Stacy Kalisz Johnson Testimony

Heart disease can feel like a family curse until you learn what you can actually change. Stacy Johnson joins us to share how losing her dad and uncovering a long line of early heart attacks pushed her into prevention, volunteering with the American Heart Association, and coaching everyday people toward simple, repeatable health habits that work in real life.

We talk about her path from growing up Catholic in Western New York to building a career in engineering, moving to Arizona, and eventually returning to church with a new kind of intentionality. Along the way, Stacy breaks down what shifted her faith from something she “always believed” into a lived relationship with God, shaped by reading the Bible consistently, learning generosity, and becoming open to the Holy Spirit in daily life.

Then we get extremely practical. Stacy lays out her "B.E. H.A.P.P.Y." framework for heart health and lifestyle change: breakfast, exercise, hydration, axe or add one habit, plate two fruits, plate three veggies, and YOU time for self-care. We also connect the dots between blood pressure, sleep, stress, food planning, and consistency, plus why “hereditary” is often a wake up call, not a sentence. If you want preventive health, heart healthy habits, and faith-fueled discipline without the hype, this conversation is for you.

Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a reset, and leave a review with one word: Jesus.

Transcript

Welcome Back And Why Testimony Matters

SPEAKER_04 0:17

All right, welcome back to the Speak Life AZ Podcast, testimony of Jesus and everyday people. I'm your host, Eddie, and always with me is my son Rowdy.

SPEAKER_08 0:25

Jesus!

SPEAKER_04 0:26

What up, dude?

SPEAKER_07 0:27

Let's go, man. It's been a minute, bro. Bro, the last time we did this, I almost died afterwards.

SPEAKER_05 0:33

That was our last one, man.

SPEAKER_07 0:35

The Ukrainian pastor, bro. Go check that episode out, man. That was on a Friday. You were in the hospital that Sunday. That's right. Yeah. Well, it all happened within a couple hours after the recording.

SPEAKER_04 0:45

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 0:46

The enemy does not like us doing this.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

I remember we got home and you went to your room and you started screaming. I went up, what are you doing, bro? Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 0:52

I was going through it, buddy. I had a perforated bowel.

SPEAKER_04 0:57

How's that hot sauce?

SPEAKER_07 0:59

I'm just glad I have medicine now. It coats everything. Thank you, Jesus. That's not a free God is good, man. God is good, buddy. You're so weird. I'm thankful I have a good God. Amen. If I'm not dead, he's not done. Come on now. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 1:17

I'm excited for this one, dude.

SPEAKER_07 1:18

Yeah, this is gonna be great. Yeah. I always love uh when we get to have people on that we're connected to here at church. Yeah. Um, that we're actually quote unquote doing life with, man.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

Well, I've had she's been great to me, brother. She's helped me out a lot, so I'm excited to hear the rest of the story because I know a little bit of it already.

SPEAKER_07 1:35

So I I personally don't know much.

SPEAKER_04 1:37

Um, you're in for a treat, dude. Yeah, yeah. Get it. Who you got?

SPEAKER_07 1:42

Stacey, how you doing, sister?

SPEAKER_02 1:44

I'm good. I'm good. Welcome. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_07 1:49

Is this your first podcast?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

No, I've done uh some TV, radio, and podcasts with my volunteerism with the American Heart Association. All right, nice.

SPEAKER_07 1:56

So we got a celebrity in the house.

SPEAKER_04 1:58

Let's go. Well, coach, we just want to thank you for um like we were talking just now. We know that time is not a resourceable commodity. We're only limited to so much. And uh for you to carve some out for us to tell your story, man. We're so honored and just so privileged that you would do that for us. And we just want to honor you with that and say thank you. Um, we pray that God just blesses you somehow and restores some time somewhere down the line for you, man, to uh just come and share your story. We appreciate that so much, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

I'm excited to reach people.

SPEAKER_07 2:28

Amen. That's it right there. Um, it there's so much power in our testimony, Stace. It's uh it's amazing how God uses this. Um, I wouldn't not be surprised if here when people start watching this and it it goes out live that you start getting people from the church coming in and like I had no idea. Um this really God uses this to uh one bring his people closer, bring his people together. Yeah, um, but at the same time, this thing is all over the world. Yeah, um, so you have no idea. Literally, I start showing him the countries he's like, I don't need to see that, man. Um, God does what he does. Um, and there's a there's power in our testimony. Yeah, um, it's it's literally a way that we can kick the devil in the face. Yeah. Um, and that's why we go through the wars both after uh we do these things and before. Yeah. Um because it it's kind of a way that we can take our take the power back. Yeah. Um because there's things I'm sure that you're gonna share that you don't share on a Sunday morning when you're hey, how you doing? This is this is a special time that we're able to really in long format um share about the stuff you've been through. Yeah, share about the things that that God has healed you from, share about the things that um were the causes that led you into the things you're doing now. Yeah. Um, that's why I was telling Dad, I was like, I can't wait to hear how she kind of got into the heart health thing. Yeah, um, because you're you coaching him, it literally like set him off into this place where his whole life's different. Oh, yeah. He's eating different, he drinks different things, he his everything uh other than the working out. Yeah, um, because he was really working out. Uh we would be setting up for CR, man, and he'd be in there doing his push-ups, recording his videos. I'm like, you go, boy.

SPEAKER_04 4:17

Injuries.

SPEAKER_07 4:19

God is good, man.

SPEAKER_04 4:20

You know, you know how we talk about how these things help people. You know what I mean? I think this one is gonna be different. You know, like we do dealing with recovery a lot. We do a lot of the things that we're sharing are are aimed at people that are in recovery. And I think with your story and the things that you do, it's gonna be a little different type of help that people are gonna see. And I wouldn't be surprised if people that hear your story like I did, and like, I need to reach out to this lady and and get some of that knowledge that she has. And I think I believe that when people listen to this, they're gonna hear that and be like, oh, wait a minute. I didn't know she did that. Yeah, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_07 4:55

I need I need to, they're gonna be personally convicted and and want to start taking better care of themselves and maybe their families, and you don't know what who God and what what he's gonna use this for.

SPEAKER_04 5:07

And it was funny how I found your stuff, right? It was like so I don't want to get into it. Yeah, let me let me get that. Let me let me pray. Let me pray, man.

SPEAKER_07 5:18

Uh, we pray a lot around here in Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_08 5:20

We're praying, people.

SPEAKER_07 5:22

Um, God, I just thank you for what you're gonna do. Yeah, um, Holy Spirit, just come. You are already here, God. Yeah, um, I just pray for your daughter, Lord. I pray that uh clarity and word, um, peaceful and thought, um, freedom and and what she's getting ready to share, God. Um, sometimes there's there's things that we don't want to talk about because they're hard. Yeah, um, because they're they're they are traumatic sometimes. Um so I just pray um a real vulnerability. Um, God, this is a safe place. You are here. Yep. Um so I just pray if there's any anxiety, you're done with God. Let this be just uh a story of power, a story of strength, um, a story of health. Um that and you use this, God, all for your glory. Yeah. I pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Um, so Stacy, when God gave this to us, it was in 2020 and um COVID. It seemed like a lot of people started podcasts in 2020. And for a couple of years, we were not obedient to what God had told us to do. Uh uh. We were doing what we wanted to do, man. Uh we we I literally set up a studio in my bedroom. I had these tables and chairs and the whole thing, and we were preaching videos, and it was great. We got good responses, but it wasn't what God told us to do. Um, it wasn't until the end of 2022 um when we sat down and we were praying, we're like, God, what are we supposed to do? And he showed us the the three-chord strand. And um and it's simply just sitting down with people, um, Speak Life A Z podcast, the testimony of Jesus and everyday people. Yeah. Um, we if if you have come and had an encounter with God and are one of his kids, um, and it looks different for everybody, no, no one's is the same. Yeah, um, we all have a testimony. It doesn't matter if you've grown up in the church or you're out there running amok like we were. Yeah. Um everyone's story matters. It does. Everyone's story can help somebody. Um, and that's what we're gonna get ready to do today. Yeah, um, and we're we also uh I always uh Revelation 1211. We overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb first, um, but the word of our testimony and loving not our life unto death. Yeah, um, we are literally gonna kick the devil in the face today um by sharing what you're gonna share. Um and and what's cool is uh you are connected to one of the pastors here that's the reason why we're here. Um so I can't wait to hear that. Pastor Tom, Pastor Amy, I love you guys. Make sure you check this out, man. Um, but so what we want today, Stace, is we just want to get to know you. Yeah, that's really what it is. We we want to know um what your childhood was like, what where you were born, brothers and sisters, uh, mom and dad, um, relationship with God when you were younger. Did you guys go to church? Was God even a part of the family? Yeah, um, and a lot of times, so we we serve in recovery, and a lot of times people as adults, they've been carrying stuff for years. Um it's that trauma and that childhood hurt and that stuff that if we don't go through a process of healing, um, then it's it's stuff we kind of stuff. And as you stuff, man, later in life, it really messes us up. Yeah. Um, so we just just let Holy Spirit lead you into whatever that looks like. Um, but I think the coolest thing today that we want to get is your personal encounter with God. Um, because God met dad in a prison cell. Yeah, God met me in an altar at 1515 West Grand and Team Challenge. I still remember the spot I was, man, when he told me, son, I love you. Son, I forgive you. Um, and we we want to know what yours looks like. And it can be a day or a moment. Some people, it's a process, it's a series of events in life where you start to realize, wow, God loves me. Yeah, and God has been with me this whole time. Um, so what what your encounter with him looked like. Um but the cool thing is like we were talking about earlier, anytime when you somebody comes and has an encounter with Jesus, yeah, things change. Lives change. Yeah, transformation. That that's the power of God in our lives. He helps us, he loves us too much to leave us the same. Yeah, that's really what it is. Not that we're perfect, but things can make it we start to go through the process.

SPEAKER_04 9:55

It's a sanctification process, and it takes time, you know what I mean? Right.

SPEAKER_07 9:59

Um, and then at the very end, um, we want to know what you're hoping for still. Because you are young, you you got a you got life ahead of you. Um, the kids are getting ready to go on to their next phase in life. One of them already has, and uh, I know that there's things you want to do. Yeah, um, so we really want to get that at the end so that we can pray for you. Um, but our listeners, uh, I've asked people and gotten messages. Man, I'm praying for this one. Yeah, there's people all over the world that are gonna be praying for you and what you're believing God for. Um, and we when we get to that place, go big. We we got we got a big God, man. And you'd be amazed. Mark chapter 9, verse 23 says, Anything is possible for them that believe. It's like, what are you believing God for to come?

Growing Up Catholic In Western New York

SPEAKER_04 10:47

It also talks about the measure of our faith, how he'll meet us in our measure of our faith, you know what I mean? Right. So the bigger your faith is, and the more that you're believing for, the more he's gonna show up and show off. That's a word for somebody out there. So, what was it like growing up, Stacy, man?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yeah, I was like, wow, you've you've laid out quite a lot of stories. Yeah, yeah. Uh so I am originally from Western New York. Right. I'm from Buffalo. So I'm known for the snow, which is why I live here. Are you a Bills man? Yes, come on, man, man. Yeah, so my you know, my family, Rich, is from my husband Rich is from here. So Cardinals and then secondary is the is the Bills of the household. But for me, always the Bills. Come on, huh? Yes, of course. So I grew up in Western New York and I was raised Catholic. Yeah. So I was baptized at birth. So it's interesting to think about that now because of the way we are today. Um, I've never had a day where I didn't believe. Right. Oh wow. It's sort of a sign to you, which when you're baptized as a baby. But then I went to Catholic school from K all the way till senior year of high school. Really? And so praying was part of our everyday. And that did happen to my mom. But either I was a good kid or we didn't do that. No, we didn't, that that wasn't a thing in our school. All right. No, but it is a known joke for nuns, right? But uh yeah, but that wasn't my high school experience. But there were little things like they told us if you sang, you were praying twice as loud or twice as hard. Really? So we didn't call it worship. We were singing. We were singing, and so I always believed that. And so I guess I you could say I grew up worshiping because I was like, Well, I want to pray twice as hard or twice as loud. So uh so growing up, Kay, through you know, senior year, we did all of the things with the church, you know, had a hyacinth on Easter. I was Mary in the little play for you know, always part of the church. And and we're I don't know that my parents were, but like I always joined everything, participated in everything.

SPEAKER_07 12:58

So um Were you an only child?

SPEAKER_02 13:00

No, I have a brother. He's uh three and a half, four years younger than me. Okay. Um and he was an altar boy, you know, like so. We did all the things. My mom's more of a C and E. Um Christmas and Easter. Christmas and Easter. But my dad, we went every week. In fact, during Lenten season, he would go every day, sometimes twice a day.

SPEAKER_07 13:19

Is that where they put the thing on your forehead and then okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:23

So grew up, I would say, in a home that you know, with Christian foundation. And um, but when you talk about trauma and things like that, that's where you get into my entry point into the heart and stuff. So while my dad was a cop, so he um growing up, you know, he he worked weird shifts, so he would be there um and then be sleeping and on and off. And my mom was uh an an an admin, kind of like a secretary job that she worked her way up and got her education like while she was working.

SPEAKER_07 13:57

And um did you did you have a good relationship with both your parents? Yep. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah, still do. My mom is still living. My dad uh passed away in twenty thirteen, twenty thirteen, I think so.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

And uh yeah, we I mean my family is just the you know, just four of us. And then but my mom has a bunch of brothers, my my uh dad no Rich is Catholic, I guess. And um, and then my dad was one of three. But we don't do things as a big collective, whereas Rich's family, when we get together, there's 90 people, you know, so and they're very family uh union oriented. So totally different, which is what I always wanted when I was a kid, so I just married into it. Nothing wrong with the way we do things, it's just I always saw that, like see it on TV, so it's and then I married into a family that's cool. So it's kind of funny.

SPEAKER_07 14:48

God'll give you the heart's desires.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

But yeah, I mean our family is is everybody's good, healthy relationships. My brother is you know, he's a dude, so he does we don't talk very much, but there's nothing there, it's just he's a dude. So if I'm doing his own thing. If I text the answers, if I call the answers, if I go, he'll see me. Right, right. But it's not much of a flyer, so I usually go there, so I'm going there next month.

SPEAKER_07 15:09

So the the whole family's back in New York still.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Still in yeah. So my dad has passed, and my brother's married, has two kids, lives in western New York still. My mom lives there most of the time. Okay, that's it. Sometimes she kind of floats around. Um still lives in the same house? No, no. Um she she bought a smaller kind of house, and um, but she has a boyfriend. Yeah. Oh, I love that. Yeah, he's great. And they um they're traveling right now in Florida. They go around. So he's he's in Ohio. They dated when they were in high school, and then they just you know had their own lives, had their own family, grandkids, and then found each other after their spouses passed away. So they think they've been dating about two years. So right now she's in Florida. Sometimes she comes here, sometimes she's in New York. So she's sort of a no man.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

When you say Western New York, are you thinking like neighborhoods?

SPEAKER_02 15:53

Because I think in New York, I think tall buildings, apartments, no, Buffalo is is like a suburb and it's mostly green and trees and lots of grass. Beautiful outside of wintertime. Yes. The city would have um would have uh uh you know skyscrapers and stuff. But it's sort of like when you tell someone I'm from Phoenix, you're not really from Phoenix, right? You live in Queen Creek. Yeah, okay. Right? So I'm not I'm not from Buffalo. Like I lived in a smaller town called DePew or on the Chictawaga border, so smaller towns. But you know, like exactly it's in the dead end road that leads to a gravel pit, you know. Small town. Um, but we never went in the city. I when I moved, I didn't even know how I was 17. I went away to college um an hour and a half away, so it'd be the equivalent of being like from Phoenix and going to Tucson for college. So I went I'm from Buffalo, but I went to school in Rochester.

SPEAKER_04 16:51

Did you go have sports and stuff like that? Uh yeah. So did you do any sports?

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Well, it's funny the cause at the Catholic school? You're asking because of the coach role, right? Well, it's funny.

SPEAKER_04 17:01

So as as a kid, well I know you had coached for something different, not because of sports. Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

But I played I played uh soccer starting when I was very young all the way up, but then in high school, my high school, it was an all-girls Catholic high school, didn't have soccer.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

Really?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

So I played volleyball, basketball, softball, whatever we had. I was in the plays. I mean, there's there's eighty-seven or ninety-something kids in my class, so we just you just did all the things, right? But in college, yes, they had soccer, and it was probably a team I could have made, but I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Really?

SPEAKER_02 17:34

It's not like now where everybody kind of knows, oh, is it D3, D I didn't know any of that? So I didn't even go out for the soccer team. I probably could have, I didn't know. Uh, but I played club rugby.

SPEAKER_06 17:45

Really? Okay. Rugby's a little rushed.

SPEAKER_02 17:48

Yes. So I it that was it was a couple seasons, but they would complain because I was too skinny. Okay. Because I played second row, which is in the middle of the scrum, and they basically hold on to your love handles as a as a uh hole. So you were too skinny. At that time, now they would have a little bit more luck.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

But back then, they would lose, loose hold of me, and then the whole thing would fall down.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

So they move me to the eight man, which is the last man back. Yeah. And so your job is to pop up and push the whole group, and my legs are really strong, so that was a good job. But your ears get like pulled. Oh, yeah. You know, so I can remember my parents coming to watch one of my games, not knowing what is this, right? And I had pre-wrap around my things to keep my ears to my head and a big old ponytail, and you know, everything falls down, and then some girl pulls my head back and smashes it in another girl's head. So I had this huge shiner, and my parents are like, What is this? What are we doing there? And and the next day I had an interview uh to get accepted in the bachelor's master's accelerated engineering program. And so I'm like, This is this black eye, is this school spirit? Because I was playing, right? Because I, you know, it's not common for an engineering student, a female engineering student, to be in a bar room brawl, right? So what happened to your eye? It's like you can't walk into a room with an interview with a black eye and not have someone go not have a reason. But what happened? What's this here? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_07 19:21

So from at this point, obviously, from the stuff you're sharing, you got a brain, you're very smart. You did graduate high school. Um, school was obviously easy for you. Easy. Some people it's not so easy for. Um, so we are love you, Dad. That's me. That I love school. School was fun for me. It was actually a way where um, if I got good grades, I I could feel like I was doing something good. And I always knew that if I had those A's and B's on that report card, man, my father wasn't proud of you, son. So it was something that I strived for. Um, and it was total performance thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Mine were C's, dude. You got C's, it was like, you go, boy.

Choosing Engineering And Early Internships

SPEAKER_02 20:04

It's interesting. Me, you you guys know Daniel, yeah. Um, because he goes to to our church. Well, uh, when I had Daniel and then he went to kindergarten and stuff, it was then. I mean, I was like what mid-thirties when this was happening that I realized I just thought when people did this is a terrible, but this is real. This is what I thought. I thought when people got C's or D's or failed, it was because they just didn't try or didn't go. I I thought it was an effort thing because I just only knew that. So for me, I was a straight A student and it was easy easy. I mean, I had to work in the engineering classes, don't get me wrong, those are hard classes. But when I had Daniel, I was like, Oh, you can work really hard and still struggle. I didn't know that. I didn't know that was a thing. And it actually helped with a lot of things, right? Like dealing with coworkers, like, oh, okay, we're I I understand now why it doesn't come easy to everything. I didn't know that that was a thing. I don't know why. Why would I only assume that? Uh nobody told me that, but that was a you know how you mindset these incorrect things that you need to adjust, especially when you're gonna work with people. But all these, you know, as we grow older, right? Ideally, your emotional intelligence is improving over time. But that's one of those I remember like it's snapping, like, oh wait, not everybody's a straight A student. I didn't know that. Like I thought you could be if you wanted to. I didn't know that you can't, and I Daniel still, I mean, he nobody works as hard as he does. I always see him with his little projects. It's really hard to to be with strives to be a straight A student. You go, Daniel, keep it up, buddy. He's still battling. He's battling. And in about 35 days, he'll be 50% of an engineer.

SPEAKER_07 21:51

Come on, that's so awesome. It's already been two years he's been over there.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Two years. April twenty fourth.

SPEAKER_04 21:55

Time flies.

SPEAKER_03 21:56

Where'd you go to college?

SPEAKER_02 21:57

I went to the Rochester Institute of Technology. Technology. So if you're from out here, you probably never heard of it. But Intel and Motorola mostly.

SPEAKER_07 22:04

Sounds like New York something or other. Kind of like an Evit thing.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

It's it would be kind of an equivalent where there's a technology piece. So there really isn't another school out here in Arizona that matches it. Maybe in like in the middle of the country, you might have heard of Drexel. Oh, yeah. Um, if you go like Cal Poly from California, something like that. Um, or maybe like WPI, one of those kind of um or Colorado School of Mines, like a specialty engineering school. So it was known for engineering, but it's also known for film and video. It was also known for um photography. It has a lot of things it's known for.

SPEAKER_07 22:39

How in the world did you grow up in Catholic school and doing good grades and have a want to or a desire to be an engineering? That's a fun story. Where did that come from?

SPEAKER_02 22:51

Sister Peters. So one of the nuns that she was our guidance counselor. And so I went to her because we all had appointments. I think we were sophomores when this happened. And I was like, okay, what do I, what am I supposed to do? You're the guidance counselor. And she was like, Well, you're good at math and science. You should be a nurse or a teacher. And you've you've heard like I'm up that age where that's what they told girls then. And I was like, ugh, yeah. I don't like touching people, and I don't like children. So that's a big thing. She was just talking about that before. So uh hard pass. Yeah. So then at that time, I um they had we, you know, I I tell this story sometimes when I'm doing mentoring calls and things like, you know, we had books. We didn't have Google or Chat GPT, right? So I had a book, and each each page there was a paragraph that had a job description, like would tell you what this job does. And then my study hall, I would just read the book, you know, a big old two-inch thick book and like post-it note the ones that didn't sound terrible. Okay. And then I just went back through it. And so eventually I narrowed it down to engineering because the things were interesting, it just sounded interesting. And I had like, you know, I want to go to space or you know, whatever engineering. I think a couple of them were physics related. I was taking physics at the time. I had a cool teacher, and uh, she had just gotten all these lasers and she needed help setting them up, so I could help setting up. So it was just like hands-on and cool. And of course, no one knew what an engineer was then. I still don't.

SPEAKER_07 24:18

So I still don't. If you don't mind me asking, when did you graduate?

SPEAKER_02 24:22

I graduated from high school in 1991 and then college in 1996. I went to a five-year program.

unknown 24:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:28

Yeah, nice. Yeah. We won't say what that is. Uh it's they can figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 24:33

It's you know, it's all totally just it's all rel relative anyway.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

So, what is an engineer?

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Because I think an engineer, I think of people who build buildings or bridges or the people that would build bridges or ships would be probably more of a civil engineer. So I'm a mechanical engineer by degree. Oh uh, Daniel's studying electrical engineering. Um, but I mean you're just different parameters of engineering. Right. Industrial engineers would be more like hands-on people. That's me. Um, and and in in my internships, I did kind of a little bit of each. And I'm more of a project manager kind of engineer. I'm not a super technical engineer. I take I know that the people who are actually touching and doing this stuff already know the things. So I do a lot of interviewing and then putting the right people in the right places. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:20

I didn't okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

In my early career, I was more hands-on. I was an applications engineer, so that would mean I would fly out to a place where they have a piece of our equipment and either I would be installing it or showing them how to use it or show them how to use it, or perhaps I would be trying to sell somebody, you know, do the pre-sales like here's why it's amazing, and you should buy it. Okay. And uh I really liked the hands-on piece, but you can't travel all around and then have little kids. Well, you can, but the way I wanted to be as a mom, I wanted to be hands-on at home with the kiddos. So when I had Daniel, I stopped traveling because I had been travel I traveled the globe in the early careers.

SPEAKER_07 25:59

So hold on, we need to go back. Gotta go back to how you met Rich.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

Oh, how I met Rich. Oh, that's a good story. So I worked at Motorola here in Phoenix. Nice.

SPEAKER_07 26:08

And um after you graduate.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

So in 1996, when I graduated, I had done several internships, but I moved here to work for Motorola. And I was at a party.

SPEAKER_07 26:19

Didn't your didn't grandma work for Motorola?

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Yeah. Well, back then in the 90s.

SPEAKER_07 26:25

She she worked there for years, and then right before her.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

She was one year away from full benefit retirement, and they laid her off, then turned around and hired like 200 young people. Yeah. Yeah. That's not nice. Yeah, they did her dirty.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

In the 90s, it was considered the employer of choice, and it was the largest employer in the valley. And so they recruited a lot of young people from college. So I was that's when I came out. But I was only at Motorola for like four to five years max. And then I went to a startup.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

Um, and by then it was starting to become like on semiconductor NXP and things like that. But I I had heard stories, but I, you know, when you're 22. Just out of college, you don't know. You don't really understand.

SPEAKER_04 27:06

Well, it was funny because the kid I went to school with who was like a year or two older than me, which lived in a neighborhood, they laid mom off and I was like, What the hell? And he's like, dude, I just got a job in Motorola. And I'm like, wait a minute. I'm like, wait a minute. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 27:19

And sometimes it's because they they have to have the new knowledge from school, and it's not like a one-to-one, but it's perceptive, it's hard to say. But like I mean, Motorola is almost non-existent now anyway.

SPEAKER_04 27:33

Yeah. She worked there as long as I could remember, man. You know what I mean? She would always she she had like uh what do you call it? Uh uh investment in there.

SPEAKER_02 27:41

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:42

I kept every like every quarter she would get a check from Motorola for her investments that she had in there. So she had been there for quite a while, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 27:50

And it was very much a family company, and um and it was a great place to work and you know.

SPEAKER_04 27:55

And then she went to California another Michael Chair Place California summer rather than Jammer. Yeah, she worked there for a while too.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Was she like an operator working there?

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Yeah, she always had this like hazmat suit looking thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

Semiconductor. So that's the same industry that I worked in in the early career, but then I moved more to just printed circuit board test and printed circuit board manufacturing.

SPEAKER_07 28:19

Is it like Intel? Intel would be a semiconductor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

So at the time when I moved to the startup, that was uh Intel was hiring like crazy. And so they I had friends, they would get an incentive if one of their friends got hired. So they're I'm like, well, what the heck here? You know, here's my resume. But I didn't want to tell my boss I was looking because I was like only five years, so I had been helping with uh what they call a beta test where some a company put their equipment in our lab and I was testing it. And so I asked them, Would you be a reference for me? And they were like, No, you should come work for us. Oh wow. And so I that's how I ended up leaving Motorola going to a startup was because I was um kind of being wooed by Intel. Um, I always joke that I I never worked at Intel, um, but I use them every time I need a raise.

SPEAKER_05 29:11

Good people to use.

SPEAKER_02 29:13

I could just go to Intel here in Chandler. Um, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:16

Where'd you do some of your internships at?

SPEAKER_02 29:18

So my first internship was at a small company. Like this goes back to, you know, we didn't have again no Google, no computer. So you literally had um the phone book. So I wrote letters. Wow. I opened the phone book and to engineering. The yellow pages for those of you that have never seen them Google it.

SPEAKER_04 29:35

I was trying to protect your age, but you're totally just blowing people. What's that?

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Most of my stories expose that.

SPEAKER_02 29:43

So they opened the open the book and just to engineering, and I sent 96 paper letters with my resume to them, and one of the recipients was an a Rochester Institute of Technology alum. Yeah. And so he was like, I'll bite. I know what I know that these you know students need that for because you're the chicken and egg. You can't get your first job because you don't have any experience, but you don't have any experience because no one will give you the first job. Right, right. So how do you do it? So I had to say, That guy knew what Rochester was producing. He went to the city.

SPEAKER_06 30:13

He went there. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

And um he probably like owns an island off of Costa Rica right now, right? But I didn't know enough about what to um, you know, how to um stay in touch and network. I didn't know that. And at that time I was making that's funny. So I was making three something an hour at home grocery store, right? And so this internship, which I viewed as terrible because it was so boring at the time, I was making$750. Oh, wow. So it was like wow.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

That was really good money back then.

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Right, back then. So anyway, I did everything from answer the phone to whatever. But my main job, I would wear a cass uh headset and listen to cassette tapes. Google that one too. Um, with this old this old Italian guy ranting about inventing alternate fuels. Really? And alternate, like basically like what should we do instead of gas. And I would type what he was saying because we were codifying his inventions to apply for patents. Oh, really? Wow. So I would just type what he's saying, but it was so boring, right? I mean, sitting there just typing this guy's ranting, answering the phone, making coffee, like it was the worst job, right? However, I two things that have stayed with me my entire career. Number one, I type faster than the speed of lightning because I was, you know, you did 24 by seven typing. And number two, I can listen to accents over the phone now, or you know, it wasn't a tape at the time, but over the phone, and then I can help like okay, I know what they're saying, right? It taught me how to listen. And I've worked from home since 1999 before it was a thing with a global audience. And so there'll be times on the phone where you know someone's been messaging me going, What is he saying? I can't understand. I just had this happen Friday. This one gal is from Malaysia, another gal is uh from California, and she's like, I can't understand anything she's saying. I'm like, I will be your interpreter. So you're sitting there typing what she's. I'm like, I know what she's saying. I mean, you just I learned how to listen. So that was my first internship. But again, I you know, it was boring. I didn't know to like keep in touch, so I didn't want to do that again. So I went to the next internship, which was at hold on one sec.

SPEAKER_07 32:19

But now you had some I was just gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 32:23

So if you're watching this and you are younger, it is not what you know, it's who you know. And it really is about relationships and networking and connections.

SPEAKER_04 32:33

For sure. You could have a degree and not be able to get a breakthrough somewhere unless you know somebody that can get you that breakthrough. True. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

The second internship was at Johnson and Johnson. Oh, really? And the way I got that one is uh also comical. So back then we would you would look up on this like little screen. It was we called it the vax. It was not even a computer. You would look up the little job listings and then it would give you a code like C9, and then there was a wall of mailboxes, and you would find C9 and you'd put your resume in the box.

SPEAKER_08 33:06

Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_02 33:07

But I somehow, I don't know how I had this wisdom at the time, but I was like, you gotta get to the top of the stack because they're gonna open up. So I went and bought just a slightly different colored paper. Oh, so it stood out so that it would stand out in the stack and then they would put on the top, and it worked. Yeah, and so I got I mean, not that my resume wasn't good, but you still have to cut through. But it had to look different than everybody else. But it's so different now, right? Because now it's digital. How do you stand out digitally totally different? But back then you could just put a different colored piece of paper on the front of the stuff. That's okay. That's really good. So I got an interview with Johnson and Johnson, so they make Tylenol. I worked for McNeil Consumer Products. Everything now. And I worked in a factory where they were manufacturing Tylenol, and my job was to build safety guarding so that like if the worker was, you know, pressing the button, he couldn't like get cut by something or get you know whatever accidents happen. And so I sat in a really like little dark cubby and did design work and was like, I hate design work. Really? Why did I go to school for mechanical engineering?

SPEAKER_04 34:08

So t so tedious.

SPEAKER_02 34:10

Yeah, so it wasn't for me, but because I'm a people person.

SPEAKER_04 34:13

When you were doing engineering, this is not what you were thinking.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

Well, I think I just didn't know enough. You know, when you go to school, and this is one of the reasons that uh I you probably neither uh you both probably don't know this, but I'm actually an early career coach. Like I do advising to help students figure out what their major is, because otherwise you end up in school, which costs billions of dollars, and then you're like, oh, you're somewhere you don't want to know what I want to do. Only now you're up to your eyeballs in debt from school. So back back on my end, like no one knew what engineering was. I was really doing it because I was told, like all women at that time, and I don't think we do this as much anymore with men and women, but back then you were told, you know, you can be this or you can be that you'd be a teacher, you'd be a nurse. And I just was like, No, yeah, I'm good at math and science, and I don't want to be put in a box, right?

SPEAKER_04 35:04

And so I can see that about you.

SPEAKER_02 35:06

I just wanted to do my own thing, but I didn't really know what an engineer did either. And my dad would always, you know, how you get the instruction for something, and it's like, what are these? These instructions are horrible. He would say freaking engineers.

SPEAKER_04 35:20

So an engineer and engineering classes, what are they teaching you?

SPEAKER_02 35:23

Yeah, so the engineering classes is totally tons of math and lots of physics and chemistry and science, but those are like the prereqs. So that's your first two years. Yeah. And then the next classes you start to specialize. So the mechanical engineers, I took things like heat transfer, um, I took um fluid dynamics, so the like the flow of air, flow of fluids. Um, I wasn't really good at any of these necessarily, but I was pretty good at the control systems class, which was more of an electrical engineering class. Um, and when by the time you get to like your later years, then you're doing more project-based work. So as an example, um, there was a John Deere tractor that maybe it was not that brand. I think it was John Deere. It was a tractor, and you could you would and a partner would go pick a piece off of it and then you would redesign it to be less materials or more functional in some way. So maybe you wanted it to be lighter. And another project I did, my partner, she was a firefighter as a you know, a hobby. And she was smaller than me. So she would struggle with the equipment, right? She's a smaller person. And so we did we took the uh the oxygen tank and we're like, what if you made it out of a different material? Like, could you make it way less so you still had all the same functionality, but a smaller body frame could wear it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because she struggled with the equipment. You know, you put all the stuff on her, she can barely move. So those are the kind of things we did in Nintendo. That's cool. That's really interesting. Yeah, so the that job, then six months, I was like, okay. At Johnson and Johnson in the dark corner. In the dark corner. Now, what did I do? Because I don't want to do this design thing all day long. So I went back to school for the next semester because this was like you'd go out on a you know a summer internship equivalent. We called them co-ops because they were in different times of the year and then back to school. And then my next job was at Ford Motor Company in Michigan.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

Is that why you guys are Ford people?

SPEAKER_02 37:21

It's not coordinate. It's actually uh just checking it's actually a coincidence that we're gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 37:28

I'm trying to understand why people become Ford people. I'll just kidding. The car guy, man. Big time.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

It's there's the You gave your husband a hard time. The car thing is funny.

SPEAKER_04 37:38

And I apologize, and I hope he knows I was just kidding, Rich. Just kidding, buddy. He loves you, dude.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

How we became a Ford people is because my company um uses Ford, and we bought the car that I drive super cheap from somebody. So it could have been anything. We didn't care about the rent. The second the the silver truck that Rick Rich drives, that was because his mechanic friends told him this is the time window that you want, otherwise, they're hard to maintain. And he happened to do a lawn job and there was one next door, so he bought that one. And then the Bronco is a different story, right? Classic Bronco.

SPEAKER_04 38:10

I forgive you guys for being poor people.

SPEAKER_07 38:13

It's weird, man. Car people are nuts. I don't get it. I'm not one.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

But I did work at Ford.

SPEAKER_07 38:18

Well, you're either a Chevy guy, a Ford guy, or a Mopar guy.

SPEAKER_02 38:21

There's no I think my dad was kind of a Ford guy for a while, but then he had like that one bad experience, so then he moved, and now he's like a Dodge guy. You know, I think that's a thing. But that's probably also like our age and up. Oh, yeah. Because my kids would are going to say Yeah, they don't care. Give me a Toyota. Yeah. So I when I worked at Ford, I had a really awesome job because like Ford in Michigan for brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

Yep, yep.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

So I was on a product line, um, not in Dearborn, which is like the main headquarters, but in a smaller area. Um, I lived in Rochester and Rochester, funny, because I lived in Rochester, New York. Now I moved to Rochester, Michigan. But the by yourself? Yep.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

How was how was the transition from like leaving more than that to being on the oh yeah, it's it's interesting to think about that now, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Because Travis is 16 right now, uh Cooper just turned 18 and Daniel's 20, right? But I left my house when I was 17. Really? Wow. Yeah, so I I started kindergarten with my own. Do you have a confidence? I don't think I just or you just had a will or a free speech. I mean I can remember, I don't know, you probably never did this either of you, because it maybe is more of a girl thing. But do you remember you would have like paper chains, you would take a little loop and make the loop and you'd count down to stuff? I don't think that was a I used to do it for Christmas. Did you do it for Christmas? Okay. I all I can remember is being 15 and having one counting down to graduation. But I nothing bad happened. There was no like I but I knew I wasn't meant to be in the snow. Yeah. So I was looking to get out of the weather. Yeah, um, but that's the only real thing. And then the college, you know, I applied to a handful of schools.

SPEAKER_07 40:06

And Rochester was Rochester was one.

SPEAKER_02 40:08

Well, I got I wanted I was dead set on Princeton. I think part of that was you know how people are um, you know, Ivy League is the way to go. Right now I know so much better and I know so much more. And there's nothing wrong with Ivy League, but it is also not necessary. Abundance is there for everybody, but I didn't get into Princeton because, you know, back to my guidance council, they didn't know to tell us to take all these tests. So I didn't have the right, you had to take this test, that test, this test. Nobody told me, so of course I applied without it, and they don't get in. Right. Okay. So I got into Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Buffalo, which was sort of the mainstay for my town, if you will. I got into hold on.

SPEAKER_07 40:46

Uh because of what you just said about how the guidance counselor didn't tell you about the test, it's really cool that now you're able to coach the young people. Yeah, so you need to take these tests. This is what you need to do. All the stuff I love that about because that's God. Right. All the stuff that you didn't get that you should have, now you're able to do and show and give to the younger ones so that they do.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

You can have all your options. And that's great. I I think right now, living it too, with the three boys all around this age, right? We there some kids should go to Ivy League schools, but if you don't, it's okay. It's gonna be fine.

SPEAKER_01 41:22

It's gonna be okay.

SPEAKER_02 41:23

None of this matters. I just saw a woman post in a social media group about teens the other day. She's like, My child is, you know, as a five point something. I'm like, I didn't even know that was a thing. And they didn't take this one test, and so now, like, is their life over? No. Yeah, no, none of this matters. Then you just pivot, and there's another 7,000 opportunities. It's just which one is best for you. Anyway, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:46

So there's other great schools that do the same things that are not correct in the IB league system. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

And so I I didn't know which schools, I just I think it was more just like, you know, you're good at school, so go for the gusto, right? But we I didn't get in. And then um I got into the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is uh more of um very similar to the school I did go to, it's just in a different part of New York, and then another school card called Clarkson, which may be perceived as a little bit higher technically, um, but it's even a smaller part of town. Um, but I went to a weekend, you know, experience at Rochester Institute of Technology. We call it RET. You like it? And I was like, this is it. This is where I want to go. My energy aligns to this. I liked it here. It was fun. I'm gonna just go here.

SPEAKER_07 42:32

I see, I seen, I seen you doing trips with the boys, and that's basically what they're getting is this weekend experience, this is what the campus is like. That's cool. That's cool that colleges do that.

Ford Plant Lessons On People And Process

SPEAKER_02 42:42

Yeah, I'm actually going back to my college next month because there's like a reunion of a bunch of different people that are from the Greek, you know, sorority fraternities because we're still friends. Yeah, that's awesome. 30 years ago.

SPEAKER_04 42:56

That's awesome. Yeah. Wow. So you're at Ford. What were you doing at Ford?

SPEAKER_02 43:00

So at Ford, um, they had a production line that they built clutches for different cars, including the Taurus. And they needed to have that.

SPEAKER_07 43:10

Do they do they even make clutches in cars? They do. They they still have manual cars.

SPEAKER_04 43:15

Oh, well, even a regular car has a clutch. Even a regular car has a clutch.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

Um, so the the the assembly line was supposed to make 3,000 clutches a day. Yeah. And or a shift, I should say, and they were not making their numbers. And so that was they hired the intern, me, to try to figure it out. Right. And so I was like, okay, and this is more of an industrial engineering job in some ways, because you go down to the line and you just try to figure out what's happening is like kind of people studies, like timing studies and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 43:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 43:45

And so I this is what I'm trying to teach Daniel, because he's going on his first internship of like you have to go talk to the people that do the work.

SPEAKER_00 43:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:52

But there's kind of a con uh a dynamic here where at least at that time and in that fourth season. The engineers didn't go down to the floor.

SPEAKER_03 44:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:03

And so I was like, uh, how do you learn if you don't go down to the floor? So I was like, uh, do I have to do that? So I went down to the floor. Yeah. And I would just talk to the people working next to them. Who are running the machines? Yes. Like, what are you doing? People who are doing the work. Why are you doing that? And so I learned what was happening.

SPEAKER_03 44:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:22

And it was a variety of things, but there was a cool promotion that the company had where, like, if you put in a process improvement idea, you would get points. So I was like taking their what they they did, they are also not paperwork people, right? They're line workers. So they're like, and maybe they're frustrated, maybe they whatever. Who knows? They weren't gonna do paperwork. I was like, can I do the paperwork? And so I would put their names and mine on there, and we got all these points. And so then they started to like me. And then of course I made a difference. And some of them were silly, like there was a big control arm, it would come down and it would be doing something. And I'm like, what is it doing? And they're like, Oh, we used to build three flavors of clutches on this line. Now we only build one. So it's testing to see which flavor it is. And I'm like, Well, we can make no sense. We can get rid of that because we only have one. Wow. Yeah. Oh, and this is fun. So in a Ford plant in the 1990s, right, there's not a lot of women. And so I'm, you know, I'm already bucking this by trying to be an engineer. So I put it, you have to put in a ticket. So I put in a ticket in their little user thing, and then they dispatch somebody to come work on it. And the people I was working with are like, yeah, good luck getting these tickets. It's gonna take forever, right? These guys are busy and they don't care about your improvement ideas. And then boop, the guy was there in a flash, and they were like laughing, and I was like not catching the joke. Now, mind you, I'm I'm like 19 years old at this time. Oh wow. So I'm not catching a lot of jokes. Yeah, okay because I'm 19. Yeah, and I'm I'm I'm from a you know conservative Catholic family, so I haven't seen anything. Yeah. What am I even doing in Detroit? We don't know. And so what it was was a woman's name on the ticket got an instant response because at that time there were no women on the ticket. Women, and so and it was, but this is you know, kind of like a construction, woo-woo, kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah. Not but that's not what I was necessarily going for. But once I observed it, I would just put a different woman's name every time I filled in a ticket because then they would come and they're like, I see you. And I was like, hey man, I gotta play the game. Yeah, guys are genies. But then they thought it was, you know, pretty good. Yeah. And I figured out their systems. But I had some cases like I worked over the shutdown, and they uh part of the plan. What do you mean shut down? They would take like three weeks over the summer, two, three weeks, to do preventative maintenance around the whole facility. So they would shut down and only the skeleton crew would be in, and then everybody would have time off. And they they had an area that was stamping the where they would literally make the engines like stamp the hot metal, right? And the one stamper like wasn't working. It it's not called a stamper, I can't think of what it's called, but it wasn't working, it was stuck, and I was like, Well, it's because of the safety's on. Um, and so it's you need don't you need to take that off? And but they literally could not hear me speak because I was a woman. Oh man. And so I was like, the safety is on, and they're like, get you know, not only are you a woman, but you're young, so therefore you have no idea what you dismiss, and you're new here, so you can't know it. So I finally got a I asked one of the guys, can you just say this sentence, please? He did, and they were like, Oh my god, the safety's on. I was like, right. So you know, I did have examples in my career where it was like, really, really, why? But it you can choose to then beat that drum or just kind of laugh and use it to grow. And so I've always just been like the whatever, that was dumb. That you couldn't see me because I was young and and a girl, but whatever, I solved the problem.

SPEAKER_07 48:04

It very well could have, you know, get to that thing where it's oh men, you know what I mean? And then you're mad at men, but you didn't.

SPEAKER_02 48:11

I just decided that's not what I wanted to do. Yeah, and and then um yeah, so that summer was really fun. The so the second shift, um I think the reason they weren't making their numbers is because they were playing cards in the break room.

SPEAKER_03 48:25

Really?

SPEAKER_02 48:26

So that wasn't really boys will be boys. It wasn't really an easy one to solve. Um, but my last week they both shifts made their numbers because they liked me and they knew that I was like, I'm trying to get a job here, you guys. Like, can you make your numbers for me? So that last week everybody made their numbers. I got to present to the plant manager and it was pretty cool. And I did get offered to go back there, but their offer was slow. Really? So by then I was like already got an offer to come full time to Motorola in Phoenix, and Phoenix versus Detroit was the no comment. You wanted out of the snow.

SPEAKER_04 48:59

So yeah. So you were like 20 when you came out here?

SPEAKER_02 49:02

22.

SPEAKER_04 49:02

Really? Wow.

SPEAKER_07 49:04

And a graduate with a degree, yep, master's degree in engineering at 22?

Meeting Rich And Building A Life

SPEAKER_02 49:09

At 22. My goodness. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:11

So that had to have been what 93, 94, 96, 96. Really? Wow. Yeah. All right. I was already in prison by then. Jesus.

SPEAKER_08 49:20

He was on his way to wear a cell. Oh God.

SPEAKER_07 49:27

Amen.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yeah. So so let's see. You asked how I met Rich. So 90. So I moved out here in 96, worked at worked at Motorola, and I had been dating somebody for a while, and then we broke up. And so you know how when you have a bad breakup, you're like, I'm just gonna be alone for the rest of my life. It's not worth it. So I was kind of coming out of that.

SPEAKER_04 49:44

I know the story. I'm excited to hear it.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

I was kind of coming out of that. And so I ended up, I was going to a party, and uh I at the party I was kind of like, okay, maybe if I meet someone at this party, I'll think about dating again. And so we go to this party, and I know everybody at the party, every man at the party I know. And so I'm like, well, there's that. I guess I guess we're really done with this game. And then late in the night, um, Rich and his buddy Brandon and their friend James uh came in and Brandon and I worked together. And James and Rich were not from the Motorola group, but Brandon had gone to the hockey game with them or something, Diamondbacks, I think it was a hockey game, and so they came after the game. So now Rich is like the only and and his friend James, they're the only two that are not we don't know. So I was like, oh, okay, this is interesting. Okay, so then we we ended up um have you heard you've heard the whole story, right? Okay, so we're getting drinks and uh someone bumps someone, and so richest drink spills. And I was like, Well, where I come from, when drink spills, it's 10 push-ups. And of course he looks at me like, Who are you? Go away. And so then later, you know, someone bumps me and the drink spills. And so he's like, Where I came from, that's 10 push-ups. I'm like, we go right now, right now. And so they cleared the little dance floor. It literally they had built a dance floor in their living room, so they cleared the dance floor, and so here we are, full out, full on your toes push-ups, right? And so we get to 10 and we kind of looked at each other like I'm not losing to you. And then now we're at like 15, and like, well, now we're getting into troublesome areas here, getting to 20, and then finally we just both said, like, okay, yeah, and draw, right? Because I'm I'm like, he doesn't want to lose to the girl, but I'm like, oh, I'm not losing just because I'm a girl. So so that's awesome. You know, he got my number, and then that was it. Well, I went on a business trip overseas in Asia or something for several weeks, and so he to me, he never called. But what had happened was the guy that I worked with told him she's in Asia, so don't bother because she can't take your call anyway. She's in Asia. So then three weeks later, you know, I come home and then like he gave me some time to adjust because he's being thoughtful, but I'm like, I don't know. So when he called, I was like, Rich, who, you know, right? Because it had meant to be like, oh great. The push-up one. I don't know, but he had a plan. He was like, I would like to go to the um to the comedy club on whatever date at this time. Does that work for you? And I was like, Nobody has a plan like this. This is a good sign. So I was like, sure. So that was the first date. And then there's a funny story he tells where um I had a coupon, like a buy one, get one for that same comedy club. So I'm asking all my guy friends, like, Do I bring out the coupon on the first date? And they're like, absolutely not. And so I was like, okay. And so he paid and then later learned about the coupon. And he's like, Man, if I knew she had a coupon, I would have just married her right there.

SPEAKER_04 53:02

So do you remember who you guys saw?

SPEAKER_02 53:04

Uh, don't remember who we saw.

SPEAKER_04 53:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

I don't, I remember we ate like prime rib or you know, some nice dinner. Like a nice steak dinner. It was just at the Tempe Tempe Comedy Club, but it wasn't, I don't think it was anyone really noteworthy, but it, you know, it was fine. But it was, yeah. So that was cool.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

What got you as form in the push-ups?

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Say it again. What got you? The form of the push-up. It was the plan, bud. The plan. I'm sure back then neither one of us knew much about form on push-ups, but we've got to be.

SPEAKER_04 53:35

That's right. That's good. You had made a comment about doing push-ups or something, and I said, Oh, I think I got 35. And she's like, I'll have to check the form. I'm like, oh really.

SPEAKER_06 53:46

That's a coach right there.

SPEAKER_04 53:48

So when we were doing our challenge, I did a video of like, how's the form? Amen, buddy. Oh, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 53:55

Well, Rich by occupation is a physical therapy assistant now for the last you know, 20 years. Before that, he worked at a car dealership as a service writer. But you talk about checking form. You're doing a workout in the living room, and he's like, put your butt down. So there's constantly form adjustments. I'm like, God, I hear that.

SPEAKER_07 54:13

That's how he's a Ford guy. He worked at the dealership. I did work at a dealership. Chrysler dealership. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Oh dealing with those people. I think Ford people are bad.

SPEAKER_04 54:24

Shh. Try dealing with some Chrysler people. Them people are nuts, dude. Jeep and Chrysler people. Car people. I deal with them all day. They by far are the worst, man. Oh my god. Oh, they are. They're just especially old Chrysler people with their old like challengers and challenges. Oh man.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

Probably most of his people, because they worked at 17 years for the Chrysler dealership. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:48

Yeah, we make fun of Chrysler people.

SPEAKER_07 54:50

So you you start dating rich in 90?

SPEAKER_02 54:53

Like right around 99 into 2000. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 54:57

Well, doing what you were doing, how how did the quote Y2K is that? Because that was a whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 55:03

It was a whole thing, and then it was nothing. I mean, everybody was worried about it. There was projects on it and all that, but it didn't really, I wasn't on any of those projects. I was working in applications as I told, as I mentioned earlier. Uh would have been right on the bubble. I moved on March 31st, 2000. So yes, I was there for like the last for three months.

SPEAKER_04 55:28

Were they worried about it?

SPEAKER_02 55:29

Yeah, I mean, all the tech and we have all there's projects that come up like this all the time where there's some sort of technical thing. Like right now it seems like Microsoft. Because of the way the software is written. Really? Yeah. And it ha this these kind of projects are like everyday projects now because you have um hackers, you have um Microsoft will have um c dependencies that influence, like you think about if you're using a computer that has Microsoft on it, it's a downstream effect. If they change something then your equipment doesn't work anymore, what do you do? Right. And I'm just picking on them. There's tons of companies like that, right? Um every company. Yeah, like like the airlines, right? So all the software that was written to determine where they all are in the air at the same time, right? That was probably like DOS-based, and nobody does DOS anymore, so they put some front end on it, and then the front end, right? You have to keep evolving. So these kind of projects like that Y2K project exist and the daily. That's the whole idea.

SPEAKER_07 56:31

And this is all this is all stuff that engineers figure out. Engineers figure out. Okay. Yeah. All right, thank God for engineers. Brainiacs.

SPEAKER_04 56:39

Hey, just give me the tools and the parts, and I'll put it together for you, man. I'll do the work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

So Dan Daniel's internship this summer is with a company um called Hensel Phelps, and they build infrastructure. So a lot of times you haven't heard of them or companies like Burns McDonald, but they're behind the scenes with infrastructure. So you have to have the engineers draw the plans up, and then you have you, but you need the people to do the work too. Yeah, yeah. So I'm telling them, like when you get there to the construction site, you talk to the people doing the work.

SPEAKER_03 57:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Faith On Pause Then Back To Church

SPEAKER_02 57:08

They know all the stuff, right? And they probably have never talked to the engineer. Yeah. So if you can bridge that gap, you're gonna solve so many problems.

SPEAKER_07 57:16

So you said that basically you were born into the faith. Yes, through the church, and when you left home and you started your studies in the college and the different internships, and you started moving around. How was it for you with church?

SPEAKER_02 57:34

Right.

SPEAKER_07 57:35

With Catholic church, because I haven't really heard much about it.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

Yep, and that's because it really does kind of come back in line later. So 17 went to college. I tried going to church a couple times at school. There was church, there was a Catholic church there. Okay, but it was kind of early, and so I was a teenager, and so I wanted to sleep a little bit. Yeah, we're not doing that, and so I didn't really do anything with any church um in college. I mean, I did a ton of volunteer work, I was still, you know, trying to bring joy to those around me, still serving people, a lot of servant leadership, but no church.

SPEAKER_07 58:09

Yeah, and are you are you uh are you in your room or at in the dorms? Are you reading your Bible?

SPEAKER_02 58:15

No, I didn't I didn't even know that you like really should be doing that until much later. Really?

SPEAKER_07 58:21

Even in even growing up in the Catholic school Catholics don't read their Bibles, bud.

SPEAKER_02 58:26

They don't.

SPEAKER_04 58:27

That's for the priest, you go to church and they read it to you and they tell you about it.

SPEAKER_02 58:31

Well, so I should say I don't like making generalizations either. Um, but in general, I would agree that when I I was raised, we did not sit down and read our Bible.

SPEAKER_04 58:42

Let me rephrase that a lot of Catholics.

SPEAKER_02 58:43

Correct. But are people doing it today? Probably. Is it fair to say one religion doesn't doesn't know? But but uh what you're saying describes my experience, your experience, which was no one really said, hey, when you leave here today, you should go read this book while you're living. It wasn't. We did I did handbells, I was in the choir, those were our practices on like Wednesday, Thursday, then on Sunday you'd go to church and you'd have like a another like a Bible study group after church. So I've and a youth group. I mean, so compared to my peers, I was very churchy, if you will, because I did a lot of things in high school and in middle school and in grammar school related to the church. But I didn't I didn't know to study the Bible.

SPEAKER_07 59:29

It's like you you said the you said servant leadership. Yeah, so so you were doing the stuff.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

I was serving people, but I didn't know that I should be reading the Bible and looking for answers in that way until much later. What a relationship with God looks like, and I think we'll we'll get there as because we're chronologically exploring here. But I just had I I had to ask that because I was like, wait, we're already at half your life and nothing has come up, right? But that's very true. That's real. And when I was 22 and I moved here, so of course my dad was like, Did you find your church yet? And I was like, It did. It's on South Mountain when I hike. And so you would literally climb the mountain for 22 to jeepers, maybe even 30. I would just hike every Sunday. And so when my dad would be like, You go to church today, I'm like, I did, I prayed outside because I was in a mountain exploring all this creation that didn't exist when I grew up in the snow. And that was my answer. But again, no one told me you should be reading the Bible. I wasn't doing anything like that, and by then I wasn't in any kind of youth group or going to a church at all. So I was, I wouldn't say I ever was wavering in my faith, but I definitely wasn't working on a relationship with God, and I wasn't working on studying anything. I still feel like I was emulating good behavior as far as like being a good citizen, yeah, but I wasn't necessarily doing anything one way or another. It was just sort of like in between you still had you still had the heart of it. Yeah, but I wasn't doing anything.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:01

Did God ever meet you on that mountain? I mean, I'm sure you're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:05

Over and over would say would say, like during that, like I would have conversations like, I'm not supposed to be in a building right now. This is just not what is needed. I'm getting so much more from taking this break and just being here, right? So, yes, I think that was probably God talking to me, but I also wasn't really open to the conversation. I didn't know. Yeah, okay. Um, I just was there. So I think there was lots of knocking, and then I just missed it because I wasn't paying attention. I didn't know what to look for. Okay, and that probably covers like that 10 years, really.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:41

Um, Richard, I was gonna just I was just gonna say, what about Rich?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:45

Yeah, so you guys know Don and Carol. Yeah, oh my god. So Don and Carol, Don was um involved with Rich as a kid. He was one of his youth group leaders. Don listens.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:56

Wow, Don, I love you, bro.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:58

Yeah, so they've known Rich since he was a kid. Really? And um I got goosebumps, man. So and I think too, when Rich was probably before we had met, like early 20s, I don't know that he was going to church often either. I was a C and E, right? Because I'd go home for holidays and go with my dad. Yeah, but um Rich was definitely much more in his and he spent a lot more time as a kid at the church than I did. Like his dad and they did everything at the church. Um, but when we got together and then got married, we How long did you guys date? So we dated for like a year and a half and then we're engaged for like a year and then got married. So it'll it'll be 24 years on April 6th. Oh, come on now. Praise God. Yeah, so 24 years, but we didn't get married in church, we got married in like a garden, you know, because our church two families were from different churches and weren't quite sure how that would go. And neither one of us were really going to a church at the time, so we just did our thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:49

I got married at the courthouse.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:51

Yeah, I mean, buddy.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:53

It was just, you know, that's almost got married in prison, but they denied it.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:58

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_07 1:02:59

Yeah, it was the it was so so mom could after at his last prison sentence in order for actually the one before that, when I was in Mirana, she had applied for us to get married, and I was only doing eight months, and they denied it because I wasn't in there for long enough to retire.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:16

But they're like, dude, you got like four months left. You can get married after you get out, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_07 1:03:20

But the last one, he was getting ready to go in for four years, and in order for mom and the kids to be able to come see him, they had to get married. Uh you went in November 6, 2006, and I think you got that was the day you got married November 6th.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:34

I had to turn myself in November 7th. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Our honeymoon was spinning a courthouse.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:39

Oh my god. Well, ours.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:44

Yeah. A little different.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

Um yeah, but but you guys are hitting on something interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:50

How messed up my story really is sometimes. Well, it's just that stuff cracks me up. You know what I mean? I'm like, what the hell are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:56

It's just interesting. It's just different. Oh, it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:00

Praise God. I'm thankful for my story, by the way. Amen. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:04

Well, I think if everybody, it's funny because it doesn't matter the story, like it still brought us to here, right? That's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:10

Amen. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

I mean, we we are where we're supposed to be.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:13

See, and that's beautiful to me. You can go this way, or you can go that way.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:18

One life this way, one life this way, and eventually they're we're sitting here at a table and having conversations about Jesus. Yeah. Yeah. That's the beauty of it, man. It's really beautiful. And he knew before we did. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:30

Yeah. Yeah. So you were talking somewhere earlier about, oh, I think it was your question, Rowdy, to about prompting about like, well, what about reading your Bible? Yeah. So when we went to have kids, I was like, hmm, I don't really see myself sitting down at the kitchen table and like opening the Bible and being like, So, Daniel, this is what right? So I was like, we gotta find a church because I'm not good at that, and someone else is gonna have to help us. So we started going to Rich's family church right around in that.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:01

What year did you guys get married?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:02

2002.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:03

2002. I'm trying to figure out Daniel. So that's yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:05

So Daniel's born in 2006.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:07

All right. Yeah. All right.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:08

So we started actually now that I say that, we started going to church around 2002 because Rich's dad had um he had a brain tumor and then he was undergoing cancer treatment. And so it was important to him. So we started going to church with the the his family at their church. Yeah. Okay. And Brad, you guys might have met uh uh uh Rich's middle brother Brad. Brad and Tim were both so Rich has Brad, Tim, and then his sister Debbie. But Brad and Tim were both going to that church as well.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:38

So we would go Was Tim the one that was married to the lady that lived in Chandler that we used to go to Bible study with?

SPEAKER_02 1:05:46

Maybe Brad was I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:47

No, there was a Tim.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:49

Oh no, no, that wasn't a different Tim. T Tim, I don't think Tim hasn't gone to the You've known them for this long?

SPEAKER_04 1:05:55

They were at Pastor Tom's first church that we went to. I didn't know them at the time. You know what I mean? I but they were they were at the Bible study. No, they weren't.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:03

We weren't right. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:04

But she's missing Tim. Because I remember Tim Tim and his wife were the house that we used to go to the Bible study at at that church.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:10

From from Cross Point. Oh, it could be. It could be. I we didn't go to Bible studies at Cross Point that were outside of the church. I went to one, but this was now after Pastor Amy and Tom.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:21

Swift got weird at the end.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:23

I yeah, that's probably right.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:24

Yeah. Cross Point, that was the one in Tempe. Yeah. Wow, dude. They were that church.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Yep. Wow. Yeah, so Cross Point is rich as the family church.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:34

Don and Carol.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:36

Them, us. We all Pastor Tom, but there's a lot of other people.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:40

And so it was before Pastor Tom was there that we started going there. Yeah. And then once we had, like I said, once we had kids, we were like, we definitely need to have a church. And um we tried Cross Point with the kids, but they did not like the the like the child care setup there. So it did we did our best, but then we just followed Pastor Tom.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:00

They let me do it. They let me do a student class one time.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:04

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:05

Oh boy. I have no idea. It was me, it was me and one kid. It was like the teenagers. Yeah. It was me and one kid, and they're like, hey, uh, dude called out. Do you mind filling in? And I'm like, sure. I mean, it's what do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? And they're like, Yeah, just go in there and you know keep these kids occupied for about an hour. And it was just me and one kid, and I have no idea what I did that day.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:26

Did you did you ever go to any of the work days when they would have like a work day at that church?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:31

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:31

So Rich Rich says, This is one of my favorite things that you did. So somehow we are we are on the maintenance committee there. Really? I don't do I know how to fix things. Like people assume, like, well, you're an engineer. I was like, right, but I just know how to ask the people that do this stuff. I don't actually do this stuff. I did at one point in my career take stuff apart and put it back together. It's not that I can't, but it's that's not your gift. Not what I do. Normally just pull all the smart people.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:58

That was literally my first church experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:01

Like outside of his dad's church that we went to a few times, that was my first like church experience. Okay. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:08:09

Yeah, and that that was kind of like. Well, were you 24?

SPEAKER_07 1:08:11

25.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:12

No, that was 2005. Yeah, you were 30?

SPEAKER_07 1:08:16

I don't know how old was that. Yeah, 32. Yeah, 33.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:19

33.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:20

Yeah, 33. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:21

But it was kind of an old-fashioned church when was it a Baptist?

SPEAKER_04 1:08:25

All around there in that Tempi area, because we went to a bunch of different churches, and I forgot how old school Tempi really was. That we went to a lot of those churches that were gray hairs.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:34

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

And we're walking in. I'm 30, she's mid-30s. We got a couple kids, and we're looking for like people our age. Oh, yeah. And we would go in, we would go into these churches that were gray hairs. Grant they they were happy to see us because we're like young people, you know what I mean? But we're like, old people, you know what I mean? That was the first church that we walked into that we saw people our age. You know what I mean? And it was like, oh, okay, all right. We saw kids running around. It was like, all right. Yeah. So that's what Pastor Tom was amazing.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:03

That was the first one where Pastor Tom walked up to him and told him that God had a plan for his life. That was the first time. He wanted to take us out to lunch, and I'm like, I'm like, really? What? Coming out of the life that we lived and the stuff that we did.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:20

Pastor Tom was just I tell him all the time that I cannot tell my story without including him in. It would be true for me too. It would be an injustice, not just to God, but to my testimony to leave him out because that point is the launching point into what I am now. It was that moment of walking into that church at that moment and the way that he treated me that just changed my life forever. I've never been talked to like that. I've never been treated like that. I had nobody ever tell me, oh, God's got a plan and a purpose for your life. And it's like, I haven't looked at my wife. He didn't grow up in church. I looked at my wife and I'm like, who the hell is this guy? And what the hell is he talking about? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:58

And once you get over the, I think he's woo-woo. And you go, well, maybe I should listen, right? That's when the magic starts.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:05

Well, we went out to lunch and we were talking, right? Dang. And they're like, well, what kind of music do you like? I'm like, oh, Metallica. And he's like, he likes Metallica. You know what I mean? And I'm like, wait a minute, you're in a suit and you don't look like a Metallica kind of guy. You know what I mean? And it just, they just seem very like normal people. Real. For sure. You know what I mean? Even today they send me this these Christian songs that are just like, girl, you know what I mean? I'm like, you are you people, man? They still blow me away, dude. They still do today. Carlinese are special people, man. Oh, yeah, they're different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:39

So the my story will link in with more than that. So when we went to that church, um, you know, after a while, Pastor Tom took on the commission. Like, I can't remember the details of if I think the pastor retired, then they're not. Didn't he pass away? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:54

I think he passed away.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:55

He might have. I guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:56

Oh, and he was like a voting. That was the that was like a family church, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:01

And so it was a church of God, you were asking earlier. What did that nation? A church of God.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:06

And from what I remember was the pastor had passed away.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:08

Could be.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:09

Pastor Tom came in and was taking over the church, and there was a lot of the family was kind of resisting what Pastor Tom's visions was kind of for the church.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:20

Their board had some very specific people and waves, and so it didn't always line up. I don't know the details. And we were like we had littles, we didn't get, we were like barely survived. I was standing in the hallway trying to get the kids to stop crying. But they but they had like younger, um, younger music coming in, and that's hard for people that are used to a very specific traditional hymns.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:46

That was the first time I seen somebody wash somebody's feet.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:48

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:49

Remember when there was a there was a those are special services. I think there was a pastor from Africa that came to the church. Wow. And Pastor Tom did a service where he washed his feet.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:58

I don't remember that. And I was like, oh, nasty. You know what I mean? You're touching dudes' dogs, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_04 1:12:05

But I get it now. Right. I get what he was in, you know what I mean. But at the time, I'm just like, oh, you dirty dude.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:11

Dirty dude.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:13

At the time it was like, what the hell are you doing? Oh, you don't touch somebody's feet, you know what I mean? But yeah, I get it now though.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:18

Yeah, so I did a Bible study with Pastor Amy, and I can remember it was a uh uh Rick Warren book. Yeah, and I can remember like the overarching theme was it's possible that your whole plan is just to be the mom. Yeah, not just but to that maybe your job is what your kids are gonna do. And I remembered that when I was having things with Daniel, like, but what if my only job, not I know that's not my I know now, yeah, that's not my only job. But back then God used that. I was like, what if this is my most important thing? If I think about like you asked about my role with Daniel is far more um involved in his faith and his walk with Jesus than I ever was uh at his age, and we kind of learned and what you got, you mean and what was done for you. Well you had more of an I think I just didn't didn't do it. Okay, you know, like he was evangelistic as a teenager, right? The front row on the left side of the church with the young people, several of them were invited by Daniel. Yeah, and there's you know some really good stories. Mr. Logan is one of the go boy! Um, you know, they're invited by Daniel, not by mom and dad, but by Daniel. Wow, and he has at his school stories, uh or just in attention.

SPEAKER_07 1:13:34

He's at he's at GCU and hooking me up with the pastor for the students over there, Pastor Smith. Yeah, he's I got his information trying to get him on here.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:42

Yeah, he's always connecting. Yeah, yeah. Oh wow, for sure. Yeah, and that's those people are special. That's me. I'm connecting, networking, training, teaching, always, and just what topic. I'm like, leave me the hell alone. I just want to do that. Like to people, yeah. That's more like this.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:55

This guy here, he networks all day. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, you do all that, dude. I'll just show up. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:02

Yeah. So um the first Bible study, that was something I remembered, but then we followed the Carlinis to the couple smaller locations we were talking before we were recording about that, right? We met at a school, we met at a how long were they at that church for?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:17

Do you remember? I'm I was only there probably six to eight months.

Radical Steps That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_02 1:14:24

Yeah, so Daniel was born in 2006, and I can remember holding him, so he was very little. And then we joined Life Life Link in 2013. So during those times, we were either at Cross Point or making our way to LifeLink via the other um plants that we're partnering with or working with Pastor Tom and Amy. And I was trying to preparing for this, I knew this would come up because of Pastor Tom, but I can't remember which church season we were in when he did a sermon on uh the book Radical by David Platt. Yeah, yeah. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:03

I remember the book, I don't remember the thing. The sermon.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:05

Okay, so he did a sermon on that, and like the call to action was, you know, go read this book.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:10

And kind of coming back to Rowdy saying, I haven't heard much about the Bible or whatever. And I that's true because it wasn't. I but I at that time didn't think I I I sort of think I felt like, well, I was born into this, I just always believe and I do what I'm supposed to do because I was trained from zero to 17 on what to do. And so there you go. I didn't know it needs to be a relationship, I didn't know it could grow. I didn't know that it could shift, I just didn't know. So when that sermon happened, it was the conclusion or recommendation was read radical by David Platt. And so that's when one of the things shifted. So kind of coming back to what he's saying, like, oh, I haven't heard much about okay. So the outcome of that book, there's four things that you're supposed to do. That's a great book. One is give generously, and they they have a lot of stories on what that means. One is do a mission, ideally outside of your town, yeah. One is read the Bible in a year, and the one is tithe.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:10

And this, those four things, that's when I started really changing and shifting and walking differently. So um the the at the time financially, like a lavish gift to me was a hundred bucks. So I'll come back to that. But I really wasn't in a position to go on a mission at that time.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:28

You mean somebody giving it to you? No, me giving.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:31

So it was like do a secret big gift, right? So like I was like, okay, I'm in, but like big to me at that time was a hundred dollars. Some of the some of the examples in the book had a lot more zeros on that, right? But to me, that that time. With what you had and with what you were working with. And so I I was like, I'm doing it, I just don't know how yet. And then the the mission, I mean, I had little kids, right? So Daniel is born in 2006, Cooper's in 2007, um, like the way they land their birthdates anyway, two years apart. Yeah. And then Travis, 2009. So I have little kids, I can't be like going, I'm gonna go. Bye, Rich Mal. Have fun with the kids. So what we did was we actually Pastor Tom and I, uh Amy used to tease at this time that I was his church wife um because she would. We planned we planned uh a rummage sale where we collected stuff from everywhere we could, and then we just gave it away.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:25

And we advertised to a low-income area right around the um the is it a dot? Is it a YMCA? It's at like Gilbert and Elliot. Um, and that neighborhood had kind of like smaller houses and so.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:38

Yeah, you're right, you're right around the town of Guadalupe, right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:41

So people would walk, people were walking in and we just gave everything away. So it was a rummage sale, but you would give it away. So that was my mission. It was local, but it was out of the box, and it was totally out of my comfort zone. It was something different. And then I met a lady while I was there that um she bought or not bought, it was all free, but like she needed something and we had to deliver it. And so I saw where she lived and I was like, now I know where my hundred bucks goes. So I put it in an envelope and I I addressed it and I mailed it with no return address. Like I put her address as a return address, just mailed a hundred dollar bill to the house. Yeah, yeah. And you know, no one knows that because that's just part of the book. And then you have the other the third one was read the Bible in a year, right? So I did. And then the fourth one was the tithing. Well, that was right around when the church did a thing, you know, if you tithe for 90 days and you don't like it or doesn't give you gifts, we'll give you money back. And I was like, okay, I'll bite. Yeah, yeah, right. Because that I we never learned that when I was a kid. Now, my dad was one of the highest donors at the church that he went to, but it was nothing like a 10% donation.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:45

Um, but he was one of the top, if not the top. Like he was definitely a top donor, but I know it wasn't anywhere near 10% that he gave, but he gave what he thought was reasonable, but no one ever talked about tithing. In fact, I can remember going, Rich, what is this word? Yeah, you know, I never heard of it. Yeah, and even though I grew up.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:03

Just so you know, just because you don't give terms, God still loves you and he appreciates your.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:07

Of course.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:08

But at the same time, you want to be blessed, test God in this and watch what he does. Correct. And so that's what I was gonna do. As long as you're giving cheerfully.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:16

Is I tried, I try we tried it, our household tried it. And so it was what year are we at?

SPEAKER_07 1:19:21

We're like and this is still at Pastor Tom's church.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:24

Yeah, so somewhere between 2006 and 2013. I can't I can't remember what year it was, honestly. But I remember I I we started been with Pastor Tom for 20 years. Yeah, isn't that something it's right around there? I can't remember what year he came, but Daniel was a baby. Oh, Pastor Tom dedicated all three of our kids. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Daniel was his first baby dedication. It was wow, yeah. Yeah, he's told me that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Forget these things.

SPEAKER_04 1:19:50

Because I mentioned you one time and he was like, you know, she was. I was like, because then I had no idea that you were at that church.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:55

Yeah, so I think Daniel was his first baby dedication, and he dedicated all three of our kids. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:00

Yeah. So somewhere in, you know, the kind of blending.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:04

Now he's obviously in Reinhardt Bunky. Come on, buddy. You go, man.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:08

He's paving the way for us to come behind him, bud. In Jesus' name.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:12

Yeah. So I we tithed as a household, and it was super nerve-wracking because it's like, what if this is too much money?

SPEAKER_07 1:20:18

It's a really stretching.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:19

Then I go to California for a business trip, and my boss, who lives in New Jersey at the time, he's like, Oh, oh, this is gonna be great. I'm gonna be in California too. Let's do your performance review in person. Yeah. And I never got a bigger raise ever in my whole career at that point, it was a significant runway of a career. And and I was just after you started tithing. Just after I started tithing. And then and then they gave um a lot of stock options and things too. So it was like, okay, I see you. I see you, guys. Right. And the the four things I you know, I keep as soon as I finish the Bible, I do it again. So I'm on the eighth time through right now of doing a Bible recap. But it does make a huge difference.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:00

And I'm doing it for my first time now each time with the Bible recap.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:04

Hear and experience different things, and I really like the Bible recap.

SPEAKER_04 1:21:07

That first year that you read through it, what what was that experience like?

SPEAKER_07 1:21:12

Yeah, I mean, it was because that was the first time you've picked up the Bible and are making it a discipline.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:17

And we would read, like in the like you said, in the Catholic church. I mean, we would read parts, we would have a sermon on it, we would know, like we read storybooks. I mean, it wasn't like I didn't know, but I never read the cover to cover. Yeah, and also don't know that I was like listening to her stuff either, right? Even even now doing the Bible recap when when um Terry Cobble goes back through and tells you all of the Bible readers. Yeah, when she goes through and she unravels stuff, I'm like, wait, what? How have I heard this? Like, how did you get that out of what we read? Never understood that before, so it's really helpful. But I think it's just like any any topic, whether it's fitness or finance, as you practice it, it becomes more habitual. And as it becomes more habitual, it gives you more value. And the same thing, like it all loops back, you know, to the to the other things.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:10

But we haven't even gotten to the fitness stuff yet, I think the beauty of the Bible is that the simplicity of it is for a layman man that could come and read it and understand the gospel, but as you continue to dig into it, it begins to unravel. You know what I mean? Yes. Not that it's ever changing, it's still the same, but our understanding and our perspective shifts, and we're like, oh, I didn't even know that was in there. I didn't like I hear stuff, like I'm like, I hear stuff and I'm like, I got I've read that verse a hundred times. I never got that. Got that. Because you hear somebody else's perspective and you're like, dang, that makes sense now. I love that about the Bible. Yep. It blows me away that it just keeps unraveling like that.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:50

The mysteries of God.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:52

Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:53

And I would say the last 10 years, because it's been under that, you know, ever since I read it the first time, you know, and then just read it again. But I like add new new things to my practice, if you will.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:07

Um are you a morning time or nighttime?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:10

Uh whenever you're gonna do it. Just like exercise. It works whenever you do it. I hear you, God. Whenever you're gonna get it done. So I prefer, you know, the nice wake up and like listening to it while I'm maybe walking the dog or something like that, so that I'm only focused on the road.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:25

You have a routine that you do every morning. I do have a routine. Yeah, my breakfast books. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:30

So that's my preference. But if it doesn't go that way, because sometimes the day is just do it whenever you can do it.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:37

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:37

Yeah. But I do have I very much have a routine, like, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:40

How did how did you how did you establish that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:43

The routines, yeah. That's well, I'm an engineer after all. I like patterns. So plans. She likes plans. Having kids.

SPEAKER_04 1:23:50

I like spot Nighty. I'm like whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:53

Well, have I used to be a lot more particular in the world?

SPEAKER_04 1:23:56

When you take trips, do you plan trips out like this is what we'll do? Yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:59

Try a trip one time with the I do, and then I it doesn't go well. Really? She didn't plan. Because of the food.

SPEAKER_04 1:24:07

Because we're so like so.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:08

I have done that, and because those trips are the best for me. They are fun, but the food then screws everybody up because we eat stuff that doesn't align with well, and by the third day, everybody's yelling at everybody because our bodies are not feeling good because we're so food. Yeah. So I have tried that. That makes sense. So I can be a little loose. Forget you guys. But the food is a huge problem. Yeah. Everybody's behavior is in the toilet after eating a lot of junk. So it's crazy how much that influences us, huh?

SPEAKER_04 1:24:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

People are grouchy and um snappy, and I'm like, hmm, this is because of the food. Yeah. So and and yeah, so I I'm not very good at the spontaneous because of that, but I also know how to do a little bit both. But once you have kids, like they wake up sick, it changes your day, right? So I've had to learn how to be a little bit more flexible as well. Um, you know, 20 years of practice now with the kids, but before that I very much had a routine. Um, but my my ideal day would have routine, you know, wake up, walk the dog, uh yeah, do the breakfast and books, then do my workout.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:10

It sounds good it sounds in good in theory to me. Yeah, but then I'm also like boring. You know what I mean? Yeah. I just I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:18

I I'm an efficiency person, so like if you can make it efficient, then you have more time for the other stuff.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:24

So if you just hammer it out, it's weird because I like routine, but I also find it very boring.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:30

Like I wake up at the same time every day, I leave the house the same time of the day, I eat the same breakfast every day, I eat this drink the same coffee every day. You know, so there's areas that I do love routine, but it's also like somewhere throughout the day it has to be some kind of surprise that just like your day job is probably more routine than mine is different every day.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:47

So and then the kid job is different every day too.

SPEAKER_04 1:25:50

So when I take a trip, I'm like, I am not planning. Right.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:55

I I have to ask you because I don't know if this is like this for women, but in recovery and working with the guys that I work with, um, a lot of them that are married and have kids, they either are really great husbands and amazing with their wives and they struggle with the kids usually, or they're great as a dad, but yet their they their relationship with their wife kind of struggles. For women, is it easier for were were did you find yourself better with kids and it was kind of harder with rich, or are you enriched just like this and the kids really stretched you?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:37

Oh, you have to choose to try to be good at all, right? Like so, and I don't I think like the concept of work-life balance sort of plays in here, right? It's not just work, kids, and rich, it's all the other stuff too. You just have to be purposeful. Yeah, so I I don't think you're good at the end of the way, and you're not balanced in all those things at any given day. So I think of work-life balance as sort of like a a myth because every day won't be balanced. Like, how can I be balanced right now with my kids and rich? I'm not with them.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:08

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:08

And then I'm gonna be traveling for work Sunday through Wednesday. So am I focused on them? No, but I'm focused on myself. Then next weekend I need to make sure that I have time.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:17

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:17

So you have to like look at the week, month, year, and just make sure. But you have to have intentionality in any relationship in order to keep it going. And I think for women and men, they just focus one or the other, right? And ki the kids too, they have different seasons, right?

SPEAKER_07 1:27:37

Was raising kids easy for you? Or not easy, but I like kids. Amen. Amen. I love you, dear. She's not talking about you, Cooper Travis and Domino.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:49

They already know. They already don't.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:54

They already know. That's funny.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:56

It's funny, but it's true. So we decide to have Daniel. Because we're, you know, Rich's dad was unwell. My dad was, you know, battling at that time too. But we decided to have Daniel, like, we should have a kid. But then after having Daniel for years, like, I don't know, only kid seems like really hard because we're watching Rich's dad go through this cancer battle, but there's four kids.

SPEAKER_07 1:28:18

And then they're able to help each other.

Tracking Health Clues With Daniel

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

So we're all even the spouses too. Like, so we're all helping. Yeah. What do you do if you only have one kid? That kid has to come and do all the things alone. So maybe it would be better for us if we had two. So then we decided, okay, too. So Cooper, and then that was it. Well, as we tell Travis, you weren't my plan, but you were God's plan. So I was 19 and a half weeks pregnant with Travis when we found out I was pregnant with Travis. It's like halfway to done. Right. So I cried a lot. But he but this is because I was like, I don't want to do this again. And women and women are like, I just love being pregnant. Liars. Liars. My none of the baby things. Right. So people will, you'll encounter, and there's some listening from our church because I know them and I love them, but we're just different people. Like, I can't wait to hold babies. Head no. Hard pass. Hard pass. So when my friends would have babies and you have to go meet the baby, like I always go bring the meal because they're my friends and I know they need their help. And they're like, Do you want to hold the baby? Q Rich. No, I don't want to hold your baby. I don't want to hold any babies. Nothing to do with your baby. I just don't want to hold any babies. So yeah, raising kids, it's so interesting because I think this is a God thing, right? So Daniel, you probably don't know much about his health issues, but when he was about 10, he had some really crazy health issues, but they're uniquely perfect to an engineering mind to solve. Really? Because I had Rich and I, we were like tracking and like I had calendars and notes, and eventually we found out the problem that he was having because it was like something we went out to lunch. I mean, this battle, we had been to every doctor, every lotion, every potion, everything, everything. But he had um skin uh eczema, but it looked like a second degree burn from his chin to his toes. Really? And no one could tell us why. And they'd put him on all these awful medicines, steroids and antibiotics, and then the day he'd go off of them, it would all come right back. And I was like, something is not right. So we started tracking everything. This is where the food thing is was a good obsession to have. So we're tracking everything. And we had this one lunch where I'm like, he's acting like a lunatic. What the heck did he eat? Because we all ate the same food. Well, he had had lemonade, the boys had had Sprite, and I had water rich, had a Coke or something. And so I was lemonade, lemonade. Can you have an allergy to lemonade? Can you? So I thought, uh, well, we're gonna go try, we're gonna figure it out. So I went out to the lemon tree because we had a lemon tree. I cut a piece like the size of a dime and I taped it to his back, and he was sitting across from me, and then you know, I seemed like wiggling his shoulder, and uh, and he's like, How long did I have to have this thing on him? I was like, just a couple days. He's like, a couple days, and I'm like, he's not gonna last an hour, but so I managed to get him and I'm like, he's probably allergic to the tape I used, and now I'm poisoning him because you know it's all skin stuff. Yeah, sure enough, I take it off and it's raised like a welt.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:17

I was like, Oh my gosh. So we cut out all citrus and we found that was the problem. And then we had a lot of healing to do, but we were all over the place doing allergy shots, trying to, we thought he was allergic to the grass, we thought he was allergic to nickel, we thought citrus. Well, we had paid, oh, you don't even want to know all the doctors and stuff. But anyway, to your point, I think you get the kids you're supposed to get, and then you just have to hospital.

SPEAKER_07 1:31:43

It's almost like God used the kids to to kind of show you this health and food and these different things that now you are able to give to other people as options or tools that can help them. Because they have you went through a hell because I'm sure it wasn't easy with these kids, but now you are equipped and empowered and you have some knowledge that in your networking and in your connections, you're able to, if you hear, you can help.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:18

Yeah, and the the the Daniel is how I got into the heart hell thing too.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:25

Um, you might have heard me tell this story before, Eddie. So when Daniel was two, I looked at his feet one day and I was like, oh my God, his feet look just like my dad's, like on the outward, and I froze because I was like, wait a minute. We haven't talked about this much, but there's stories. When I was 13, my dad was cutting the grass and he came in and he had this little spot where he had all his stuff, and he was like leaning on the counter, and it was like, Oh, you have another heart attack, Dad? Yeah. Oh, like this was normal. Oh, wow. He would take a nitro pill and then he would go on with his day, and then whatever, right? And he had open heart surgery two times, once when I was in high school, once when I was in college. Okay, so now fast forward. I didn't know. I didn't care. You know, I'm dressed up for prom, I got my braces off. I went to see my dad in the hospital.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:09

And I was disappointed because he didn't notice I got my braces off. Wow. He had just had open heart surgery. Wow, right? Because you're a teenager, it's all about you, and you don't realize, like, right? So now I think about that all the time. Like, oh my gosh, my dad had open heart surgery, right? Band saw across the chest. Yeah, but I was mad at him because he didn't notice I got my braces off.

SPEAKER_07 1:33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:29

Right? Who cares?

SPEAKER_07 1:33:31

Do you think do you think that because he was a cop? Do you think that the life he lived and the work that he did and all the different hours messed with perhaps the heart didn't help?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:42

Perhaps. I mean, my lot of stress. Right. Okay, so I'll get to the heart, what I think with my family history. So so I look at Daniel's feet and I realize, oh man, they look just like my dad's outside. And so probably the inside looks like my dad. Okay, so my dad was having heart attacks before the age of 30. His brother, also a cop, died of sudden cardiac arrest at age 39. Their father died of sudden cardiac arrest at 49.

SPEAKER_07 1:34:08

Oh my god.

Family Heart History And A New Mission

SPEAKER_02 1:34:08

So you know we talk about age, but this is why I'm like, yes, but I'm 52 right now and I've beat all of them. Yeah. And at one point, we weren't so sure, right? We thought this family just doesn't live past 40 or 50, and there you go, right? Wow. Well, it isn't. It's lifestyle. So, so I I'm in 2006, Daniel's born. 2008, I'm looking at his feet, going, uh-oh, we have a problem. And by now, Cooper is on the scene and Travis is soon to come. So I have these three boys, and they're gonna die of a heart attack? Uh no. Yeah, we're gonna get in front of that, right? So I went to a casting call for the American Heart Association and started volunteering with them in 2008. And what I learned was 80% of your risk factors are mitigated by lifestyle changes and choices. So now go back to my dad. My dad, his brother, and their and my grandpa, who I never met, they all smoked. They did not do purposeful exercise, they they worked to some extent some physical jobs, but that's different than actually exercise. They did not eat healthy foods and they were um you know, heavy, obese, diabetes, that type of thing. So if you look at the risk factors, like they weren't mitigating the ones you can control. So was there heredity? Sure. But my brother and I are both fine.

SPEAKER_03 1:35:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:26

So we we go, I go regularly, so I go every two years to the cardiologist and they do a full workup. EKG has never been abnormal. I do a stress test and I run that treadmill. And I have to run 22 minutes because uh you have to get to 80 per 80 per 88% of your capacity. But I just keep going. I'm like, I hate running. What are we doing here? Because my heart is so healthy. Wow. And uh they do the echocardiogram. I do have damage to one heart valve, but that's from having lung problems like pneumonia too many times, which comes from not taking care of yourself and sleeping and all of that. So to your point, yes, the lifestyle changes and made the difference, and they did not. So we do make a huge effort, and that's when my dad called. Um, my mom and dad called in September 2013 when my dad was end of life. So he was basically like now moving from chair to chair, like just waiting for quote unquote the big one. So they called and they were like, It's time you need to come. Yeah, um, because there was no more intervention. So he had had the two open heart surgeries. The second one was when I was in college, so I would have been 22, right? We didn't know he would make it to our wedding, and he was there in 2000 uh 2002.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:41

At 29.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:42

Yeah, I was around there, something like that. Yep. So he we, you know, Wow, he'd already been through hell. We cried a lot. That that father-daughter dance was a mess, total mess, because we didn't think he would be there. Then he got to meet Daniel, we didn't think he'd be there. Then he got to meet Cooper, we didn't think he'd be there, and then he got to meet Travis, we didn't think he'd be there. Yeah, and then he passed away in 2013. But when I got that call, you gotta go home. Um, so I went straight to the hospital because we didn't know how much to time. Can I have this? I've told this story quite a few times, so I was like, I think I can keep it together, but it's yeah, so I got to the hospital.

SPEAKER_07 1:37:20

I just need to sorry to interrupt, but yeah, and you're helping somebody right now. Yeah, somebody is not living right, they're not eating right, they're not doing what you're very talking about right now, and they may have a fear in their life or in their mind that this family dies early when we can literally make choice choices to change it. You do not have to be like what you experienced. Yeah, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:48

Yeah. Well, we need to come back to that heredity thing. So I I get to the hospital and my dad, it's this is my dad, right? I'm done for stace. This is his sentence, like, dad. And so I by then I had already been doing some fitness coaching because we it was like my coping strategies. Like, well, I'm gonna lose my dad, and that's I'm very close with my dad is sad. So how do you I'm not um I'm not really good at the negative. Like, if I get in a fight with someone, like I have to fix it. I'm just not good at that. Sort of like the engineering women-man thing. Like, I'm just not good at like holding it up, like and just have to go to the next thing and just don't like that. I just don't like it holding over there. So knowing he's going, you know, we all die, but he's going to die. He's going to die of heart disease. I say he died of smoking, but he's going to die of heart disease. So what can I do about it? Well, maybe I can fix it. So um, when you said at the beginning, at the end, at the ask, like one of my goals is like when you look at the stats, one in three men and one in three women will die of heart disease. Well, I'm on this side of the dirt. I would like to see that number change. Yeah. If it could go to four, then I'll be probably ready to go to the next step myself because I this is one of my the pieces of my life's work is to fix this because these are not hard things.

SPEAKER_07 1:39:11

Yeah, right. I mean, it's I don't think people know.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:14

Right. But it could be people don't know. But it's not, it's not as hard as you think it is to be healthy.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:21

No.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:21

And it doesn't always mean skinny, no, right? But it's not as hard as you think it is. So coming back to this heredity point, okay. So people will tell me in my coaching, I get this all the time. Well, you know, it's just hereditary. And I want to call, like, no, yeah, no, as loud as I can. No, because if that were true, then I would be dead. And I'm not, I'm as healthy as you can be from a heart health standpoint. And my brother is the same because he watches what he eats, he's huge into exercise and all that kind of stuff, too. So when someone says, Oh, like you have to look at, like, yes, did you stay where you were and eat the same things that maybe your family is eating? Or maybe you also smoke, like perhaps if your family didn't move and then you had a lifestyle disease and you still don't move, perhaps, then yeah, but you're not controlling that, you're just like waiting for it to happen. Yeah, and it's not, I mean, when I say it's easy, you know, what I'm it's not easy, you still work, but it's not like it's inaccessible because of money or physical geography, or you have that choice. It's a choice, you have that choice, it's a choice, and you have to work at it every day, just like everything else. But that's just it. One small thing repeated over time will make the huge difference. And so that's what one of the things that I say is one heart healthy change for 500 people a year is what I've been trying to do since 2012. And then, yep, like your water. Let's try here.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:46

My mom checks us up. Oh my god, checks us out. I'll drink water and sleep when I'm dead.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:50

I used to never drink water, never. I was so fatigued coffee, but never drink water, right? People would ask me, like, we had a life group one time, and they were like, How much water do you drink a day? And I'm like, You can have it. Yeah, you can have it. I don't need it. And doing that challenge with you, I now asked him, he cleaned up my car the other day.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:13

Water bottles.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:14

So many water bottles everywhere. So many because what I started to do was I I found out I had high blood pressure, right? Well, your family had the heart stuff. I didn't know that at the time. Oh. I went to check my blood pressure. I was 180 over 120.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:30

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:31

And someone's like, dude, you're on the verge of stroke.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:33

Yeah, call 911.

SPEAKER_04 1:41:34

And I'm like, what? So I go to the emergency room, right? And by the time I get there, it's down. You know what I mean? They're like, dude, you're dehydrated. You know what I mean? Yeah. And uh all this other stuff. So I'm like, whatever, you know, like give me some medicine, right? And that's when I started seeing your videos. And I'm like, I really gotta get a hold of this lady. You know, I don't want to die. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I started looking, I'm like, wait a minute, my mom died of an enlarged heart at 65. 65, 63, something like that. My dad had a stroke at 44. I'm like, I'm right in the middle. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I'm like, no. You know what I mean? So that's when I got a hold of you. I'm like, I'm like, hey, how do I do this? You know what I mean? And one of the things you told me was drink water. Drink water. How much water do you drink? And I'm like, you know, and now it's I try to drink four to five of these a day. It's great, dad. At least at least, you know what I mean? And God, what a difference. Yeah. I'm still on blood pressure medicine, but so accessible.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:29

Anybody, and by the way, so many people just took a drink of their water while they were listening to us, but so accessible to just drink water. It doesn't take cheers. It doesn't take any kind of PhD, it doesn't take money, it doesn't take anything. You just drink your water.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:44

I have a brother at church. He posted the picture on on social media. It was 200 over something. He's like, personal best. You know what I mean? And so I see him the next day, the next Sunday at church, and I'm like, bro, how are you doing? You know what I mean? He's like, I'm all right. I'm like, do you drink water?

SPEAKER_02 1:42:59

Yeah, see, that's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:00

Come on, buddy. And he's like, he's like, no, not really. I'm like, start there. Start there. Because when I when I started looking, when I started doing it, I looked up. What's the best way to lower blood pressure? The first thing I found, drink water. Wow. I'm like, oh. So literally I've cut out soda, I've cut out tea, I drink water, coffee, and now I add like greens and superfoods to my water, things like that. You know what I mean? But I don't drink soda no more. I don't drink tea anymore. I've literally got myself down to water, coffee, and added it to my water. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:37

It's one small change repeated over time, and then you add the next thing. That's why I do those challenges as sprints because you can focus on it and then make it a habit, and then you go to the next one.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:47

Another thing that I preach to people that I learned from you is in one and one during our challenge, just so you know, like twice a year she does a six-month challenge. I challenge you to do that.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:57

No, they're not six months, they're 30 days.

SPEAKER_04 1:43:59

But she doesn't like three. But I do, but I do, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:01

I have about five or six challenges throughout the years, but the ones that you're talking about, we do three times a year.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:06

And in that challenge, you you brought up you put something in there because on the social media thing that we share, um, what's the name of the space? It's water that was called, yep. You said you you should be eating three cups of vegetables a day. Yep. I was not a vegetable eater. Like literally, I eat vegetables all day long.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:25

Yep, that's good.

SPEAKER_04 1:44:26

Like I have spinach with I found out spinach is a super food. I'm like, yeah, spinach in my breakfast, you know what I mean. I have I eat two snacks a day, sometimes it's broccoli, sometimes it's green beans, whatever, but I eat a fruit. Salad. You eat salad and queen crack. Salad, it's my lunch every day. I ate salad with chicken, you know what I mean? Just things like that. That that's from that challenge that I learned with you. I've learned how to eat better. I've learned how to make better choices. I learned the one other thing I've learned from you was planning. Yep. If you plan your food, you don't make bad choices, you don't make bad choices. And I child people all the time. I'm like, dude, I stop every mor every morning, literally every morning. I stop. I get an avocado, I get my salad, I get some kind of fruit, I get some kind of snack. You know what I mean? And I'm like, they're like, my coworker is like, really? Every day. And I'm like, if I never allow myself to get so hungry to make a bad decision and I have stuff already here at hand, then I'm eating what I have at hand because I don't want to spend the money. Yeah, it saves money and you also feel better and and and and I hear people say, Oh, it's so expensive to eat healthy. It's like it is really not really. Not really. If you're buying the right things, it's not. I get a I get a salad at Walmart for three dollars. It's salad, it's it's cheese, it's chicken, it's three dollars. An avocado is 90 cents. Yeah, a bag of grapes is two dollars, two, three dollars. You know what I mean? I'm eating all day for under ten dollars and it's all naturally grown, healthy stuff. Yes, and I'm eating all day.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:45:55

And I'm like, so miss me with uh eating healthy is expensive. If you're going out to eat healthy, yeah, you're gonna spend a buttload, you know what I mean? But if you're buying stuff at the grocery store and just things like you know what I mean? Yes, that's good. It's really life-changing.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:10

Yeah, it is, and it it is not take uh reading some special book and learning all these advanced things. I mean, there's more to learn, but it's just simple.

SPEAKER_04 1:46:20

If I could exercise a little more, I'd be golden.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:23

But but you are you have a physical job, so you're moving. There are people who like I've I've done some of um like learn style talks, and we do um we make goals before I leave. And one of the things we're talking about are the exercise, and so they're setting an exercise goal, and their goal is to get like 2,000 steps. That's like not even that's below sedentary, but a lot of people are not even moving that much. That's right. It's very dangerous because the exercise is key.

SPEAKER_07 1:46:51

So when I uh I got out of rehab in 2020 and the world shut down, and I started working here, and there's this the basis, Jim. Yep, he started taking me out to to work out and I would go and I'd work out with him at the gym as as his guest. And I knew then God was telling me, I want you to start working out. Yeah, me being me, a stubborn and hard-headed man, and so I start working here and I quit going to the gym with Jim. Love you, buddy. J-I-M, not J Y M. And so Max. Let's go, Max. And so uh um I start working here, and literally God start, I am walking this building. It's 25,000 square feet. I start looking at my things, 17,000 steps, 23,000 steps. I think the most I ever did around here was like 38,000 steps in a day. I'm like, God's like, all right, you ain't gonna listen to me and do what I told you to do. I'm gonna walk you around my house all day. Find a way. All right, God. So now uh I'm I'm able to, and me and my sister, we we were walking at night. Yeah. Um it just it's cool that I get to do it with her. I I almost died, and so I've kind of some stuff happened, and but I need to get back into it. And I feel like I just got this week released back to regular duty. Yeah, and so I'm gonna start going over to my buddy Michael's house. We're gonna go into his little training room and we're gonna start training. I need somebody to do it with. I don't need it, but for me, it'll help having somebody. All right, dude, this is what we're doing now. All right, cool. I was looking for it from my dad and my brother.

SPEAKER_04 1:48:41

Somebody other than his dad and his brother. I would love it if it was just criticism.

SPEAKER_07 1:48:47

But it's cool. Yeah, and then we need I need to walk with my sister. And it's just feeling God that so while you're talking about health and the little changes, that's why I'm like, okay, God, I hear you. The biggest struggle is consistency.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:02

Correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:03

And I don't care who you are. You have we all have great intentions and we go out and we do it. I did the three, what was it, three months with you? Yep. Did it great. I was on it, and I kept going after that, and then my shoulder started hurting. So you take a little bit of time off to let your shoulder heal, and then before you know it, you're like, just not doing it anymore. You know what I mean? So it's staying consistent at all areas of it. I'm good at the eating and the drinking and all that other stuff, but I have so many injuries that I it's hard. I have this like huge scoliosis, my shoulder's been trashed, it's like torn and inflamed and all this other stuff.

SPEAKER_07 1:49:39

Oh, it's a job all day long. It's just working. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:49:42

Yeah, now I got this neck thing that's driving me crazy. So it's hard to stay consistent at all those little things, you know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know how you I don't know how you do it, but it's hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:50

One at a time, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:49:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:52

Yeah. I didn't always, you know, I well I was an athlete. We talked about playing sports and stuff and and I always did a lot of hiking. And athletic type things. I've played soccer since I've can remember. I mean, I took off in during uh high school. I didn't play for high school, but I played like rec. But I've played rec soccer. I still play rec soccer.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:11

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:12

Wow. That's great. Yeah, I'm playing on two teams right now, a women's team and a co ed team. The guy next to me on the co-ed team is 27 years old. Pretty fast. That's gotta make you feel good. Yeah. So I wasn't, I just started playing with them because they needed a sub. You have to have five women on the field to play. And so if they don't have enough women, they can't play. So they're, you know, I'm on a sub list. And so I was just subbing and I got it. It's been a while since I played co-ed. It's harder because I don't I really don't want to be playing against a 17, 19-year-old boy that can't I cannot do it. They're flying. Yeah. So I mean that's my kids, right? I know that I cannot compete. Yeah. So even when I was young, I couldn't play with that 17-year-old, 19-year-old boy. So anyway, the I got asked to sub, so I went and I told the boys, I was like, the kid next to me was 27. And they're like, Did you get invited back? I don't know yet. We'll find out. So, but I did. I did get invited back. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_03 1:51:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:51:08

Okay. So we are in the 20th, the heart thing that you started.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:14

Yeah. So 2013, 2012. Like that was like just coming off this uh David Platt radical book, starting to implement these kind of things. Then also, you know, my dad and the um uh the the heart health thing. So making heart health a part of the daily routine, trying to change those stats.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:32

You said you got volunteering. What was that we had?

SPEAKER_02 1:51:36

So I first joined just like a committee type of thing related to the heart walk. And then they had for many years ago red ambassador board. In fact, Daniel was the youngest ambassador board member at age nine.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:49

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:50

So it goes back a while now. So I he would see me go to those meetings, you know, they were like twice a month. We would meet and just kind of strategize, and then we would staff lunch and learn requests, or um, we would um maybe do a health fair where you hand out information or help with whatever the like staffing an event for the American Heart Association, that type of thing. But Daniel, when my my dad died, his buddy in you know, the kid was nine, lost his dad.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:19

And so Daniel was like, Well, how old do you have to be to be an ambassador? Because I think I need to get in on this as well.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:25

Because, you know, and when you're nine, your grandpa's a pretty big deal. And well, your grandpa's always a big deal, but when you're nine, it's like blots of sons, first death that you're experiencing with that you're a aware of, you know, whatever. So um, so Daniel and the boys, all the Rich, the whole family was involved with the ambassador board. And so when COVID hit, it kind of changed its shape a little bit because it was very much an in-person volunteering thing. But I have been doing more speaking engagements with them. So how I ended up doing like the TV radio podcast, that type of thing was there was supposed to be a cardiologist who was going to do the advertorial on Sonora and Living Live. Yeah. Sonora and Living Live is a TV that's like filmed live in a studio. Yeah, yeah. Well, the cardiologist got Channel three, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:53:11

I think it's channel Sunday mornings.

The Be Happy Framework For Health

SPEAKER_02 1:53:14

I think it's channel three. I it it varies over the last couple of years. This goes back a while, so I'm not sure what day it was, but this was a December 20. I remember it was December 23rd because the cardiologist got called into surgery, and so now here they are. Who's around to do a speaking gig? Like right before Christmas. Oh wow. And so they had that slot, and that's one of the most viewed slots because people are off of work. Right. And so they're telling me this, like, and it's one of the most viewed slots ever, blah, blah, blah. Do you want to do it? I'm like, wait, what? Live TV. So I was like, sure, I think. And they gave me a script, and it was like, if your poinsettas are pooped, and I was like, oh dear, this script is not gonna work. I'm really not good at scripted anyway, but I definitely am not gonna remember all of this words that I don't speak like because I'm kind of my own person. And that's when the Be Happy Challenge was born.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:05

Really?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:06

I needed to come up with something that was accessible, but also TV worthy that I could remember. Yeah. And so Terry O, who was the news anchor, she also lost her father to a sudden cardiac arrest. So she was very passionate about the cause. And so I was on Sonoran Living Live and I revealed the be happy, which is like the governing um thing that I try to teach people to make heart health more accessible. And it's just, you know, because everybody wants to be happy, right? So each letter stands for something that if you do it and they're all really accessible, that you will find heart health or health in any fashion. So the B is breakfast, eat it. Really? Get protein based, and it's okay if you're doing intermittent fasting, whatever. What if I'm doing a protein shake? Yeah, that's fine. And some eggs, okay. B breakfast, eat it. Protein is great. I love eggs. Okay. E exercise, 20 uh 30 minutes a day is only 2% of your day. And walking is great. So B E. H is hydration. We talked about that. A is axe or add, something that isn't serving you. So you're trying to find one thing that's bothering you, like maybe it's I'm eating too many cupcakes, or maybe it's uh artificial sweetener in your diet. Maybe it's cookies, but you pick one or sleep. Like if you're not getting enough sleep, add sleep.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:22

So the A is axe or add something, because you do it in a two-week sprint and you focus on something that's not working. The P plate two fruits, plate, second P plate three veggies, that's where you got that from. And then the Y is 15 minutes or more of U time. And that can be meditating, it be reading your Bible, it could be both. So if you do all those things, B breakfast, E exercise, H hydration, A, X or ad, P plate two fruits, P plate three veggies, and Y, U time, the heart health comes. And by the way, so does a lot of other amazing side effects. Yeah. That's really good, so that was invented when I was on that show because I was like looking at this script, like, oh man, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I can't, and then of course, the first thing they you know how you brought the tissues, the first thing they ask me, so I've never been on live TV before. There's all these cameras, it's super intimidating. And yeah, totally she goes, So your father just died. And I was like, my husband said the clinic, because he was in a physical therapy clinic, the whole clinic went because I thought I was gonna lose my stuff on the TV, right? But I somehow kept it together and was able to say yes, and that's why I do what I do, and then we jumped right in. I don't know how, because I at that time it was pretty fresh. My dad died in so this would have been 2013. We were trying to talk about when it was September 2013, is what my dad died. This would have been December 23rd, 2013. So two months before. But I kept it together, but that was the first time. So, anyway, to the point about the volunteerism, mostly I do public speaking because a lot of people don't like that. So when they get a request, they send me, and uh, I think it's a great way to reach people. Yeah, so yeah, so then and I've been a volunteer since. I still am a volunteer. Um, I'm right now I'm on an advocate leading an advocacy board where we're working with the legislators to try to make some um how bills change going after tobacco to 21 and things like that, but that's sort of a different angle that's more leadership style.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:26

How do we how do we get PE back in schools?

SPEAKER_02 1:57:28

Yeah, that's a great question. It's so complicated. Everything is money, right? So with the state really with the state um being kids running around playing with balls. I don't think they're changing. I mean, they still have PE, but it's not what it used to be.

SPEAKER_04 1:57:41

Not like what it used to be.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:42

Yeah, and I think exercise is the you know, is the key. So when I turn 50, my friend Sarah, her sit her sister is a physical therapist that has studied uh aging and elders for her 30-year career, and she's invented a test where you um you know do a variety of things like grip strength and balance, and and her premise is basically like muscle is the key to longevity. Oh, yeah, and so muscle comes from exercise.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:08

That's what I heard. Yeah, yeah. Look at Chuck Norris, he was what 89.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:12

Yeah, yeah. If you've seen any of his content, like him and his wife did a lot of um podcasts and videos in the recent times, and they talk about how the exercise is critical. So I'm I definitely still look like a ninja.

SPEAKER_04 1:58:23

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:24

My mom is on zero medications and wow, she is Does she exercise? She has always exercised. When she she did gymnasts and like cheerleader when she was young, I can remember going to her softball games and keeping score when I was a teenager. Yeah. She's always exercised, just like I do. In fact, it'll be interesting, like, because the kids, my my kids' friends, they are kind of like, What is your mom doing? Right? Because I like lift in the living room, but I'm not so sure that they see their parents exercising. Right. And yet every one of those moms is driving their kids to their sports practices, making sure they don't miss a single one, right? We need to treat our lives as the moms and dads the same way. Like you can't miss a workout, you have to do your workout. It's only 2% of your day, and it can be walking, that's okay. And there's days when I don't want to do it. Yeah, but I also want to, you know, I don't want to live healthy. I want to be happy. I want to be healthy. Exactly. Be happy. Isn't that it's full circle? So good, it just so relatable, it just stops. So relatable because everyone wants to be happy, and so you use that as your baseline. Yeah, um, in fact, I'm doing the um Jans um Bible Bible study, Women of the Word. The word. Um, and we're reading a book by Joyce Meyer, and it's literally the Be Happy Challenge in a book by Joyce Meyer. Like, I'm like, shoot, I need to write this down because it's it aligns perfectly.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:50

When you get done with the book, is it only for women? Oh no, can I read it? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:54

It's a cute little tiny book, so it will look entertaining when you hold it up because it's so cute. But no, it's just a regular old Joyce Meyer's book. And in fact, it was written like 10 or 12 years ago. It's from like 2012 or 2014 or something.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:07

Some of the most inspiring posts on that Red Inspire are the ones who like, I didn't want to do this today, but I still got it. And you're like, like, ah, you're you're a champion, you know what I mean? Because a lot of us have that same mentality. Yeah, but you got your good days, do it. But when we push past all that and do it anyways, those are the best.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:26

And since we use uh we use an online streaming platform for most of the workouts that we discuss in that group, it's not necessarily any workout is good, but one of the common things with the online streaming platform you say is like just press play. Yeah, because as soon as you start and you just do it, you're like, Oh, well, I mean, I already did eight minutes. Yeah, what's 10 more? Right? Or I already did five minutes, what's six more, right? And then you just do it.

SPEAKER_04 2:00:48

Those 30 minutes is like when I did the challenge with you, those 30 minutes went by really quick. Yeah, and they were tripping. They're like, dude, you're you you're really doing it, bro. And I was like, and I did, you know what I mean? But it's I don't know, I gotta get out of my mind these days and get back to doing something.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:02

I'm doing uh a program that's called Extreme Home Fitness, and I can tell it's made for young people, but that just makes me want to do it even more because I'm like, I'm not supposed to be jumping. Yeah, well, I am right.

SPEAKER_04 2:01:15

How did you how did you fall into body?

SPEAKER_02 2:01:18

Yeah, so uh I had a friend from college, one of my engineering friends, and uh he was like top 32 but to die. That's a huge program worldwide, right? And he was you know recruiting all his friends to join him at that time. It was built on like if you recruited your friends, you had a higher earning potential. And uh so he reached out to me, and I I had that coincidence that weekend, I was with a bunch of richest friends, and we were literally like leaning over the crock pot with like the really bad for you bean dip and just like eating like to know a bound. And I was like, this is bad. And it was like every weekend I was like gaining five pounds. I just felt gross, and I had kind of the kids were small, so I wasn't really exercising, I was just trying to survive my life with the three kids, and so I I had remembered I had remembered my mom saying something like she had touched somebody's arm and it was squishy, and that it was like, right? And I was like, Yeah, and then I touched my arm and I was like, ooh, so I was like, okay, the bean dip, the arm, and like the I just don't feel good. I need to do something. And so one of the guys at the party was like, I'm gonna start P90X tomorrow. And I was like, Okay, I'll bite. Yeah, I'm obviously we've talked about the push-ups, and I'm like, I'm competitive too. So I was like, Well, if he's gonna start B90X, I'm gonna start it too, and I'm gonna do it better and faster than him because I can.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:42

That's a hard one, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:02:43

So I picked this hard program. So it's a 90-day program. Yeah, it took me 110 days to do it, but I got through it, and I can remember my friend Christy, like six weeks in, she's like, Aren't you like super sore? I was like, No, because I watched most of it because I'm like, What? I can't do that. But by the time by the time it got to the end, so honest and real.

SPEAKER_07 2:03:03

I love these days.

SPEAKER_01 2:03:04

This is great, dude.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:06

By the time I got to the end, I was like, okay, I can do these things, you know. And so now the program I'm doing currently is called P90X Generation Next. Yeah. So it's like the new one. It's it's it's like the refresh. So, you know, the the trainer is a new trainer. They should have used a different brand, but whatever. But anyway, how did I end up as a coach with that company? Was because people I would go do these heart health lunches, and there'd be like 30 people, and you know, I'd give my talk, tell them about be happy, and then people would loiter around after and be like, I really resonated with what you said for XYZ reason, maybe family history, maybe they just got a diagnosis, whatever the case. And so could you help me? So Rich and I were like inventing workout programs and like inventing meal plans, and then I was like, I don't think we can help as many people if I have to keep inventing stuff and then teaching and writing and whatever. So, like, if I could just find an off-the-shelf solution, it would be a lot easier. And then I had started that program and I was like, you know, these tools are pretty, pretty amazing. And right around then, tw April 2013-ish, I think it was might probably right around there. Um, uh Autumn Calabries, who's one of the uh super trainers with the company, she had launched uh a program with these little containers to help you with portion control. And I really resonated with that because it's just simple. Like you just fill the container and eat it, and this is the portion. It's very similar to the be happy, like the when you fill out the little grid to tell you how much to eat, you get three greens, which is three veggies, and two purples, which is two fruits. I was like, this is literally what I've been saying. So I just it just made sense. Nice. Um, in more recent years, I I am more product agnostic. Um, I really just want more people to be healthy. I don't care what you're doing. Like if you're going to orange theory or you're doing Weight Watchers or you're just doing none of the above and you're just drinking your water, it's all there. I just want to one hard, healthy change, repeat it over time, and then again reach more people so that this message, because it's not there's just way too many people. Millions of people have high blood pressure, millions of people are on statins which are going to eat away their muscle, yeah, and so on and so forth. So if we can just get in front of it, which is funny because it's the muscle that pushes the blood.

SPEAKER_04 2:05:23

Yeah, you know what I mean? That's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:25

Yeah, so that this is just kind of one of my passions. Yeah. So yeah, but helping people uh make heart health a part of their daily routine. I use a Facebook group, but I also, you know, people are texting me or whatever the way sometimes they do in-person.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:40

If people are on social media and they are not here in Arizona and or don't know you personally, people in the challenge are everywhere, bro.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:46

Yeah, they're from all over.

SPEAKER_07 2:05:47

So where what do they go on? How do they get involved with that?

SPEAKER_02 2:05:51

Um, in the Facebook group is in Facebook's Red Inspired Fitness Community, and they would just request to join. Um, they can look up my I'm assuming my contact information will be somewhere there, reach out to me as well. But um uh yeah, they're all over Do you have a nonprofit for this? No, I probably should. Rich is always asking that. No, you really should.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:09

This is something that somebody that you never know, they may have resources and wealth, and you may help save their life, and they might want to help you.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:18

And I I've been doing this since 2012, just helping with little mini challenges because I'm like as a competitive. Sometimes someone will be like, I'm not competitive, so you're child. I'm like, I don't know what those words mean because that's how I I am. But they're not all competitions. Sometimes it's here's the activities you should do, but it's not a punitive challenge. Like I'm in one right now called Mindset and Movement, and it's just a goal. Like you have a partner and you're trying to encourage each other. And I have I have women that I partnered 10 years ago, they still text each other every day. Wow, right? Similar to your recovery infrastructure, where you're just having the accountability to somebody.

SPEAKER_07 2:06:58

So we can't do life alone, can't do recovery alone.

SPEAKER_04 2:07:01

You gotta have people, man. So I'm assuming that when you were growing up and you were young doing engineering stuff, none of this that you do now that I see, I mean, I don't see much of your personal life or much of your business life. I see a lot of your heart healthy exercising stuff. That I could imagine that you growing up being an engineer, none of this was in the playbook for you.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:24

Yeah. I mean, we did my dad played baseball, my mom played softball. Like we always had sports. I mean, you were always healthy, but we'd be this advocate that you talk about the advocacy thing until um I heard it let's say God I was driving and I heard a radio on the uh I heard an ad on the radio. Yeah, and it was right around when we were discovering all this family history. Because I think when my dad was going through the like I knew my uncle died of of a sudden heart attack, but I don't think I really I can't. It didn't click until dad. I was 13. I was I can remember being at the funeral and being like making jokes with people, not about the death, but just because it was like you don't get to see people until you're at a funeral. So we were having kind of having fun because we were together, family, right? And that's just kind of the way I am, right? You take advantage of the the interaction that you have in front of you. But it never occurred to me that, like, wait at 13 that like, wait a minute, my uncle died of this, my grandfather died of this. My dad knew because I can remember hearing my parents argue about his pension because I can remember her saying, like, don't you leave me with these kids with no money because they just assume he was going to die. And like I said earlier, like he made it to the wedding, made it to see the kids and met all the all three boys. It would have been awesome if for him to see them grow up and turn into great kids. Yeah, because he would, I mean, he sees them, but it would have been awesome for him to be here. But he kind of gave me that charter, you know, when he said, I'm done for, don't let this happen to you. Yeah. Um is that what he said? Yeah, yeah. He was like, Don't, don't let this happen to you. And so I just was like, I have to fix this for everybody, I guess. For a woman that doesn't like children. Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:07

For a woman that doesn't like children, I find it ironic that God gave you a child not only one to perpetu down this path, you know what I mean? Yeah. Because you said it was Daniel's feet.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:16

Daniel's feet, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:09:17

That if that would never happen, right? This part of your life would not currently exist. You know what I mean? And so I find that pretty ironic that you know what I mean. I don't know. I didn't love my own kids.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:27

Of course, and I do a lot with kids, which is why it's also funny, because I really have to stretch. Like when I would volunteer in the classroom, I'd have to go home and take a rest after because I'm like, I just take a lot out of you. Well, and the teachers would always think it was funny because I'm like, I I I would have a rule. I'm like, if anyone cries, I don't come back.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:45

But I would bring really fun parties. So they like, and then when the I would collect kids and bring them to the house, because I you can tell when you're parenting like a lot about who where your kids are going, whatever. So I would have all the kids at the house, but there are two rules no nerf guns, no crying. And if you cried, you didn't get invited back. And so they like every so often someone would genuinely like trip or something, be like, Don't cry, shoot. We don't get a comeback.

SPEAKER_01 2:10:12

Because those were the rules. Yeah. So yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:14

So for me, so my dad, my dad just recently passed away. Yes. And we didn't we didn't know it, we thought he fell, but it turns out that he had a heart attack.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:23

Yeah, I saw that.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:24

And he also had a stroke when he was 44. And so learning about genetic heart health was never really something myself thought about until recently.

SPEAKER_06 2:10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:10:37

So we're sitting in the hospital with my dad, and I'm talking to my aunt, and I'm like, yeah, you know, they're gonna put up your dad has to have a pacemaker. He's like, Oh, grandma had a pacemaker. I was like, really? He's like, Yeah. I'm like, tell me more, you know what I mean? Oh, grandpa died of a heart attack. You know what I mean? And I'm like, why are these not conversations that we are sharing with each other? Like, shouldn't this be something I know? Because obviously it runs in the family, you know what I mean? Yep. But I'm starting to think how many other families are not having conversations about things like that for sure that are not aware. Literally, we got this dog that we literally had a DNA test on this dog so we could know the medical problems of this breed of dog that we have, but yet in our own families, we're not sharing medical information or things like that that may be relevant.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:27

So I, after our last podcast, I have a perforated bowel and hereditary uh ulcer. Alderna ulcer. And so I'm in the hospital, and the guy literally tells me, because in 2022, I had a hernia and I had some stuff going on. So I'm going to the and the same guy who did my hernia surgery is the same guy who sees me for this perforated bowel.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:55

Interesting.

SPEAKER_07 2:11:55

It was crazy. You should have seen his eyes, Stace. I'm slaying in this hospital and ER room and this guy comes up to me, Dr. Olafson. Thank you. I love you, Doc. And he's mad. I can see it in his eyes. He's like, when I saw you in 2022, I prescribed you omnipresol. Have you been taking those pills? And I'm like, well, I took them for a little bit, doc. I uh remember those were the ones that quit taking my pills, dad. And I had acid reflux, that stopped. Everything that I was kind of going through stopped. So I quit taking these stupid pills.

SPEAKER_04 2:12:32

Because the pills were working.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:33

They were working. And so the doc literally tells me, if you would have been taking those pills and you would have continued taking those pills, you would not be laying in this hospital bed right now getting ready for this surgery. Because through all my drinking and everything that I've done, but my mom, my mom tells me, Your grandma had ulcers. I was like, What?

SPEAKER_00 2:12:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:12:54

So your grandma every now and then would have to go into the hospital. She'd go through the things she would go through and she'd come home. I'm like, oh my God. So now my new favorite best friend is this pill I take in the morning. Oh, yeah. I'm like, because it's literally cur cur creating the linings in my stomach and my esophagus and my intestines that are gonna be.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:15

But all the abuse tore out.

SPEAKER_07 2:13:16

Yeah, all the drink. I loved hard alcohol. I loved liquor.

SPEAKER_04 2:13:20

But how many families don't share hereditary things with each other? You know what I mean? Where like if I would have known this was in my family, I might have dings better to take care of my heart. Now that I'm at 53 and I know now I'm doing things to make up for that. But damn, they should have said something.

SPEAKER_02 2:13:34

Yeah, and it's better now, but it was definitely taboo back then. Yeah, I think it's better now, but there's always room for improvement. I've had a few things like that where I'm like, why I'm sure that I'm sure that's not I'm sure that's not dinner table conversations, but you know what I mean? But that should be something that's yeah, but you have to tell tell like so with our kids, like I worry about Daniel, and he knows it because he's got the genetics on my side, right? And it's really easy to get away from your plans with the nutrition because when you're busy, it's easy to go and he lives on a restaurant-based campus at college. It's really hard to eat healthy and a very high sodium restaurant-based life. Wow. And then I'm like, well, we have to be careful because all what we know is my dad had his first heart attack before age 30. But was he 20? I don't know. Nobody knows. Right.

SPEAKER_07 2:14:23

So that's the whole thing with just do you want to be happy? Do you want to be happy and do you want to be healthy? Breakfast, exercise, Hydration, hydration. A was ax or add, and then P. You got uh uh two fruits, two fruits, three vegetables, three vegetables, and why that you time when you said that, I was like, man, it's important. How many people get so busy with kids, marriage, job, ministry, cert, whatever they're doing. People feel guilty when they do you time. Yeah, that self-care, and it's important, self-love, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:04

And it can start small, like a simple breath where you just take in, um, take it. Well, you said 15 minutes, and you don't even you just start with one if that's important. Amen. Right, amen. But I can remember first trying like the deep breathing, and like you're supposed to do like an eight count in, hold eight counts, and then eight count out, and I couldn't even get to eight. I would do like three and be like at the top of my breath.

SPEAKER_03 2:15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:25

Because I was so high strung and like rushing around, right? But if you don't cool your central nervous system, that's when you start having all these other health problems stuff.

SPEAKER_06 2:15:35

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:15:35

And and so Axe or ad, we didn't talk about sleep very much in this, but um I think sleep is also similar to water where it's very accessible, right? You don't need to pay for anything special to do it. And um, in July of 2015, I read uh like more of a medical article uh from the American Heart Association about um the conclusion of this medical article was if you do not sleep six hours or more a day, it's the equivalent on your body of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. Or one pack, one pack of cigarettes a day. Sorry, one pack of cigarettes a day. And so I talked to my doctor and was like, what do you think about this? And he goes, No, that's not right. It's worse. So I was like, I did exactly that. Cause at that time, right, we've already talked about like I'm uh I'm all over the place, right? I mean, I'm doing sports, I have three kids, I'm an engineer, I travel for work, I've got to take care of my household, my husband, might walk my dog, right? Like, I'm a busy person, lots of people are busy. But how I would gain bandwidth is I feel the same if I sleep four hours or eight. So I would just sleep less, right? But now I read this article and I'm like, wait a minute, yeah, I cannot be a heart health advocate and doing a behavior that's like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, that doesn't make sense. So since July 2015, so now this is a decade, I've had 11 days where I dipped below six hours and they were all for speaking engagements for the American Heart Association. That was kind of one of my funny so ironic. Yeah, but I I used the Be Happy Challenge to add sleep. Sleep. And then I worked up from whatever chaotic thing I was doing to a solid six hours, then I got it to six and a half. Now I got it, now it's usually seven or seven and a half, and now I'm trying to add or it's that in bed by ten and up at five. Yeah, and uh I don't I'm not great at like the same thing every day because my schedule is weird, but I usually am eleven to six or eleven to seven. Okay. Uh just depends. Right now, I the kids' uh schedules have changed over the years, but right now the eleven to six, eleven to seven is what I'm doing. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:17:36

It just depends on the so I want to go back to we've heard a lot about the family, the the heart health. I really wanted to get into that. You you helped. I I if you uh implement these changes into your life, things are gonna change for you. Your mental is gonna change. Oh, yeah um, just the way you look at yourself, you're gonna be so proud of yourself, knowing, look, I'm actually doing it. And these are things that we can do. Yeah, um, so I really wanted to get into that. And it's Red Inspired Fitness.

SPEAKER_00 2:18:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:10

Um, is that just Facebook?

SPEAKER_01 2:18:12

Uh yeah, just Facebook.

SPEAKER_07 2:18:13

Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:14

I mean, I do some one-on-one. Yeah. Her name's Stacy Johnson on Facebook. If you ever have questions, she reach out to her. Great.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:20

And you might have to find me with my maiden name in the middle there. There's like 18 Stacy Johnson, just the Nisa alone. But my maiden name is Kaylis, K-A-L-I-S-R. So if you look for that, you'll find me. So Stacy Kaylis Johnson. That's why I keep it like that, so you can actually find me. But yeah, reach out.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:37

She's got great challenges throughout the year, man. Jump in one, man, and you'll get connected. Yeah. It changed, it changed me. I know that much.

SPEAKER_02 2:18:44

And I yeah, it's so awesome when someone comes back with a cloak. Usually I've seen that she's I asked that. Like, come back and tell me, and then I use your story next time I go out and talk about the Be Happy Challenge. It's it's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 2:18:56

As hard as it was for me to reach out to you. I'm glad I did. It's good. And I never had an opportunity, but thank you. Oh, so awesome. I know it was only three months, but that three months really did change a lot about what I what I do for myself as far as water and eating. And I thank you for that, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:19:10

I love every Sunday when I see you in church and you're like, hey coach.

Finding LifeLink And Raising Grounded Boys

SPEAKER_07 2:19:13

Yeah, it's so good that you say that because that's where I want to go to. Um, every Sunday, you're here at LifeLink when you're in town. And a lot of times when the boys are with you, they come. I see Rich pop in. So how Rich is in the choir, you know. He is. Pastor Cherie loves him. Yeah. Pastor Cherie loves him. See him laying on benches and stuff. Like he tells stories on this is great, dude. He's the crazy one, man. He makes life fun. That's awesome. Um, but so how how'd you guys get through how'd you get to LifeLink?

SPEAKER_02 2:19:51

Yeah. So we started going to Cross Point, and then when Pastor Tom moved, it was into Gilbert, and we're like, well, we don't have to drive all the way to Tempe. That sounds like a winner to me. Yeah, and by then Rich's dad had had been gone, and the mom um was in a like an elder care place. So we were to go to their to them. Um and so we went to Was Rich's dad like a pastor? He was not, he was just like the maintenance guy type of guy, like a go-to guy. He sang in church as well. Um he just did everything at the whatever's needed. You'd be amazed at what needs to be done at a church. That's what he, you know, he just did whatever was needed, exactly, for decades. Um, so we went to the church where Tom and Amy were, and then you know, they just moved a couple times. Like we were at a school, we were at a um like in a gym, we went to that other location, and then eventually they partnered with LifeLink. So 2013, we followed them here. In fact, I have pictures of the kids like without the room that we're in right now, like when it was just like the plywall and stuff, they had a party, and all the the attendees could come and like sign your name under the room. You were a part of that? So I have pictures of the boys signing in this room that we're sitting in, you know, with like their pencils on the plywood underneath the paint that we're in. Yeah, and so we yeah, so they are all a part of that. So the and the reason we stuck with Lifelink was really because of the kids, because the kids' ministry was so strong. Like when we were previously, we we interviewed a bunch of different churches at that transition, but we did end up going with Tom and Amy, but we did look at a lot of different churches, and um, it really was just the kids because when they were like you're having to like shove them in and push them into the place versus like it was fun and they wanted to go. And I know that like church is not only about having fun, but as a little kid, but you want to say that if they don't want to go, they're not gonna go. And if you go back to my own story, right? So when I was 17 and moved from home, like I felt like church was boring. Yeah, so why would I want to do that now that no one's making me? And so I didn't. Yeah, and I don't I don't see that I I don't want that to happen with my kids because you have to have that relationship. And again, when I was a kid, I didn't know the relationship had to be um had to be worked on and that you have to foster it and read your Bible. I didn't know any of that, and so my kids are doing better than I ever was in that because they grew up here in the church.

SPEAKER_07 2:22:19

Yeah, this is a blessed church, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:21

And don't they don't even get me started on the student movement.

SPEAKER_07 2:22:24

Come on.

SPEAKER_02 2:22:25

So Pastor T uh Pastor Tiffany and Pastor Josh are gifted. Amazing, amazing. When I when I see people go like, I need a place for my teen, and like, there's no doubt it's student movement. Absolutely no doubt. So during COVID, um, Daniel was kind of struggling, and uh Rich was uh working in healthcare, so we were kind of locked down more than most because he was worried about all the patients or giving it to my mom who was staying with us at the time. And we sent Daniel to church, even though the rest of us were not, because he needed to be in this building. He really loves the people and thrives on the people and uh also helped other students during that time, like there because he just finds his lifelink is his home, you know. And now he's he's serving at a church across town as well, and he attends a different church. Um, so he's just always in in a church. He's also done that. Um, I don't know if you've seen the on the side of the freeway, there's like a sign that's like the brotherhood on Saturday mornings. It's like a men's practice. Yeah, over here at the Yeah, Daniel's Daniel goes to that as well. He invited me to that one time. Yeah, I think I could probably get a kick out of it. He really likes that. It's just the early morning. So, but let me tell you something. And I work on Saturdays, so it's let me tell you something. When I was 18, 19, 20, there's no way I'd be going to a Bible study at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning. And that's what he is.

SPEAKER_04 2:23:48

So your your kids are obviously, I mean, I don't know them really personally. I just know them kind of in passing. But your boys are amazing. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 2:24:00

Oh, I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:01

From what I know of Daniel and the conversations I've had with Daniel, what a wonderful young man. Yeah. And then the other day, it's probably been a little while now, but I got to experience the other. I think it was Cooper.

SPEAKER_07 2:24:12

Is Cooper the younger one? And Travis is the older one?

SPEAKER_02 2:24:15

No, Travis is the younger one. Cooper is Cooper's the tall one.

SPEAKER_04 2:24:19

With the curly hair. I'm not gonna tell the story because it's it's personal and it doesn't need to be shared. But there was a young man that he brought to Queen Creek. And in a moment where the kid needed something, and for your son to know there's a four o'clock service. I need to get you to this four o'clock service. And he brought his friend to that four o'clock service, and that young man was able to get ministered to. Yeah. But the fact that your kids know that, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. And just to see young men have that kind of understanding, that kind of heart for people and God to know that I see what you're going through, friend. We need to go here. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:25:03

And that's this this church in particular, I think, is really good at this. So there was another situation with one of my boys where they they had uh a friend that the family reached out and said, We need you to come help. And I was nervous because I'm like, Are we sure we don't need a PhD? Yeah, like is it is a teenager what we're like do I need to like I don't know. It's hard as a parent too, because it's like you're sending your kid into something unknown environment. I don't know what's happening, but I just trust, like, when I I I think I my gut says just stay away from that, it's easier, but that's not what we're being called to do. No, so I send him there, and then I don't know what's happening, and I don't have the skill set. Again, I'm not trained in these areas. That's really the root of like the I don't like children, is because I never felt like I had the right skills and I was gonna screw them up. So I didn't want to do that. So you know what I mean? So anyway, coo they're there with this situation, and uh they knew who to call.

SPEAKER_01 2:26:01

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:26:02

They and they called a lifelink um pastor and said, here's the scenario, we need help. Who do you suggest? And they suggested another lifelinker, and they called that person and then they got eyes on what they needed and they got the right resources. Wow. And I don't uh when I was 16, 17, whatever, 20, any of these numbers these boys are. Yeah, no way did I have anyone at church to call to, first off. If they did, they probably would have not known what to do. Like it's just the infrastructure is there to support and help people of all no matter what's happening. That's right. And I have story like there was one service right before Daniel went to college where we were sitting in the left side of the church, kind of in a little bit in the middle back, and like the whole front in front of me, I was like, all these people are here because Daniel brought them here and they're all thriving here. And they this one had that problem, this one was struggling with this, and that because he literally is an evangelist wherever he goes. But when they come to LifeLink, it's a difference. I mean, there's lots of really great churches, but I can remember, so you guys will love this, and Pastor Dave and Cherie will probably never know this story, but they'll hear it now. So when we first joined, right? So, you know, I'm not a perky person, right? I and I'm I'm pretty straightforward, not perky. So Pastor Cherie pops out on the stage and she's very perky. And I'm like, I don't know about all this perkiness, right? It's like, can you really be perky like that all the time? Oh yeah, like that. So we're like, we'll see, you know, like we'll see. And then, well, guess what? She really is well, she's not all the time perky, but she's just real. And they are gifted. And I have learned so much being at Lifelink Church. And it started with, you know, Pastor Tom and Amy, but it has evolved. And I just this is our church home, and I think we are better people. Um, I'm a better mom, a better friend, a better leader, a better everything because of the relationships that I have built or have learned from the weekly ministry here. Yeah, and it makes a huge difference. And then and then, of course, the boys like there's no way Cooper gets up on his own. Travis is a little harder to get here, but Cooper gets up on his own and and you know comes in, so does Daniel. So, but there's also an age, right? Like, so the junior age is like the tough one. So you said something.

SPEAKER_07 2:28:27

You said that I felt unequipped to for kids because I didn't want to screw them up. I have to say, friend, that you did a great job. Did a great job, Stace. And I know a lot of it is God, yes, you know, but you you have prayed for and you have modeled and you have shown them and you decided this is what we're gonna do as a family, this is what we're gonna do. You and your husband. Yeah, um, you guys are are a beautiful fan. For me personally, when I showed up here after in 2020 for young adults, your son just loved me. Yeah, stays I was at a place where I hated myself that I didn't love myself.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:12

Yeah, and Daniel just like I know you're talking about Daniel, but it's Daniel.

SPEAKER_07 2:29:17

And he'd just come up and hey man, how you doing? I'm like, dang, dude. What he does, yeah, he'd just make me feel better. Yeah, and so I just personally thank you for doing what you did because he had a part in helping he he helped love. That's why I tell people, even in my testimony, is the people at LifeLink loved me back to life. Yeah, they loved me when I didn't love myself, yeah. And so just yeah, thank you, Daniel. I love you, buddy. Keep doing what you're doing, man.

SPEAKER_02 2:29:49

And then you think about that Bible study I was in with Pastor Amy, where she said, it's also possible that the only job that you do is raise your kid that does something. And then like you look at the Daniel story, right?

SPEAKER_04 2:30:00

Come on, man. Yeah. I know he's trying to give God a lot of credit, but you can see a child by you without having intimate eyes on home life, you can tell a child has a good home life when they're good people. Usually when there's trauma or chaos in the home, it's reflected in the child. You know what I mean? And to see your son just be good men, it shows a lot of reflection of how home life was just a good environment. Yeah, you know what I mean? And so just I know he wants to give God a lot of credit, but kudos to you and your husband for creating an environment where young men can grow up to be good young men.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:38

And they're they're friends, yeah, because I guarantee you, Stace, by you opening up your house and letting the boys' friends in, there was kids that were experiencing what a real family looks like.

SPEAKER_02 2:30:51

For sure.

SPEAKER_07 2:30:51

There were kids that were coming over there that they didn't want to leave because they were going back home. They kept coming back because it was nice, it was it was safe. It was safe.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:01

At Thanksgiving, though um, they had like a big Friendsgiving, I think this year was year two, with the Cooper and Travis and their buddies. Daniel is obviously at, you know, he comes home for Thanksgiving, but he's not in this particular story. Um, and there was like 17 boys this year. Wow. And I just kind of like set up a few things or ask them like what food wise, because I don't want all of them eating weird stuff. Like you have to have some basics, right? And um we have weird things like if you come to our house, you have to try two new foods, right? Usually fruits and veggies, like there's little sticks things that we do. That's great, but I was like kind of flitting in and out because they're old enough where they should manage themselves. They don't really want me there, and I want them to have organic connection and not be worried about what I'm hearing or whatever. But I came in the room and they were praying.

SPEAKER_01 2:31:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:31:48

And I was like, Well, I did not I mean, of course, that's what you want them to do, but I did not see that coming without someone going, You should pray before you eat. That was all on their own, and it wasn't even one of my boys leading. They had somehow encouraged someone of the other kids, and I was like, This is amazing. And the year the year before that, they did all the student movement games and they did like fun challenges and stuff, and so like the community aspect, and they learn how to how to build that. So yeah, it's an it's it all kind of like loops back. I mean, yes, we we try really hard, but you don't know. Yeah, you just don't know, and then you know, there's they push back on your rules or whatever.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:25

Like, I don't know, but this is what we're doing, you know. Yeah, it amazes me in my household, and I give my wife and Roddy a lot of credit because I was gone most of them growing up. Is that Jesus, Jesus? My my youngest son and my youngest daughter are good people. It's crazy, Stacy. They're good people, and I'm like crazy. I know it wasn't me because I was locked up, so kudos to his mom. It wasn't us, dude.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:48

We were on drugs.

SPEAKER_04 2:32:49

I don't know what it was. It was God, but somehow they just turned out to be good people.

SPEAKER_07 2:32:55

With my little brother specifically, I've asked him, and he watched me in the hell I was living. And he's like, I am not doing what Rowdy did. Yeah, yeah. Praise God that my stupidity and my bad choices, he ended up turning out good.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:10

You're talking about doing things that you were afraid that you were gonna do things that would mess him up. We did those things. We did those things that like statistically proven, my younger children should just my little brother and sister should be worse drugs, people that have experienced. They should be addicted, in jail, yeah, all these different things that's that statistics say they should be, but yet they both are just thriving, young, good people.

SPEAKER_07 2:33:37

Graduated high school, they're blows me away.

SPEAKER_04 2:33:39

You know what I mean? And I I'm so thankful of the God, and like I said, my wife and Roddy, that whatever they did when I was gone, that they somehow managed to raise good young people. You know what I mean? It's a blessing, man. It really is. Yeah, so for you guys to have young men, I just I can understand it's probably just I don't know, there's gotta be some kind of joy there.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:00

Again. That's right.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:01

Grace and mercy is new every day.

Learning To Notice The Holy Spirit

SPEAKER_04 2:34:04

So let me ask you this. So you you you said you grew up a Catholic, right? Obviously, you found yourself where you're at now. Rich is oh, rich Church of God. Church of God. Okay.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:14

So you and that's more Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:16

I I found that they're very similar, like the services and stuff, similar structure. I think there are some rules that are different, but we ne they never I never learned those. Okay. Um, they have a few beliefs that are different, right? They don't have a pope. I'm not good with rules and structure. I don't know all the lifelink.

SPEAKER_06 2:34:33

Life link is a lot different.

SPEAKER_02 2:34:35

Right, but lifelink is a lot different.

SPEAKER_07 2:34:38

We are Holy Spirit filled and Holy Spirit led.

SPEAKER_04 2:34:40

So the question I want to ask is you said you always just believe because you grew up that way. Was there ever a moment when you were like, like just like like wow, God, you you really are God. You know what I mean? Did you ever have a moment like that?

SPEAKER_02 2:34:56

I had I had like the sm like kind of the the the uh four things like I was saying from the from the book from the David Platt, uh Radical by David Platt, that like just kind of exposed and like tithing and seeing like success come after that, both financially and just like emotionally, lots of other like breakthrough. Um I can remember after my dad died, um, I had some weird things. Like the I think the sermon series was a lot about the Holy Spirit. And I've I know at that time I was like people who say, you know, spirit filled, and like they're just a little woo-woo and maybe great. I didn't really, I just like, yeah, okay, stay over there. And so I sort of was like, whatever, that you know, they're just that just not for me. I'll just kind of stay away from that. Sort of that kind of behavior, like it sounds weird, so it must be weird. So just keep it over there. But whatever for whatever reason, the sermon series was sort of saying, like, instead of just shutting it out, maybe consider letting it in. That's kind of the way.

SPEAKER_00 2:35:55

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 2:35:56

Um, and I was like, so what would that look like? And it was the way I internalized this are probably nothing to do with what was actually said, but the way I internalized it was like just be more open to encountering the Holy Spirit, and perhaps you'll see it. Now go back to the what I was saying about when I would hike, right? So there was probably encounters, but I was not open to it because I would have told you if you said, Oh, it was the Holy Spirit, I'd be like, Yeah, okay. In that case, yeah, exactly. Like, uh-huh. Yeah. But now here at this sermon series, and now I've done a lot of work, you know, I've read the Bible through a couple of times. I'm trying to live it more. I'm like paying attention, joining things, like, yeah, many things, right? But at this time, it was only probably one time through. Yeah. But I decided to like try it. Like, what does it mean to try to look for signs from the Holy Spirit? What is that even like? So I would ruminate on this while I'm walking the dog, and I'm like, what does this even mean? It just sounds like a lunatic, is what it sounds like. Well, then my dad was a bird guy, like my mom is afraid of birds, and I'm not a huge bird person either. But there was this little hummingbird that I would see at the same spot each time, and I would think, like, ah, that's my dad, right? Like his name was Happy. Uh I named him Happy. And uh Cooper called him Happy Feet, which is funny because like that's like a penguin movie, not the but whatever. Um, so I would walk this um walk this loop with the dog, and it became where you know, so now I'm telling myself, okay, be prepared for an encounter with the Holy Spirit, but don't say it out loud because people will think you're nuts. But just keep doing that, right? So I would do that, and then I was like praying over my neighbors and like just you know, in my always quiet in my head. And um, I was walking, and then like one of the days there was like three or four hummingbirds, but I swear they were like zooming at me. Yeah, and then like, okay, if I told anybody that, they would also think I was crazy. And then at some point during that walk, there was this lady there, and I've never seen this lady before ever. Yeah, and she was like really slow walking and was with a walker, and so it was one of those where it's like if I go next to her, it's gonna be weird because I think she's gonna talk to me, and but if I like just stay behind her, I can't walk this slow. So I was like, Well, just try it, maybe I'll make it past her and it will I'll just keep going, right? Because she's too slow, right? But no, no, no, no. I get up to her and then she asks me something about the dog, so now I'm walking with her, like slow, which is not a good speed for me, right? I'm I struggle with it. But she's I she had some death happen, and so like she was asking questions. So it was weird because there's like these hummingbirds bugging us, and this woman, and I don't even know, but it was I it was an interaction, it was some sort of encounter that it was just she was just a lady, she wasn't like a ghost or a holy spirit or whatever. But this whole experience was just like shending all these messages, like screaming, like it's happening, yeah, you're experiencing it, pay attention and slow the freaking hell down. So I started just kind of slowly seeing more things, like more signs or more tips or recommendations or whatever in my daily life where you know it's like something is guiding you one way or another, and I was listening more. So it wasn't um it wasn't sort of an You were open. I think it wasn't necessarily an encounter, it was like built up over the series of a couple months, but I definitely felt like by considering that I I do get guided by the Holy Spirit, and I know that's a real thing now, even though I would have uh heard someone say that before and been like, yeah, sure. But I get it now. So I think that's the real encounter, is that I actually believe that to be a thing. I lean into it as much as I can, and I think it gets better every year for our family, and also um more favor. Um, you know, some some funny, some are funny things, right? Like I tried to do this really crazy like series of flights when I turned 50, so I could see all these important people in my life, and I had all these really weird things happen and like delays and stuff, but they ended up being perfect and like strange thing. Like I sat next to a nun on one of the flights and a priest on the next one. It's like this is not lost on me, but in the past it would have been. Yeah, right. So I think it's just being I at the the pivot moment sort of piled up all these little things over time to then hearing a sermon series that I listened to and tried. So now I know because of all these examples, when the sermon series tells me to do something, I can at least try it. Yeah, so I'm trying to do the one I'm not good at it, but I'm trying to do the one to um memorize the Bible verses. Yeah, don't ask me for a single one right now because there's none, but I'm trying. So I have like five or six on my uh so Pastor Tiffany did a sermon and she talked about putting the things you're working on and trying to get a um a series of uh verses that that support that. So I actually put her prompts into Chat GPT and I got my four nice governing, maybe it's six verses, and I print them out on little post-its and I read them every day. And I'm trying to memorize them. I'm not good at that because I'm I forgetful, like I can't, but I try I do it every day. I read it every day, and every day I literally write on my to-do list, play, pray for, and like the things I'm praying for. And I just have processes around them because again, I'm a process person. So when I write breakfast in books on my posts, which you might see, part of the process is the Bible recap, and part of it is reading these verses, and part of them is practicing them. But I did none of that. Now we go back full circle to ages like 17 to 30 ish. I didn't do anything. Do I think I did bad things? No, but I wasn't working on the relationship and I didn't have as much abundance in my life.

SPEAKER_00 2:41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:41:41

And now I do, and it just keeps getting better. So when people are like, oh, you know, 52, whatever, I'm like, I'm ready for 53. It's just gonna be even better because I just keep doing this.

SPEAKER_07 2:41:50

So check this out. You drive a lot. Yep. You do, and you said yourself, just pick one thing a day. I feel like God wants you to just pick one and work on that one. And what it do you use your visor?

SPEAKER_00 2:42:10

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:42:11

I just use your visor. Okay, put the little post in the three by five card, put a three by five card up there on your visor. And then when you're at the red light, just read it. Just read it. If you say it out loud, it's even better. Yeah, I've been doing them out loud because I'm trying to remember them. It's it's God's doing it, and that's my encouragement to you is just put it on a three by five card, put it on your visor, and when you're driving, when you stop, just say it out loud. I think it's gonna help you.

SPEAKER_02 2:42:41

Help me remember.

SPEAKER_04 2:42:42

I believe uh to piggyback what he's saying, I believe saying them out loud helps us to remember them better for sure. Because we were doing this thing one time where we would post a verse on the wall. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Remember that, baby? Eight by eleven piece of paper, right? Oh yeah. And we would sit there and we would say it, you know what I mean? Back and forth. And we would go back and forth until we get to the point where just out of the blue, what's the verse? And boom, we just have it, you know what I mean? And we got to the point where we had like five of them on the wall. All right, once the verses, you know what I mean? Yeah, and boom, boom, boom, we knew them all. You know what I mean? Some of them I still know today.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:20

Yeah, some of them I can remember the verse, but then I can't remember what it where it is. Like I know the verse, but then I'm like, was it Proverbs 20? That's good. That's good.

SPEAKER_07 2:43:29

I had a pastor one time that tells me, How's a person supposed to get to the destination without an address? And I was like, Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:37

So the verse is the destination, but you gotta have the address so they can get there. Yep. It's still hard.

SPEAKER_02 2:43:42

I always tell people it says in the Bible that somewhere in there. I'm working on it. I'm working on it.

SPEAKER_04 2:43:48

I try to remember verses too, man. And it's I tell people all the time it's like it's like an arrow in your quiver. You know, each time the enemy comes to try to do something, you can pull that arrow out. And no, my Bible says, and you know, Amen. I'm a new creation, you know what I'm saying? Old things have passed away, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 2:44:07

But that's really like the that sermon where Pastor Dave encouraged us to practice the purposefully memorized was just a few weeks ago. But this is what I'm saying is now I listen to uh I lit I listen to uh We're live people, yeah man. Sorry. It's Mr. Daniel, and I thought I was on quiet. You're good. Um I l I listen to the sermons and then when I get an action item, I actually try it. Whereas in the past, when I was younger, I would leave and be like, okay, I checked the church box, right? But now I'm taking that that home and trying to do the things.

SPEAKER_04 2:44:41

Yeah, yeah. Amen. Yeah.

Big Goals For Career Coaching And Prevention

SPEAKER_07 2:44:43

Also, what the I know you talked about uh getting the number from one to three to one to four for the health. Is there anything else that you are believing God for?

SPEAKER_02 2:44:54

Yeah, that's a good question. Well, we're in the season of collegiate uh time and I I have it on, we touched on this earlier. So I'm a I've developed a process through career mentoring at my work. Yeah. Um so I would get a lot of early career people to help them um figure out, you know, it's it's what's kind of a typical thing, right? Three to five years out of school, they don't like their boss, they think they need a raise, right? All this. So I actually built processes on how to help those people figure out what to do next and how to navigate. And in recent years, I've realized that actually works with high school kids to determine what their major is. That's great. So I'm right on the cusp of trying to figure out how do I package this into a thing because it if you have direction, just like we talked about, all the different stories that we had were because we were a little bit lost until we were not, right? And so if you could shorten that cycle for someone on a on the career piece and find their vocational personality early and direct them earlier, it would save so much time and money. And then they would have more time and money to do other things that would make the planet better or their lives easier or whatever. So I'm kind of at a pivotal point. We didn't again, we didn't get into that, but that's something I'm praying for. Like I'm right on the cusp of something with this. You can feel it. I know it's there. And so when you said think big, I'm like, whatever that is, that would be where like I need to just figure it out. Like, is it finish the book? Is it a go on a speaking circuit? Is it more client? I don't know what it is. Partnership with the school district. I don't know what it is. So I wanted to, when you said think big, I'm like solving that because I think that's another place that of course it would have an income um aspect that wouldn't hurt, but it's more just like reaching people in that different way because it's a different, it's something like I uh we're all high potential people in our own ways, but like I I have discovered something that is unusual and I've been practicing with it for the last five years, but I don't know what to do about that right now. I'm at a pivot point. So when you said at the beginning, pray for something, it has nothing to do with really it. We touched on it a little bit, but that's like immediately what I could see in my mind. So I was like, I'm just gonna put that out there.

SPEAKER_06 2:47:10

Come on, out of the way. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:11

And then the but the one moving, so I also um moving that one in three men and one in three women dying of heart disease, that has got to change. And I I we are equipped as a as a people to fix it because it's not rocket science. We talked about be happy, that's accessible. No one needs to go buy anything, they can listen to this podcast and start tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 2:47:32

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 2:47:33

And it's all stuff they have access to, especially in the America, in the United States of America.

SPEAKER_07 2:47:38

So I want to share this with you. I watch on X, I don't have Instagram, it's just it's a thing. I'm in recovery. But I watch this doctor, her name is Dr. Barbara O'Neill, and she's all over with uh it's medical stuff and health stuff. When I asked you earlier about Facebook, it it was Facebook. Yeah, I really think that God has anointed you and you already have the gift of speaking, but I feel like maybe TikTok and X, you should start something for Red Inspired. It doesn't have to be anything long, but you're able to speak onto these platforms where these younger kids, because that's what they're on.

SPEAKER_02 2:48:24

I know, they're not on Facebook. Tricky, I know. That's the thing your voice can help you. I did some Instagram and I was like, this is not for me. And I also don't, you know, it's it's kids aren't on Instagram either, though. I know now they're on Instagram.

SPEAKER_04 2:48:37

They're on TikTok and they're on X, TikTok, their X or Snapchat, things like that, man. I'm not excited.

SPEAKER_02 2:48:43

Right now, I my population tends to be like more of the 50 plus, right? But if we could reach people younger, so yeah, it's possible.

SPEAKER_07 2:48:52

You gotta start it tricky and watch what God does. So I think that income you're talking about is literally in these views from these kids.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:01

So I feel right now that the people who are finding you are people who are already having issues and are looking ways to correct it. Oh, where I feel like God wants to get you ahead of the game. Preventative thing. Where if you can get these people at a younger age to pay attention to heart health and take the things now. That's how you do it. Instead of waiting until you're 50 and you have high blood pressure.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:30

And when I started, that was who was in Facebook right now. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:49:33

So I'm just Daniel, help your mom, bro.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:37

He's not on any social media right now.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:39

Amen. But we need to figure out how to get your voice to those people. That's right. You know, and start telling those people look into your history of your family. Is there heart issues? If there is, I want to help you prevent this from happening to you or the generations after. You know what I mean? You want to be happy.

SPEAKER_02 2:49:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_07 2:49:57

There's so many that aren't.

SPEAKER_04 2:49:59

That's how you get one to three to one to four. One to four.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:02

I'm taking hip through.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:03

People our age, we're stubborn, hard-headed, and we just want to eat what we eat, and you know what I mean.

SPEAKER_07 2:50:08

Yeah. So this this younger generation is willing to learn. And the thing is, Stacey, you got a you have the knowledge to give them the why. Yeah, that's what this next generation is looking. They all they are all about the why. Yeah. And you literally have the why to give to them with the knowledge and how to do it.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:27

Yeah. Man, Jesus. So your connection with helping students and your ability to speak needs to be figured out how to way to get that into maybe colleges to where you're having heart health conversations with 20-year-olds. You know what I mean? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:50:54

And figure out how to find the young people.

SPEAKER_04 2:50:56

Yeah, man. If you can get 20 to 25 year olds now to pay attention and be aware that this again, when I was 25, I didn't want to hear a damn thing you would have said about heart health. You know what I mean? Because I'm like, I ain't living to 30 anyway, so I'm just living. You know what I mean? So you'd have to figure out a way to make it presentable in a way that it would catch their attention. Yeah. But I think that's where you're going to get your one to three to one to four is to prevent it for that generation to start doing.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:27

Just like you, it's to be happy.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:29

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:30

That can that can literally be what it is, man. Be happy.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:34

How do we do that? Everyone's hunting for it.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:37

If you come on, guys, if you're listening to this and you know and you can help, yeah, please reach out to her. Amen.

SPEAKER_04 2:51:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:51:43

Anything else you believe in God for?

SPEAKER_04 2:51:47

Those are two great things. So already great. Awesome with those.

SPEAKER_02 2:51:50

But yeah, I I, you know, as a parent, we talked about like the ease and the challenges, right? You always pray for your kids, right? I just want to make sure that they stay on the on the path they're on right now because they're looking, they're right on the cusp. Like we've got two that are now officially like out of my control, adulting. But yeah, praying for their their next season, right? This next six years is getting us through high school and college. It's a tricky time, and it's weird, right? Like Daniel's gonna be in New Mexico for the summer. He has to drive himself there. It's so nerf wracking, you know. So big, big things for the family. But that, you know, the boys, the boys.

SPEAKER_04 2:52:28

I think what you implemented in them is cemented in them. Yeah. Look, you left that you left, you left the room. That's not something that yeah.

SPEAKER_07 2:52:38

You left the room at Thanksgiving and come back, and they're Travis literally encouraged, hey bro, we're gonna have you pray. Do you know why I know that?

SPEAKER_04 2:52:47

Because you and Rich has lived it out before them. You've modeled it. The people where people go wrong with their children is is is is their Sunday church people, Monday through Saturday, they're worldly people. You know what I mean? And again, I don't I don't I don't have preview to your personal life at your home, but I can tell by the way that you talk, the way I see you on Facebook, that you live what you live. You know what I mean? And so your kids have seen you preach, have seen you and Rich live this thing out. That's different. Because I ask a lot of guests did your parents exemplify Christ Christ in the home? Yeah. And a lot of them say no. They were just go to church on Sunday, come home after church, have a beer while they were a beer while they were watching the football game, cussing, screaming, yelling, and all the other stuff. Sunday, they were perfect people again. You know what I mean? Where it seems like you and Rich have literally There's plenty of screaming, but you know But you know what, of course, it's it's boys, it's a boy's won't be boys at home, you know what I mean? Things like that. But you know what I'm saying? Yeah, you guys, you guys You probably come back around. You weren't two-faced in what you were doing. Yeah, you know what I mean? It wasn't we're this way at church and this way at home. You guys were just this way. That's what has cemented that in your boys. Is that's just how they've seen it, you know what I mean?

Prayer Covering And Final Ways To Support

SPEAKER_07 2:54:01

I bet you if we were to ask the boys, did your parents model it? Oh, yeah, they did. They would probably say yes. Amen. Yeah. Can I pray for you? Yes, yeah, right. Thank you. Thank you again.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:12

Yeah, thanks for coming in. It was cool, man. Yeah, I learned a lot. I did. I hope you guys learned a lot, man. Again, Stacy, what's your main name?

SPEAKER_02 2:54:22

Kalis, K-A-L-I-S-Z.

SPEAKER_04 2:54:24

And Red Inspired Fitness, man. Find it. You will not regret it. I promise you. I don't. Let me pray. Thank you, God. Heavenly Father, Lord, just thank you, God. Lord, I thank you that you put people like Stacy in our lives. God, I thank you, Lord. Thank you, God. Um, I love that two people from two different walks of life can have an encounter and and and have the same experience right now, God, uh, of just loving you and and loving your church and loving your people, God. And so I just thank you for uh that you brought Stacy into our lives, God. Lord, I thank you for just uh the example that she is to people that know her, God. Lord, I thank you that um I just I can just sense a genuine care coming from her, God. Nothing to boast about herself or trying to do anything crazy, God. She just wants to help people, God. And I sense that and I feel that so deeply in her, God. So Lord, I thank you for just uh the journey of the heart health, God, Lord. I thank you for the journey of body, God, Lord. I thank you that um that she is making an impact, God. Lord, I thank you that uh you're gonna open doors, God, for her to help get this message to younger people, God, so that that number of one to three can jump to one to four. And maybe, just maybe, God, in this lifetime, we can get it to one to five. Hallelujah. That there is a huge number, God. And you are that kind of God, Lord. So I pray that you put the right people in Stacy's past. God, but you put those people who are who are uh administrators at schools who hear her messages and just feel like this needs to be spoken at school so we can get these young people to understand and ask questions about their mom, ask questions about their grandparents, about heart health, God. Did grandma have heart attacks, did dad have heart attacks, there's heart issues in our family, God, so they can be preventative to stop those things now, God. So I thank you for opening that door and that pathway for her, God. And Lord, I thank you for just the the the thing that you've given her, God, to help these young people with their schooling and their career paths, God. Lord, I pray by the power of your spirit that you bring that together somehow, God, whether it's in a book or platform or or or X or whatever it is, God, to help these young people understand and find out just who they are, God. Because you created us all for a plan and a purpose, God. And I pray that that whatever the formulation is, whatever the process is, God, that you bring that together in Jesus' name. Because Lord, I thank you that so many people are wasting so much money trying to find out what they want to be. And I'm not sure what the number is, God, but I know a lot of people who graduate with this degree are not even using it for what they're doing for work, God. What a waste of time, what a waste of money, God. So Lord, I thank you that that you've given this to your daughter, Lord. Thank you, Lord. That you created the engineer mind that she has, God to put this together, Lord, so people can save time, to save money. And so we can have those people that we need in this world right now to make it better, to make it flow better, God, to make it the planet healthier, to all these things, God, so we can get these people where they need to be so they can fulfill their purpose and their call in their lives, Father God. Lord, I thank you for her boys.

SPEAKER_05 2:57:42

Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_04 2:57:43

Lord, I thank you just for the wonderful young men that they are, God. Lord, and I thank you that they're coming into this season, God, whether they're coming out of high school and into college, and that there's going to be uh, with Daniel's already there, where he's kind of stepping out on his own, Father God. But Lord, I thank you that Stacy and Rich has prepared them, God, that when they step out on their own, that they will not depart, God. Your word says that raise up a child in the way that they should go and they shall not depart, God. Lord, I thank you that in this home these children were raised up, God. Lord, I feel there's there's a sense of just what they've been taught and what they know has been cemented, God. Foundation. That it was not that it's not shaken, God. It's not, it's not nothing that can be moved, God.

unknown 2:58:25

Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 2:58:26

So I thank you, Lord, that uh as they begin to step out, and I know she's a mom, she's gonna be nervous, she's gonna be worried, God. But Lord, I pray by the power of your spirit that you give her peace to know that her and Rich did a good job. So I thank you, God, that these are good young men. Thank you, God. Lord, I thank you that you have good plans for them, God. Lord, I thank you that you have boring angels around them that will protect them every step of the way, God. Hallelujah. And Lord, I thank you that for the season that's gonna come where uh the boys are gonna be out doing their thing, God, and it's just gonna be Stacy and Rich. Lord, I thank you for that season for them as well, God. Lord, I pray that that season is just uh blows their mind, God. That they're just blown away by what you're doing, Lord, through the resources and through the time and how that marriage is gonna be unified and just strengthened again, God, as it goes from being uh uh the children to step out and it's just them, God. So Lord, I thank you for what you're doing. God, we just love you. You're so amazing, you're so awesome, you're so wonderful, and we just uh sit here in awe of who you are. And we just praise your holy name. Thank you, God. So, Father, again, I thank you for your daughter. Thank you for our friend. We just give you honor, praise, and glory in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_07 2:59:48

Uh Stacy, can you pray for me and dad and pray for Speak Life A Z? Yes, for sure. Thank you. Thank you, God.

SPEAKER_02 2:59:56

I appreciate so much the opportunity to get to know you both better as well. Thank you. And it is such a blessing to understand the mission of Speak Life A Z and to be a participant in it. So um Father God, we we thank you for this opportunity to work together and to talk today. We pray for both Eddie and Rowdy that their voices will continue to be elevated with this podcast to find the lost, to reach those who are unreachable and to share their story, which has some rough and tumble moments, but yet ended up here today. And that that optimism should be available for anybody. Thank you, God. And we pray over this infrastructure that it will be it will be amplified. Abundance is is here for all of us and and you know it. Thank you, Lord. And you you see it even though even before we see it. Thank you, God. Father, please bless this infrastructure and we'll close in your holy name. Amen.

SPEAKER_07 3:01:00

Amen. Thanks, sis. Thank you so much. Hey, I sure hope you uh enjoyed this podcast, man, wherever you're watching from, listening from. Uh, if you could please, whatever platform you're at, man, Buzz Sprout, YouTube, Spotify, uh, Apple Podcasts, or all the other ones that are on there, um, subscribe to the channel if you haven't already. Uh, hit the little bell on YouTube, man, you'll get all the uh up upcoming episodes and uh notifications for new podcasts coming out. Um, maybe you yourself got a really good story, uh testimony, and you you feel like uh people need to hear it and you could possibly help some people, um, please reach out, Facebook, YouTube, send me a message. Um, I will get back to you. If God's blessed you and you have the resources um and you're able to sow a seed, um, you can go through and actually support the show and become a monthly subscriber. Um, if you could also go and leave us a review for some reason, uh, those things and comments as well. Um, just put one word in there, Jesus. Um, it helps so much with the algorithms um and the stuff on the back end. But until next time, we're gonna continue to speak life, AZ. God bless you. Jesus.