it anymore. I mean, the but I one of the things that I saw in many projects that we did, was that if there was a delay, the reason was almost always that nobody thought about writing any copy. So the clients they they loved you know talking about functionality, technology, and especially design. But oh yeah oh okay yeah yeah, and so I was chasing them for filling up the website with copy, and it was always an afterthought. And then, then an office manager was sent off with the job, and then we got terrible copy, and a sort of disgrace for the design. And that was a always returning problem, and and and it. Irritated me, so I thought, what's the reason for this? Why is this happening? And I thought, well, basically, the whole business of writing copy is still stuck in the 20th century. You know, people were just chasing freelance writers and then sending word documents by email, and I thought the whole whole workflow was just flawed, and and nobody liked it, and it's it's painstaking. It's a lot of work, and it's undervalued. So I thought if I can get all the as much pain and friction out of the process, then that might be a really interesting business. So that's when I started Copy Robin in 2015. Well, I did the the the MVP, you know, amenable viable product. I tested it out, and I found a buyer for MediaWeb, and so I managed to sell MediaWeb, and and then, but but with with MediaWeb with the web design agency, we did build the whole platform, the website for Copy Robin. So I had a new business, and the people that bought MediaWeb, they asked, "Hey, so what are you going to do now? And I said, "Oh yeah, I start a new business. It's called Copy Robin, and I told them about it, and they said, 'Hey, but that's really interesting. Can't we participate? So I had actually the buyers of my old business also invested in in the new business. So that was the double Emmy. Michael Hingson  31:28 Well, it's it's interesting on on several fronts. You've seen the potential for different kinds of technologies, and you decided to to deal with them before most people did. Why? Why is it that you have found that as technology or as technologies change and grow, that you're able to be out in front of it and become successful using the the new changes and the new advances that come along? Eric Van Hall  32:01 Well, first of all, you have to be very curious, and I think also you have to be a sort of a tinkerer, somebody who likes to experiment with stuff and tries things out. And even if it doesn't work immediately, if it's if it's still you know not really mature Technology that that's yeah if if you know if you if you always want to play it safe, then then you just wait for other people to make all the mistakes. And I'm you know the the the downside is that you're if you're early you're one of the people making mistakes. And if you're but but if you're if you if you hit the good technology and if you know if you if you if you do it right, then you've got the first mover advance advantage, and that's really really valuable. But it's you need to be curious. You need to be always out looking out for new stuff, and and try stuff out. You have to you you have to be have an experimental mind you know try stuff break stuff fail fail forward and try out and and and and and have fun that's the most important part is that you do stuff that you really you know I liked learning how to write HTML in 1995, you know, and I, I liked building a whole new concept around around copywriting, where I I made an online platform like a SaaS solution, software as a service kind of solution, where I had a lot of freelance writers in the database and managed to connect those to to to the clients, and had and and the difference with other platforms like Upwork or Fiverr is that we had a whole quality control layer on top of it, so that we could service the customers more like an it was like a hybrid between an agency and a SaaS platform, because customers don't like working with SaaS platforms most of the time. They just want a result, and that's why I I chose this hybrid solution, and and that was actually you know it was it did fill fill in a big need, so yeah that that that really worked out well. Michael Hingson  34:33 Well, so I I agree with you. You got to start with a curious mind, but you obviously looked at technologies as you, as your curious mind showed you different kinds of things, and you made some determinations of what was probably going to continue to grow and continue to be something that the world would want, as you did with the internet, and then. Obviously, you did it with advertising and copywriting, and that's an interesting thing. Just a couple of days ago, I had a person on our podcast who is an advertising specialist, and one of the things that he said, which is very close to what you have talked about, is that companies don't advertise like they should. They they don't really look to to advertise to to do it well, to ask questions, to produce things that will truly get people interested in their products the way they should. And of course, you talk about the fact that people don't do copy very well, which really is is part of the same thing, but but his his point was that the more successful companies that are truly successful are also better at truly advertising, which is important. Eric Van Hall  35:55 Yes, absolutely. Now I'm I'm personally not not very much into the advertising side of events, but like media buying and stuff like that. I don't really know a lot about that, but I do know about creativity, and and and that's very important. But yeah, I think people find it's it's it's it's really difficult for often to put yourself in the shoes of someone else, and and that's and and that's that's that's an art if you're able to have the empathy for for your customer base or for your target audience and really really you know, get into their mindset. That's, I think, the basis for all good content, be it advertising or or just content content marketing or whatever. Yeah. So that's where it all starts. If you want to be successful with with any kind of content, you need to really, really understand your audience, Michael Hingson  37:03 and you need to be really willing to tell the story. Eric Van Hall  37:07 Yeah. Okay. If if you're yeah, if you if if if you want to use your like a personal branding, then then you need to have a story and be open and be candid and and and also yeah be a bit interesting, yeah. And and yeah, and and that's what we're doing here. You know, we hope that that from the experiences that we discuss from from my story that that people will maybe get either get inspired or that they learn something. That would be great. So, so the but the thing is we we we're talking about why innovative stuff why why always new tech and I think it's it's it's it's just in your it has to be in your personality that you're always trying new stuff always trying something is new and you try it out so you know I was there with windsurfing really early. I was there with snowboarding really early. I needed to know about it. I saw a bit of it somewhere, you know, and I thought, hey, that's interesting. And then you and then you have to just go all in, yeah, and and spend a lot of time and a lot of practice. Michael Hingson  38:19 Well, one of the things that you've done, because you've been curious, because you've looked at various technologies, because you have decided that, or you decided they were worth exploring, you've essentially, I think, some would say, reinvented yourself a few times over the years. How has that changed for you as you as you age, do you do you find yourself less interested in reinventing yourself, or do you continue to look for other things that may be relevant to look at down the line? Eric Van Hall  38:51 No, that's what I said. The body may be 65, but the mind is still 25. You know, I'm I'm always still looking for the newest now, I'm very very active in AI since since a few years. That's I mean that's quite the the pivot of copy robin is quite an interesting story. I think it's good time to start talking about that. Is that of course when your when your product is copy and AI starts writing copy. You have to pay attention because this is like a really disruptive something in your market. So in the years like 2021, 2022, I was following the developments of tools like Copy AI and Jasper and all these writing tools, I was I was actually very interested in that and trying them out. But at that time, like until halfway 2022, I tested in total 10 tools and. It was interesting, but it was not there yet. I mean, the English writing was already pretty good, but since our audience and our clients were mostly, we had to write in Dutch, and the Dutch was still very bad. I mean, you could not use this AI writer to write professional Dutch copy. It was just no way. So I did make an April Fool's Day joke on the first of April in 2022, where we published an article and a social media post that that we as copy robin would no longer work with human writers. That we would do everything With AI, and and I got a lot of phone calls and emails from from freelance writers that were totally upset that that didn't realize it was the first of April. Yeah, yeah, it was one was I think my my my most successful April Fool's Day joke ever, but it was also actually with hindsight. It it had a lot of it was early. It was very early, but it's actually all happening right now. Sure. And so then I I wrote a big article in that summer comparing the 10 most used AI writing tools and sort of saying, "Well, if you write in English, it's kind of okay. If you write in Dutch, just wait. It's not good enough yet. And then in the early December 2022, I I was I was hibernating in Curacao. You know, we we had some contact when I was still in Curacao before Michael, and I was doing that there as well. And then I I heard about a new a new AI tool called ChatGPT, and I thought, okay, now I've got to try this out. And of course, I tried writing with it in English and then writing with it in Dutch, and I was, I was, that was like this moment that I thought, okay, this is going to change everything. It's going to change my business dramatically. So I experimented with ChatGPT day and night for for for the whole month of December, and and I concluded that I had to pivot my business completely because otherwise AI would eat eat my lunch, and so I I identified actually eight workflows in our business that have to do with creating content, and everywhere I thought, where can I integrate AI and make it useful? And so I spent six months working on that, reprogramming a lot of our workflows in our in our platform, integrating the OpenAI API to to generate ideas, to do keyword research, a whole lot of stuff that we do, and and actually to to produce a really good system prompt based on so we had a system prompt, and then when the customer would fill in the form for the with the briefing for the for the writing job that would generate a prompt that our freelance writers then could use in ChatGPT to to write the like a draft of like that was like 80% ready you know and and that's what we did and in June 2023 we launched this and I got a lot of publicity because I was really early, really early with that. So I got a radio interviews and magazine interviews, and it was really good for the business on that for for from that point of view. Eric Van Hall  43:54 But the other other other end is that a lot of people were not ready for it. So I also had a lot of problem with the freelance writers adapting to this. Some of some of them were really angry. You know, some of them were just just hated it, and others were were enthusiastic. So it it it got a lot of commotion around it, and and it's been quite a roller coaster ever since. Michael Hingson  44:21 Well, the the whole thing about AI today is is we see these arguments, these fierce battles about AI doing things and stealing creativity, and there are a number of people who say AI is a great tool. It's a great research tool, but it shouldn't be doing the writing. The writing, the creativity belongs to humans. What do you think about that? Eric Van Hall  44:51 Yeah, I think that's bullshit. Sorry, the AI surprises me every day. Creative it can be, but it's you know garbage in is garbage out, and if you know how to talk to the AI, it can make you a lot more creative. It's it's and especially with the latest models that they surprise me with a creative maybe not so much that that you think it's it's it's very well and beautifully written because it can obviously do that if you prompt it well. It can write in any style that you want, but you have to you have to always you have to make sure that it doesn't go generic. And that's if just if you give it too little information and it goes very generic. It okay, but but that's not necessary. But that's of course what happened: is that all these freelance writers that were against AI in principle, they they thought, hey, this this AI is coming for my my work, and I have to hate it, and they didn't want to embrace it, and then so they tried it, and then they thought, ah, this is generic, and this is oh, this is terrible. Like my experience of of a year before, you know, that I thought, ah, this doesn't work. It's in Dutch. It's terrible. And when you have that experience, and you don't, you know, and you think, then basically these people they thought, okay, well, this is nothing, and then they just put it aside. So they they had this vision that they, you know, it's like if you if you try to ride a bike and you've never done it before, and you step on a bike and you immediately fall on your knee and you and you scratch your knee and then you say, "Oh, that's nothing for me. Fuck! Instead of learning to ride the bike, you know, you have to fall and get up and try and and and and in the end, and and a lot of people don't want to do that, and then just their first experience determines how they feel about the whole technology, and that I think that's a big mistake. Michael Hingson  46:50 Well, I think it's it's a lot of fear. A lot of creators feel threatened and felt threatened by AI. You didn't, but you have a very curious mind. My belief about AI is that no matter how good AI is, there there are aspects of being a human being that I think it's going to be a long time before AI can truly emulate. But even then, it's going to emulate as opposed to totally taking the human part of it and and totally becoming human, if you will, and so I think Eric Van Hall  47:28 absolutely. So the AI doesn't have an experience; they don't experience anything. So, but they can emulate the experiences, and they they can fool you very very good. You know, they're very avid at it now. But no, I think you know. I that one of the most important things with human interaction with AI is that if you use AI, you always have to know, have to realize that you, in the end, you are still responsible for whatever exactly, and that's what I was Michael Hingson  48:06 getting to. That's what I was getting to. Is that ultimately, you still have to be a part of the process. I I would never want to let AI totally write an article or do any work for me without me supervising it without me looking at it, and and also using my own creativity to add my touch Eric Van Hall  48:30 to it. Yeah, you can add your touch on the front end often more than on the back end. But so, for example, when I write with with I use ChatGPT and I use Gemini and Gemini and I don't really type texts anymore; just prompts, you know. Because because when the text is is not not not okay, I don't I don't like the final the the product the first first draft. I keep prompting. Yeah, that's right. Because the AI is always better able than me to to either embellish something or or get you know. But very often it's also that that it's more the content itself. You know that I just say. It's you know yeah you have to it still it still work it you know it's it's not a push in the button and you have a perfect final product. Although my experience is that that the the the one shot prompt prompting really good results. I get them more often all the time. So, so there's definitely a progression there, and that actually seems to be accelerating. And at this time, at this moment, there is a big hype of real agentic tools. Called Open Claw, where you can run agents on your own computer, and I'm really, really eager to try that out. But it's also very insecure, so it's it's something that you that you don't do lightly. You have to really prepare it well. But there, you know, from the people that are already experimenting with it, I I can see that these agents are very independent already. You know that they feel like you have a human almost working for you that is on its own taking decisions, and and that can go terribly wrong, and it can also give really good results. And it's it's very experimental now, but it's a it's a window on what's coming, and it's it's going fast because the especially the AI companies like OpenAI and Claude Anthropic they focus a lot on on programming because that's their core business is is writing code. So if if you want to look to the future in other aspects of AI, like for example writing, or legal, or financial, or etc. Well, look at coding, and now I understand that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Microsoft and Google and and and well, all the Facebook, they all meta, they all are generating ever more content with a code source code with AI, and it's getting better at an incredible pace. So it it won't take extremely long until AI can do complete jobs all by itself and deliver final product all by itself. It's it's it's it's it's going to happen. Well, I think I Michael Hingson  51:48 think it will. I think that the the issue though is that even when AI gets to be really good, it's still my responsibility as a writer to make sure that it is saying what I want, and you know one of the and so like dealing with different sources when when AI if you do research with it and it cites something, it's always good to verify that what it found is really true, and as I point out to people, the reality is even if I ask a human being and they give me a reference or something, I'm going to check it out because humans make mistakes, and humans don't always necessarily give you the whole story, and it's not a matter of they're maliciously or deliberately doing it, but it it happens. And so, no matter what we do, there's a need to make sure that we that we truly analyze whatever it is that we're working on, and make sure that it's it's all coming out the same way and the right way, the way that we want it to be, and that's just going to continue to happen. Eric Van Hall  53:04 Yeah. So, like I said, I mean, accountability is the main thing. I mean, you as as the you, but you know, I listened to a podcast recently with Elon Musk as a guest, and the predictions there are a bit terrifying. He says that in in in he's always sort of exaggerating, you know, and and and and puts things on a timescale that in the end takes much much longer. But he says that within a few years, of all the intelligence in the world, only 1% will be biological, and the rest will be digital, and and so who is going to run things when 99% of all intelligence is digital? I thought that was quite a spooky picture. I don't know how true it is, but I, you know, you can think of him what you want, and I'm not really a fan of him for certain reasons. But I do think that he's pretty in this field. He's pretty genius, and he's probably got the. I think it's worth listening to that because. Michael Hingson  54:11 And which person is that again? Eric Van Hall  54:13 Elon Musk. Michael Hingson  54:14 Elon Musk. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Eric Van Hall  54:16 Yeah. Yeah. So he he was in a very long podcast and listened to it, and this was one of the things that I thought. Yeah, okay. What what is a world where, of all the intelligence that's available, 1% is biological, 1% is human, or you know, in is in actually flesh and blood. Well, who is who has the power then, and that's something that we really, you know, that's sort of Michael Hingson  54:43 well. And I, but I also think that the intelligence, as he puts it, is an issue. Even if it's 1% that 1% is a different kind of intelligence than what we see with. Digital and programming and AI and so on. So yeah, I'm I'm not sure that Musk is is there and and Ray Ray Kurzweil, for example, talks about singularity, and I'm I'm not ready to let my brain be married to computer technology as such because I just think that we're missing the fact that there is a certain characteristic in the human thinking and in the human brain that technology isn't going to truly be able to to master, and and as as it masters it, humans get better, so it's going to continue to evolve, and humans need to be able to keep that control. Eric Van Hall  55:47 I totally agree with the last part that we need to keep control. But it's going to his point was that it's going to get be how difficult it's going to be if only 1% of all intelligence is human. Then how how do you how do you stay in control. That was basically the the dystopian future. So we need somehow we need to build in ways to to stay in control. And I think one of the things is there is that that that when we build these systems, we have to put values in there. We have to put our human values in there, you know, because humans are terrible. We have terrible. We do terrible things, but we still have also we have values. We also preserve nature where we can, and we have empathy. And machines don't have empathy. The machines. So it's it's it's, you know, I don't lay awake at night worrying about these too much, but it's it's something that's it's interesting to think about, and also what the impact is if you have a business or if you have a job, because because of the exponential speed. You see, if if if if the the the total amount of intelligence and and they they were talking also about compute and putting putting data data centers in space etc. I mean this this was the whole because it's the only way that you can get enough energy and and and room and and compute to do to do all this super intelligence and yeah how do you stay in control? Yeah, it's that's that that's quite. It can be a bit scary to think about. But I'm an optimist, you know. I'm also an AI optimist. I'm not. I'm not a skeptic. Michael Hingson  57:33 Yeah, Eric Van Hall  57:34 I embrace it. But I, you know, I think we do need to think about, and that's one of the things that I do with my new endeavor, where I'm involved, is called Scriptorium Initiative. Is where we where we want to help within the AI realm build an operating a operating system for trust. So build in trust and and and accountability into the into the systems, and that's one of the things that we want to develop and help help companies build you know build or incorporate AI into their into their. We are focusing then on communications. Yeah, build that into their system so that the that the the company still has a still has benchmarks for the for trust and is to be trusted by humans because in the end, yeah, trusted by humans and by their the human the human synthetic stakeholders, you know, because humans are using more and more agents to do their work. It's going to be the next two three years are going to be very very interesting because these the the developments could speed up a lot because, like I said, they start with the programming, but now that's why I think that copywriting will probably also be more and more automated, so that that human interference is less and less necessary. And I, you know, I'm also thinking about what that means for for for copy robbin and what will the future bring. You know, it's it's it's also a bit scary because I can see it now that the quality of the the the the one shot prompt text production is is has improved a lot recently. So you you know what I mean with one shot. I do. I do. AI just starts working on its own and and and corrects its own mistakes, and you know it gets better and better. That's working on the working on the product like a human would. Well, we talk we talk Michael Hingson  59:48 about control, so that goes back to Isaac Asimov and his laws of robotics, and you know we we do need to build in governors to to try to prevent as. Much of the the nastiness as we can, and I don't know that we know how to do that yet. But I think we'll we'll see. Let me ask this question because we've been doing this a while now. As you know, I work with Accessiby, and one of the questions I would ask is, do you think that AI help make the well technology and the internet and so on more accessible, or is it going to create more barriers? Eric Van Hall  1:00:26 I think it will make very much more accessible because if you look at these tools that are now experimental, like Open Claw, which is just running on a computer, you can just chat with it, and it does it does complete jobs for you. So if you're if you're it's it's basically on a computer. If so, if you're if you work on a computer, now you you will you you have to use a screen reader. And so so I'm not I'm not very familiar with with with all the. I mean you know a lot more about it than I do, but you still have you still have to learn to deal with a lot of obstacles. And in the end, I think we're almost there. We're practically already there. It's just the safety issues are need to be resolved. But when you have a safe solution that has the same intelligence and self, how it works, it works independently as as a as a as an agent, and you can do it safely. Then it's going to be tremendous improvement for if you can just talk to to your computer and it and it starts doing stuff immediately. And computer already knows what you need, and starts thinking ahead for you, it's that's going to happen, and I think if you have a disability, impairment, it will it will make life a lot a lot better. I'm I'm pretty sure about that. Michael Hingson  1:01:51 I I think I think you're right. So for people who fear change and fear technology, what's what's one step they can take to maybe learn to become more comfortable with all the things that are happening in our world. Eric Van Hall  1:02:07 Well, if you, yeah, it's it's it's it's difficult to say from my point of view because for me it's always been sort of natural. But right. But how would you Michael Hingson  1:02:19 advise someone to yeah consider positively more change. Eric Van Hall  1:02:23 Yeah, I think I think that I think curiosity curiosity educated the cat and didn't just kill it. You know, you have to yeah you have to try to to step outside of your comfort zone, basically, and and also be not too skeptical. You know, you know, if you think AI, if you if you have like, how do you call it that you think that that you have your your opinion is already made, Michael Hingson  1:03:02 yeah, if you're biased, if you're prejudiced, if you're biased, Eric Van Hall  1:03:05 prejudice, yeah, exactly. Then then that's a big break on your on your development. So you have to have an an open mind, yeah, and and and and try stuff out, even if it feels a bit counter counterintuitive, because if something feels counterintuitive, you're probably on the right track. If it feels comfortable, then it's probably not. Then it's probably not worth worth pursuing. Everything that that that yields success is hard. Michael Hingson  1:03:37 Well, and there's truth to that. Well, if people want to reach out to you, maybe interact with you, maybe use some of your services or whatever, how do they do that? Eric Van Hall  1:03:47 Well, they can contact me. Maybe it's find me on LinkedIn, and it's Eric with a C and Van Hall H A double L, and I'm based in the Netherlands. And if they listen to this podcast and they want to get in contact with me, that's that's a good place to start because all my other connections, my businesses, etc. is all mentioned there as well. Michael Hingson  1:04:19 Okay, do you have a website you can refer people to? Eric Van Hall  1:04:24 Yeah, I have two. I have I have copy robin.com if you're English speaking and.nl if you're Dutch, and I have scriptorium dash initiative.ai, and that's my new project that I'm that I'm recently started with some partners, and that's a project to help communication professionals, senior communication professionals, manage, you know, navigate through the the big changes that are that are now. Coming over them due to AI. Michael Hingson  1:05:03 Well, you have offered a lot of really great insights. I hope people will think about what you've said and and reach out to you. I think it's worth continuing the discussion, and maybe we'll need to. Would you agree? We'll have to do a conversation. Also, sure. Eric Van Hall  1:05:18 If they reach out through LinkedIn and mention Michael Hinkson, then I will definitely accept their their invite and and start the conversation. Absolutely. Michael Hingson  1:05:28 Well, thanks for being here, and I want to thank all of you for being here with us today. This has been a really fun and wide ranging discussion. If you'd like to reach out to me, I'd appreciate it. You can email me at speaker at Michael Hingson M I C H A E L H I N G S O n.com. Love it if you'd give us a review wherever you're listening to or watching our podcast. If you know anyone who wants to be a guest, we're always looking for people who want to tell their stories. So, Eric, for you and everyone out there monitoring our podcast, we'd love to be introduced to other people you think would be great guests. And if you haven't been a guest and you want to be, let us know. But for now, I just want to thank you, Eric, for being here. This has been absolutely wonderful today. Eric Van Hall  1:06:14 Thank you. It has been a pleasure and an honor. Michael Hingson  1:06:20 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhinkson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

What happens when an engineer discovers that great technology alone isn’t enough to build a successful business? My guest, Christine Slocumb, began her career as an electrical engineer before moving into marketing, entrepreneurship, and eventually building and selling her own agency, Clarity Quest. Christine and I talk about why marketing and sales need to work together, how SEO and AI are changing business, and why website accessibility is simply good business. We also explore something I believe matters even more: how we treat people. Christine shares why she built a company where employees could feel respected, how she balanced entrepreneurship with putting her family first, and what she learned during the long process of selling her business. Now, she is helping other entrepreneurs prepare for business exits and discover who they want to become afterward. I think you will enjoy Christine’s thoughts about authentic leadership, embracing change, and taking the time to discover what comes next in life. Highlights: 04:53 - How growing up without gender-based limits shaped Christine’s confidence and career choices. 11:17 - Why great technology still needs strong marketing to succeed. 21:35 - How website accessibility can benefit customers, businesses, and search visibility. 35:25 - Why AI can transform marketing without replacing human creativity and relationships. 45:25 - The choices Christine made to grow a business while keeping family first. 55:43 - Why selling a business can create an unexpected search for identity and purpose. . About the Guest: Chris Slocumb started her career as an electrical engineer at Motorola, where she witnessed firsthand how poor marketing could tank great technology. That insight sparked a career pivot that would eventually lead her to founding Clarity Quest Marketing and writing the 2024 book “Stop Starvation Marketing: 23 Power Moves For Healthcare, Biotech and IT Companies”. For over 20 years, Chris built Clarity Quest Marketing, growing it into a two-time Agency of the Year winner. When she sold the agency in 2023, she stayed on as Chief Growth Officer at the buyer’s holding company, driving 88% revenue growth for the holding company. From the outside it looked easy. In reality, selling her company and finding a new identity was a gauntlet. In February 2025, Chris made her exit from the buyer’s company complete and launched her exit advisory practice helping B2B founders successfully exit with their heads held high and values intact. Unlike traditional M\&A advisors focused solely on financial readiness, Chris addresses the complete founder experience: emotional preparation, successful transaction, and post-exit life design. Her upcoming book "Mastering the Exit Gauntlet" (April 2026) captures the raw reality of her journey in the moments she felt lost, questioned everything, and learned to celebrate the sale in order to design a new identity. Her core message challenges the exit narrative: A technically successful exit can become a disaster without organizational, financial, and emotional preparation. Chris brings the same nerve and grit that got her through the tech startup world’s engineering floors to helping founders exit on their own terms—living proof that life after exit can be purposeful, grounded, and entirely your own. Ways to connect with Christine**:** My website is https://christineslocumb.com/ Link to my upcoming book's teaser page: https://christineslocumb.com/my-books/mastering-the-exit-gauntlet/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisslocumb/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cmslocumb/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes:

Sometimes becoming unstoppable begins with realizing you have more control over your life than you thought. Merrill Isherwood shares how her journey from professional ballet and a battle with bulimia to an abusive marriage, single parenthood, corporate struggles, and life coaching taught her the importance of self-ownership. She and Michael explore trauma recovery, toxic relationships, self-esteem, emotional support, and the courage to ask for help. Merrill also explains why coaching is not about giving people answers, but helping them discover their own strength and make conscious choices about the life they want to live. Highlights: 03:11 - Merrill shares how ballet shaped her early life and career. 11:00 - Pressure around weight led to bulimia and leaving professional ballet. 20:49 - Toxic relationships taught Merrill the importance of setting boundaries. 31:09 - A life coaching course changed how Merrill viewed control and personal responsibility. 43:28 - Trauma recovery became a focus of Merrill’s coaching work. 59:16 - Undivided attention can help parents build stronger connections with their children. . About the Guest: I am still here, and I am most grateful for that privilege.  I have been fortunate to live out most young girls’ dreams of being a professional ballet dancer and an air hostess / flight attendant. However, for many years was terribly unhappy and felt life was not worth living.... Abusive relationships were the order of the day, both at work and in my personal life, and I unfortunately developed a severe eating disorder which taunted me for 12 years. Atop that were several sexual assaults, exorcism, home robberies, burnout, financial scarcity, manipulation and more. I overcame being completely broken emotionally; physically, experienced grief from the loss of multiple loved ones and friends; was a single parent (for over 20 years with no support), lost most of our material possessions, and loads more. Often questioning, “Why me?”, I read one day what we should be asking ourselves is “Why not me?”  Why should I think, or assume I should be immune to difficulties in life?  This was when I realised the power of my mind.  I overcame the trauma of the above through mind control, determination, reflection, introspection, and willpower. That was a changing point in my life.  Perhaps I went through these experiences so I could help others. In 2019 I studied to become a certified life coach, intent on helping others. Subsequently, I created a course on healing oneself emotionally, using the principles of life coaching. I discovered once my emotions were better aligned, the physical 'tiredness', and lethargy, decreased, and for the first time, (in what felt like forever), I decided life might be worth living after all. My desire is to teach others to do the same. Realising how much valuable time I had wasted, hiding from the world, feeling pathetic, and unworthy, I set out to make a difference, spreading love and support. At the lowest of the low, God sent heavenly friends to support me through the dark days. My mission is to strengthen, and empower others by teaching them the tools, strategies, and skills they need to succeed, and to be able to live the life they choose. I encourage them not to waste their lives being unhappy, it really IS worth putting in the work, healing, and being able to actually LIVE a productive AND fulfilling life! Ways to connect with Merrill**:** Website 1:  Merrills Life Transformation Coaching:  https://merrills.co.za Website 2:  My Healing Program: https://myhealingprogram.com Instagram:     The Sista Hood:                    @thesistahoodsa Facebook:      Merrill Isherwood:                           https://www.facebook.com/merrill.isherwood Merrills Life Coaching:       https://www.facebook.com/Merrillsthesistahood/ The Sista Hood:                    https://www.facebook.com/Merrillsthesistahood/ LinkedIn:       Merrill Isherwood:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/merrill-isherwood-the-change-catalyst/ **My Healing Program: ** ? About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes:

Strong businesses do not become healthy by accident. They are built through trust, clear leadership, accountability, and a willingness to face problems together. Will Watrous joins me to explore what makes leadership teams work and why so many companies struggle even when good people are involved. Will shares how his own entrepreneurial journey led him from marketing into helping leadership teams use the Entrepreneurial Operating System, or EOS, to create greater vision, traction, and team health. We discuss vulnerability-based trust, productive conflict, accountability, business complexity, data-driven decisions, and why leaders must take responsibility for both what works and what does not. Will also explains why simplicity matters as companies grow, how weekly meetings can keep teams focused, and why leaders need quiet thinking time to gain clarity. You will find practical leadership lessons here for building stronger teams, making better decisions, and creating a healthier business. Highlights: 05:22 How helping one business owner launched Will’s entrepreneurial journey. 11:42 Why strong leadership creates accountability. 15:29 How trust becomes the foundation of healthy teams. 26:20 Why productive conflict leads to better decisions. 40:44 How leaders can reduce complexity as a business grows. 54:04 Why clarity breaks help leaders think and lead better. . About the Guest: Will Watrous is a business owner, EOS Implementer, and advisor to growth-minded leaders in the Tulsa and Broken Arrow area. He works primarily with founders and leadership teams of companies with 10 to 250 employees who want more clarity, discipline, and traction in their organizations. His work centers on helping leaders simplify complexity, make better decisions, and consistently execute on what matters most. As a Certified EOS Implementer, Will guides leadership teams through the Entrepreneurial Operating System, focusing on vision, accountability, data, and healthy team dynamics. He is known for being practical, direct, and grounded in real-world business experience. Clients value his ability to ask hard questions, create focus, and turn strategy into clear priorities that actually get done. Beyond EOS, Will owns and advises multiple businesses, including a marketing company and commercial real estate investments. This firsthand ownership experience shapes how he works with clients. He understands cash flow, hiring decisions, sales challenges, and the pressure leaders face when growth creates complexity. His approach blends structured systems with sound judgment and financial awareness. Will is deeply interested in finance, long-term wealth building, and disciplined execution, both personally and professionally. He values tools, scorecards, and measurable outcomes, but believes strong businesses are ultimately built by healthy, aligned leaders. His Christian worldview influences how he thinks about stewardship, integrity, and responsibility. He lives in the Tulsa area with his wife Jenny and their two children, Eli and Ellie. Outside of work, Will enjoys fitness, hiking, travel, learning, and time with his family. He is driven by helping leaders build organizations that are not only successful, but sustainable and well-run for the long term. Ways to connect with Will**:** LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willwatrous/ Website: https://implementer.eosworldwide.com/will-watrous/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Well, greetings, everyone, wherever you may be today, I am your host Mike Hingson, and you are listening and/or watching Unstoppable Mindset. Our guest today is Will Watrous, and Will has a I think a lot of interesting things to talk with us about regarding organizations, team building, teamwork, and other such things, and I'm not going to give it away because it's his job to really talk about that, which is a lot more fun. Although I will say that he and I share a like of a particular book on teamwork, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, as we go forward. But anyway, Will, I want to welcome you to Unstoppable Mindset. We're really glad you're here. Will Watrous  01:40 Thank you, Mike. What a pleasure to be on your podcast today. Michael Hingson  01:43 Well, well, I've been looking forward to it for a while, so we're we're glad we're doing it, and we'll we'll take about an hour, and then you can go off to dinner unless you've already had dinner. Speaker 1  01:53 Sounds like a plan. Michael Hingson  01:56 Yeah, Will is in Oklahoma, so I think he's having warmer temperatures today than we are. Anyway, so let's let's go ahead and move forward. Why don't you tell us kind of maybe a little bit about the early will growing up and all that? Speaker 1  02:10 Sure. So I grew up in a little coastal town, Mystic, Connecticut, which is on the shore, northeastern Connecticut. Michael Hingson  02:19 Did you ever have pizza there? I had to ask. Speaker 1  02:21 I did. I did have Mystic Pizza before it was made famous by Julia Roberts' right movie, and that was that was my hometown. Yeah. So the Mystic Drawbridge there, and the old Mystic Village, or the Mystic Seaport. It's a very touristy, but also a great place to grow up. Yeah, on the water, and yeah, the youngest of six kids, five boys, one girl, but don't feel sorry for her because she is probably could still beat me up. She's a strong, strong woman, and yes, pretty, pretty average in in many ways, childhood graduated from high school and went off to college here in Oklahoma. Spent about six years out here going to school, and then went back to the East Coast. This time to Washington D.C. area. I was working in a large nonprofit organization just outside the Beltway, and then wound up going to Boston. Taught at a school in Brookline, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. And then my wife decided she wanted to go to college out here in Oklahoma, so we moved back out here in around around 2010, and I started a business, and that started my entrepreneurial journey, which was very intensive. Let's say learned a lot, a lot of it the hard way, and really developed an affinity, appreciation for business, for entrepreneurship, for ultimately serving people, which is what most businesses should be designed to do. And through all of that, took some really powerful principles, insights, truths away, and now have the privilege of helping a lot of other business leadership teams run stronger, better, healthier companies. Michael Hingson  04:28 What got you to go to college in Oklahoma? Coming from Mystic, Speaker 1  04:33 well, being the youngest of six, two of my brothers had come to school out here, and so I was following in their footsteps. Michael Hingson  04:41 Where did you go to school? Speaker 1  04:43 So I went to Oral Oral Roberts University. Yep, and I went to a college called Raymo Bible Training College, which is a Christian two-year Christian school out here. Michael Hingson  04:56 And eventually, you came back. And why did your wife want to come? And go to college in Oklahoma, kind of same concepts. Speaker 1  05:03 Yeah, she wanted just so she wanted to go to the Rayma Bible Training College to get a foundation in her faith, and just you know early on in in life wanted to lay that framework, that groundwork, so that she she felt for the rest of her life, and she had met a lot of other graduates from that particular school, which is an amazing school, and they had all just shared how influential, how impactful the school was for them. And mind you, it's not just about head knowledge, you know, not just information. It's about ultimately knowing God better, and so which tends to serve you well in every every area of life. So she was hungry for that. So we decided to move out here. And I, the nature of my work at the time was such that I could work remotely, and so we moved here. And she went to school, graduated, and we stayed and raised a family. Michael Hingson  06:01 So, what what kind of business did you start when you started your business? You said in 2010. Speaker 1  06:09 Yes, in 2010, and so I had been serving in a marketing capacity, doing marketing management for the organization in the D.C. area, and learned a lot simply by doing. Don't have my my college education. My degree is in music performance, actually, so didn't serve me very well as far as marketing is concerned. So I learned a lot by doing, and when I moved out here, I knew someone who had an auto repair shop, and he, through a series of events, had to rename his rebrand his shop completely. the the the I went to his website, I think one day, and it said under construction, and I thought that's weird. I know he has he's been in business, he has a website, so I send him an email, and he emailed me back and said he just asked inquiring is everything going all right? He replied and said I need help right now because we're in the situation where I need to redo everything. So I at the time was not a technician when it came to marketing. I was more of just a manager strategist type. So for whatever reason, I decided that I could build him a website. I just wanted to help, so I didn't charge him anything, and literally went online, and this is many, many years ago. Before there was all of the resources available to us now, and I Googled how do you build a website, and I prayed, and I just went through this very excruciating process of coding and understanding how it all worked. Wound up building him a website, learned a lot along the way about search engine optimization, about digital advertising, and then other you know forms of online advertising. And his he's a great businessman. He does good work, and he has a good reputation. He knows lots of people. His business grew to the degree that he would have some other business owners come to him and say, "Man, what are you doing? Because you you guys are just crushing it. And he's a really gracious guy. He would tell these other business owners, "Well, I have this guy named Will, and sometimes I have to call Will and tell him to tone it down a little bit because I'm too busy. Well, these other business owners demanded my phone number from him because they wanted you know to grow their businesses. So I started getting phone calls from other business owners asking if I would do for them what I was doing for this man, and that started. So I never really woke up one day saying I'd love to start a marketing agency. I just was trying to help someone who needed Michael Hingson  09:00 it, Speaker 1  09:01 and it wound up turning into a business. So then I hired someone, and they started helping me. And then hired some more and grew it and grew it until about four years ago. I stepped away, and there's more to that story as well as as to how I was able to step away. I still own that company passively now. It's a it's a great multi-million-dollar, very profitable, growing company, very healthy company. But now my passion and focus is helping entrepreneurs create businesses that give them what they want from their business that are more aligned, more healthy, and stronger-not just for the business owner and the entrepreneur, but for the whole for the whole company, for everyone involved in that organization. Michael Hingson  09:48 So, you're more involved now in helping people start businesses, or are you still dealing with businesses that exist and you're helping to to kind of improve them? Speaker 1  10:00 Businesses that are already existing. So typically, my my the clients that I work with now are are two to 50 million in annual revenue, 10 to 250 employees. They're growth oriented. They're willing to be open and honest with one another and with themselves, and they're more afraid of the status quo than they are of change. They really are trying to get somewhere, but feel stuck, feel frustrated, feel like the things that have they've been trying to to do to make the business better just aren't gaining traction like they need. Michael Hingson  10:34 Well, how does that differ from what you were doing before? Speaker 1  10:37 Ah, well, so before the marketing agency was really focused on lead generation, increasing their revenue, their sales. Now, what I do is work with leadership teams. I use the EOS model, which is the entrepreneurial operating system, which is a very specific process and set of tools that I teach the leadership team of the organization, so typically that's the three to seven people at the top of the company making the important decisions, and I help them do three things. I call them vision, traction, and healthy. So vision means first getting the leaders 100% on the same page with where is this company going and how do we plan to get there. Traction from the standpoint of helping your leaders to become much more disciplined and accountable, and executing really well to achieve every part of your vision, and then healthy meaning helping the leaders to become a more healthy, functional, cohesive leadership team. Because the truth is that most leaders don't function well as a team, and what I found is, as goes the leaders, so go the rest of the organization. So what we do is we get to the point where everyone in the company is all crystal clear, fully aligned with the vision and plan. They're gaining consistent traction wherever you look in the company, people are executing on that vision together, and they're doing it as a group of people who are who enjoy the work that they do and and enjoy the people that they're around. Michael Hingson  12:13 Okay, what do you think is the problem that leaders and companies most often misdiagnosed in their organizations that create the problems that you have to come in and deal with. Speaker 1  12:30 I would say one of the most common is accountability. It's a it's it's a common hot button frustration of many business leaders, and the misdiagnosis, as you said, is that accountability is actually a byproduct. It is, it's a formula. Actually, the formula is this: L plus M equals A. So the L stands for leadership, plus M stands for management, equals A stands for accountability. So leader accountability is the output, and so rather than trying to make your people be accountable, which you can't really do. What you can do is be a great leader and be a great manager, and the result will be you'll create an environment where accountable people thrive. And so, within EOS, we teach five leadership abilities and five management abilities, or not really ability. They're more like practices, leadership practices, and and management practices. You just do those things well, and and the accountability that you so desire will show up in the organization. Michael Hingson  13:52 Yeah, I think a lot of people don't really understand what accountability is, and and that doesn't help the process, and yeah, you know exactly what I mean, and and that that tends to really make a lot of challenges for people because they they resent rather than recognizing that people who truly understand accountability are are trying to do something to help build the team, help the team work well, and and are looking out for the whole company, but just so many people don't understand that, do they? Speaker 1  14:27 No, and and part of the reason it's interesting. All these EOS tools work together, but another tool that we use a lot is the something we call the accountability chart. The accountability chart is a visual illustration of the structure of the organization, meaning who is responsible for what. So we've got the leadership team, but then every single person in the organization should have a box, a seat on the bus, and within. Box or in that seat, there's five major roles that they really need to own. What I like to say it this way: If the company could speak, why would it say this function exists? Why is this seat in the organization? And many companies have not clearly defined what success looks like for an employee. What are their five major accountabilities or roles within the organization? And so, how can you hold someone accountable to something that's not been clearly communicated from the get go? If they don't really understand what success looks like and what we need them to be doing and focusing and being great at, then it's it's really hard to to hold them accountable. Michael Hingson  15:46 Yeah, and they they just miss it. Well, going back to something I mentioned at the beginning, you and I are both great fans of the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Which which function or dysfunction do you? I can imagine what this might be, but which dysfunction do you most often encounter, and do we find most often with companies and people? Speaker 1  16:14 Yeah, I'll have to start at the bottom of the pyramid because it's right. It's it's it's a it's linear in a way, and and in that one builds upon the other. So the bottom tier of the pyramid is vulnerability based trust. So trust, and that, as Patrick describes it, is being completely open and honest with one another. If you sit down and have a conversation with a peer, you know that they're going to be completely frank. They'll tell you the truth and the whole truth. That, and not only that, you can trust them to have the right motives, the right purpose behind things. It's not political. They're not, you know, kind of positioning themselves and working the politics and dynamic dynamics of the organization. They're really trying to do what's right for everybody involved. So vulnerability-based trust is the first one, and that takes time. That's Patrick defines that as different from the kind of trust that is based on just knowing people in the sense that you can you know what to expect out of them if you're familiar with them. You work with them a lot, so you kind of you can trust that they're going to act a certain way. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about this true, open, and honest approach, being candid with one another, and that comes through some specific exercises. Ultimately, times the more you know about people, about their personal lives, and the more time you spend with them is what ultimately builds trust. Michael Hingson  18:07 Yeah, and it's all about building a trusting relationship that allows for that level of honesty. Because when you truly have it, then you're you're dealing with an environment where when someone says something to you, you know they're not trying to be political. You know they're not trying to undermine you, but they're trying to give you information, and it goes back to accountability and holding maybe you accountable for the things that you said that you were going to do. But it's also about holding the whole company accountable by feeding back to and working with people to get jobs accomplished. Speaker 1  18:48 Yes, absolutely, that's right. And and for that to happen, everyone has to be on the same page. We all must be looking at the same picture of where we're planning to go and agreeing on how we plan to get there. Michael Hingson  18:59 Yeah, and in a sense, even though accountability is at the bottom of the pyramid, it starts hopefully at the top with senior management that sets the tone and starts to create the environment where everyone can learn to trust and work together in a much more positive way. Speaker 1  19:21 That's right. When we when I work with leadership teams, I half jokingly tell them in in our early sessions that they should look around at the company and admire the wonderful things that are happening, the clients and customers that are being served, the employees that are getting their job done. All all of those things are wonderful, and you helped create that wonderful. On the flip side, all of the frustrations, the pain, the things that are broken and not working, you created that too. So you have to take responsibility for all of it, the good and the bad. And so the leadership really does have to. Take responsibility for everything. Michael Hingson  20:03 Why is it that trust is so hard, and trusting relationships are so hard to build, even when when people probably have really wonderful intentions and want to do it? But why is it so hard? Speaker 1  20:16 Ooh, that's a great question. Michael Hingson  20:18 And and I'll and I'll tell you one of the reasons I ask, being a little prejudiced, working with guide dogs. I work with dogs, and I have learned over the years that while dogs may love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally. But dogs are more open to trust, and if you really work at building a trusting relationship with a dog, you set the rules. You set which is what they want, you set the ground rules, you set the tone, and if you do it, the relationship that develops is incredible. But that just seems to be something that's really hard for humans to do internally or between human and human. Speaker 1  20:55 You know, I think the answer is in something that you just said, and the word is intentional. Intentionality, I think that most people show up to work focusing on the work, focusing on doing things faster and more efficiently, and the how and the strategy. But they don't focus very much on the health of the team. And Pat Lynchioni talks about that as well. How that most organizations are focused on getting smarter, but not on getting healthier, and he argues that the healthier team will outperform the smarter team every single time. Michael Hingson  21:36 The other part about it is the whole concept of just being open to trust-we we in our in our human world just see so many examples of why not to trust. And I think too many people have just learned, well, we can't trust. We don't dare take the chance. We can't because everybody has their own agendas, and so how can we trust them? Because they're looking out for them. They're not looking out for me, and we teach children this. We teach each other this, and that's so unfortunate because it doesn't need to be that way. Speaker 1  22:11 Yeah, what are they? The wisest serpents, gentle as gentle as doves, is the is the saying. I, I'm not. You're right. There's a lot of people out there, unfortunately, that have ruined it. Let's say the few have ruined it for the many. I think, and the reality is that today you have to be. And now with AI, we don't need to go there. But with AI, you really have to really have to know what's going on because what seems real isn't. Michael Hingson  22:44 Yeah. Do you think that will improve over time? Speaker 1  22:49 What's that? Michael Hingson  22:50 That AI will get better over time, and a lot of things that aren't real today will become more real just because the whole process will improve. Speaker 1  23:04 Will AI improve? Yes, absolutely. Will its results and its helpfulness improve? Absolutely. Will people continue to use that for their own good? You know, for their for their own devices at the expense of other people. Yes, unfortunately. Michael Hingson  23:21 Unfortunately. Speaker 1  23:22 So, what does that make leave? Where does that leave us? I think we have to be all the more wiser to it. You can't. You can't stay ignorant and think that everything's going to be okay. Michael Hingson  23:35 Where do you think AI fits in corporations mostly, or should fit? Speaker 1  23:41 Well, it's it's an incredible tool. It is an incredible tool, and I think it's it's like it's like money. What do you what do you do with it? It's simply a tool. What are you going to do with it? Where does it fit? It depends on what kind of business model, but I see it impacting every business to some degree, we utilize it heavily. I think when I work with leadership teams, I do a lot of facilitation. So we'll we'll sit around this table here. I'm in my session room here, and we have lengthy, deep, meaningful, impactful discussions with one another, and sometimes I even encourage them to use AI to refine an idea or to collaborate over an idea. But I warn my teams that AI has no soul, and what I mean by that is, it's it's information, it's data and information, but the human being there's more to us than just information. It's like the data, the information part of us is like the tip of the iceberg, and but there's a whole mass below the waterline. I believe you have a soul and a spirit, and so the danger I warn teams of is making strategic decisions based on information that comes from AI without really discussing and using their their soul. Sometimes ideas can resonate with a person on a different level. That that AI and just information can't it can't go there. It's not able to go there. So I don't know if that makes sense. But I just warn them: AI has no soul. You need to pay attention to what's going on inside of you as you're discussing ideas and and weigh that into the decision. Michael Hingson  25:46 And I still go back to we're the ones that are and should be the creators, and so it's great to use AI to help a process, but we still need to be the ones to do the real work. Speaker 1  25:59 Yes, Michael Hingson  26:01 and I think too many times I hear about it with with schools and so on. Oh, students are just writing their papers using AI. Well, we need to work on encouraging that not to be the case. The AI can help provide information, as you pointed out, but that's what it is. It's an information source, and it's only one information source, and anyone who is truly looking for information knows full well you don't just rely on one source. Speaker 1  26:29 Right. Michael Hingson  26:30 Even if it's a human, you don't rely on one source. Speaker 1  26:33 That's right. That's right. But it but it is Michael Hingson  26:35 pretty crucial to to work through that. Well, Patrick Lencioni talks a lot about conflict, and he talks about teams that have healthy conflict, and then there are those who quietly just kind of avoid it. What distinguishes, or how do you deal with the two different kinds of teams? Because I know Patrick talks about the fact that conflict is a very useful thing and needs to be respected as part of the process, Speaker 1  27:04 right? So the second layer of the pyramid that he illustrates is healthy conflict or productive conflict, which can only happen if there is a foundation of trust, because without trust, people tend to hold their cards close to the vest. They're not willing to go out on a limb and say something that might be taken the wrong way, because for fear of retribution, or that it could be it could be used against them, or or what have you. And so conflict is may the best idea win. I have wonderful teams. They're healthy teams. They'll fight like cats and dogs over an idea, not over. It's not personal. They're simply fighting for the best idea to win, and so they'll go at it heated conversations because they have strong opinions. At the end of the day, though, what really matters is that everyone has been heard? The point of conflict is to get the options out on the table to see what's possible, to see what's available, and then from those options, pick the best. So, what healthy conflict does is it opens it up for people to share, be willing to get out there, share their opinion, go back and forth, and as I said, everyone gets heard. That's such a critical piece of healthy team is that you're hearing from everyone on the team. They're having that opportunity to share their perspective, and then when all is said and done, the what we call this person the integrator. This is the person who leads the leadership team. They have a decision to make. It's not a democracy. They have heard all of the all of the opinions, and and then they say, "Well, this is what we're going to do. And 99% of the time, reasonable people, even if they disagree with a decision, if they have been heard and know that their opinion is valued, they are willing to commit to a decision that's against what they believe should have happened. Michael Hingson  29:14 Well, so take that to the next level. Let's say that the decision is made, and in a month, it turns out it really wasn't the right decision. Then what? Speaker 1  29:25 Yeah, healthy teams can pivot, and they don't. Excuse me. There's no paralysis by analysis. They're they're able to be flexible and make a quick decision without regrets and move on. You know, in business, most of the decisions that we make are reversible. It's not like we're a brain surgeon and there's someone's on the operating table, and and one slip means drastic results, or it's not a court case, and the judge once they slam the hammer, nothing changes. That's the verdict. In business, most decisions are reversible. Sometimes I see teams or leaders who are hesitant to make a decision, and I encourage them make a decision, commit to it, and start taking steps. We can always iterate. We can make adjustments along the way, but if you don't act, if you don't take one step forward, then you can't steer a parked car, as they say. So, when when your question was if a month later it was a wrong decision, we agree as a team to pivot and move on. And a great healthy team, you know, they'll probably give one another a hard time and laugh about it and poke a bit, but but keep moving toward the goal. Michael Hingson  30:46 But it's all in fun and it's not intended in any way to be personal, Speaker 1  30:50 right? Michael Hingson  30:51 Which is really the key. None of this has to be personal. We're not doing it to one up anyone, and the good teams truly understand that. Speaker 1  31:02 That's right. Michael Hingson  31:04 Do you ever find environments where leaders unintentionally do things where accountability breaks down? Speaker 1  31:15 Yes. One thing that happens specifically with visionary or leaders or founders is something I call end run, which is when they don't follow chain of command. Basically, because of their position in the company, they feel freedom to go to anyone in the company and either make a decision or give them a directive, and the person that they're giving the directive to feels obligated to follow that because it's a senior leader. Michael Hingson  31:54 Yeah, Speaker 1  31:55 and so that really that really damages you know it's chain of command ultimately, but it damages the relationship, damages the health of the team, and the hard thing about it is that visionary leaders and founders are idea people. They are the creators. They're brilliant at coming up with seeing opportunities and coming up with ideas to solve problems and add value, so they have this natural bent to research. They're curious. They'll want to talk to people, employees in the organization, and that's all good. But they do need a healthy boundary and to understand who they should talk to about decisions or influencing employees in the organization. Michael Hingson  32:43 Yeah, I'm curious about something. How do the operations within a business differ from, say, what goes on in the military, where there's an absolute chain of command, and someone along the line, can issue an order to someone, and it's supposed to be obeyed, and so on. But how does military operations differ, or do they from business, or should they from business? Speaker 1  33:10 I yeah, that's a great. I I think there's some strong similarities, and some significant differences. You know, one question, and this was actually oddly enough. This was a military leader. I forgot who it was, but it was a general. He said something he asks his subordinates on a regular basis is, "Tell me something you know I don't want to hear. Tell me something you know I don't want to hear. And his goal there was to truly to create a relationship with his subordinates where they feel comfortable raising their hand, saying we've got an issue, here's a problem, and I think that traditionally in the military that would be resisted. I think the or my my perception anyway is that subordinates would rarely want to say something's wrong. Everything's always okay, you know. Following orders, everything's good. But I respect that that general's practice of of telling his subordinates that, and I I recommend my leaders do it as well because they need to know what's going on. Really, there's this I think a natural desire to impress or to make it look like I'm doing a good job and our department is okay, so they don't bring up real issues. And so the kind might go against your question, but the the common thread there is a willingness to talk about real issues, real problems, to bring them up, solve them together as a team. But first, be willing to identify. And oddly enough, it goes back to the trust piece: to being open and honest. You have to be willing to just call something out. The elephant in the room: several people know that there's something going on. Nobody wants. To say it, just say it. So that that's maybe one similarity. Michael Hingson  35:06 Well, I know that in reality, in the in the military, I at least I've heard this from my military friends. They they do emphasize teamwork and and teaming and so on. But at the same time, they have this reputation where there's an order and you you just obey the order because that's what the general or what someone above you says and it seems like there's a paradox there somewhere. Speaker 1  35:33 Yeah, I think in in business, what my observation has been that people do need to know the why. I think in the military that's not required, and maybe same in parenting. Sometimes it's you're on a need to know basis, and you just need to follow the order. Whereas in business, I think it's much more common practice for good leaders to give the context of why this directive matters, so that the people can connect the dots and have a clearer picture of the overall success of the mission, as it were, the goal of the organization. They can see how what they're doing is contributing to that over goal. Overall goal. Michael Hingson  36:20 Yeah, yeah. Well, and in the military, maybe the privates don't necessarily get the get to know the why, Speaker 1  36:31 right? Michael Hingson  36:31 But but the hope is that there are enough people above them who are involved in a process that there is enough of an understanding that that enough people know the why that that the process works, and I guess that's a. I've not ever been in the military, and I'm certainly not going to criticize, but it just seems to me that that the more people can communicate and interact with each other, the stronger the team will be, no matter whether it's business or military. Speaker 1  37:00 Yeah, I would hope. Michael Hingson  37:03 So you know, but so EOS generally represent talks about clarity and execution. Where do leaders typically in organizations lose traction after they set a clear vision? Where do where do things break down. Speaker 1  37:22 You know, I think one of the most powerful ideas within EOS is the weekly meeting. So there is something we call the Level 10 meeting, and the name Level 10 comes from when we started working with companies and 1000s and 1000s of companies. One of the questions we would, one of our first questions in meeting them would be: rate the quality of your meetings on a scale of one to 1010, being best. How effective are your internal team meetings? And on average, they were about a four. And so over time, we developed the level 10 meeting agenda, which is a very specific agenda for leadership teams on a weekly basis to conduct that covers makes those those meetings so effective and efficient. And we keep talking about Patrick Lencioni. He wrote another book called Death by Meetings, which is a great great book as well. But so within EOS, the level 10 meeting is a very clear agenda. It gets everyone on the same page. Data passes quickly and smoothly across the right channels to the right people. We solve problems together, and it's just a wonderful, wonderful way to keep the business moving forward. So your question was, what happens after they set a clear vision? Well, very often they lose traction because they're not on a weekly basis measuring their progress toward that goal and vision, and solving problems on a weekly basis that show up that get in the way because there will always be things that prevent us, that resist us from our goals. So, are we methodically? And this is a discipline. This is it's it's not you know glamorous. It doesn't always feel good. But if you can stick with that weekly cadence, then every single week you're you're measuring what matters, the KPIs? It's a score. You know, one of the items on the agenda is the weekly scorecard, five to 15 numbers give us an instant pulse on the business. Reviewing the data, solving problems, and marching forward. So that's where it gets lost, because also in that meeting, everyone is staying on the same page, and there's that accountability. You're looking across the table, say, asking about this initiative or this project. Is it on track? Yes or no? Are we confident we're going to get it completed on time? Do you need any help? Every single week, the leaders. Showing up to that meeting and asking those questions of one another, and they know, hey, on Tuesday at 2o'clock, I'm going to have to answer this question: Is this goal on track for the quarter? And so that introduces this accountability within the team, where the peer-it's peer-to-peer accountability. They're holding one another accountable for the goals of the organization, Michael Hingson  40:22 yeah, I talked with a person recently on one of our podcast episodes. She runs a a boutique PR organization, and it has been growing, but she's not letting it grow too fast. But it has continued to grow, and and I've asked her, and I asked her how how long do you expect or how much do you want the company to grow, and can it grow too large where it becomes unmanageable? And she acknowledged that that kind of thing can happen, and and it it kind of is an interesting concept because most entrepreneurs want their companies to be successful and grow, but when you get multi-million-dollar or larger companies and you're hiring 50, 100, 200, 500 employees, that kind of ranges raises a lot of different complications, and it gets really overly complex. At what point does all the complexity really become too dangerous to deal with? Speaker 1  41:27 So the complexity model is where you you can calculate how complex business gets by every person you add to the organization. My point is complexity is real, and as a leadership team or as a leader, you have to constantly fight the onslaught of complexity. You have to fight for keep it simple, less is more. Keep it simple, less is more. So, if you had two people in an organization, you've got two lines of communication, one going from one to the other and back. If you add a third person, so you increase the number of people by 50% Now there are six lines of communication, so 200% increase in complexity, and that's just communication. Not talking about systems, processes, culture, all of that other stuff. You add a fourth person, so you increase the number of people by 100% from the two. Now you have a A 500% increase, 12 lines of communication. Speaker 2  42:45 Yeah, Speaker 1  42:46 so you have to, as a leader, fight against complexity, and the way that you do that is by less is more, keep it simple. Within EOS, we set three to seven rocks. We call them every quarter. Those are just business priorities, not 27, three to seven. Because if everything is important, nothing is important. So you're always asking yourself as a leader, what's the simplest way to say this, communicate this? What's the simplest way to do this? Do we have the simplest possible structure for the organization. Occam's razor says that the simplest solution is invariably the best solution, or the best solution is invariably the simplest solution. So the the complexity thing is real. You have to stay aware of it, and and fight against it by keeping things simple as you go. Michael Hingson  43:42 Yeah, and and the reality is, it goes back to what you were talking about. Certainly, the weekly meetings and other methods that you use to make sure that everyone not only is encouraged to communicate, but they do communicate. And again, it all gets back to that bottom level of the pyramid, which is accountability, and as long as everyone understands and feels the concept of accountability, and that we're all working toward the same thing, you have a much better shot at making it successful and making it work. Speaker 1  44:15 Right, that's right. Within EOS, we have a two-page strategic plan, not 50 pages. It's not this giant document. It's two pages that allow everyone within the organization to see who we are, where we're going, how we plan to get there. It's simple. Michael Hingson  44:36 Yeah. So, for a while, you didn't own your own business, and then you you now own your own business. How is becoming your own entrepreneur and your own your own business owner, boss, or whatever you want to call it? How has that changed? Kind of the advice you give to other people, and and what do you think about being? A business owner, as opposed to working within another organization, Speaker 1  45:05 you know, I I think I I'm spoiled. No, I don't think I could ever be a good employee again. Yeah, I just have a deep appreciation for visionaries, for people who see what's possible and then rally a team around them to help make it become a reality. That's a special. That's a special quality, and the world needs lots of that quality. So I, I, I have gained just a greater appreciation for the entrepreneurial spirit, and I, I think that it's it's now it's not for everybody, and that's okay. But I, I just can connect now more deeply than I ever could with people who are taking that step of faith, being courageous, doing something that's risky and uncomfortable, and just figuring it out as they go. I think that's for me particularly that resonates. I can't now, and I get it. I I understand. There's the majority of people are comfortable with a oops are are comfortable with a salary, a steady amount of income, and the safety that that brings. But I just it doesn't compute for me. I can't do it. It's just not for me what life is about. Michael Hingson  46:26 Yeah, I know. Especially since 2008, I've not only owned my own company, but it's been mainly me and dealing with lining up speaking engagements and so on, and especially since we moved down here in in 26 2014, I'm I'm very used to being my own individual, and and I I hear exactly what you're saying. I can work in an environment where there are other people, and there's there's times that that's that's a good thing, but I know that especially during COVID, people complained a lot about being locked down and they really missed being with other people, and I always had a little bit of a problem with that because I don't I don't look at other people, so that's one thing, but I learned that I could still communicate with people, and so I I didn't fall into some of those traps. I just do find it interesting, but I understand what you're saying. You're used to to to being the person not only in charge, but you're interested in setting the vision, and there's a lot of merit to that. Speaker 1  47:40 Yeah, yeah, and and he it takes all of us. If he had all visionaries and no doers, no you know no executors, then we'd be in a mess. I'm terribly sorry. The it's later here in the evening, and the cleaners are are at the door. Let me just tell them to wait 10. Give me 10 minutes on the office here. I'll be back in just a moment. Okay. Michael Hingson  48:05 So, yeah, I I appreciate the the position, and I can live with it as as well, and I can I can cope. I can work either way, but I I do like kind of really being the person in charge of me, I think it it probably works better. Yeah, that's okay. Speaker 1  48:28 Yep, we're all wired differently. Michael Hingson  48:30 Yeah, we are. So, in in making decisions, data is is a very important thing, and and it's certainly something that we need to keep around. Why do so many people resist and business leaders resist using data in a kind of an honest way? What are they afraid of? Speaker 1  48:51 Well, I think that data is can make things black and white. I think that data can be very telling because we can share opinions and feelings and ideas, but you can't. The numbers are the numbers; they they are what they are, which is why we use this weekly scorecard in that level 10 meeting I was talking about. But Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify. So the idea here is that people don't respect what you expect; they respect what you inspect, and the data is an inspection of what actually happened, what's real, what's what's going on on the ground, and that that's uncomfortable. The numbers don't lie most of the time. Now they can be manipulated, and people can tell stories. But if you're set up in the scorecard the right way with the right. Measuring the right things, it gives you a good idea of what's really going on. So I think it's just a natural resistance, a fear of being falling short, a fear of punishment. Ultimately, you know, in some form or fashion, hardship, difficulty, uncomfortability, things like that. Michael Hingson  50:22 But I think the the other thing I show about data, though, is it is kind of hard factual information, as you say. But it doesn't necessarily always bring the human element into to to things that maybe ought to be considered as well. So that the data should only be part of the final decision-making process. Speaker 1  50:45 It's very true. Very true. If you're looking at the numbers, there's always a story behind the numbers. What's the story behind the numbers? And that has to be part of the equation. Michael Hingson  50:55 As a as a speaker, I get a lot of people who say, "Well, we'll consider you fill out this form, and will evaluate you along with everyone else. And the problem is, I've realized that a lot of these forms, you fill them out, and you get a bunch of words on a screen, but doesn't really tell the whole story. And that's unfortunate because I think that too many evaluators are missing out on really understanding speakers when that happens. Speaker 1  51:25 Yeah, I believe that's true. Yes, absolutely. Hearing someone in person can't compare to just words on a page. Michael Hingson  51:36 Well, so yeah, it's just one of those things that one has to deal with when a team experiences a setback. What is it that causes some people to recover quickly while others don't necessarily recover quickly? Speaker 1  51:54 Why don't some people recover more quickly? Michael Hingson  51:59 Or teams, yeah. Speaker 1  52:00 Or teams. I think I don't know that I can separate teams from people. Michael Hingson  52:08 Yeah. Okay. Speaker 1  52:09 You know, and I say that because it has to do with self awareness. It has to do with personal development. I think many of these qualities are inseparable from the performance of the team, because a team is ultimately a group of individuals, and so in that way you've got the team dynamic. But you're you're also going to rely heavily on the character and the qualities of the individuals on the team. And if some people just can't let go, if they can't just raise their eyes or turn their gaze from the past and look forward, then, then they're going to struggle. Now, there are tools. You know, who is it? An autopsy without blame. He called it in good to great. In good to great, he said. This is where. What was his name now? Jim. I forget his name. Who wrote Good to Great, Jim Collins? Michael Hingson  53:04 Collins. He said Speaker 1  53:05 he called it on autopsy without blame, which is a team or person's ability to look back at the past and just understand. Okay, what happened? This isn't this isn't to point fingers. We just need to know what actually went down, so that we can learn from it. Because I tell teams this all the time, the past is only good for one thing-learning from it. And once you learn from it, you got to let go and move on. So the and and it's funny, I say this again every every meeting that I have with them. Actually, we review our data and we look back, we understand what. And then I said at the end of that review, I say, "Okay, that's the past. Nothing else we can do about it. Anything else need to be said before we leave it completely in the past and move forward? And I give them that opportunity to process and to you know make observations, insights, confessions. But after that moment, we got to let it go, and I think that a team has to be committed to be willing to do that for them to be able to to move forward. Michael Hingson  54:09 Yeah. Well, a lot of what you do is I suspect helping leaders, especially shift their mindset in some way. What mindset shift really helps leaders move from reacting to problems to leading intentionally and developing the kinds of of operations that we're talking about here as being successful? Speaker 1  54:35 I think you know you said mindset shift, but this is what I would call a mindset best practice. It's something I call a clarity break. A clarity break is a time scheduled on your calendar. So this is hard landscape. This is a an appointment you make with yourself that you keep, and in a clarity break, you get away from all the noise. You turn all the notifications off. You. On do not disturb mode, and you get a legal pad and a pen, and you simply think it. You think about the biz, think about the business, think about the biggest challenge you're facing, and you just start writing. And it's amazing what kind of solutions, ideas, next actions come to us when we have that clarity of mind. When we have time to get gain perspective, to take a step out of the fray, all of the noise, and just simply think. There's fewer things more valuable than high quality, pure thought, just simple thinking time. So that that is a mindset best practice, I would say, and and I encourage leaders to do it at a minimum of once a week, 3060, 90 minutes. Get a legal pad. Now, there's another book out there called The The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. That's lessons from the the chairman of the board, and he that book is a book full of questions that leaders should be asking themselves about the business. You could use those as prompts, or just again get quiet and think about the business right now. And I promise you, you'll start writing, and the thoughts will just flow, and you'll write the whole time and come up with such clarity and such perspective that allows you to re reengage, reenter the business with confidence as to what needs to happen, what are our next steps, and that's so important because that confidence is a precious commodity for leaders. You have to protect your confidence, and the confidence comes from clarity, and the clarity comes from taking time away from the business to simply sit and think. Michael Hingson  56:46 One of the things that I think all too often we individually and collectively don't do is to just stop and think about life, think about things, do more internal introspection, and that's kind of what you're talking about. And the reality is, if we would do more of that, and if we would listen to our own mind, we would discover so many things that would help us along the way. My favorite example is Trivial Pursuit, where I ask people regularly when you're playing Trivial Pursuit, and somebody asks, and somebody reads a question from a card. Immediately, you think of an answer, but you went, "Oh, that came too quickly. That can't be it. And so you think again and come up with another answer. But that first answer invariably was the right answer. But that's not what we listen to. We're teaching ourselves not to be so introspective and to sit back or to sit down and think about whatever it is that we need to think about, and as you point out, writing things down. Speaker 1  57:50 Yes, so valuable and and hard to do, frankly, in our age of distraction. Our phone is so distracting, and so so many other options, so many other things that hit the dopamine, get the dopamine flowing, that challenge our our ability to, or our sitting down and making time to do simple thinking time. Michael Hingson  58:16 Yeah. Well, if a leadership team today wanted to have one practical step about how they would work together this quarter. What would you advise? How would you advise them to start? In addition to reaching out Speaker 1  58:34 to you, which I'm Michael Hingson  58:35 all in favor of, but that's another story. Speaker 1  58:38 You know, there is a tool out there that I would point them to. It's called the organizational checkup. It's free. It's online. It's put out by EOS. There's no obligation, no strings attached, or anything like that. But I think that tool. It's a set of 20 questions, and you rate each question on a scale of one to five, five being best. And that tool would really shine the light on where the most pain is being felt across the organization. When the leaders, first of all, just give an honest assessment of those 20 questions, they'll be able to put their finger right on the priority of what they need should should fix first. And I think that would just that exercise alone would get them all on the same page of what problem to tackle first, and I think that would be the very valuable for them. Michael Hingson  59:30 And what is that called again? Speaker 1  59:31 It's called the organizational checkup. If you were to Google EOS organizational checkup, there'll be a link there, and it's just 20 questions. Michael Hingson  59:40 Great. Well, if people want to reach out to you and learn from you, or interact with you, and maybe use your services and so on, how best can they do that? Speaker 1  59:52 Yeah, connect with me on LinkedIn is great. Also, if you just did a search for EOS Will Watrous, my name, it'll come up. I've got lots of content out there. The EOS website has my listing and contact information on there as well. Michael Hingson  1:00:06 And what are what's your LinkedIn name or handle? Will Speaker 1  1:00:10 Watchers. Yep, Wils. Michael Hingson  1:00:16 Okay. Well, I hope people will reach out. This clearly has been instructive in so many ways and lots of great ideas. So I want to thank you for being here and being a part of this. And I want to thank all of you who are paying attention to us today, wherever you're listening and/or watching. If you'd like to reach out to me, and I'd love to hear what you think, please email me at [email protected] at speaker at m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com wherever you are with us in the podcast please give us a five star rating but more important give us a review we love reviews and people who are interested in looking at podcasts love to see the reviews that others have thought about podcasts, and so hopefully you'll say nice things about us. But either way, please give us a review. If you know someone who ought to be a guest on our our podcast, Will, including you, please introduce us. We're always looking for people to come and tell their stories. and And with that, again, I want to thank you for being here, Will. This has been absolutely fun. It's been hours gone by without without any any time seeming like it passed. So thank you very much for being here. Speaker 1  1:01:29 Thank you, Mike. What a pleasure to speak with you, and looking forward to your podcast success. Michael Hingson  1:01:37 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back, and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

A strong story can do more than sell a product. It can change how people see a brand, a problem, and even themselves. I talk with advertising and brand storytelling expert Park Howell about why our brains respond to simple problem-and-solution stories, how trust shapes buying decisions, and why your story should focus on your audience instead of you. Park shares the ABT storytelling framework, lessons from decades in advertising, and how one campaign helped drive major growth for Goodwill. We also explore AI storytelling, brand identity, human creativity, and why the best use of AI still requires a human voice. I believe you will find Park’s ideas useful whether you lead a business, market a brand, speak to audiences, or simply want to communicate with greater impact. Highlights: 01:19 - Why every strong story starts with a problem that needs solving. 14:46 - How shifting the story away from yourself makes it more relevant to your audience. 19:55 - What one advertising campaign taught Park about the power of story structure. 30:25 - How the ABT framework turns a message into a clear, compelling story. 44:39 - How storytelling helped Park make a major career shift at age 55. 53:50 - Why finding key moments in your life can reveal the story worth telling. About the Guest: Park Howell is known as The World's Most Industrious Storyteller, having helped purpose-driven brands grow by as much as 600 percent through the power of strategic narrative. With over 40 years in brand creation, including 20 years running his own advertising agency Park and Co, Park was named Advertising Person of the Year in 2010 by the American Advertising Federation of Metro Phoenix. The following year, his agency was recognized among the Top 10 Impact Companies in Arizona by the Phoenix Chamber of Commerce. Park is an EMMY Award-winning storytelling strategist and the founder of the Business of Story, a proven platform based on his 10-step Story Cycle System to clarify your story, amplify your impact, and simplify your life. His popular weekly Business of Story podcast is ranked among the top 10 percent of downloaded podcasts worldwide, and Feedspot.com named it the number one business storytelling podcast for 2022. In 2020, Park published Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand, which teaches readers how to use three proven narrative frameworks to captivate audiences and convert customers. He followed this with The Narrative Gym for Business in 2021, a practical 75-page guide on using the ABT framework—And, But, Therefore—to make all business communications compelling and persuasive. Most recently, Park launched the StoryCycle Genie, an AI-powered platform that helps business leaders craft lucrative brand story strategies in minutes rather than months, using his proven Story Cycle System that has grown brands by as much as 600 percent. The platform democratizes strategic storytelling expertise, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes. Park consults, teaches, coaches, and speaks internationally, having guided hundreds of brands and developed thousands of leaders in organizations including Dell, The Home Depot, Hilton, Cummins, Walgreens, Banner Health, and the United States Air Force. A graduate of Washington State University, he combines his degrees in communications and music composition to help leaders excel through the stories they tell. Ways to connect with Park**:** StoryCycle Genie™ Linkedin.com/in/ParkHowell Twitter.com/ParkHowell Facebook.com/Park.Howell Instagram.com/ParkHowell YouTube/BusinessOfStory The Business of Story About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi, everybody! Wherever you happen to be welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host Mike Hingson, and our guest today is Park Howell, who has been in advertising for quite a number of years. So he's going to talk about a lot of that kind of stuff, and I think it'll be fascinating. He's been Advertiser of the Year in the Arizona area, and he's just done a lot of different kinds of things over the years that will be interesting to hear about. I suspect that you'll all find what he has to say pretty fascinating, and he has done a lot with helping people and companies improve their brands, as you'll see. Anyway, I'm not going to give it away. Where would the fun be in that? So, Park, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Well, Mike, thank you so much for having me. It's a true honor. Well, thank you. I'm I'm honored that you're you're here as well. Well, why don't we start? I'm I'm going to start. I usually like to start by asking people to talk about their their kind of early life, and I'll do that in a minute. But I want to start with something else. What is advertising? I'll ask for an opening question. Park Howell  02:08 The desperate act of selling something. How about that? It if you've got you know if you're going to sell something out there, you got to let the world know what that is. Of course, I had a mentor of mine, Sandy Peterson, when I was just growing up in the ad world, and he often said to me, "He said, 'Hey, Park, even 2000 year old churches ring their bells every Sunday morning to let their people know that the doors are open, and that to me is advertising that you've got to be able to communicate and tell stories, share stories about your brand and your world that connects from your target audience's point of view to solve a problem they have. You know, every story is about a problem. Without a problem, without conflict, you have no story, and that is the essentials of advertising: is what is the problem you are solving for whom, and how do you do it better than anyone else? Yeah, and I think the the key to that is stories, and and so many people just don't understand why storytelling and having stories is such an integral and important part of everything that we do. Yeah, well, if you think about it, you know everyone is is fearing this existential crisis of AI, the most remarkable technology our brilliant brains have been able to create. But if you think about it, and you go back 75,000 years when our ancestors were navigating and surviving the savanna. They were using the technology of storytelling in the way of rebel storytelling, cave paintings, and so forth, to be able to not just evolve but become you know the Homo sapiens storytelling apes we are today. So that particular structure, that technology of storytelling, speaks specifically to our very primal limbic brain, where all of our real decisions are being made, and that brain has not changed appreciably in 75,000 years, even though our neurofrontal cortex has enabling us to create what we have today in technology, and that's why I get asked this a lot. You know, they'll say, "How is AI changing storytelling? And I said, "Well, it's not. Storytelling is fundamentally the same. It is changing the storyteller and how we share those stories with the world. And I think we need to be careful with AI because right now we're sort of on a cusp. So part of AI can be very accurate. Sometimes it's not, but the reality is that AI is not going to replace the human being storyteller and. Michael Hingson  05:00 So it's really important that although we can use AI to help, we still have to be the ones that are in charge and tell the stories. Park Howell  05:08 Well, the fundamental structures or algorithms of storytelling are the exact same as they always have been: setup, problem resolution. That is your, you know, Kurt Vonnegut, famous American writer, said, you know, a story is about a man falls in a hole, a man gets out of a hole. It needn't be about a man, and it needn't be about a hole. People love that story. Yeah, that is so true. So that's something that is innate in us human beings. You can certainly teach, and we have AI how to use those frameworks, but AI can never replace the actual human experience that you're talking about. Michael Hingson  05:50 How often do we refer to the TV show Lassie, and everybody keeps thinking that sometime Timmy fell into the well, and he never did once, Park Howell  06:00 and Lassie was there to pull them out, right? Yeah, Michael Hingson  06:03 but but Timmy never did fall in the well. But anyway, whatever. Well, well, Park Howell  06:08 Mike, our our brains are problem solution brains. I mean, again, that primal limbic brain of ours is all about survival. That is our survival center, and whenever we're buying anything, it yeah, a lot of times it's driven by ego. But emotionally, first and foremost, it's driven by what problem are you solving? How are you going to help me survive this problem and get me out of this mess faster than anyone else? Just the other day, went in for a haircut. My hair was atrocious. The longer it got, the worse my original haircut was, and I had a problem. And I went in and sat with a young guy by the name of Ray down at V's Barber Shop in North Phoenix, and in you know in under 30 minutes he got me cleaned up, looking my best again, and he solved a basic primal problem. I want to look good. I want to be socially acceptable. I don't want to look like a jerk. That's the problem solution dynamic, right? It Michael Hingson  07:09 is. You know, one of the most interesting and compelling stories I can think of, and I think people mostly forget about it today, but was back in the early 1980s when we had the Tylenol crisis, when somebody planted cyanide in one bottle of Tylenol in a restaurant in a in a drugstore, and the thing that that happened was that within like a day, the president of the the company that manufactured Tylenol went on the air in public and said, "We are going to pull every bottle of Tylenol off the shelves until we verify that there are no other problem bottles of Tylenol. And by doing that, I mean he first of all he he taught us a basic business lesson that we really ought to take more to heart, which is you confront problems and you are very upfront with with the with the problem and what you're going to do. But it was just such a compelling thing that he did. He said that, and then they did, and eventually, then of course everything went away, and because there were no other bottles, but still, he just he handled it in such an incredible what an incredible way! What a what a great feat of advertising, if you will. Park Howell  08:31 Well, Mike, if we don't have trust with our target audiences, then we have nothing. Yeah, and so yeah, they had a major problem of trust when that happened, it wasn't their fault necessarily. Some lunatic planted that, but the fact that they didn't have you know secure caps and so forth, it revealed a problem in the industry. But he was very smart in taking immediate action and doing what he did to help maintain that trust for Tylenol, and hopefully build on that trust over time. That we are here for you, and we will protect you in every possible way we can, Michael Hingson  09:09 because that's who we are. And and of course, it did lead to changes. Now we do have more secure caps and and other things like that. So there were changes in the industry. It's unfortunate that they had to happen, but understand it, and so we now have what we have. But but it still is just kind of one of the most dramatic business cases and and if you will advertising cases that I can think of. Park Howell  09:36 Well, it's interesting too because it underscores a fundamental way we storytelling Homo sapiens make sense to the world, and we will tend to remain in status quo as the over-the-counter pain reliever industry was, and not securing those caps because they never had a problem. So why change them? They never anticipated that to be a problem, and then what happened? A problem happened. You know, a big hole. This, you know, Tylenol fell in, as did the entire industry, and that's what shakes people out of status quo. Status quo will kill us faster than anything if we are not continuing to evolve and move forward. Michael Hingson  10:16 No one anticipated that there would be a group of people who would deliberately fly fully loaded with jet fuel airplanes into the World Trade Center until it happened, and I still, having read all the reports, I am not at all convinced that we would have been able to figure it out, even if every government department was communicating together, which they still don't know how to do, but the bottom line is that we didn't anticipate it. We did make buildings that were flexible. We did a lot. I think we did all that we could do at the time, but by the same token, nobody anticipated it until a bunch of people got together and worked and and did what they did and brought the world almost to its knees, and and I hate to say it, but I talk about trust and teamwork a lot, and talk about teamwork. The 19 hijackers kept their mouths shut. They they did what they set out to do to a large degree, although I don't even know whether they thought that they were going to cause the buildings to collapse. But still, they they did what they did, and it also has caused so many other positive things to happen since. But nevertheless, again, nobody thought it was going to happen, and so we had the situation that we had, yep, yep, that's exactly right. And I mean, you lived through it, thank God. But boy, being right in the heart of all of that, what an impact it had on your life! It certainly caused me to to change what I do. So now, instead of selling computer hardware and managing a hardware sales team, as I tell people I get to sell life and philosophy and and travel the world and be a keynote speaker and it's a lot of fun and it's not the and it's not the story of getting out of the World Trade Center nearly as much as it is the story of how I got there all the things that led up to it and the things that I learned that allowed me to be able to survive getting out of the World Trade Center, and unfortunately, one of the the challenges that that I continue and blind people in general continue to face is that sighted people think that you're less of a person if you can't see, and it is really a challenge to get people to recognize that's not true, and you're really misassessing the situation. But it is what we face. Park Howell  12:45 Yeah, no doubt. And you are a great voice and advocate for your community to go and demonstrate that to people. It's like, all right, so I've lost my sight, but now let me re, you know, reframe my life and my message to the world, or just look at the impact you're having on people. Michael Hingson  13:02 Well, and and you know the reality is, I was I've been blind my whole life, and and the the the idea is that it is important that we learn that blindness isn't the problem; it's the misconceptions that so many of us face at the hands of others that that tends to be the real difficulty. So we ought to maybe get your help to do better advertising. I don't know. We'll have to see. Well, tell us a little about. I will go back to it now. Tell us a little about kind of the early part, growing up and all that. Park Howell  13:30 Yeah, I grew up in the Seattle area, just north of Seattle, in a place called Bothell Woodenville area. Ah, one of seven kids, and we were all born within nine years of each other, so we were quite a pack of of crazed Northwesterner little kids. We had a lot of fun. Great parents took us on lots of adventures and always encouraged us to do what we always wanted to do. And one of the things I wanted to do at a very young age was learn how to play the piano because my grandmother Mabel, who played the piano like nobody's business, and it just always blew me away, and so they gave me piano lessons, and I, as a little kid, just started writing these little ditties, these little songs, and whatever, and kept writing more of them, and just had fun with it. Ended up getting a degree in music composition in theory, but figuring Mike that I probably starved to death as a composer. At the same time, I also got a degree in marketing in you know communications, and it's really you know blessed me. My whole musical background has played a very important role in me over my 40 years in the branding world on writing, finding the theme to a brand story, introducing interesting characters and twists to the plot that you do in music writing, just as you do in storytelling. And here I am, you know, 40 years later, I ran my own ad agency for 20 years in Phoenix, but. I pivoted away from that 2016 just to simply coach, speak, and teach people leaders how to use stories to have the impact in the world that they want. So I find it ironic. I come full circle where I studied music composition in theory, and now I teach brand storytelling composition in theory, wow, and and clearly it is it's a it's an interesting challenge. Do you find many people who, at least at first, resist this whole concept of telling stories that they're just not used to it and they resist it? Not as much anymore, and a lot of people will ask me, you know, how do you sell people on storytelling? And I tell them I don't. The people that hire me are already sold on story. They know how powerful it is. They just don't know how to do it. And when I come in and find someone very resistant to storytelling and whatever, I'm like I respect that. That's cool. Keep doing your features lists and your you know functions lists and that sort of thing, and see where it gets you. Because Mike, one of the two true story truths that I talk about is number one is your story is not about you. It's always about your audience and what's in it for damage. Story truth number two is your story is not about what you make, but what you make happen in people's lives. So those that are resistant to storytelling are focused on themselves and communicating about what they make, and just assume you will arrive at the marvelous conclusion that gee, what you make is for me, where storytelling is what you make happen, and that word happen is so important because it speaks to the outcomes, the activity, the momentum of the story that you tell that that describes the impact you have on them, and I think you said something that's really key. It's not about you; it's about what you make happen, and and it's about the audience. I know as a speaker, I learned really early on, fortunately, that it's not about me, and that's also partly why I say it's not so much about escaping from the World Trade Center, it's all the other things that that led up to it and have happened since. But it isn't about me as a speaker. It's about Michael Hingson  17:30 what I do to connect with the audience and what the audience needs from me. And I have to learn that so that I can best tell my story in a way that will be relevant to Park Howell  17:42 them. Yeah, Mike. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got is if you are speaking, and before your presentation could be to a small group of people, could be a large auditorium. If you are really stressed out, freaked out, major butterflies. A few butterflies are normal to keep you on your toes, but if you are really stressing out, it's because your ego has taken over and you're making that presentation about you. As soon as you make that shift to say, no matter what happens on that stage, if I totally forget where I am, if I fall off the front of the stage, if I go into a coughing attack, it doesn't matter because I am in service to them. As long as I can impart wisdom to my audience that they can leave with at least one takeaway, then that makes all the difference. Your your butterflies go away, and you're like, I'm just here to help. Michael Hingson  18:36 And and that's exactly right. And I tell that to people when I'm discussing coming to to speak at events for them, is it's not about me. My job is to be a guest, to be a servant, and I need you to tell me the kind of messaging that you need if you have anything like that, and we'll put it together. But I'm here to do what you need to make your conference more successful than it might otherwise be, and that's that's my job, and I can do that, and I know I can do that because I know how people react to the story, and the reason I love to give in-person presentations more than virtual presentations is that when I'm telling the whole story, including growing up and all that, I've learned how audiences typically react to different things that I Park Howell  19:30 say, and if I'm not hearing the reactions that I expect, then I have to change something around to deal with it because I want to draw them in. But at the same time, I I do know that typically audiences are interested in what I have to say, and as long as I make that interesting for them, then we're good. Yeah, without a doubt, and you know it goes back to even your first question about what. Is advertising. Advertising is that storytelling that you make it about your audience, whether they're reading a Facebook ad, or watching a TV commercial, or listening to a radio commercial, or reading a white paper that you wrote. If you take the approach of making it about them, and I've got a framework, I'd be happy to share with you and your audience on how to do that, then the impact of all of your communications goes through the roof. If Speaker 1  20:32 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week, we've created a way for you to support the show, your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset community. Michael Hingson  21:04 When did you realize? Was there a moment that you kind of had this aha moment that said storytelling is wasn't just a creative technique, but was really part of the whole fundamental process? Park Howell  21:17 Yeah, it you know something that I had thought about early in my career, I just was intuitive about it, innate, and all the great ads I loved always had story. But I never thought to myself, "Boy, that's a great story. I think that's a great ad. And something happened in 2003 when I was running my ad agency, Park and Co. in Phoenix. We were working with Goodwill. Now, Goodwill Industries-they're a bunch of franchises all around the country-and we were working with the Phoenix franchise. They had 24 stores at the time. It was a big account. They were going to spend spend well over a million dollars with us to help them with their marketing. And we went out, we toured all their stores, and we said the first things you need to do is clean it up. It just they don't smell great. You got to have more inventory out there before you do any marketing. Get your operations together, and they were smart. They listened to us and they did. And then we created an advertising 32nd commercial campaign. Two spots in that campaign. One of them polled unbelievably well, Mike. I mean, same store sales a month after the campaign started running went up 42% with this one commercial in the campaign. The second commercial in the campaign didn't poll at all. It just didn't work. It fell flat, and I sat there at my agency, scratching my head, and said, "Why did this ad work so well, and this other one, Buckus, got nothing out of? In fact, the very first ad we created, we won an Emmy award for because it was so well produced and worked so well. Well, when I started studying true story architecture and storytelling, I'm like, oh my goodness! That first spot is a perfect setup, problem resolution story. We had fun with it, kind of you know sharing a real world experience. And in fact, the goodwill said you were you were telling the story that we feel like you were going to be making fun of our customers when in reality we weren't. We were calling them out. We were saying, "Listen, we know you're a closet shopper, and you might even be embarrassed to shop at Goodwill to go and find your treasures, but don't let that stop you. That played and pulled in. You know, increased sales by 42% The other one was just kind of this creative, clever spot that we were very proud of as an agency, but it never ever landed with our audience because it wasn't speaking to them, nor did it follow a story structure. Now, again, that first one was just an intuitive, innate story structure in there, and when I started studying it, I'm going. Oh, let's follow this structure with all of our commercials, you know, all of our work moving forward. And then I did a deep dive with Hollywood to truly understand why does this structure work in our human brains. And when I started studying, then that took over my life. I was so fascinated by it. Again, I think it was my music composition theory background where I was fascinated as to why does music work on us and what are the algorithms that work better than others. That I was now enthralled with storytelling. What are the algorithms, the story structures that work better than anyone else. That was my awakening back then. Michael Hingson  24:45 What have you discovered about storytelling that traditional advertising doesn't do? That has in turn made you so successful. I think you're kind of alluding to it, but I gather that what you do is a little bit different than. Oftentimes, what we see in the advertising world. Well, I would say advertising world is in decline. Just watching the Super Bowl Park Howell  25:08 over the weekend, I could not tell you one of those commercials that I thought was any good at all. It just seemed like a bunch of creative noise out there, and yet our brains still fundamentally lean into and make meaning with the you know set up problem resolution story structure, and yet it seems like the ad world has completely abandoned it, and makes no sense to me. If you compare advertising today back to the 60 s, 70 s, 80 s, 90 s, even you will see a marked difference. And today, it's more wallpaper noise in abundance. Where back then it was much more curated storytelling. Fewer people were doing it, fewer channels to expose you to it, and they just had a much greater impact. So I always say, if you want to hack through the noise and hook into the hearts of your audiences that emotional center where they actually make their decisions, their buying decisions, then share a story in a structure that's been around for 75,000 years. That is what overcomes this technology that is just bombarding us with slop today. What I find really fascinating, in part, about what you just said, and I didn't get to watch the Super Bowl. I was flying back from freezing in Delaware on Saturday, but yeah, it was 60 mile an hour winds and it was 17 degrees. It was it was so cold that Michael Hingson  26:44 that my guide dog Alamo didn't even want to go outside and do his business when the wind was up so high. We walked out. We went 10 feet, and he just turned around. I'm not going out there, brother. You stay out here if you want, but I'm going in. But but later it worked okay. But still, I didn't see coming up to the Super Bowl any major discussion, as we've seen in past years about a lot of the Super Bowl commercials and so on. And there hasn't there hasn't been much discussion of it all this year about it, which I find interesting. And of course, what you're saying kind of verifies and justifies that. Yeah, yeah, they spent. big money producing big time spots that just left me, anyways, very flat. I'm like, what, Park Howell  27:30 what's going on here? It's you know, I, you know, it's ironic humor, goofy stuff, whatever, and that's fine, but it does not play to our meaning making limbic buying brain. It just doesn't. Michael Hingson  27:42 Have you ever done a Super Bowl commercial? Park Howell  27:45 No, never had one, huh? That would be fun. It's rarefied air to be able to do one of those, but no. Most of my work was in the B 2b world, coming out of Phoenix. Some some national accounts, a couple global accounts, but nothing to the level of Super Bowl. You know, Michael Hingson  28:01 well, maybe we need to advocate for a switch. Park Howell  28:05 Well, I'm kind of out of that world. I am much more of a story consultant now to work with teams and agencies and leaders and so forth. On all right, show me what you got, and let's figure out how can we make it better, if not way better. Michael Hingson  28:22 Yeah. Well, and and and hopefully you'll have some significant influences in that. You said that you've helped some companies increase their brand by 600% How do you measure that? Park Howell  28:36 Yeah. Well, they measured it, and so that was Clinica Adelante, a 33-year-old community health center in Phoenix, Arizona. At the time, this was back in 2009, 2010. They were their business model was coming under immense fire with immigration. With they were really working with farm workers out in the West Valley farms were getting bladed over with big subdivisions, and their their basic clientele was going away, and so they needed to attract and maintain their core mission of of making healthcare sustainable and available to anyone, regardless of your ability to pay, but in order for that to happen, they had to bring in regular insured patients to help pay the bills. Which means they had to attract even better doctors so that people would move from their traditional healthcare into Clinica Adelante. And we told that story. We changed the name because there was a fear that Clinica Adelante was a little bit too, you know, Hispanic for. I'll just be honest with you, you know, the white folks to come there, but we kept Adelante because that means advancement, moving forward, becoming, and you know, in in Spanish. So it became. Adelante Healthcare, and we branded it all around sustainable healthcare for all. And they were one of the first big community health community groups to really embrace green healthcare, sustainability in operations, sustaining the ability to get healthcare, and then sustaining the individual health of each one of their people that came in, and so how they measured that is they looked at the growth of their doctors, and they went from having just a couple clinics into 12 clinics, and the new ones that they added were all leed certified sustainable clinics. They then looked at the growth of the practitioners came in their administration, the growth of their actual patients that came in, and across the board over the course of six years they grew by 600% Wow! Avensate to Foya at the time when she's no longer their CEO, she was the one instrumental in building all this growth. She told me on my business of story podcast that she goes. We would never have grown that way had you not helped us get our overarching brand narrative in place and taught us how to tell the story to the world to attract those top tier practitioners, to attract the Anglo community that was ensured that we're going to come in, and then to attract national attention on their sustainable healthcare model that brought them even more cred. So yeah, they were looking at the measurement was purely by practitioners and then actual patients coming in. Michael Hingson  31:36 Well, and and clearly it worked. Park Howell  31:39 Yeah, yeah, very effective. Michael Hingson  31:41 Tell us about something that you talk about the ABT network framework. Park Howell  31:47 Yeah, and this is one of the most basic structures I teach. In fact, I call it the DNA of storytelling because you get this three-word structure down, and yeah, it sounds simple, but it takes a little practice. Then all of your messaging will be way more impactful, way more engaging, and it's called the and but therefore or NABT narrative framework. And here's the way it works very quickly. It's three sentences. The first one is your and statement of agreement. You want to identify your audience again, placing them at the beginning of the story. Describe what they want relative to your offering. They may not even know what you have to offer yet. You're foreshadowing that, and why is it important to them? So, who's your audience? Where they want, and why is it important to them? Raising the stakes with that. Why is it important to them? Then you introduce the but statement of contradiction, the problem. But you're frustrated, you're concerned, you're overwhelmed. You follow that with a negative emotion because you're speaking to their emotional heart, right? Because of this problem that's keeping you from getting what you want, therefore, then you follow that. Therefore, it's a positive emotion. Imagine what it's going to feel like when you get this by doing such and such with us. Your brand, your call to action doesn't come in until the second clause in the third sentence, which is your therefore statement of consequence, and if you like, Mike, we could build one really quick just to show all of your listeners how to do it, and let's do it for your show. All right, and I'm going to make some notes on my end because I'm going to ask you a couple questions. Do you want to do that? Michael Hingson  33:39 Sure, why not? Park Howell  33:40 It'll take about five minutes. Michael Hingson  33:42 I'm flexible, so my tell me who is your number one audience for this show. I think the the the the audience is is pretty eclectic overall because we don't have a specific theme that the podcast deals with. So I would say that the audience is is composed primarily of people who are curious, who want to get life lessons, to learn how to to to do things better, and to find ways to move forward in life without as much fear as we typically encounter in our world. Park Howell  34:25 All right, so let's dig down a little bit deeper. And you're in sales, so you know this: that it's great to have an eclectic audience, but the Pareto principle always comes into play. That means that 80% of your audience is usually made up of 20% of your listeners or one target audience. If that is true for you, and you are really even though it's eclectic, I get that. But who are you really speaking to? Even though you're attracting in a lot of others, who's your. Michael Hingson  35:00 Are they professionals? Are they, you know, non-professionals? Or is it for speaking gigs? What What is it? I would say that to a very large degree, it's professionals, and I know that that there are also a number of people who are curious to to hear me because I am a speaker, and some of them have have have brought us in as a result of the podcast. But I think we're dealing primarily with more of a professional-oriented audience that wants to hear ways that they can do things better, and they love the fact that we have a lot of general, different kinds of categories, rather than one specific thing that every episode goes towards. But it's all about trying to figure out how they can use the things that they hear each week to make themselves and their businesses or their world better. Park Howell  36:00 Okay, so that's the curious professional who want to learn how to do things better, and if they they listen weekly, they are going to be exposed to an eclectic group of guests that have all achieved a certain amount of success in their individual area. Michael Hingson  36:21 Right, Park Howell  36:22 that fair enough? Michael Hingson  36:23 I think that's fair. Park Howell  36:24 So that would that might be your statement of agreement. You know, you want to learn how to do things better, and if you tune in to the unstoppable mind, that we will, you will learn from some of the most eclectic leaders in the world, so that you can have the impact in your career and on other people that you seek. All right, science, Michael Hingson  36:48 good, right? Park Howell  36:48 Okay, but let's introduce a problem because I don't actually want to introduce your show quite yet. I just was kind of getting that sort of out in my mind. But what are they? What what's a negative emotion that that they are are experiencing because they don't typically have access to these you know sort of eclectic minds. Are they frustrated? Are they concerned? Are they? Michael Hingson  37:11 I think I think there is a a level of frustration and concern, but I also think that there is a lot of fear. We talk about subjects like disabilities. We talk about subjects like AI, and I think that, to a large degree, those are things that people don't understand very well, and so they're afraid of them. They're afraid of trying different kinds of things where they can use some of the the the concepts to improve what they do, so I think that there is there is a level of fear that more people have than than people who don't, and so they come into the podcast with the idea that well I don't know what I'm going to hear this week, and so something comes up on AI or disabilities, or or even advertising, and and people fear, oh, there are just too many problems, or it's going to be too expensive to fix, or it's not going to help me in what I do, which is something that, of course, you see. So I think that fear is is probably a good overarching concept that people deal with. Park Howell  38:22 Okay, so we've got the emotion, negative emotion of fear. Now let's add the problem that's creating that fear. Because of what? You're fearful because of lack of knowledge in these areas, or Michael Hingson  38:37 I would say so. I think it's more fear of a lack of knowledge, and societal norms have said do it this way, and a lot of times on this podcast we hear that that's not the way to that that isn't correct. But I think that a lot of it is societal, and a lot of it is just plain when societal is is guilty of that as anything, but it's a lack of knowledge. Park Howell  39:05 Okay. Then by listening, let's move on to the therefore. Just writing here the therefore statement of consequence. Therefore, what will be their positive state by listening to your show. You know, imagine what you're going to feel like, or what is the positive state? Michael Hingson  39:28 The positive state is that they're going to hear things and and encounter people who talk about a lot of the the very same things that they've been feeling, but who have learned how to overcome or deal with issues, and who have, as a result, become more successful and more confident in in their world. And and the reality is, I think that most everyone who comes on the the podcast has a story to tell about challenges they faced. And they talk about what they did to overcome it, and how it has helped them grow and improve themselves as a result. Park Howell  40:11 Interesting. Okay, so this is good, and this is the way an ABT always comes together. You just kind of formulate your thoughts. If you were to sum up this story that you're sharing with me right now, as we create the ABT, and you could give it one word that becomes your story theme. What would that word be? Michael Hingson  40:32 Unstoppable. Park Howell  40:34 Okay. So you want to become unstoppable, Michael Hingson  40:37 right? And I don't mean that in a negative sense or in an egotistical sense, it it it really is a a competence thing. But unstoppable, I would say, is a is a good term to use. Park Howell  40:51 All right, excellent. So now again, I'm just kind of you know I'm free, right? I'm freely working here. So I'm going to just say here, folks. This is how you do it. Mike has given us a ton of great information, and you've just seen how I've kind of pulled that out of him. And I've, for my mind, I'm the outside looking in because I don't know his business or brand that well. It gave me a number of different threads to work from, and when I have that, then I ask myself, what's the one story theme? You know, name of the show, so it's be unstoppable. So I'm going to want to introduce that right up top, and it's going to come down to what we call the conversational ABT first, just to get our singular problem solution set up. And this, when I say conversational ABT, it's very vacuous. It's very simple, just to make sure we've got the right problem solution lever in there, and in this case, you want to be unstoppable, but you don't feel unstoppable right now. Therefore, we're going to help you become unstoppable by listening to our show. Now, granted, that is very vacuous, but is that essentially the problem solution dynamic that we're dealing with, I think so. If you were standing in front of a group of 5000 people speaking as you do, and they don't know who you are or why you're there, what you're going to talk about, and you could just start your your speech with, "You all want to be unstoppable, right? But you don't feel unstoppable right now. Therefore, over the next 60 minutes, I'm going to show you how to become unstoppable. Yes, it's redundant, but boy, everybody in the room knows what you're talking about, and they're Michael Hingson  42:32 going to pay attention. Park Howell  42:33 They're like, "Thank you, I've got a theme. I've got a singular theme that I'm going to focus on. So now let's take that in and build out a little bit bigger, and but therefore, so it becomes more of a story, more of a talking foundation that you can build from. So you can say, as a curious professional, you want to learn new things so that you can be unstoppable in your career, in your life, and with the impact that you're making in the world, but you're fearful, maybe even frustrated, because there are so many things like, you know, disabilities and the existential crisis of AI and other things that you feel like are holding you back, because you don't have a place to go and hear from people that have overcome these sorts of things. Therefore, imagine your abundant mindset growing and your unstoppability taking over when you start listening to my show, where I introduce you to an eclectic array of professionals from around the world that have overcome great obstacles to to find tremendous success, and will show you how to do the exact same thing. There you go. So again, I was kind of vamping on that, but you can see you set it up. You identify the audience. What do they want to become unstoppable? But why don't they currently have it? Because they don't know where to turn to learn about how do you overcome things like disabilities and the existential crisis of AI. Therefore, put your mind at ease. Let's replace that fear with an abundance mindset and learn from you know the people that we we host on the show. So I would share that with anybody out there, and that's what I'd ask them to do. The breakout is write down who's your number one audience, what do they want relative to your offering, and why is that important to them? But why don't they currently have it? What's the problem standing in their way? Therefore, how are you going to help them achieve it? Yeah, and that's a great explanation of the ABT method, which I love. And I didn't invent it; I learned about it from Dr. Randy Olson back in 2013. He's a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist. Gives up 10 years ago's to film school in his mid 30s at USC. Graduates, produces writes, directs, and produces three movies on climate change and global warming. But the body of his work is about taking this basic framework of the ABT and teaching scientists and academics how to make their complex messages simple and compelling, and what I've learned from Randy over the years of working with him directly on this is the ABT has been around literally since the beginning of storytelling. He didn't invent it either. We are just revealing it to the world and say this is how you engage with that storytelling monkey sitting across from you. Yeah, which is which is cool. Well, you've you have I'm sure had situations where you use the ABT method in your own life to kind of reframe a story that that help you become stronger or more unstoppable? Can you cite an example of that? Yeah, I can tell you. It was back in September of 2015, and I had been running my agency at that time for about 20 years, and I just did not enjoy the advertising agency world anymore. It was got overrun by technology and digital marketing, and I thought I was getting the creativity sucked out of it. And my first thing was like, how do I fix this? And I found that storytelling was really the way to go. And it was we were very successful with it for 10 years, and my agency was growing. But I didn't care to be in an agency anymore. I wanted to teach people how to do it. And I remember waking up one morning with a total pit in my stomach, and the ABT essentially was, Park, you're an accomplished advertising professional, and you've got you know an amazing agency and team, but you are looking to make a bigger impact in the world than you can just simply do with your agency. Park Howell  47:02 Therefore, at the age of 55, you have to take a leap of faith, wind down your agency, start the business of story, and follow your true passion of consulting, teaching, coaching, and speaking on the power of story the world over. That essentially was my new mantra. That was my ABT. And what did you do? I wrapped up my agency by the end of 2015, 2016, January one. I launched the business of story. It was nice because it was kind of an extension or an off ramp of what I had already been doing. It wasn't like I was completely changing careers and industries. I just saw a new way forward to have impact in the world through communication, not just being an ad agency, but now being a teacher. And I mean, I went on right after that, or actually leading up to that, while I was still running Park and Co. Arizona State University came to me in 2013, and they saw the success I was having as an agency in the sustainability world with storytelling and my structures. I wrote a book on it, and I've since co-wrote a second book with Dr. Randy Olson, and they invited me to come in and teach a master's course on sustainable storytelling. Now, Mike, I had never taught anything in my life at that level, and I wasn't even the greatest student back in my days at Washington State University. But what I had learned over the course of the 30 years leading up to that, I was became a professor of practice, and I spent five years teaching storytelling, and I realized that that was my next calling-not just an ad guy, but to teach people how to do that. Michael Hingson  48:47 You talk about the story cycle system. What is that? Park Howell  48:50 Well, back in 2006, when I was struggling with our agency, trying to figure out how do you operate in this new digital realm and and actually make it work for clients. Our son Parker was going to film school at Chapman University, which is a very prominent film school over in Orange, California. He really wanted to be a film director, and I said, "Yeah, that's great. Go for that, and you might want to get your minor in business too, because business drives everything, even filmmaking. Well, while he was going to school there, and he has since moved on and has has a very prosperous career in the virtual reality mixed reality filmmaking world. So his education did him well. But while he was there, I was saying, you know, Parker, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you're done with them, since I'm paying for them, because I want to know what does Hollywood know about storytelling that we don't know, and that's when I was introduced to Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey. And as soon as I saw The Hero's Journey, I thought to myself, "By golly, this is a customer journey. This is a sales representative's journey." This is an agency owner's journey. This is all of our journeys. Why don't they teach this in the advertising world? It seemed like it was such a blueprint to success. It blew my mind. So I took it. It's a between a 12 and 17 step story structure is the hero's journey, or as Campbell would call it, the mono myth. And I mapped it to business because I knew the business people would say that's woo-woo Hollywood stuff. So I created my 10-step story cycle system, and Climate Adelante was the very first brand I used it on, and looked at it. It was kind of a science experiment, Mike. I didn't know if it was going to work or not, and it worked beyond my wildest imagination. And that's when I said, "There's magic here. There's incantations here. There's algorithms here that I need to understand much better. And by the way, it was Joseph Campbell who famously said, "Follow your bliss. You know what do you really love to do? And doors will open where there were only walls before, and in doing that, well, number one, we started having tremendous success in branding. Arizona State University shows up and says, "We want you to teach a master's course in this. I got a chance to sit down with the legendary screenwriting coach Robert McKee in his home in Connecticut and interview him for three hours for my podcast, even before I had a podcast. And I'm like, this stuff works. The magic of story works, and that's really what got me going. Is I had to take that leap of faith several years later and say, all right, you know, at 55, most people don't make that change, but I thought everything else has been telling me this is the way forward. I need to respect that and have the courage and the curiosity and go for it. Michael Hingson  51:51 And it worked, Park Howell  51:52 and it's worked fabulously. I've been able to travel around the world, teach people all over the place how to do this stuff. We have embraced AI. I think, by the way, I got to laugh because artificial intelligence is like the worst brand name you could ever advance for our most dynamic technology ever created. Think about it, though. It plays to one of the story truths I talked about earlier, right? The technologist that created AI named what they made artificial intelligence. Yeah, I reframe it as to what can artificial intelligence actually make happen in your life to artful intelligence because it doesn't work very well without you, and it can absolutely amplify your ability to create, to connect, to to have a tremendous impact in the world, and so I think about a little bit like emotional intelligence (EI) plus AI, artificial intelligence equals a whole new kind of ROI, and to me, that's your return on intelligence because it can make you smarter, it can make you faster, it can make you a better writer. I've experienced it myself, and that's why I look at artificial intelligence as artful intelligence when used right. Michael Hingson  53:17 And I think the key is when used right, and and the the operative part of all that is, it isn't going to do the writing. It isn't going to do the creating, but it's going to give you tools and assets that you can use to make you a much better writer and creator. Park Howell  53:36 Yeah, to me, it replaces the blank page and the blank stare with a right piece of content that you can now become the chief copy editor and writer on, Michael Hingson  53:48 right? Which which is fine. Yeah, I I don't think you're ever going to be able to take the human out of the creativity, no matter how good artful or artificial intelligence becomes. There's still that human element that that really is going to be part of it and should be part of it, Park Howell  54:06 yeah, without a doubt. One of my favorite piano players, Ben Folds and writer, you know, songwriters. He was a guy that back in the '90s, I was listening one of his first albums, and it was the first artist I had ever heard that left mistakes in his recording. He didn't go back. He didn't auto tune. If he missed a note on his piano playing, he left it. And there was such an authenticity to his singing, songwriting, and music because of that, there was nothing artificial about it. You knew you were hearing from an artist, warts and all, very endearing. And as AI gets better and better and better, it's going to erase those warts and it's going to give you synthetic pablum that is going to give you a toothache. Is it is not going to feel feel human unless you know how to use Michael Hingson  55:05 it, right? Which is which is the important part. So there are a lot of entrepreneurs and and people who have great stories. How do you help them learn to tell those stories? What do you do today? The Park Howell  55:21 best thing, the best tip I can give to anyone to that excellent question, is when you're telling a story, don't think about some big epic arc of a story. Those are like impossible to tell. Forget about it. And actually, your audience pretty much doesn't care about it. Think about a moment in time when everything changed for you, that woke you up, that set you on a new trajectory, tell that story. Have you noticed with a lot of the stories I've told, I've always given you a timestamp. I woke up in September of 20. What was it? September of 2015 with a knot in my stomach. Well, you do that. I purposely do that because if I start with a timestamp, it triggers my limbic brain to say, "Oh, something must have happened. Park started with a timestamp. I'd better pay attention to hear what happened to him, so I know what to do in case it ever happens to me. That's the essential sort of biology around it, as we believe. Then I followed up with a location stamp in bed in Phoenix, Arizona, with a knot in my stomach. Well, everyone's woken up with a knot in their stomach. They can relate to it. They can picture it. They can feel it. So now, opening up the theater of the mind. Oh, I can see it. You know, and then what happened? I loved my advertising world, you know, and I was really good at it. Got ad guy of the year in Phoenix in 2010, but there's the plot twist. But I no no longer liked it. Didn't want to be an ad guy anymore, and I was 55 years old. Let's raise the stakes a little bit more. So what did I do about it? I wound down my agency over the course of the next four months, launch business of story, and I've never looked back. That is a story about a moment in time for me that everything changed, and I share those with you. And how did I learn about storytelling? Gave you a timestamp, 2006. Gave you a location stamp, Chapman University in Orange, California gave you an individual, Parker, our son. Everyone you know that has kids have been in and out of college. They can relate to that. So I tell everybody, don't look for your story. Find your scenes. Those moments when things change in your life that you did not anticipate, or those moments of overcoming something that informs who you are today, knit together those scenes, and your story will find you. Yeah, Michael Hingson  57:50 what is the story cycle genie? Park Howell  57:53 Well, what we did, and then we took two years to create it. So we've got our story cycle system. I wrote a textbook on it, and I've taken numerous brands through it, and it typically takes 345, months to actually do. After all the due diligence, research, and creative brainstorming, whatever, one of my clients who had been through it and built it for his agency and a content management system ended up selling both of them after we rebranded. Came to me and said, "I love the StoryCycle system. We can make it way more efficient through AI. We're going to build it. And I said, "Okay, you build me a prototype, and away we go. Well, he did. I was blown away. We spent next two years. We launched it in July, and now anybody can use my process through the StoryCycle Genie at StoryCycleGenie AI, and all you have to do is give it your brand name, give it your website, and if you want to add a couple of other documents to it, you can. You don't have to. The genie is going to go through your website, give you a brand assessment on how you're currently showing up in the world with your story, and then it's going to create with you your overall brand narrative strategy. So you are interacting with the genie through that artful intelligence engagement to really dial in your foundational brand story. It finishes creating your overall brand brain with audience stories in your content playbook, and then from there you can build any sort of marketing strategy that's going to be on brand because it knows all about your brand and what you do, and every piece of content it will write for you with you, and it's always on brand. And with every iteration you make, every change, every instruction you give to it, it gets smarter about how you show up in the world. So we just took months of brand development and boil it down to you can do it in a couple of hours. What used to cost 50, $60,000 to do might cost you 200. Let's all send them to build that brand brain out, and then from there it becomes your brand content agency in a bottle. You can use. With your people for all kinds of sales and marketing, from producing videos, it doesn't do images yet. It does all the content strategy around those, and so it's just taken our human invention of the story cycle genie based off of foundational narrative frameworks and makes it available to anybody that wants to build a world-class brand. What's the biggest mistake that you see that most people make when they're trying to share and tell their story and so on? What's the biggest storytelling mistake they usually make? They make it about themselves, and even if your story is about you, which is fine, we tell a lot of stories about ourselves because it's a great example of what we experience, what you can learn from our experience. But always tell it from the point of view of your audience. Why does Mike care about this story? Well, he he asked me, so you know that question about you know what'd you do as a young kid. So I want to tell that story, but I want to try to get it to be relatable to you, you come from a sales background, right? You have to get hardware, computer hardware, and so forth. And so, a lot of the things that I was talking to you about, and hoping that your audience would be triggering in on, was from your perspective through my experience. Michael Hingson  1:01:17 Right. Park Howell  1:01:19 That makes sense. Michael Hingson  1:01:20 It does. So, Park Howell  1:01:21 and then be brief. You know, one of the best copywriting tips I got was out of an old, old, old direct mail copywriting book. Said, you know, in this case, it was about writing. So, write with vigor. Brevity is vigor. Yeah, storytelling is the same way. You want to be specific and have specifics in the story, but you got to balance it with brevity. If to your point, Michael Hingson  1:01:47 yeah, people oftentimes take way too long. They have to explain too many things, or they think they have to explain that that they don't, and they take way too long to get to the point. Park Howell  1:02:00 Yeah, yep. The only way to overcome that is start your story with the end. You know, you could might it's sort of like a moral of a story. Like, gosh, Mike, have you ever been in a situation where you did something that surprised the hell out of you, and you found kind of a whole new calling? Yeah. Well, what are you talking about? Well, let me tell you what happened to me. Time stamp, location stamp. I was trying to do this, but then this thing happened to me that opened my eyes to this whole new world. Now I'm doing this. Makes perfect sense. So for listeners who want to develop their unstoppable mindset through clear storytelling and so on, how and what would be the best way for them to start? Well, like you, I also have a podcast. There you go. 10 years, and it's always story artists from around the world. It's called the Business of Story. We talk a lot about storytelling in every aspect of business: sales, marketing, branding, and personal development, and in fact, I end each show with the simple thought of remember that the most potent story you'll ever tell is a story you tell yourself. So make that a good one. So that's that unstoppable mindset, right? So go there. You can find me too on LinkedIn, Park Howell. Let me know. You know, reach out. Let's let's connect. Tell me you heard me on Mike's show, so I know where you're coming from. And then, of course, if you want to check out the Story Cycle Genie, you can even test the strength of your brand story for free. Just go to StoryCycleGenie.ai. You're going to click on a button that says "Give me my brand story grade. It's going to ask you for your name, an email, and your website. That's all. No credit cards. No nothing. And in under a minute, it's going to give you a grade from A plus to F minus, and a 14 point storytelling assessment that will validate what you're doing well, reveal gaps that you can easily fix, and even inspire you with new ways to tell your story. Michael Hingson  1:04:03 So there you are, and I hope people will reach out to you. I think that you have offered a whole lot of very relevant and useful stuff, which I'm not surprised at. I figured you would, and I personally really appreciate the time that you've taken with us. Maybe we should do more of this in the future. We'll have to discuss it and plot. Park Howell  1:04:23 I love it, Mike, and I got to have you over on my show if you're open to coming on the beach. Absolutely Michael Hingson  1:04:28 love the feature there. Absolutely, I always start my stories with a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Do you think anybody? Nobody's used that, right? You know, fair enough. Park Howell  1:04:38 Fair enough. I like it. There should be a movie out of that. Michael Hingson  1:04:41 They really should. What would they call it? Star something. Anyway, I really, I really Park Howell  1:04:48 unstoppable Star Wars. Michael Hingson  1:04:49 Unstoppable Star Wars. Right. Well, thank you for being here. I want to thank all of you for listening and watching. I'd love to hear from you. Hear what you think about today and. Everything with Park that we went through. Love to get your ideas. Feel free to email me at speaker at michael Hingson m i c h a e l h i n g s o n.com. Wherever you're observing our podcast, please give us a five star rating. But even more important, give us a great review. People love reviews when they're considering what podcasts they're going to devote their time to, so we really appreciate reviews. And of course, as I also always say, if you know anyone who ought to be a guest on our show, Park, including anybody you may know, we're always looking for people you would introduce us to who can come on and tell their stories. So with that, I want to thank you once again, Park, for for being here and working with us and and putting us through some great exercises today. So thank you very much. Well, thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it, and I can't wait to have you all run the business of story. Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back, and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.

What if changing your attitude starts with changing the questions you ask yourself? Stephen Shaner has taken a remarkable path through music, the military, firefighting, air traffic control, technology, leadership, magic, and public speaking. Along the way, he became fascinated with how people respond to life and why some people remain positive when things go wrong. Stephen and I explore how attitude becomes a choice, why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear and frustration, and how simple changes in vocabulary can shift your outlook. We also talk about gratitude, energy, service, leadership, passion, and discovering who you are beyond what you do for work. Stephen shares lessons from Stephen Covey, Toastmasters, his own leadership experiences, and everyday moments when one different question changed everything. I believe you will find some useful ideas here for building a more positive attitude and making choices that help you move forward. Highlights: 02:58 – Follow Stephen’s unusual path from music and the military to leadership and speaking. 10:21 – Discover why knowing who you are matters more than defining yourself by your job. 13:44 – Learn why attitude is a choice, even when circumstances are difficult. 22:42 – See how changing your words can shift the way you experience everyday challenges. 30:21 – Hear how gratitude can quickly change your focus and mood. 52:30 – Learn how one different question can turn a negative situation into a positive one. About the Guest: Stephen Shaner has been studying the concept of “attitude” for more than 35 years. Specifically, his interest has focused on how attitude affects people, and the people around them. He has incorporated learning experiences from a multitude of sources, research, and training relative to behavior, attitude, ethics, and business and personal relations. Stephen, as a facilitator of Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" for 15 years, was able to gain powerful insight. These opportunities led him to design informative and relevant presentations. Coupled with his contagious attitude, his extensive experience has made him a popular resource for keynotes, seminars, workshops, private sessions, newsletters and articles. He is a sought-after mentor for business professionals and individuals seeking for meaningful and lasting improvement. In his professional life, after 20 years of employment with HealthPartners, Stephen recently retired as the Manager of the Regional Technology Center in Duluth, Minnesota. He has been an active member of Toastmasters International for over 23 years, where he has held many leadership positions, including District Director for a membership base of approximately 5,000, and Region IV Advisor, with responsibilities covering six U.S. states and four Canadian Provinces. Stephen currently lives with his wife in Tennessee. Stephen continues to incorporate his leadership and communication skills to help professional and private entities meet their specific demands and goals.  His success is based on delivering personalized training, guidance, and entertaining messages, and his passion for teaching and sharing his knowledge for the benefit of those around him.  As an award-winning international speaker, his presentations have reached around the globe to businesses including England, Germany, Canada, the Philippines, and India.    Stephen is also building a successful podcast titled, “Are You Awesome Today?” He will soon be releasing his 200th episode, all featuring a truly international cache of professionals, covering a myriad of relevant, interesting and dynamic topics.   Stephen has developed presentations that reach to the core of what attitude is and how having the right one can dramatically change lives professionally and personally. You are invited to explore all Stephen has to offer, or contact him to discuss a presentation that fits your needs. Ways to connect with Stephen: Website: www.awesomeattitude.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenshaner/ About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT\&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi there, everyone. Wherever you happen to be, welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host Michael Hingston, and today we get to chat with Stephen Shainer. And Stephen is a person who's going to talk a lot about attitudes. So we ought to have a great discussion about cats. Then we'll see. Anyway, Stephen, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Stephen Shaner  01:23 Well, thank you so much, Michael. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Michael Hingson  01:26 Actually, my cat does does pretty well. My cat has developed this habit that she likes to be petted while she eats, and I'm the one that has to pet her since now I'm the only one in the house. But literally, she'll yell and won't eat until I go in and pet her while she's eating, it's it's really funny. Stephen Shaner  01:45 Ours was abused in two homes before we got her by both people and animals, and we got her from the shelter. She had very little fur from the anxiety. They told us she was a medium-haired tabby, and we got her home, and she just went poof, and just this giant fur ball. And it turns out she's part Norwegian forest cat, but she's just a little angel. She just her favorite place to be is on one of our laps, and she she doesn't get into anything. She doesn't scratch furniture. She has no interest in people, food. She just wants to be held and likes to purr. Michael Hingson  02:14 Well, and that's what counts. Well, we rescued this one. We rescued Stitch 11 years ago. Now it's actually getting 11 years and almost a month. And people lived in the apartment next to us, and the the wife died, and it was the wife's cat basically because the husband decided to go live in an assisted living facility and had absolutely no interest in the cat. Just told his caregiver and his sister who were moving out his furniture, take the cat to the pound. I don't want anything to do with it. We learned about that, and we said, "Well, we'll find it a home, because we didn't want a cat at the time. We was all we were living in apartments and had two golden or two Labrador Retriever dogs, a guide dog, and the dog's mother, who was also a service dog for my wife. And so we said, "We'll find it a home, and as I love to say, I then made the mistake of asking what the cat's name was, and they told me the cat's name was Stitch, and I realized that this cat was going nowhere since my wife had been a quilter since 1994. Stephen Shaner  03:15 That's a great story, Michael Hingson  03:16 and Stitch has been now with us for over 11 years, and it's and it's great. And my wife has passed away, but you know, Stitch and my current guide dog Alamo keep an eye on me. And I'm sure my wife is monitoring from somewhere, so I got to be a good kid, or I'm going to get in trouble. Stephen Shaner  03:32 Yep, good. Michael Hingson  03:33 So you know, it kind of works. Well, tell us about kind of maybe the early Stephen growing up. Let's start there. It's always great to start at the beginning. Stephen Shaner  03:41 Wow, way back there. I know Michael Hingson  03:43 a long time ago. Stephen Shaner  03:45 Yeah, early. My my dad played guitar professionally for many years, and he's done some other things as well. But that was his primary love, his passion. And growing up, I learned guitar a little bit, and then by the time I got to elementary school, I had picked up trumpet and did well with the trumpet. Had fun with it in high school. By my 10th grade, I was playing in the the college jazz band, and then when I graduated from high school, I joined the army and I went through the Navy School of Music and graduated from that. I played trumpet and guitar in the army for three and a half years. The Michael Hingson  04:17 boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B Stephen Shaner  04:20 did a lot of funerals. Yes, I did. I was a bugler and got out of the army and didn't do much with music after that. But I I got a job at the mines, copper mines there in Arizona. Worked there two weeks and we had a cave in one night. And okay, that's the end of that. Were you out near Bisbee Michael Hingson  04:37 or where were you? Stephen Shaner  04:38 I was out near Superior. Michael Hingson  04:40 Superior. Okay. Yeah, Stephen Shaner  04:41 that that area. So then I became a full time firefighter EMT, and did that for a couple years. I left that job through something less stressful. I became an air traffic controller. Michael Hingson  04:53 Yeah, that was less stressful, right? Stephen Shaner  04:55 It was, yeah. Good job. So that was in San Diego, and did not like. The job and ended up going out to Florida, Daytona Beach, Florida, and it was in San Diego. I started picking up Magic a little bit, and went to Florida and went to Embry-Riddle Air Natical University for a year. Didn't care for that. I got hired by GE to do some computer type stuff and worked with them for a little bit. Then I was accepted to Magic College, and they only take so many students a year, and I was accepted. They were in Los Angeles, you know. So I went San Diego, Florida, then went back to L.A. I went to Magic College, spent some time Michael Hingson  05:31 at the Magic Castle, of course. I Stephen Shaner  05:32 worked the Magic Castle for a few years while I was out there, and just had a good time and left L.A. Went up to Washington State and got back into computers, and continued to do the magic, and then I ended up getting a job at the Nevada Tuss Site. So I worked there for five and a half years, along with Area 51, a little bit, and then. So, are there are Michael Hingson  05:52 there any aliens out there? No, Stephen Shaner  05:53 it's it's a great subterfuge, though. I know people think that's it. They don't know what's really going on out there. So, I was out at Michael Hingson  06:03 Roswell several years ago speaking somewhere, and it was fun to to make jokes about the the aliens. And I'm sure that they stored them out there somewhere. Stephen Shaner  06:12 Yeah. So, and then when I when that job, they stopped doing nuclear testing about three four months after I got there, and so my company went from a little over 10,000 employees, and over the next five and a half years, they were doing, you know, reduction in forces every six months, and we got down to about 1800. And I was like, you know, there's no future here. So we went to Minnesota, and I took a little time off, figure out what I wanted to do. When I grew up, at that point, I had I had two Oracle certifications, Oracle programming language, and so I got to Minneapolis then and got a job with the U.S. Postal Service as a contractor and helped them develop a national training database. And then I went to work for a healthcare company when that project was done, and I was with them for 20 years. Michael Hingson  06:58 Wow! Stephen Shaner  06:59 And they eventually moved me up to Duluth. They asked me to go relocate up there. They're going to open a new IT facility up in Duluth, Minnesota, and they asked me to consider relocating up there and managing this new facility. So did that, and I ran that place for about 14 years before I retired in 2019. Now I'm down here in Tennessee, speaking and doing magic, and I've got the podcast. I just published my third book and doing a lot of emergency communications on radio and that type of stuff and having a good time. Michael Hingson  07:27 I, when I was doing computer sales, especially the last few years, worked for Quantum Corporation, so we were the manufacturers of a lot of the digital linear tape technology and tape libraries and so on, and it was fascinating to to see all the things that the companies were doing. Wall Street used a lot of Sybase much more than Oracle, and I guess it all had to do with the fact that they were not formatted fields so much in Sybase. And I'm not quite sure what the advantage of that was, but people seemed to like Sybase at least for a while. Stephen Shaner  08:02 Yeah, I I knew some people that did both at at I don't remember what companies were at, but they were doing both Oracle and Sidebase, and there were some you know pros and cons for both. Michael Hingson  08:13 Yeah, is Sybase still around today? Stephen Shaner  08:16 That I don't know. Michael Hingson  08:17 Yeah, I don't either. I mean, Oracle certainly is, but yeah, Stephen Shaner  08:20 Oracle. It's been Michael Hingson  08:20 a long time since since I was involved with it all. It kind of really ended a few months after September 11th for me, so I've never really checked. I should go back and check and see if Sybase is around. I know it it was it would it would definitely be a problem for for blind people to do a lot with with Sybase when they were not formatted fields, but there are some technologies that even can handle that today, which which is kind of cool. Yes, but Oracle definitely certainly made life great for Larry Ellison anyway. Stephen Shaner  08:52 Yeah, it did. I met him. We were at a. It was a different company. It was a company that manufactured the computerized maintenance management software that we use at the Nevada test site. We was having a user group meeting in Dallas, and he came in during the last day and talked to us for a few minutes. It was when they were promoting Oracle Personal Seven, ah, and so he came in. So I did get to beat Larry Ellison. He's a he's a different guy. Michael Hingson  09:18 Well, that's cool. So so now today, what do you do exactly? Stephen Shaner  09:23 Well, along the way, along through all of those travels, I really became a people watcher. I just loved watching people and and how they acted, how they reacted, how they proacted, and the vocabulary they use, and just how they how they interacted with other people, I was fascinated by that, and that's how I kind of got caught up into this this attitude stuff, and learned quite a bit along the way just by watching people. I got involved in Toastmasters about 24 years ago, and kind of went up through the ranks there, and and was a what they every club is in an area. Are in a dis in a division. Every division is in a district, and the districts are pretty large. And the top three people in in the district are what they call the district trio. And I ended up serving in those three positions. First, I was the what they called the lieutenant governor of marketing. So I spent a year marketing Toastmasters. I created 16 clubs, new clubs for our district. Our district was most of Minnesota, North Central Ontario. It was big, and had over 5000 members, almost 300 clubs at that point. And then the next year, I was Lieutenant Governor of Education training, so I was working on you know training district leaders and club officers and those those programs. And then I was elected district governor. As district governor, I had 10 division governors, 58 area governors, and a leadership team of about 30. Did that for a year, and just loved it. What a great experience! And then I was immediate past district governor for a year, and then the board of directors, Toastmasters, appointed me to be a region advisor, and I did that for a year. And I had I had Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, part of Wyoming, part of Nebraska. I had Montana, I had Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Western Ontario. Michael Hingson  11:06 Wow! Stephen Shaner  11:07 Yeah, so and that was a fabulous experience. Yeah, then after that, done a lot of mentoring. Been mentored by a lot of people. I served as a past region advisor on the past region advisor council, where we looked at the past the Regent Advisor program, then I spent two years serving on the International Disciplinary Committee. So I've done done a lot of things in that organization, but my whole focus has been you know speaking on attitude and and those types of topics. I I do I have a real passion for helping people find their passions. Too often you know, ask somebody who are you, and they'll say things like, "Well, I'm a computer programmer. I'm a lawyer. No, that's what you do. Are you? And they don't know how to answer that question. Or, or you ask them, "What are you passionate about? And you get a blank stare. So, I I developed a program called Find Your Peace, which is your passion, your purpose, your potential, and your personal mission. And it's a month long, and it just takes these people through a exercise of self discovery, and they discover really who they are and why they do the things they do and think the way they think. And it's just it's really a lot of fun watching them go through that that transformation. Michael Hingson  12:10 Stephen Covey been a pretty significant influence for you. Stephen Shaner  12:14 I met him, and that that was yeah. I I was a facilitator of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits when I got to the healthcare company I worked, they that was a mandatory class for all new employees, and I had been using it for years before that, and had taught some of it to a few people here and there. Nothing formal, but after I took the class, they had they had six certified instructors there at the company, and the head guy came to me and he says, "You know this stuff better than we do. Would you be willing to help us teach this stuff? I said, "Sure. Shortly after that, four of the other instructors left the company, so it was him, me, and one other person. Then the other person left, so it was just him and me. And then he said, "I'm just too busy take it over. So, so I was running that program for a while until the company dropped it. But in I don't remember what year it was was when Stephen Covey released the Eighth Habit. He was doing a seminar in Minneapolis, and I and I went to that, and there was about 250 of us in attendance, and they brought in box lunches for us. And so I ate lunch, and I walked out to the lobby. This was at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and I walked out to the lobby, and was throwing my lunch stuff away, and I turned around and he was walking up. So I stuck my hand out and I shook his hand. I said, "Thank you. And he smiled. He says, "What are you thanking me for? I says, "Your seven habits have changed my life in so many ways. And I thought that would be the end of the conversation. It wasn't. He put his arm around me and he pulled me over to the corner, and he said, "Tell me your story. And so I told him, you know, about my life, pre-seven habits, and some things I've been doing since. Then he asked me a question I wasn't expecting. He says, "Which habit do you think is most important? I says, "Well, for me, habit one, be proactive. He said, "Really? Why one? I says, "Well, I think if you master habit one, you'll have huge successes with the other six habits. I says, and if you don't, you may have some successes, but nowhere near the level, you know, that you could. And he he smiled and he says, "You get it. Then he then he says, "What's your name? I says, "Stephen. He goes, "Oh, great name. But the the lesson for me was, if somebody like Stephen Covey can make me the most important person in his life for 10 minutes, you know, how should we be treating the people we that we interact with. Michael Hingson  14:23 Yeah, where does attitude come from? Stephen Shaner  14:25 You know, this is a this is this is a thing that when I when I talk about it, I get a lot of you know people looking at me like no, no, no. So, but here's here's here's the way we feel, and I felt this way for a long time too. It's okay. I'm this way because of my parents or because of my grandparents. Okay, I have a negative attitude because it's Monday, or because it's you know the sun isn't shining, or because so and so is in the White House, or whatever. So many people feel like attitude is placed upon us. I'm this way because of what's going on around me. When the fact is, attitude is a choice that we can make. And that's the whole habit. One be proactive, you know. He, Stephen Covey, teaches us that between stimulus and our response, there is a space, you know, where we can choose what our response is going to be, and we're the only animal that can do that. I mean, if I if I'm hiking through the woods and I accidentally walk between Mama Bear and her cub, she's not going to be proactive. She's she's going to react, and so so those those or she or Michael Hingson  15:25 you can say she's going to be proactive and get you out of the world. But yeah, I hear you. Maybe Stephen Shaner  15:29 yeah. So but and I was working for a guy when I when I first started looking at some of the stuff. I was working for a guy who took credit for everything I did, and he wasn't shy about it. We'd be sitting in a meeting, and I'd be sitting next to him. He'd go, "Yep, I did this, and I did this, and I did this, and I just sit there quietly. And one day, he, the whole day long, is over there typing on his computer. Finally, he's the printer, and he he comes over and he hands me. He had just he had just redone his resume, and he handed it to me. And I'm I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, you know, I could put my name at the top of this resume. It would be perfect, and it got to the point. So you imagine the emotions. I mean, those negative emotions come in-the frustration, the anger, and those types of things. And I decided it was time to move on. But before I did, I took some time. I went out into the wilderness, and I took Seven Habits book. I took Tony Robbins' Awaken the giant within. I took my scriptures and I took my journal and I took some food and water and I just went out there and and so I'm reading Stephen Covey and he's telling me that if I'm having a bad day, it's because I decided to, not what I wanted to hear. Then I'm reading Tony Robbins and he's telling me frustration is a good thing and it's also not what I wanted to hear. But then as I read my scriptures and and was writing my journal, I kind of came back to this concept of being of service, and I came out of that weekend with a huge breakthrough. And it was like, so what? So what if he's taking credit for what I do? Is it my job to make him look good? You know. And so my attitude completely changed because I asked different questions, and I and I decided that, you know, I can have good attitude anyway. Went back to work. He continued to do that. Didn't matter. I I had a better attitude. I was more energetic. I had fun at the job, and it was because you know it was all on me. I had to make a decision and decide. So so I've learned, and I've helped a lot of other people realize that you know if you're having this, and Stephen was right, if you're having a bad day, it's because you decided to, and yeah, bad things do happen, okay, to us. But it's still, if we decide to be in a negative mood, that is because we decided to. I know people have gone through divorce, have been thrilled, you know, and it's just it's it's how you look at it. The questions you ask are so important. Michael Hingson  17:38 Well, I know everybody talks about September 11th. What a horrible time it was! How stressful it was, and so on. And yeah, it was a bad thing. On the other hand, as as I point out to people, people ask me all the time, "Well, you survived. What do you think about that? And I said, "Well, I know there were people who who did not, and I am I'm sad about that. But by the same token, the very fact that I survived really means what I need to do is decide how I'm going to live my life and what I'm going to do with that. And we were very blessed. I think almost immediately the media got a hold of of my story. That happened because we we started by talking with the person who was in charge of information at Guide Dogs for the Blind, where I've gotten all of my dogs, and she wanted to put out a story, and that got to the media, and I chose to start to answer questions that people wanted to ask from the media. What I learned was that was much more therapeutic than in going to any kind of counseling sessions would be because you never knew what they were going to ask. Some people asked really good questions. Some people asked really dumb questions. But the point is that that allowing myself to be subjected to all of that taught me how to how to think and deal with all of it. And and the reality is, what I learned was ultimately for me, it's what am I going to do with my life because I survived, and then phone calls started coming in from people saying we'd love to have you come and speak and talk to us about what we should learn from the World Trade Center, which over the years has evolved to a lot more than what happened on September 11th, but why I got to the World Trade Center in the first place, and the the lessons to be learned from all of that, and the bottom line is that that I learned, as as you pointed out, how much of it is really choice, and I could be negative about the World Trade Center or not. Certainly, it was a not a very very positive thing, but how I deal with it is really the issue as far as my personal life is concerned. Stephen Shaner  19:47 Yeah, you get it. That's that's exactly it. We have we have that opportunity to make that choice. I Michael Hingson  19:53 met someone who had a brother who was a police officer. And died at the World Trade Center. He was a fireman, and he switched and decided he wanted to become a police officer because he wanted to go kill terrorists and he wanted to capture them and put them in jail and maybe get a chance to kill them. That was his choice, and that always struck me as that's not going to help. On the other hand, I can certainly talk to to people here and anywhere about the World Trade Center and how we deal with our lives, and we can talk about God and where God is in all of it. People always ask me if you know if I think that God just really blew it that day, and and again, my my point is, why do you think that? You know, the reality is, everyone has a choice in the world that they can make at any given time, and and we need to make those choices, and we need to live by the choices that we make. Stephen Shaner  20:54 Yes, absolutely. And there's some other things we can do when we find ourselves in those negative places. Number one is ask different questions. Sometimes negative things happen, and we're asking the wrong questions. You know, why me? You know, those those types of questions. And guess what? We'll get the answers. So, and it seems a funny one. I had a when I was working up in Duluth. My my direct report manager was down in Minneapolis, so we were about 160 miles away, and every now and then my team would make a mistake of some kind, and there was a senior director down there that every time that happened, he would immediately go to my boss, you know, and and question this, and then I get pulled in later, and I just I would get so frustrated that he wouldn't come to me with this stuff, you know, and this went on for a long time, and one day we had we'd made a mistake, and so he sent an email to my boss. Look what they did this time. So my boss forwarded to me, and he just simply typed in Stephen question mark. You know, of course, as soon as I saw it, you know, I was like, I was so frustrated, and I kept asking, does he go to my boss? Why doesn't he come to me? Why did you know? And it was just these negative anger, frustration. And finally, I calmed down. I said, "Okay, why am I really upset here? Am I upset because my team made a mistake? No, they make mistakes. They're exceptional at fixing problems and making sure they don't happen again. That wasn't. Was I upset that my boss knew? No, I'd already told him, you know, he needed to know. Okay, so that wasn't it, and I kept coming back to this. Why does he go to him? Why did he come to me? And then finally, I changed a little bit, and I said, Why would he go to my boss? And I thought, I was, well, they've known each other for years, they have a relationship, they have trust, and I said, maybe he doesn't even know he can come to me. I was just thinking that. Stephen Shaner  22:42 Yeah, all of a sudden, I was like, "Okay, I'm in control again. So I called or I replied to the email. Here's what happened. Here's what we've done to fix it. It won't happen again. And I said, "If anything like this happens in the future, please let me know. Okay. I set that off. I then called this this gentleman and I and I set up a one-on-one with him that we could meet every two weeks, and I could start building that relationship with him, build the trust. And after a while, he didn't go to my boss anymore. He came to me. But by changing the questions, Michael Hingson  23:10 yeah, Stephen Shaner  23:10 you know, we'll get different answers. If Speaker 1  23:16 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week. We've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Stephen Shaner  23:48 Well, and and then there's you know the vocabulary we're using too. Michael Hingson  23:52 I was Stephen Shaner  23:52 sitting at a Toastmasters conference one night, Friday night dinner, the round table. There's I think eight of us at the table. So it was me, my wife Nancy was next to me, and my former boss was next to her. He he and I joined Toastmasters at the same time, and and this was right when I was getting ready to become the district governor. And I and I looked over at at my former boss. I says, "Are you going to be an area governor next year? And him being him and his sense of hearing, he says, "Well, why would I want to do that? So I replied, "It's the best job in the district. You get to visit clubs, you get to give presentations, you get to organize speech contests. It's a lot of fun. And at the same time, then a lady across the table I just met, she she piped up. She says, "Well, a lady in my club is an area governor, and she hates it. And I said, "Really? Why? She says, "Well, she has to go visit clubs, and she has to organize speech contests, and she has to give presentations. And you see the difference. I was saying you get to do these things. She was saying you have to have to do these things. Yeah. How do you feel when you have to do something? You know, versus get to, and we can change our vocabulary just that simple, and it it makes a. Huge difference. If I say, "Oh, this is devastating, what am I going to experience? Devastation, whatever that means to me, you know. And I used the words like that. There's something bad happening. I'd use those negative words, and now I've just I've switched it up. So something like that happens. I just I just go, okay, this is entertaining because that changes me instantly because being entertained is a completely different experience than being devastated. Okay, so I can look at whatever is going on completely differently from an entertaining standpoint, and it takes me in a completely different direction. So vocabulary is huge. The the words we use, and I and I always tell people: take if you're in a negative place, what do you what are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading? You know what were you with? You know, take a look at those things. For years, I would watch the news programs on Sunday, you know, and I just scream at the TV. And I haven't watched news on on television now probably in going on 20 years. You know, I don't need that because most of it is negative, you know. And I can get my news into, you know, as much as I need where I want to get it from, and and do it that way. So I watch Michael Hingson  26:11 I watch the news, but I also recognize something, and you're you're alluding to it certainly, which is it's it's all about how you choose to deal with what you see. When I was running from the collapse of Tower Two, the first thing I thought of when I started to run was God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And as soon as I thought that, I heard a voice in my head as clearly as you hear me that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I also had this absolute perfect sense of conviction that if I and my guide dog Roselle worked together, we would be fine. And I have lived by that concept for now the last 24 and a half years, which really is one of things happen. There are a lot of things that we don't have control over. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily be aware of them, but it does mean that we don't need to let those things be things that we worry about because we're not going to have any control over them anyway. And that's 90 to 95% of what comes across in our lives, so it's it's for me. I don't mind watching the news. I I expect not very much from all of it, and I know they're going to come through every time. So it works out really well. But but the fact is that it's one of the ways that I have to get the news since I don't read newspapers directly. I can read. I can get the L.A. or the New York Times online, but still the news is is there, and I'll take what I can learn from it and move forward. But it is it gets back to again. It's a choice, right? Stephen Shaner  27:53 Yes. And you just you just nailed habit one. Be proactive. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on in the world. Okay. All the things of all the things we want in the world, some things we don't care about. Okay, but there are some things that concern us. Okay, so we we we pay more attention to those. There are a lot of things out there. They have no concern about that. And then inside all those things that concern us, there are things that we can influence and things that we can't. Okay, so proactive people focus on the things they can influence, the things they can control primarily themselves, okay, right? And yeah, reactive people. Where do they focus? They focus on the things they have no influence over, and they yell and scream and gripe and and do all those things like I used to do, and and that's the difference. That's really habit one in the nutshell. Yeah, focus on the things you control, and I and I work with people all the time, and I had one here recently. The guy was very frustrated about some things other people were doing, and and was just you know upset and frustrated. And I said, "Look, I says you have no control over those people. Don't worry about them. Focus on the wonderful things that you do every day for people, you know. And immediately his demeanor changed, his attitude changed, and and it really can be that simple, you know, just by changing, you know, asking different questions, using different vocabulary, and and especially if you focus on the things you can control, primarily yourself, it's huge. Michael Hingson  29:13 Yeah. Well, and and the reality is that just so many people just seem to enjoy worrying about all these things, and all they're doing is creating fear in their lives, which is which is so unfortunate, and we fear so many things, and and there's nothing that we're going to be able to do about most all of them because they're not really affecting us, or are touching us in any way. So it doesn't do us any good to to go off and continue to fret, but we do, and we we need to learn not to do that. And it's one of the the things I talk about in my my latest book, "Live Like a Guide Dog, which is all about learning lessons from dogs. You know, dogs don't do what ifs when something happens and it's over. It's over for the dog. They don't they don't go back. Well, what if. This had happened instead. They don't do that, and and it makes such a big difference. There's so much we could learn from observing our dogs. I don't know about cats. No, I do. Cats are good too, but but you know we we can learn so much from the way dogs behave. Dogs are are open to trust. I'm not going to say they're trusting all the time. I do think that dogs love unconditionally, but I don't think that they necessarily trust unconditionally. But they're open to trust, and that's the thing that we have forgotten how to do: is to be open to trust. Stephen Shaner  30:33 Very true, very true. Michael Hingson  30:35 And it is something that we really need to learn to deal with it, and hopefully, over time we will we will do more to catch on. I mean we've got all the stuff going on with politics today, and yeah, it doesn't matter what side of the the spectrum that you're on with with all of that. The bottom line is deal with what you can control, and don't worry about the rest. It makes such a big difference. So the problem is negativity is so much all around us. How do we get ourselves out of a negative mood? I think I kind of know where you're going to go with this, but I think it's a relevant question. How do we how do we get ourselves out of feeling negative all the time? Stephen Shaner  31:15 Touch on some of them. You know, change your vocabulary. You know, take a look at what's going on around you. See if you can eliminate what's causing that negativity, gratitude is huge. Michael Hingson  31:24 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  31:25 and in any given situation, there have been times when I've you know been okay, I've been down or there. But if I just take a breath and say, okay, what am I grateful for right now? You know that that can turn you around instantly. And in my workshops, I'll I'll ask that question. We'll go around the room, and people say, "Well, I'm grateful for you know my health, or my family, or my wife, or my creator, or whatever it may be. There's all these different things, but I take it a step further, and I say, "Okay, all of those things that you said you're grateful for have a relationship associated with it. Okay, so if you say you're you're grateful for your health, well, that's a relationship with yourself, perhaps your doctor, perhaps your creator. If you're grateful for your family, that's a relationship. Your employees, there's these relationships behind that. And then the next question I ask: Okay, so all those things that you're grateful for, all those relationships you're grateful for, do they know? And we miss that part sometimes. We miss Michael Hingson  32:19 that part. Stephen Shaner  32:19 Yeah, and if we if we are truly grateful for a certain thing in our life, and there's that relationship with it, let that person know, and that includes you know being grateful for yourself. You know, give yourself a pat on the back from time to time, and be grateful for that. In my book, I have the line, you know, every day above ground is a great day. Yeah, and and I was at a seminar, and there was a the guy in attendance that was you know three piece suit, Italian suit, you know the fancy shoes, and and the seminar leader asked him. He says, you know, do you consider yourself to be successful? He says, well, no. He says, well, how do you know when you're successful? The guy says, well, when I have a you know four and a half million dollar home and a and you know a $200,000 car and and all this stuff he listed off he says well how much or and he made and he he wanted to make an income of you know it was like you know 5 million a year or something he says well how much you make now he says well I'm at about 3 million a year you know and how much is your house well it's only about 2 million you know but he didn't consider himself successful and then there was another guy there in jeans, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and and the the some earlier asked him. He says, "Are you successful? He says, "Absolutely. And he asked him. He says, "How do you know you're successful? He says, "Every day above ground is a great day. And there you Michael Hingson  33:33 go. Stephen Shaner  33:33 And it's just and it's so true. But gratitude is huge. Just taking, like I said, take a step back, take a breath, and okay, what am I grateful for right now? And you can always be grateful for something, and that can change your attitude instantly. Michael Hingson  33:48 Well, and I think there's a lot of merit to that. I know for me, I'm grateful because I get to do what I think I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to be a teacher. I didn't get to teach for the longest time directly, but since September 11th, that's really what I do. I teach about life and philosophy. I get to teach about disabilities and help try to educate people. And most of the time, I think it probably goes over most people's heads. But every so often, you just never know when you might strike a nerve or you might say something that somebody just goes off and thinks about, and you've you've scored points and you've helped, and so I think that's that's extremely important. I I hear what you're saying. Every day above ground is a is a good day. There's no question about that. Stephen Shaner  34:32 And I don't want to make light of people that you know life through any illnesses and stuff like that. But again, in those situations, Michael Hingson  34:38 if Stephen Shaner  34:38 you if you think about what you are grateful for and have a positive attitude, you'll get through those situations a lot easier. That's for sure. Michael Hingson  34:46 I had a situation last year. Actually, it started in 2023, but I had a a or 2024. I had a a pain in my left arm, and it turns out when we finally. Dealt with it, and and and I had to take some blood tests, and discovered that we had a very elevated heart enzyme called troponin. I had a bad heart valve, and I knew immediately I have two ways to deal with this. I can be scared, fretful, why me? Or I can say, okay, we're going to fix it. And for me personally, I choose the positive way. I'm going to we're going to deal with it and all that. And and we did. I went into the the hospital for an operation to to replace the valve, which they did, And so this operation was supposed to take like two hours or two and a half hours, and it actually only took about an hour for me because, as I love to tell people, I have good veins and good arteries, so no problem. So they they went in, they replaced the the valve, and I wake up and I've had colonoscopies before, so I had some experience with this. I wake up, I'm listening to them, and so I I figure I had to to deal with these guys a little bit. So I started kind of moaning, and I said, "Gee, Doc, do you ever think I'll be able to play the violin? Unfortunately, somebody knew that one, and they said, "Probably. I said that's good because I never play it before. But but then I said, but you know what the doctor said is he sewed himself up, right? Suit yourself, and and you know they said you came right out of that anesthetic, didn't you? And I said, yeah, I told you I was going to come right out of it. But but you know it's been great ever since the valve got replaced, and and I was told that if I hadn't done it, I would have lived anywhere from six months to at most two years. But the valve was replaced, and I still get to to be around my guide dog Alamo and and my cat Stitch. So you know, Stephen Shaner  36:54 yeah, my wife Nancy here is a little over a year ago now. She had an episode where her her blood pressure was going up, but then it would come back down. So we're about there. There's a hospital about a half hour from us, but they don't have all the the fancy facilities and stuff. the The nearest big hospital is is about an hour from here. So I called the paramedics, and they came in and they got her hooked up the KG and were kind of monitoring everything. He says we're going to take her down to Cookville because they've got a good cardiology cardiology department at that hospital where they don't have one here locally. So halfway there, her blood pressure just dropped, and she went unconscious. Michael Hingson  37:40 So Stephen Shaner  37:41 they got her stable license, sirens rest the way in. So she was in that hospital for four days, had every heart test known to man, and you know I would go visit her and and spend a little time with her. And one of the visits, one of the nurses cornered me in the hallway, and she says, "Can I ask you a question? I said, "Sure. She says, "How can you be so positive during all this? And Alex Troy says, "Okay. I says, "Suppose I was very negative and very grumpy about all this. How would that help the situation, right? And I says, "Or if I was grumpy and in a negative mood, how would that help Nancy? And she just said, "You know, I never thought about it that way. And when they were checking her out, the the doctors and all the nurses came in and thanked both of us for for being so positive and friendly and nice with everything that was going on. So little things. And what did they finally decide? Nothing was wrong with her heart. So she has since now this year she had some more heart problems. She started having AFib issues, so they put a watchman in, and that kind of you know plugged that hole in the left ventricle so that she won't get the blood clots. So she doesn't have to be in a blood thinner. And about six days after that, her heart was kind of not working so well with it, so they put a pacemaker in. So she had two heart surgeries in about six days. But now, sounds like what what's going on is all of these problems are being caused by the COVID shots. Ah, and so because her heart was fine, you know, before, but now all of a sudden she's got these. But right now she's doing great. In fact, she had an appointment last two weeks ago, right before the ice storm, and the Cardia says everything's looking good. We'll see you in a year, so so things are going well now. Michael Hingson  39:32 Interesting. Well, you know, I've I've heard that some people have had reactions to the COVID shots, son, but I've never bought into the concept that they're just injecting you with a bunch of trackers to follow you wherever you go. I remember the first few times we had vaccinations, they did it in our in our cars, and so we drove up, and they would come out and they gave injections, and after they gave the injections, I'd reach over with my left hand. I go wait a minute, and I'd hit my right shoulder where they did the injection. I said I was just getting one of them little things that tried to get away, and you know, and the and the nurses finally say, "You don't really believe in those trackers, do you? And I said, "Heck no, I'm having too much fun, you know. Stephen Shaner  40:15 No, it's a Frank Stein monster you stuck in there that scares me. That's right. Yeah, Michael Hingson  40:20 but but you know, and you know, I I I do get vaccinations. I get the COVID vaccinations, and I asked someone when I I think it was November that we went in and had one. I travel enough that I'm always going to take no chances, so it's better to get vaccinated, and I don't have any reactions to them. But I asked if people still come in and talk about the trackers and all the the horrible things, and she said, "You just wouldn't believe how many people still buy into that. It's crazy. Stephen Shaner  40:49 Yes, indeed. Michael Hingson  40:50 If you really want to scare them, then you can tell them that AI helped develop the vaccinations and see what they do with that because it's true. But yeah, I Stephen Shaner  40:58 know everybody's loving AI. I said, yeah. Just go back on what 2001 of Space Odyssey and see how you feel about it. Yeah, right. Michael Hingson  41:05 Open the Pod Bay doors, Dave. You know what are you doing, Dave? Oh gosh, people are amazing, aren't they? Stephen Shaner  41:13 Yep. Yes, they are. But that's what makes life fun. You know, it's just the fact that people are different. It makes life fun because if everybody was the same, it'd be a boring place. It Michael Hingson  41:23 would be a boring place, so it's more fun to have people who are different and people who are not necessarily thinking the same way you are and intend to be negative. And maybe sometimes you can change some of those people, which is good. And it's always fun to to try. That's the Stephen Shaner  41:38 goal. Yeah, that's the goal. You know, be an example and show there's a different way. Michael Hingson  41:42 So, do questions matter? Asking questions matter. Stephen Shaner  41:44 Absolutely. Like I shared, you know, with the questions I was asking about this this this manager that was going to my boss, you know, just by asking different questions. And another thing is is I've had a lot of fun with this word, awesome. My company is awesome attitude, and I'm the bottom of all my emails, you'll see a "You are awesome, and I type that in every time. Michael Hingson  42:07 It's Stephen Shaner  42:07 not part of my signature, so I might say, "You know, thanks, you are awesome, or you know, you know, whatever message. I've gotten Michael Hingson  42:12 those. Stephen Shaner  42:13 Yeah, you are awesome, and people don't realize I type. In fact, I misspelled "awesome" one time when I sent the email, and the guy, the guy wrote back says you need to fix your signature. Awesome is misspelled, and I replied, "Oh, I says that's not part of my signature. I typed there time. And he was like, "Wow, personalized awesome messages. But it's amazing because people will respond to those emails, go, "Well, thank you so much. I wasn't expecting that. And barely a week goes by where somebody doesn't send me a text or something that they saw the word "awesome" somewhere, like recently, the guy was walking his dog, and he came across on the sidewalk where kids with chalk had had written "You are awesome" on the sidewalk, and he took a picture and he said, "Thought of you, and this happens all the time, and is another one of those vocabulary things, and and I'll share how the question changed that. In my first book, I talk about you know how are you today, and you think about all the different responses you can get to that question, and some are like I'm fine, you know I'm or I'm good. They're just pretty routine answers. I had one guy ignore me completely, just walked past me, you know. Then I had a guy one time. I was like, "Well, I'm alive, you know. So you get this variety of answers. And I had a guy one time. He asked me, "How are you today? And I said, "I'm awesome, thanks. And I kid you not, he looked at me and says, "That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. And and I smiled, and and he realized what he had done, and he says, and he apologized again. I was not sorry. He says, "I'm so used to hearing negative responses. I automatically assumed you said awful. Michael Hingson  43:47 Oh, okay. So, Stephen Shaner  43:48 so, and again, we asked that same question over and over. How are you today in this video? How are you? How's it going? What's up? You know, what's new? We we asked that same question. So I changed the question. The question is, "Are you awesome today? Michael Hingson  44:05 I know, and that's oh yeah, Stephen Shaner  44:07 that's it's unexpected. People don't expect that, and they think, "Oh, you know, yeah, I am awesome. That's the the title of my podcast: "Are you awesome today? And when I answer the phone, you know, it's, "Are you awesome today? Or if I call somebody and they answer the phone, I'll say, "Are you awesome today? And it's completely different. It gets them thinking differently, and it gets them. Yeah, I am awesome today. You know. So rather than the the same old, how are you today? I'm fine. It's yeah, I'm awesome. Thanks for asking. You know. So questions do matter. Michael Hingson  44:35 When people ask me how I am, I just say I'm lovely, and I learned that from a friend, and I love it. It's great, you know. And and I've had some people who go, "What? But but you know, awesome. Yes, absolutely. But I do love to say I'm lovely, and I love Stephen Shaner  44:52 that. And it's different. People don't expect it, and no, it'll make their day. Believe it. It has an effect. Had a young lady on ham radio, teenager. And I'd always, whenever I talked to her on the radio, they said, "How are you today? Or this was, you know, this back when I was asking that question, and she would reply, "Dandy, thanks. You know, there you go. Yeah, and it was just, it was so much fun. It was like that's the kind of things we like to hear. Michael Hingson  45:14 You still a ham operator? Stephen Shaner  45:15 Oh yeah, yeah. I've I'm the emergency coordinator for Macon County, and I'm the district emergency coordinator for 13 counties here in Middle Tennessee for Aries Amateur Emergency Services, and president of our local club, and so very active. I just did some some Poda before I got on on here with you. Parks on the air got three contacts: a guy at Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Michigan. Michael Hingson  45:39 If I got industrious, I would get an antenna and connect my Kenwood back up. It's been a while since we moved down here, and I haven't had this running at all down here. And I really need to get it get it back up on the air. I've been a ham operator since 1964. I got my novice license in '64. My dad could have gotten his at any time. He wanted to wait until I could get mine, so we got them at the same time. Nice. And then in '65, got technician, and then soon after that, general class. Nice. And we we set up rigs at opposite ends of the house, and we would talk to each other and drive people around the whole town crazy because we would be talking about the weather. You know, I'd say, "How's the weather over there? And he'd say, "Oh, it's raining over here, and people knew that we were at opposite ends of the same house. I say, well, it's really nice and sunny here, and just drove people crazy. Stephen Shaner  46:27 I bet, but yeah, Nancy's got her. She's a she's an extra amateur extra, and we've got our VE credential, so we give the tests, and we just have a blast with the hobby. It's a fun hobby, and then when you can do the committee service too, it's it's great. Michael Hingson  46:39 I used to do things with races and also with Mars. Stephen Shaner  46:42 Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:43 and it's been a while, but I really need to get the antenna up and get an antenna in here and get back on the air. I think it'd be a lot of fun to do. Stephen Shaner  46:53 Contact a local club. I'm sure some people help you get that. Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:55 I just really need to do that. Yeah. So, how does energy affect attitude, and how do I get more energy? Stephen Shaner  47:02 Ah, boy, you know that's such a great question. That's a that's Michael Hingson  47:05 a that's a detailed one, isn't Stephen Shaner  47:07 it? It is, and I awesome Michael Hingson  47:09 question. It Stephen Shaner  47:10 is. I watch people; those people that are positive all the time. You you know, we meet them. They're just no matter what's going on, they're always positive. They always seem to have a lot of energy, and and I found that if we we want more energy, what we need to do is give energy. What I mean by that is is movement. Okay, if we find ourselves kind of low on energy, the battery is a little low. Just get up and move. And it doesn't have to be anything, you know, strenuous. Just in my office, I had a sit stand station, which meant I could take my whole computer and to monitor everything, raise them up. I could stand for you know, and I would stand for hours during the day. They gave me energy. Take a five minute walk, you know. And music is huge. If you know, play some music, dance in your cube. You know, sell tickets, have a little concert in your cube, fight your coworkers, and have a good time. But but just get up, move. That's really all it is. I get up at four a.m. every day, and I do an exercise program called the Five Tibetans, and then I do Tai Chi, and then you know read or work on the computer, whatever, and do until Nancy gets up around seven. And but that those two things give me energy throughout the day. And if I find myself in a slump, just getting up and taking a short walk will boost my energy level up Michael Hingson  48:18 every time. Stephen Shaner  48:20 Yeah. So I Michael Hingson  48:21 we didn't design our house this way, but we have a long island, but separating the family room living room area from the kitchen. And now, since it's just me, I will do I will put an audio book on and just do laps around the island, and I can get up to 15,000 steps without any great difficulty, just reading a book and and doing it, and it's a great way to get energy. And to I Stephen Shaner  48:45 bought Nancy a walk pad. These are these are fairly new. It's like a little miniature treadmill. There doesn't have the big handle thing sticking up. It's just a flat treadmill for walking. They're designed so you can like sit it under your desk and you can you know take some steps while you're at your computer or something. Yeah. But but because it's you know a little rough for her. It's pretty hilly out here to to get us up. So she's got a nice level place that she can just you know walk for 2030 minutes every day in the house. Where especially when it was our ice storm going on a couple weeks ago, you know, stay in and stay warm and not slip and fall. And but there's there's ways to do that. And like I said, even just standing up, I did a presentation at the local chamber of commerce this morning, and when I was in my presentation, rather than go back and sit down, I went to the back and stood the whole time. And at church on Sunday, I stand through the entire service in the back and just keeps my energy up. So Michael Hingson  49:36 I don't always do that, but I oftentimes stand, and I've been to to many meetings, and I'll just stand in the back of the room. And frankly, given some of the speakers, it's better to stand and get a little bit more energy. But but a lot of times, it's just good for me anyway to to do that, which is cool. Stephen Shaner  49:54 Yeah. Michael Hingson  49:56 So, do you think? People generally tend to truly understand gratitude, or is that still a hurdle that a lot of people need to work to get through? Stephen Shaner  50:09 I think they, like I said, I think they say the word, you know, and I say, you know, I'm grateful for this. But what does that mean exactly? I don't think they take it down to the the detail. Okay, and like I said that there's relationships there. So if I say you know I'm grateful for my health, what does that mean? Okay, well you know I'm I'm grateful that and and I come from a every male on my dad's side and every male on my mom's side has had heart disease, died of heart disease. My dad had his first bypass surgery at 48. He had a second. He died of a heart attack. You know so I'm 67 and I take no medications. Okay, so I'm grateful for my health. You know, so and the relationship there, me, my family is affected by my health. You know, my friends, my coworker, everybody that is is in my life is affected by my health. I'm grateful for. I don't go to the doctors very often because I don't need to, but I'm grateful that you know you had a heart valve problem, and our medical system for those types of things is second to none. Michael Hingson  51:11 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  51:12 you know. So and even though I'm an hour away from a big hospital, I'm grateful that that is there if I do need it in in some way. You know, exactly, exactly right. Michael Hingson  51:21 Same thing for me. Stephen Shaner  51:23 Yeah. So we don't. I don't think we say, "Yeah, I'm grateful for that. But what does that really mean? And I think you're right. We don't. We don't take it deep enough and really think about. Okay, what does this really mean? And and again, with those relationships, okay, I'm grateful for my wife. Does she know? I hope so. You know, because I I do tell her frequently. I say Michael Hingson  51:42 telling her helps. Stephen Shaner  51:43 Yeah, it does. It really really does. So, Michael Hingson  51:48 and likewise, I'll bet she's grateful for you. Stephen Shaner  51:51 I think so. I hope so. So we've been we've been married. It'll be 45 years in July. So Michael Hingson  51:56 we were married 40 years before Karen passed. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life, and the body just eventually slows down. I I learned from her sister that I've I've never heard this from my wife, but her sister told me, oh, they never thought she was going to live live past 30. Well, she lived to be 73, and the reality is, I I'm not sure. I totally buy that that that what her sister said was true because I've never been able to to verify it anywhere else. But Karen Karen lived a good life, but as I said, the body eventually does slow down, especially dealing with a wheelchair and all that, and things happen. But I know that we have 40 years of wonderful marriage memories, and as I said, she's out there monitoring. And if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I don't even chase the girls. Stephen Shaner  52:48 Yeah, I would Michael Hingson  52:49 point out they don't seem to be chasing me either. No, no reference to anything on the podcast, folks. Just saying. So, Stephen Shaner  52:56 and I think attitude plays a huge role in your health too. And I know there's a lot of literature out there that would back that up. Michael Hingson  53:04 So clearly, a positive attitude is a wonderful thing, and I'm sure that that given all that you do with a positive attitude, you you by definition affect a lot of other people as well. Stephen Shaner  53:16 It's it's amazing how many people just make comments. You know, comment I'll make. Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Thank you so much, or anything like that. I was in a, I was out running errands one day for work at lunchtime, and as I was heading back to the office, I got rear-ended, and pretty substantially. And so I got to the side of the road and and kind of shut everything off. I took inventory. I was okay, but those negative emotions, you know, the frustration, the anger, and those things started to creep in, and I finally just I took a breath and I said, and I asked a question. The question was, can I make this a positive experience for everybody involved? And so I got out of the van, I went back. The car that hit me was there were two teenage girls, two sisters. The driver was 18. I think her sister was 16, and first thing I asked, "Are you guys okay? And they said, "Yep. So I called 911, said accident. Here's location. No injuries, and I had to really work to pry the door open on the car because the front end of the car was smashing. But I got him out, and she just she the fear that she had was you know just evident, and she's. I'm so sorry. I I just got distracted for a sec. I didn't mean to hit you, and I looked at her and I just I just said, I'm pretty sure when you got up this morning, you didn't tell yourself that you were going to go hit some old man on the highway today, and she didn't expect him. Then I just kind of smiled, and then then she smiled, and then her sister kind of smiled. The atmosphere completely changed. Yeah, and so we were having fun, you know, talking and laughing and everything. So the police car pulls up, and this lady police officer gets out. She walks up. Now I was wearing a bright orange Hawaiian shirt. I had on tan pants, and I had on orange Crocs. And this police officer walks up, and she goes, "What happened? The girl says, "I got distracted, and I hit him. And this police officer looked at me, and she said, "You deserve to get hit dressed like that. I'm good now. Yeah. Now four of us were having a good time. Now, if I had not made that decision, asked that question made that decision, if I'd gone into this situation with the negativity, anger, and the frustration. I guarantee you that cop would have never said something like that, because it was it would have been a completely different atmosphere. But that's just a simple example. We we have that ability to choose. Michael Hingson  55:35 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  55:36 and when we do, wonderful things will happen. Look at your vocabulary. Change some of the words. Start telling people you're awesome. I tell you what, you do this stuff for 30 days. You know, every time you find yourself negative, look at what you're doing, what you're reading, what you're listening to. Make some changes, simple changes. You, your life will change. And the great part is, it'll have a very profound effect on those people around you-the people that you love, your kids, your spouses, you know your cowork, your boss, whoever it is, you know the community. People notice, and and they will they will want to be around you, and they want to be like you. Michael Hingson  56:10 Yeah, and and that's the way it it really ought to be. And I just really wish more people would be more positive. But again, we we need to work on not fearing so many things, among other things, and there are probably so many things that one could point out. But all we can do is is our best, and all we can do is is live our lives, and then either people will catch on or they won't. Stephen Shaner  56:35 Yes, Michael Hingson  56:36 which is which is really, you know, the way the way it works. But so you read a lot of success literature. Stephen Shaner  56:45 I do. I I read a lot. I'm an avid reader. I read books like crazy. But like in the morning, you know, I get up, I do my train of stuff, and and I'll read. You know, it doesn't have to be a lot. It's not like you have to 24/7 read success literature. But even 10 minutes a day, read an article, read a paragraph out of a book. You know, watch a TED talk, watch a YouTube video, listen to a podcast. There's so many sources for positive positivity out there. Take advantage of that and and let that kind of you know information feed into your brain every day. And wow, Michael Hingson  57:18 yeah, it's as we've talked about so often during the last hour. It's all about choice. Tell us about your books. Stephen Shaner  57:29 My first book is called The Art of Being Awesome, and it's proven techniques to add to your attitude palette. And it's mostly a lot of the things we talked about here today. You know, your vocabulary, questions, gratitude, success literature, energy. You know those types of things. All of my books are are small. You can read them in about you know 45 minutes or so. The second book is called An Attitude of Service, exploring the attitudes of servant leadership, and where I define what the difference between management leadership is, proper vocabulary for both. You know situational leadership. You know those different types of things, and then the third book I just released in November is called The Perfect Gift, and it's mastering the art of effective feedback. My my title that I have been given is the Attitude Chiropractor, and I give pain-free attitude adjustments, and that's kind of what that book is about. We there's way too much contention out there in the world, and we can all learn to, me included, can learn to to give feedback. You know, better that's not so negative all the time. Michael Hingson  58:30 Yeah. Well, by the way, while I am thinking of it, not to chastise you too much, but I would appreciate it if you would send me pictures of your book covers so that we can put them in the show notes. Stephen Shaner  58:41 Yeah, I can. I can do that very easily. Michael Hingson  58:43 I was just just checking to see if you had sent them and you didn't. And yeah, I always love to promote the books. That's okay. You know, they're in print, so I'm not going to read the print anyway. But other people will. But that's okay. But no, seriously, I'd love it if you send the pictures to the book covers because we'll put them in into the show notes. Stephen Shaner  59:00 I can do that. Michael Hingson  59:01 So, if somebody comes up to you and says, "I'm frustrated with life, and so on, what's your call to action? Stephen Shaner  59:10 Call to action is let's take a look at what's going on in your life. Let's find out where that negativity is coming from, and then let's figure out what things that you can control that you can focus on instead. And and you said it. That's that's really the key is focus on the things you control, and that's where we start. But you can do that on your own too. Like I said, you know, look at what's going on in your life when you're in that negative mood, and say okay. And guess what? 99% of the time that you're in one of those moods, you're focused on something you have no control over. Yeah. Michael Hingson  59:42 So, which is the point? Stephen Shaner  59:44 Yeah, which is the point. So, the call to action is take a look at that. Say, okay, what can I control here? And when, and then you get you you you you really get control back, and the negativity will go away. And it may take a time or two. Michael Hingson  59:58 Yeah, takes practice. Stephen Shaner  59:59 Yeah, it takes practice. Yes, and that's okay. But have fun with it, and and believe me, your life will change in ways you can't imagine. But the answer, Michael Hingson  1:00:06 I'm sorry, go ahead. Stephen Shaner  1:00:07 I was going to say is just I have a little sign up here says one day or day one you decide. Michael Hingson  1:00:14 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  1:00:14 and I just love that because we sometimes well, I'll do that tomorrow or I'll do that next month. No, do it now. Michael Hingson  1:00:21 Do it now. Stephen Shaner  1:00:22 Yeah. So take advantage of the sort of the same con Michael Hingson  1:00:26 sort of same concept of when you come to a fork in the road, take Stephen Shaner  1:00:30 it. Yeah. And you just talk about unstoppable mindset. You know, that's it. And for me, it's it's the passion that I have that gets me out of bed every every morning at four and doing the things I do, and and my number one passion and is to add value every day. That's what that's what gets me up at four a.m. is is the opportunity to add value. Michael Hingson  1:00:49 So, do people reach out to you from all over the country or all over the world to to learn from what you have to say and think about? Stephen Shaner  1:00:56 Yeah, I've worked with people in India. I've worked in people in Asia, England, a lot around the U.S. I'm doing a lot more local stuff here too, which has been kind of nice in these small communities out here where I live. Michael Hingson  1:01:10 Well, I am with you. I get up at about four to 420 in the morning as well, and I do it very deliberately because I don't have to rush through breakfast, and I can can think about things, and it's a great way to start the morning and really put positive spins on the day. And and I do, and and I think that's just so important to do. So I really am glad that that there are other people that do that as well. And if people want to reach out to you, how do they do that? Stephen Shaner  1:01:40 My website is awesomeattitude.net, so you can go there. You'll there's a podcast tab. You can see all the podcast episodes, the guests, links. When is our when is Michael Hingson  1:01:50 our episode coming out, or did it all? It's already out. Yep, it Stephen Shaner  1:01:53 came out two Mondays ago. Okay, yeah. So yep, I've been on this Michael Hingson  1:01:57 podcast, everyone. Yeah, it was Stephen Shaner  1:01:58 wonderful conversation. It was an awesome Michael Hingson  1:02:00 content, awesome podcast episode. Stephen Shaner  1:02:02 So, and then there's information about my books. You can contact me, and my my email address and everything is there. So, yeah, just go to awesomeattitude.net, and you can get a hold of me there. Michael Hingson  1:02:12 Great. Well, I hope people will do that. I think it's absolutely relevant to do, and I think it is important to have an awesome attitude, and everyone should feel awesome and forget all the negativity. It doesn't do you any good. So thanks very much, Stephen, for being here. I want to thank all of you for listening today and watching, whichever you happen to do or both. I'd love to hear from you. Love to hear your thoughts about our episode today. Please feel free to reach out to me. I'm easy to reach. It's speaker at Michael Hinkson M I C H A E L H I N G S O n.com. Love to hear from you. Would appreciate it if you give us a five star rating. But even more important, give us a great review. People who are interested in listening or watching our podcasts want to know what other people are thinking about it, so we appreciate reviews. It's always an important thing to do. So thanks for doing it in advance, and for all of you, Stephen, including you. If you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on Unstoppable Mindset who has a story to tell, love to hear it. Please introduce us. We're always looking for more folks to chat with. And with that, Stephen, once again, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely fun. Stephen Shaner  1:03:23 Thanks for having me. This has been fun. Have an awesome day. Michael Hingson  1:03:28 Thank you for being here with me on Unstoppable Mindset. I hope today's conversation left you with a fresh perspective, a new insight, or at least something worth thinking about. If you're ready to go deeper into the ideas that shape how we see ourselves and others, I have a free gift for you. Head over to michaelhingson.com and download my free ebook, Blinded by Fear. It explores the invisible beliefs that hold us back and shows you how to reframe them so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast, leave a review, and share this show with someone who can use a reminder that growth starts with mindset. When people think differently, we all move forward together. Thanks again for listening. Keep learning, keep questioning, and keep choosing to live with an unstoppable mindset.