A Story Well Told: Art, Stewardship, and the Work of Lampstand

What makes a story actually move people—without resorting to hype or manipulation? In this episode, Heather Winchell sits down with HR Sweat (Lampstand Story Company, Oklahoma City) to talk about the craft of storytelling, why “the first draft is garbage” can be a gift, and how critique becomes a creative superpower. They explore Lampstand’s approach to bespoke work—listening long enough to find the true thread—along with storytelling guardrails like honesty and respect for the audience. Along the way, you’ll hear stories from HR’s early days in video, the leadership feedback that changed his life, and why focusing on the good and beautiful can widen the circle in a divided world.

Key ideas you’ll hear:

• Bespoke storytelling starts with listening long enough to find the connecting thread.
• Honest storytelling often gets simpler with each revision (less “juice,” more truth).
• Respecting the audience means trusting them with complexity and hard realities.
• A compelling “ask” stays tethered to the why, not the swag-bag moment.
• Criticism isn’t the enemy—defensiveness is.

Mentioned in the episode:

Loud Cloud Animation Studio
Johnny Harris (channel)
BibleProject
The Moth
Huberman Lab gratitude episode

Catch more of the story @thanks.for.doing.that.podcast!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Heather Winchell: Hey, there you are listening to thanks for doing that, a podcast celebrating people and ideas that make this world a better place. I am Heather Winchell, your host and chief enthusiast, and I'm on a mission to bring you conversations that encourage, inspire and delight. So stay tuned for another episode where we explore the things we do, the reasons we do them, and why it matters.

[00:00:44] All right, welcome. Back to the podcast. Today, I am joined by HR Suite. He's an owner and founder of Lampstand Story Company, and lampstand is a full service production company based in Oklahoma City. And though I thoroughly enjoy every conversation I have on the podcast, I have to say that this one is very special to me because I have actually known HR since middle school, which is really fun.

[00:01:10] Long before he was traveling the world capturing stories of impact, I knew him as a friend who knew how to tell a good tale and had big vision, and it is so cool. Just so cool and so delightful to see where that big vision has taken him. So hr, thank you so much for joining me today. 

[00:01:28] HR Sweat: It's a pleasure. You are one of those people that I love to talk to because we haven't spoken in.

[00:01:33] I mean, it may be close to a a decade, but once you call me up and you're like, Hey, this is what I'm doing, you wanna be a part of it. You're one of those people that. I just have such great memories of that. You're an automatic Yes. For whatever you want. Anything you want, Heather gets it. That's 

[00:01:48] Heather Winchell: awesome.

[00:01:49] I'm, I'm so pleased. Thank you so much for that. Why don't we just start out with hearing a bit about what life looks like for you right now? 

[00:01:56] HR Sweat: So right now, um, I live in Oklahoma City. I am, uh, uh, an owner and my official title, uh, for like the doing the work inside of Atory Company is creative director. We, we went through a bunch of titles like, am I a filmmaker?

[00:02:10] Am I a director, am I an art director? Um, and when we looked at my skill sets, like creative director just seemed to fit best. And I have eight different business cards that all say all those other things. And we've really landed on creative director. Um, and, uh, you know, so I get to, uh, tell stories through a bunch of different mediums.

[00:02:28] One of my favorite is animation. Mm. Uh, that's one of sort of one of my, uh, special skill sets. I love animation. I love motion design, which think graphic design, but it moves and it's fun. Um, and then filmmaking. Uh, and we get to work. Our niche is really with, um, nonprofits, uh, and a lot of faith-based nonprofits and international nonprofits.

[00:02:50] And so we get to tell stories of what they're doing and what God's doing all across the world, um, to try and encourage people to join their mission, to fund what they do, to understand, uh, that God's doing a lot of great things and they can be a part of it. Uh, and then on the personal side, I, I'm married.

[00:03:07] We've been married for 15 years to my wife Cena, and we have four kids. Um, Harry Ford. Baby Penny and baby Rosemary, who's two and a half months old. In fact, when she was just born two and a half months ago, and literally she was, uh, four weeks old when I had to set off to go to the Philippines and Uganda.

[00:03:27] Oh man. So I know at, at four kids things kind of change a little bit. You're not as careful with that. Fourth, like you, you find, find out how, you know, babies are a little bit resilient in some ways and you know how they're fragile and how they're resilient. You're not as worried about it. You have four kids.

[00:03:41] Yeah. You know the deal. How did you try, did you treat your oldest kid a little bit different to your Oh, totally. Youngest kid. You know, 

[00:03:47] Heather Winchell: we joke about how, I don't think Micah, my oldest, I don't think he had an Oreo until he was like almost two. I'm pretty sure Liam had one before he could like, eat solid food.

[00:03:57] HR Sweat: Yeah. Yeah. You, you give up on a lot of those things. You really hone in on what's important. Yeah. Alright. I need, I need to turn you into a good person and I need to keep you alive. Those are the big things, right. I gotta do. Right. 

[00:04:06] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Um, okay, so a couple of questions. First, do you ever do stop action like Wallace and grommet type thing?

[00:04:15] HR Sweat: No. I, that takes so much time. I have a really good friend here in Oklahoma City. He, he owns loud cloud studios if everybody wants to check it out, and he does excellent stop motion. So if I ever had to go to stop motion, I would go for him because he is unbelievable, like believably good at it. And you've seen his work.

[00:04:32] If you've ever seen like some Lego stuff or Marvel stuff or things like that, he's done. We have actually two really good guys here now. I do a version of it in 3D where I imitate stop motion and I actually just did it, uh, for my church. My church has this really cool thing they will bring me on to tell Bible stories.

[00:04:50] For kids, like, uh, first through sixth grade. And I love it because they let me do whatever I want to because they know that it's gonna be biblically based and it's gonna be sound. But creatively they let me just do whatever. So I just did a whole Lego series on, um, Paul and some of his letters and things like that, and it was, it was really fun, but it, it imitated a stop motion look 

[00:05:11] Heather Winchell: interesting.

[00:05:12] Okay. Whenever you, whenever you like, create something using Legos or something like that, especially digitally, are there any like copyright laws or are, do you have to be careful what you do with something branded like that 

[00:05:26] HR Sweat: You do. And so, um, man, copyright law, uh, is, is a whole big thing. So you actually have a large amount of freedom to take copywritten things and use them to tell stories.

[00:05:41] If, one, you're not making money with it and it's transformative. And so if, if those two things are true, and there's a few other little things about it, um, if those two things are true, you actually have a lot of leeway to take objects, take, you know, video bites, take character, take things like that, um, and use them to tell stories to do fun and interesting things to create art, but has to be transformative.

[00:06:07] And then if you start making money off of it, the rules change just a little bit. 

[00:06:10] Heather Winchell: Sure, that makes sense. Um, 

[00:06:12] HR Sweat: but yeah. Um, and so in fact, I, uh, I remember I, uh, was shooting video at the, at the capitol. I was at the Washington, no, I was at the Lincoln Monument and I was in a place where I we're allowed to shoot video and there's a lot of.

[00:06:29] Tourist around me, and they all had their cell phone cameras out. But I had a big camera and I had it on a tripod. I had assistance with me and a national park. Guy goes, Hey, you're not allowed to take pictures here. And I look around at all the tourists, I'm like, we are not allowed to take pictures here.

[00:06:43] He's like, no, they are. They are. And I'm like, well, what's different about me? He's like, well, you have a tripod. And so I took the tripod off and had my assistant take it back. And I'm like, okay, are we good now? He's like, no, no, no, we're still not good. And he just didn't know. Like he knew what I was doing.

[00:06:55] Probably wasn't okay. It was, but it probably wasn't. Uh, and then, uh, I realized if I kept arguing with him, I was probably going to jail. Oh my goodness. I just left. 

[00:07:05] Heather Winchell: So how did you create creatively solve that problem? What'd you do? 

[00:07:08] HR Sweat: I'd already had the footage. 

[00:07:09] Heather Winchell: Oh, okay. Okay. 

[00:07:11] HR Sweat: I, it was one of those, you know, uh.

[00:07:14] Just do it and then ask for forgiveness later. Yeah. But also it, it, it, it was appropriate what I was doing. Right? Like I, I was allowed to be there shooting video and doing the things I'm doing. Uh, one of the things that, uh, um, if, if anybody's into like news gathering or photography or anything like that, anything you see from a, from public.

[00:07:33] So if you're on a public sidewalk, on a public street, in a public park, you can take picture video of it, you can record it. Um, because nobody has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. So anything you can see in public, you can video and take photos of. Hmm. So even if it's a private building.

[00:07:51] Heather Winchell: Interesting. Good to know. 

[00:07:53] HR Sweat: Mm-hmm. Okay. So have to pull that one out a lot. 

[00:07:56] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Okay. So Lampstand just turned 15, right? 

[00:08:02] HR Sweat: We just did have our 15, uh, yeah. Anniversary. Yeah. You saw Party. I did. Big Party. I did see that. And you got together. So 

[00:08:07] Heather Winchell: tell me, it sounds like you were there in the beginning and then you kind of like.

[00:08:12] Did your own thing for a bit and then came back to Liam Stand. Tell me what has it looked like to develop this over the past 15 years? So, 

[00:08:20] HR Sweat: um, my buddy Derek Watson and I started this thing when we were in college. Um, you know, we both were learning film and we wanted to use that to make some money, grow our skills, actually earn a living at it.

[00:08:35] And, uh, so we started doing that. I remember I really liked it 'cause we, we earned enough money, like, which wasn't a lot, but I was really poor at the time. And so it was enough for me to quit my job at Walmart, which I was working full-time at Walmart overnight. I would go in at eight o'clock at, uh, night and I would get off work at eight in the morning and then I'd have all my classes in the morning.

[00:08:55] And so it was, it was a pretty wild thing, you know, paying for school, working full-time overnights at Walmart and doing all that. And, but then once we started making, uh, making videos and starting lamping, I made enough money to like pay my bills and things like that. Um, so we started it there and I remember.

[00:09:11] We were so bad at business back then. We were like, I look back at some of the stuff we created and it was, it was now, it was like the early two thousands. So equipment was different, skills were different. YouTube didn't really exist in the way where you can learn anything you want to now. But, uh, we still joke about like our first, uh, pitch with a potential client and they asked us how much a video would cost.

[00:09:33] And I looked over at my buddy Derek, and he had, he didn't even think we were gonna get to that part. And he's like, uh, I don't know. But I did come prepared. I knew we would get to that part and I pulled outta my bag, one of those old calculators that you set up on a desk and you type the numbers in. And I just started typing numbers.

[00:09:49] Just making stuff up. Yeah. I just, I had no actual numbers and then I eventually just like erased it all and wrote what number I thought, and I showed it to him and, and he's like, I guess so. And I scooched it over to the guy. 'cause in my head that's what business people do. You know, they, they calculate things and then they, they either write it down on a piece of paper and they slide it over.

[00:10:08] And I'm sure the guy was like. Am I really gonna hire these morons? But he did. So, you know. Okay. Now if you 

[00:10:16] Heather Winchell: were gonna make the same pitch today, did you Totally overshoot or, um, under, 

[00:10:21] HR Sweat: under what? Okay. Way. That's one of the big pieces of advice is I can give to most people in this field. Is that what you should take whatever number you're comfortable saying, add 20% to that and go there.

[00:10:34] Heather Winchell: Interesting. Okay. Good advice. 

[00:10:37] HR Sweat: And I've almost never been turned down. Yeah. So, 

[00:10:40] Heather Winchell: okay, so then you guys, you know, had your first client, you. We're able to stop your, like, full-time student and working vibe and move into this. Yeah. Tell me more. 

[00:10:51] HR Sweat: So then, uh, so that was in college and we did that for about two years.

[00:10:54] And then we both had to get kind of like, you know, better paying jobs, more full jobs. We had to really grow our skills. And, and Derek went off and he worked for, uh, PBS. And so he shot, uh, documentaries and he, he came really good at that, kind of like long form storytelling. And then I went and worked in churches, uh, as a filmmaker and a creative.

[00:11:12] So I moved to Houston first. At, uh, at this, uh, big church called Sugar Creek Baptist, which I loved. Oh, yeah, I've heard of 

[00:11:19] Heather Winchell: it. 

[00:11:19] HR Sweat: It's a great church, and they, they let me be creative. They let me learn my skills. They let me, they let me grow a ton. I grew a ton as an artist, and I grew a ton as a person there.

[00:11:31] I remember specifically, I would spend a lot of time growing. My craft so that everything I made looked better and sound and sounded cooler and just was more interesting to watch. Um, but I also, I wasn't growing as a person as much as I should have. And so what happened specifically is I was in a meeting with a bunch of creatives and when we would come to these creative meetings, I would come with a bunch of preparation.

[00:11:55] I always wanted to be the most prepared guy in the room. 'cause I wanted my idea to win. And we were talking about what we're gonna do in this sermon series. And I'm like, here's what we're gonna do. Here's my ideas, here's all this creative, here's all this stuff. And then other people would be like, oh, you know, I'm just thinking about it right now and maybe we should do this.

[00:12:08] And it, and it, it really upset me. I'm like, I put all this work into it. And I remember some guy just like threw out an idea and I remember going like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we can go with your terrible idea or we can go with my great idea, whichever one you guys want to do. And a, um, a guy who was sort of an interim pastor there pulled me aside.

[00:12:25] He's like, Hey, listen man. You're, you're creative, you're fun, you're, uh, great to be around, but, uh, like you're prideful and arrogant. And here's the thing about you is you don't lead an organization by being put at the top of it. You lead it by however you feel people around. You can't help but feel like that.

[00:12:44] So when you're happy and when you're excited about a thing, people can't help but feel like that. But when you're upset and when you're angry and when you're prideful, you tear down everything that you touch, and are you gonna be that kind of person for the rest of your life? And I'm like, no, I don't want to be.

[00:13:00] So I grew, I get, I got to grow a lot there. I got to grow into my skills, um, as a, as an artist, as a creative, uh, and then just as a person too. And I like, that's one of the defining moments of my life that that mentor sort of sitting me down and straightening me out and realizing that, hey, you know, part of what I do is who I am, not just what I make.

[00:13:20] Heather Winchell: Oh man. What great feedback and what a gift, right? I mean, maybe at the time a little bit hard to hear, but what a gift. So hard 

[00:13:29] to hear. 

[00:13:29] Heather Winchell: And I, yeah. You know, as you say that, I'm even just, I'm even just thinking about how that plays out in our home, right? Like, I can tell that when I am excited than the boys are excited, there's like a totally different vibe.

[00:13:41] But if I'm upset, you know, like it does, it does trickle down into like their little world. So great feedback for the workplace, for the home, for life. Y 

[00:13:51] HR Sweat: your, your feelings, your attitude are infectious. This is true for everybody. Like it, if you're gonna come in with a bad attitude, it's going to seep into other people.

[00:14:02] But that means the opposite is true. That is that if you can come in with a great attitude, you can overpower a lot of obstacles, right? And you can rally people on your team. Um, but sometimes you just have to choose to be like that, even if you don't feel like it's 

[00:14:15] Heather Winchell: right. That's so true. Because actually my husband and I were just having a conversation about how so.

[00:14:21] We are really intentional with our boys to, not to, to let them like name the things that like, Hey, this really bothered me, or I'm really disappointed about this, or whatever. Right? We, like, we're trying to teach them to be honest with themselves and us about like how they're actually experiencing life, and it's great for them to have the tools to be able to articulate that.

[00:14:39] But something I noticed and that I reflected back to Joel is I was like, man, I, I feel like encouraging them to be honest about those things. It, it can very easily feel like this in comparison to, if we're not really mindful about speaking the gratitude, right? Because I actually think the human brain is wired to more quickly remember negative experiences than positive experiences.

[00:15:01] And so even in the past few weeks we've been and. Kind of all the time. We're very intentional about gratitude. We have a wall of wonder in our house. It's like something that, um, as things strike us as like beautiful or delightful or like God's creation, whatever it is, we like put it up on this wall is just kind of like a way of remembering throughout the month.

[00:15:20] Like, wow, that's wonderful. That's delightful, that's beautiful. So we're trying to create this culture, but even in just the like stated expression of we need to actually like up our game. And not in a way where it's like, I have to say my three gratitudes, but in kind of like a, okay, it actually will be good for me even if I'm like feeling kind of ugh right now.

[00:15:41] To just say like, okay, what do I know to be true? I'm really grateful for our home. I'm really grateful for, you know, this, that and the other. And it's actually shifted kind of like the culture and the feel, the vibe, the overall vibe. Yeah, 

[00:15:54] HR Sweat: yeah. You know, the, the Bible talks about it with, uh, you know, whatever's good, whatever's holy, whatever's just pure, like, fill your mind with those things.

[00:16:02] CS Lewis, um, said something similar when he said, you know, um, I was trying to figure out how, um, how to be like a patient person or how to be an honest person. And I started off by just doing the things that I thought a person like that would do, and then it turns out it changed my heart and I started to become those things.

[00:16:20] And, uh, yeah. So what you fill your mind with, you know, um, it, it changes who you are. It, it starts to feel fake at first, and it feels like that for everybody If you, if you ever learn a habit, um, I find this like, people have a hard time with prayer like this too. They feel like I'm faking it, and I'm like, that's okay.

[00:16:39] Start there and do it, and it's gonna get better and better and better, I promise. Um, I, I have a small group of guys that I was, that I teach and. We, uh, once a month go to a, I always get it wrong. I always say soup kitchen. And they yell at me. They're like, it's not a soup kitchen. We are a food pantry.

[00:16:58] We're a food pantry. Which is different. It's a different thing. Um, it's like a little grocery store. People come and you build their, you know, their carts up with stuff. And, um, and I'm like, Hey guys, while we're here, I want you to be intentional with this time your goal. And like, I give them goals, kind like, you know, like, uh, like blah.

[00:17:14] But like your goal is to pray with every single person that you come through here. And that means you need to talk to 'em. You need to learn enough about them that you have a real thing to pray for 'em about. Not just like, oh, hey, I hope God blesses you and you have a good day. Find something real. And pray with them.

[00:17:27] And your goal is to, is to do that with like three people that, uh, that you walk with through here today. And I saw the looks of terror on their faces. They were like, oh, I don't, and like some of these sort of like grown men that I know are solid Christians that love Jesus, love their families, but have never been pushed and challenged to do those things.

[00:17:44] And they're like, oh, this is gonna be fake. And I'm like, I know it's gonna feel awkward at first, but then you do it enough times and you're gonna realize, oh, hey, now I am a person who prays for people. 

[00:17:54] Heather Winchell: Mm mm Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:17:57] HR Sweat: But you gotta do it. 

[00:17:58] Heather Winchell: Yep. You gotta do it. 

[00:17:59] HR Sweat: That same sort of thinking has played into my art, uh, uh, and my creativity a lot.

[00:18:04] 'cause you start to realize that I have the, that imposter syndrome a little bit where anytime I make something good and stuff's like, oh, that was really good. I'm like, listen, I'm as shocked as you are buddy. I, I was not expecting that. But, uh, there, there's something to just putting it out there and then just working on it.

[00:18:22] And working on it and working on it. But like, um. I, I work with my designers. I'm like, Hey, your first idea is always garbage. It just, it just is, it's part of the way our brains think. We think in cliches, and I think it's partly because we have to make so many decisions every day that our brain sort of offloads it into like, Hey, does this fit a pattern that I know?

[00:18:41] If it does fit a pattern, I know just go with that. And that's why we think in cliches, that's why we talk in cliches. Um, but in the creative process and the storytelling process, and when you're really trying to. Break open people's hearts and minds and, and make them pay attention. You have to say something new or you have to say something old in a way that makes them listen.

[00:19:00] Mm. And and so when I write I, I'm like, okay, I know my first draft is gonna be terrible, but just get it down on the page and just let it be bad, and then throw it away and then put something else done. And eventually you'll find something like, oh, this isn't totally terrible. Maybe I can keep this and then I can smash it together with this other not so terrible idea.

[00:19:19] And now it starts to becoming, you know, something actually good and interesting, but you have to get through that, that fake phase, that weird phase, that awkward, terrible phase. And you have to push through it. And you have to fight through it really to make something great and good. 

[00:19:34] Heather Winchell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. When, and I guess like, you know, you've been at this since, since college.

[00:19:40] You've been at this for many, many years. Would you say that that came. That understanding is something that's, you know, taken all that time to ripen. Would you say that that's something that a few years in you really started to notice? Um, how has that skill developed for you? 

[00:19:55] HR Sweat: You know, you said this about, about me and other people have said it, but I didn't notice it when I was younger that God had blessed me to be a natural storyteller.

[00:20:04] And, and I, I loved telling stories, but one of the things I loved about telling stories is that you get to iterate your story and you get to make it better and better and better over time. It's not, not like changing it to where you're lying, but you remove the parts that are boring or that slow it down.

[00:20:19] You find your tempo, you find the space, you find the things that make people delighted in the story, and you get to those quicker and you find those moments and you spread them out. Um, you work on your pacing, you work on your time, and you work on your punchlines and you do all those things. I loved that, uh, part of it, but I, I remember.

[00:20:36] I got, uh, you know, in, in high school and in college I got really into comedians and I loved getting to listen to old versions of a joke that I knew really well and see how rough and terrible it was. I'm like, okay, it doesn't start off excellent. Mm-hmm. Good, good, good. That's good for me. 'cause I know that I'm terrible at most of the things I start off doing, but to know that these guys that I love and appreciate who are amazing storytellers, um, and that's how I look at comedians.

[00:20:59] Most of 'em are just really great storytellers. They start off and they have to workshop it and then, uh, and then I get. I got really into movies and I love to get to see the behind the scenes of early iterations of scripts and directors talking about, Hey, we thought about this and we, we refined this and we kept changing it, kept changing, kept changing it until it made us feel something.

[00:21:21] And I'm like, that's awesome. Awesome. And I'm actually so into movies. My wife and I, uh, well my wife plays this game where I'll walk into the room and she'll be watching a movie and she'll just pause it and she'll be like, what's the movie? And I have to name the movie with just like one frame. And even if it's ne a movie I've never seen before, like I think I've got like a 99% win rate on this.

[00:21:42] I'm doing really good. So 

[00:21:44] Heather Winchell: that sounds like a fun game. 

[00:21:46] HR Sweat: It's a super fun game. It's a, it is a great one. She also doesn't watch like weird art house films. She watched pretty normal films. Mm-hmm. But, uh, yeah, so, uh, I guess to the sixth sense from one Frame, and I'd never actually seen the movie before. 

[00:21:59] Heather Winchell: Oh, interesting.

[00:22:00] Uh, just last 

[00:22:00] HR Sweat: night. I know just last night she's good, but 

[00:22:02] Heather Winchell: good for her. Just last 

[00:22:03] HR Sweat: night, I know it was, you know, spooky season Uhhuh watch a spooky movie. Uhhuh so 

[00:22:08] Heather Winchell: good for you guys. It 

[00:22:09] HR Sweat: was, uh, 

[00:22:10] Heather Winchell: you know, you said that I, I can't remember, did you say on here how old your kids were? I think you did. Um, you said that you have a bit younger kids.

[00:22:17] We're into the age now where our kids stay up so much later, so it's like, it's really hard for us to watch a movie without the kids around. 

[00:22:25] HR Sweat: Do you go to sleep early? 

[00:22:27] Heather Winchell: Uh, I mean, okay. 

[00:22:28] HR Sweat: I What's your bedtime? What, when are you trying to get to bed here? That's what I want to know. Here's 

[00:22:31] Heather Winchell: the deal. My brain kind of shuts off at eight 30, but I typically can make it until like nine 30 before I go to bed.

[00:22:38] How about you guys? How do you roll? Gosh, 

[00:22:40] HR Sweat: we, we could not be more different. My brain doesn't get started till like one o'clock in the morning. Oh 

[00:22:44] Heather Winchell: my gosh. 

[00:22:45] HR Sweat: I, I am a night, night person. I, I hate that the world is like made for early morning people. Um, but it turns out like if you're a really late person, you're almost an early morning person.

[00:22:57] Oh, that's really funny. Well, I mean, 

[00:22:59] Heather Winchell: you have to be a special kind of person to be able to work at Walmart through the night and then go to class the next day. 

[00:23:04] HR Sweat: Yeah. That, and maybe that was part of it. Maybe that just started a cycle that I never got to break out of. 

[00:23:10] Heather Winchell: Yeah. 

[00:23:10] HR Sweat: Um, I also love night because got four kids, got a wife.

[00:23:15] Nobody's up during that, so it's just alone time, you know? Yeah. 

[00:23:18] Heather Winchell: Oh, I do know, I, I covet that like 45 minutes. 'cause I typically wake up, I wake up at like sometimes four 30, more, like 4 45, maybe five if I'm like laying in bed for a while. And the rest of my family, if I'm lucky, doesn't appear till like six or six 15.

[00:23:37] And I just like cherish that time. If you interrupted me in that time, I are only one person I'm really upset or really disappointed. 

[00:23:44] HR Sweat: People who don't have this many kids don't realize like, time is so valuable when you have so much loading your plate. Yeah. Um, like I, I love the time I spend with my kids.

[00:23:54] I love the time I spend with, with my work. Um, but like you realize, like especially in this season of my life, every minute, every hour of my day is accounted for. Mm-hmm. And so just to have a little bit of time where, and people don't really, I don't think they realize this about me, but I'm an introvert.

[00:24:10] Like being around people wears me out. I've learned how to turn it on. 'cause I like people, I like being around people, but I get tired. And so I, even if I've been working and around people all day and we don't get done till like midnight on a shoot, I'll have to stay up another extra two hours and just watch a TV show, read or do something just to let my brain not be like, be introverted for a little while.

[00:24:35] Mm-hmm. So you are, you are asking about, I think you're trying to like get to like where the story stuff developed. I don't, I wonder if you remember this story from high school and this is sort of my first video that I ever made and I, it's, it's sort of the lore of, of my, my business. Um, I almost got expelled from school, high school because the first video I ever made it was, we were in a speech class.

[00:24:59] I don't think you were in this class though. Were you in our speech class? Well, I was in Endicott. I 

[00:25:04] Heather Winchell: was in a speech class, so maybe 

[00:25:06] HR Sweat: Okay. You might've been in this class. I remember. Um, you definitely weren't on this project 'cause the guys in the girls separated to make projects and this was a sort of.

[00:25:16] 2001 ish. The Daily Show was getting started. I loved it, but most people weren't really tuned into it just yet. And I convinced the guys, I'm like, Hey, let's make like a daily show kind of thing. We'll do a little bit of a comedy sketch, we'll have a, a, you know, a little bit of newsy stuff and then I'll make like a fake news thing.

[00:25:37] And so what I decided to do, and this is such a bad idea, it was, it was, it was so dumb. I went to a friend of ours, her mother was the principal of the elementary school, Ms. Boeck, and I, uh, I went and I interviewed her, and I interviewed the superintendent of our schools. And I didn't really know what I wanted to get, but I knew, and I didn't really know how the Daily Show did what they did, but I knew that they would often splice in different questions with different answers.

[00:26:02] And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do that. So I did a normal interview with the, the elementary school principal, Ms. Bodek. And, uh, you know, I asked her, I'm like, Hey, what's it like being a principal? What about the kids? What about the school? You know, whatever. And then I said, Hey, you know, I found some psychological questions I found on the internet, which was not true.

[00:26:22] I just made these up. But, um, I found some of these. So if they seem a little bit off, just roll with it. They're just to try and get to know you. And one of the questions I asked was, um, miss Boeck, if you were a superhero, what would your superpower be? And she laughed. She goes, oh, um, I am a superhero. She goes, I mean, heroine.

[00:26:42] And I was like, bingo. So, so I, I cut in Miss Bodek and I had dark, ominous music. I'm like, what is the largest problem? In our elementary school here and she just goes, heroine. And I'm like, can you say that one more time, but in slow motion. And it was like heroin. And I'm editing this together. And here's the thing, I didn't even get to show that video in class.

[00:27:07] Somehow word got around that, what I was working on, and myself and a guy named Chris Nance who were like sort of the ringleaders of this thing got called into the superintendent's office. And I mean, like he, he grilled, I think he was having a little bit fun scaring us. 'cause we got in and we sat down in the chairs and the first thing he did is he just looked at us, didn't say a thing.

[00:27:32] And he just, then he goes and he stands up and he closes all the blinds to all the windows. Oh my gosh, my gosh. And we're like, what is gonna happen? And ha Okay. Have you, I think my guess is that, that you're kind of like this, but um, I have this problem and Chris, my buddy had this big problem where. If we get in really tense situations, sometimes we laugh as like a coping mechanism, and he could not, I could see this laugh growing inside of him as the, as the superintendent is reaming outside, he's like, I should kick you out of the school for all this.

[00:28:06] And he's, he's sitting there like chuckling. He's like, Nance, is there anything funny about this? He's like, no, sir. But he's like, and I'm like, oh, we, uh, I'm never graduating high school. I don't know what's gonna happen here. Um, and then he finally come down. He's like, listen, really funny. I watched it. It was, it was really great.

[00:28:22] You can't do that. It's unethical, it's terrible. It's blah, blah, blah. So my very first real storytelling project almost got me kicked outta high school. 

[00:28:30] Heather Winchell: Oh man. So I learned a lot there. Yeah. I learned 

[00:28:32] HR Sweat: a lot about 

[00:28:32] Heather Winchell: ethics. Oh, I bet you did. Actually, to that point, I would really love to know. Okay. So I don't know if we've like explicitly stated this, or maybe we have, but Lampstand works with a lot of nonprofits telling stories, um, engaging people, um, often.

[00:28:47] Often in a capacity where you're telling a story in order to like galvanize people towards a response, right? 

[00:28:53] HR Sweat: Yeah. We like to say that we tell stories that move people to action. 

[00:28:57] Heather Winchell: Okay. Yeah. 

[00:28:58] HR Sweat: Um, and that, uh, we, we move hearts, uh, and we change minds so that people do or know something. 

[00:29:06] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Okay. So I think that's incredible and so needed, and I want to talk more about why it matters to do that.

[00:29:13] Well, but I think right now, just in light of what we were just talking about, I would love to know kind of the ethics or the principles that shape your storytelling, because I think, I think there's a lot of ways you can tell a story, and I think there's different lenses or maybe guardrails that you can use in doing that.

[00:29:30] I'm curious what you guys hold in that, 

[00:29:33] HR Sweat: that's an important question, especially as we're getting into this world of AI where stories are being written by something that's not human. Um, like what do these stories mean to be human? What values do we have to hold? So, and we talk about this a lot as, uh, as a company, like what are our core values?

[00:29:52] And lots of companies have core values. We've talked about this before, but I don't, I always think our first ideas are terrible. So we, we threw out some first core values. I'm like, these are all kind of cliche and we threw 'em out. Um, but, uh, one of our first core values is we are bespoke. That means every client that comes to us, they are a unique person with a unique story.

[00:30:11] Every organization that comes to us is a unique organization with a unique story. And you can only really learn that story by listening. Hmm. And so we don't create cookie cutter stories. We have, um, methods that we use over and over again. We have styles and things like that, but the story is always different and it always fits our clients like a good suit.

[00:30:33] And it's one of the things that makes it stand out. I, I know I've won. With a client if after a fir a few meetings where it's just a lot of questions and letting them talk and I let them talk and talk and talk. And uh, a lot of these people, they brought us in because they've realized they've had a hard time telling their story.

[00:30:50] Like they believe what they do is important. And a lot of them are, some are businesses, but a lot of 'em are nonprofits. They're like, we are helping people. But when I tell it to people, they don't seem to understand. You know, they don't seem to get it. And I'm like, well, just talk to me about it. What is it that you love about your job?

[00:31:03] Tell me about the people that you work with. Tell me about the things that you do. And I just let them talk and talk. And they're like, I know I'm rambling. Like I love ramblers. I want ramblers. 'cause what's happening is your brain is making all these connections and it's throwing them out there into the world.

[00:31:15] And my job is to figure out, is find that thread that connects all of those random thoughts that you have together. 'cause that thread's out there. And once I find that thread and I can hone it and I can make it sharp and I can tell it back to you, you're gonna feel it. And so I know I've won with a client when.

[00:31:30] After several meetings, I go, Hey, listen, let me tell you your story back to you, and you tell me if this is right. And so often it ends with them very emotionally. I mean, a lot of times in tears saying like, I wish I told my story like that. Yes, that's exactly right. And uh, and so we are, we are bespoke. We listen, we learn, we find out what is unique and what is true about the client and their story.

[00:31:56] And then we're, we're honest. We don't, we don't go and find the story that we think is supposed to be there. We don't make it up for make up things for drama. I mean, I've seen people do some kind of unethical things because they think it will. Make their story more impactful. There's, you lose something when you lose that honesty.

[00:32:20] Um, and, and it also makes you lazy. Like you start, stop looking for how to tell the truth of what's going on. Um, I just did a whole bunch of videos and as we went through revisions and revisions and revisions, um, they kept getting simpler and simpler and simpler. And what we were doing is they're getting more honest.

[00:32:40] I realized that as we were putting these stories together, we are adding more into them. They were always true, but I was always like, Hey, maybe we can juice the drama by having some music here, or we can add a line in with the VO that says something really dramatic here. And as we started to take 'em out, like it started to move our hearts more because it was simpler and it was just so much closer to the truth of the story of what was happening on the ground.

[00:33:03] This, and this specific one was for Compassion International. You know, they help kids that are in the most extreme poverty around the world. And, uh, you know, and as we were telling these stories, I was like, okay, hey, we can tell all, all this drama of this one little girl who lost her house to a flood and then, uh, had so had to live in the streets with her family and, and do all this stuff.

[00:33:23] And I had all these like, really impactful phrases and I, and as I just started removing them, it was just her story, just the basics of it. And like, and it just moved people more, 'cause it got more and more honest. Um, and then, uh, we have a high respect for our audience. Um, and, and what that means is,

[00:33:44] you know, sometimes if you get in this world or if you're in the writing world, um, and you're in the marketing world, they'll say, Hey, write like you're talking to a fourth grader. And, and I used to be like, okay, I, I kind of get where you're coming from. You don't wanna use jargon, you don't wanna use big words.

[00:34:03] And then I realized. That if you take that and you really start to believe it, you start to belittle your audience and you start to tell them like, Hey, I know more than you and let me tell you what you need to know. And that attitude starts to seep into everything that you do. And so I've, I've tried to push a respect for our audience.

[00:34:25] Like our audience can handle difficult subjects, they can handle the truth. I I do this with our clients all the time. They're like, I don't know if we wanna say this. 'cause it's kind of, it's true, but it, it's hard. And I'm like, you know, it's true. Your audience knows it's true. And the second you say it out loud, they now realize that you mean business, that you're not fake, you're, you're just talking about it.

[00:34:47] It's for a, a different nonprofit. We were talking about, Hey, all this, um, uh, government funding is being cut for, uh, aid around the world. And they're like, yeah, it's kind of a touchy subject. I'm like, yeah, it's a touchy subject, but it's real and it's important. And if that stuff is going away, it's organizations like you.

[00:35:03] It's people, like the people you're talking to that are gonna be able to fill those gaps. And you need to be able to say that they know it and you know it. And us not saying it out loud doesn't save you anything. It just. Makes you look fake. Yeah. Um, it's, it's not respecting the audience. Um, and so I, like, I always work to respect the audience.

[00:35:22] We live in a world, like people look at TikTok and things like that, and they're like, oh, people only have an eight second, uh, attention span. And that's just not, it's true in some sense, 

[00:35:31] right? 

[00:35:31] HR Sweat: There's some people that only have an eight second attention span. But then you look into like what Netflix has done, where they have series of television shows where each episode is an hour and a half long.

[00:35:44] They are reaching great narrative levels of complexity, and people are digging into it. You look in the podcast world where people are having three hour long in-depth conversations and people are devouring them. The there is a desire for truth and honesty and complexity and understanding that's out there if you're willing to be real about it and respect your audience.

[00:36:08] So those are our, our main values that, uh, that we think. I wouldn't say make us unique, but that we focus on to tell real stories and move people to real action. 

[00:36:19] Heather Winchell: Yeah, I love that. And I'm curious, you know, when you said, um, your last point about respecting your audience, something that brought to mind for me, and I wonder if this fits in that value for you.

[00:36:30] So in a previous job I had, I helped write and coach people through a fundraising curriculum for ministry fundraising. And I think that I love the idea of. Gaining the skills and tools to cast a vision and help people understand what their part in that vision could be. And I think that as I've just had my own experiences out in the world at concerts, things like that, I just, I think sometimes some of that vision casting can very quickly position the audience to respond in a very particular way where it's like there's, there's kind of like an incentivizing of the audience responding in a very specific way.

[00:37:11] Like, Hey, if you give your money, then we want all of you to do this. And then it's kind of like, for all the people that aren't doing that, they're looking in a room of people that are doing that and they're kind of like, oh, I'm the person not doing that. And so it's kind of like, I don't think it's trying to manipulate, but it's just, it's just kind of creating this opportunity where it's not necessarily even people responding out of their own desire to act as much as it's creating an opportunity where people are responding out of what they think they should do.

[00:37:38] So I wonder how that fits. 

[00:37:40] HR Sweat: Well, let me ask you about that. 'cause I, um. I have felt that in a lot of different ways, but I wanna hone in on, on what it is that you're, that you're feeling there. Do you think maybe what you're feeling is that sometimes when you create marketing, you create writing, you, you create something for a purpose that that purpose gets too pointed to like, Hey, our goal is to raise money.

[00:38:05] Is that kind of where you're headed to or, 

[00:38:07] Heather Winchell: yes, and, and kind of positioning it in a way that makes it almost. Embarrassing if you don't respond to that call, like I'm thinking there was, there was one event where a speaker shared about their experiences and the value that they saw in the mission of this company.

[00:38:29] And then everybody that was moved to action received like an actual physical gift. But the gift, the physical gift they received, it was like a packaged gift was correspondent with the amount of money that they had given. And so you have people in a room walking around with all these different sizes of gifts.

[00:38:48] And at that point it felt, it felt like the emphasis was no longer on the vision and was more on like, Hey, what size package are you carrying around? Yeah. 

[00:39:06] HR Sweat: Yeah. I, my, uh, so my brother is a, is a. Developer, a web developer, and he was working, uh, with a nonprofit. Uh, it was like just a side thing that he was doing.

[00:39:17] And I could tell he was having a little bit of friction, uh, with this client. 'cause he is like, Hey, I made you this thing. I made the donate button right on the front and it's real big and it's all this stuff. And they're like, oh, that makes us feel weird. He's like, well, you have to raise money, don't you?

[00:39:29] You have to. Like, people should know, like when you show up, like that's what you want them to do. You're all, you are about getting. I'm like, I'm like, um, hunter. I'm like, you're feeling this disconnect because you're missing the heart of who the people are. Yes, they have to raise money. That's an important part of what they do, but it's not why they do what they do.

[00:39:48] And oftentimes, um, when we are in marketing or we are in fundraising mode, sometimes we get wrapped up in the what we need to do. To get the why done. And we totally forget the why. And and that's one of the big things that we do with our clients too, is constantly remind them of the why. Why are you doing this?

[00:40:08] What are you doing? Um, so I'm like, anytime you have an ask out there, it has to come with the why and you have to let people know. Um, and luckily every organization I work with is true. Like you have to make them believe that you are about the why and these, whats this, this volunteering, this donating, this, sharing on.

[00:40:28] So whatever it is that you want them to do is all in service of the why. And if you just keep pushing back to the why, it solves a lot of those issues. Yeah. 'cause people, honestly, people care a lot more about feeling like they're making a difference in the world. That they are doing good things than they care about.

[00:40:46] Some gift you get for donating to Right. A nonprofit. Right, right. That you're probably gonna throw away when you get home. Like nobody really actually cares about those things, but they do care about this story that they tell themselves in their lives. Like, what am I doing to actually make a difference in the world?

[00:41:02] Mm-hmm. 

[00:41:03] HR Sweat: They care a lot more about that and that that's a good thing. That's a, that's totally an excellent part of humanity. That sometimes we feel bad, like, oh, are we manipulating people? And I'm like, I don't, I don't like saying it like that way I could see how a, um, you know, a negative way you could look at it like that.

[00:41:18] But what we are doing is we are tapping into sort of the best part of humanity, reminding us the great things that we can be and putting that in front of them and saying, be the best that you can be. And here's an opportunity to do it by helping children with epilepsy, by helping the poor in your neighborhood, uh, by volunteering this food thing, by adopting a child, by becoming a big brother, big sister, by becoming a mentor of some kind.

[00:41:42] Um, and, and. You know, start to live out the story that you see yourself in. 

[00:41:48] Heather Winchell: Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. Hr. Okay, so just looking at your website and with some of the examples that you've given, you tell stories for a wide variety of companies. I think I saw Walmart on your website. 

[00:42:01] HR Sweat: Yes.

[00:42:01] Walmart is been a client for a long time. Yeah. 

[00:42:04] Heather Winchell: You said that you help your church with things, compassionate, international. I think there's a healthcare system that you also help tell stories. That's a wide range of types of clients, but I'm sure you are leveraging the same like aspects of storytelling for each.

[00:42:21] Would you say that that's true and what? What do you think makes a good story and why does it matter to tell it well. 

[00:42:29] HR Sweat: A hundred percent. It's, it's true. Uh, like I use similar storytelling techniques, um, for Walmart, uh, and for Compassion International or for Water, for who's a Water Well Drilling Organization or Cure, who is an organization that's trying to eradicate epilepsy or ika who is trying to translate the Bible into every language by 2033.

[00:42:52] Super audacious goal. In fact, if you go to the Museum of the Bible in dc which everybody should go to, it's unbelievably cool. Whatever you imagine, a museum of the Bible looks like it's 10 times cooler than that, but there's a room in there where it's called the Illuminations Room, where they show all the translations of the Bible that are yet to be translated and it's, it's moving, but it means they have a lot of work to do anyways, um, lot of different clients, but.

[00:43:15] Yes, we use, we use the same tactics. Like a lot of, a lot of clients, especially business clients, they usually want to dig into what we do. This is what we do. We drill water wells. Um, this is what we do. We are Walmart, we have, you know, we get stuff to people when they need it. Um, you know, we're, we're cure epilepsy.

[00:43:36] We are working to eradicate epilepsy. They get really hung up on the, what they do because that's what they spend all their time doing. For a lot of people, um, that we work with, it is their profession to do whatever it is they're doing. So every day they're like, how, how do we do what it is we do? And then the advantage that someone like Lampstand has is we can come in and we can be like, you have your head so deep in the what, that your story doesn't really focus on the why.

[00:44:05] Mm. We do some of those things. So you, that's kind of easier to do with. A nonprofit that drills water wells. It's like, Hey, let's go find some kids who didn't have clean water and now do have clean water, don't have diarrhea, can cook, uh, good food, like are just all around healthier because of the water.

[00:44:24] Well that you've drilled from. That's easy. But how do you do that with someone like Walmart and how do you do it? Honestly? Well, one of the cool things that, uh, Walmart was having me do for a while is that whenever there was a natural disaster, they would send me out, like as it was happening. So, um, a giant hurricane hits the East coast in like South Carolina, um, and they would send me out there to tell the stories of what Walmart was doing in those disasters, because Walmart has the best distribution infrastructure.

[00:44:59] Um, because they're doing it every day. They're getting product to stores all around the country. Every single day. They're stock. There's, you know, shelves are always stocked with everything you need all the time because they're the best at it. That's what they do. And then you get to see why they do it in a situation like a hurricane.

[00:45:17] So I was out there. And I was looking for the stories of, of why, and uh, and I saw this guy packing in like 30 racks of ribs in and like into a, a Sam's Club that, uh, and if people don't know Sam's and Walmart are owned by the same company, you know, they're all the Waltons. Uh, but, um, he'd, he was packing in all these racks of ribs.

[00:45:40] I'm like, well, okay. There's definitely a story there. So I went and I went and hunted him down and I'm like, Hey dude, what are you doing? Like, we're in the middle of a, of a hurricane right now. Uh, everything's destroyed. Like why do you have. All these ribs. And he said, well, I own a barbecue, uh, stand, not, not yet like a restaurant, like a, like a trailer.

[00:45:58] I own a barbecue trailer. And he's like, I'm the only thing open for people to get food right now. And so luckily Walmart has been able to get all these racks of ribs in here that I can cook in my smoker, go park in some of these neighborhoods that don't have electricity, that don't have running water, that have nothing, and I can feed people in the middle of this devastation.

[00:46:18] Wow. And so I got to follow him and tell that story. He was just a fun guy who loves barbecue, loves people, and because Walmart was the best at what they did, it fed a neighborhood in crisis. And so that's, so we show them why they do what they do. Um, and that's, uh, you know, and that's why organizations like Walmart would bring us back.

[00:46:41] 'cause you start to feel like, oh, this is, this is cool to see the why. Yeah. Like to remember like, we're not just spreadsheets and stock shells and skew numbers and whatever, like we're real people who really need things. 

[00:46:52] Heather Winchell: Yeah. And it's not just, you know, this big corporate machine, Walmart looking for a way to leverage themself.

[00:47:00] It's like, actually that was the company that provided the meat that allowed this man to feed this neighborhood. Very cool. 

[00:47:08] HR Sweat: Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think you can, you could probably, if you were cynical, go into a meeting with Walmart and be like, you guys are one of the largest companies in the world. You're a behemoth.

[00:47:17] This is just corporate America and you're just greeting whatever. But I like, I, I honestly believe I don't that that people. In their hearts want to be the heroes of their own story. They want to be thinking, whatever I'm doing, even in my day job is important and valuable. And if you can find that humanity in people and show it back to them, they actually start to live it out more And like, like I really believe that when I, when I go to Walmart and I show them, Hey, you're helping real people out in real time in crisis, that they'll remember that and the next time a crisis happens, like, Hey, what can we do with our position in Walmart to make life a little bit easier to help out with this disaster here?

[00:47:59] Because that becomes a part of the story they tell themselves about who they are. 

[00:48:02] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Well, and honestly, I just really feel like if people could. Hold at the front of their mind and remember like, what I do actually matters, right? Like it's not just, it's not just something I do to pass my time. It's not just something that gives me a paycheck, like it actually has a function.

[00:48:18] Any job in any community is actually doing something, it actually matters. Like I was at the park the other day and there was a woman there with a leaf blower and I realized that she was like blowing the wood chips off of all of the little mats under this, the swings. And she was like putting the wood chips back in place under this like merry-go-round type of thing that there is.

[00:48:41] And I just stopped and thought like, I have never, ever in my life thought about who upkeep the playground. Even that matters, you know, 

[00:48:51] HR Sweat: and digging into with people like that, like, why do you do something like that? Because it, it's so much easier to not do things. I like in my heart, I'm a lazy person. I love being lazy.

[00:49:01] I love plans being canceled. I love, like, it's, it's my favorite thing in the world to like sleep in or not do anything. Um, but, uh, there's also this side of me that has this desire to make and create and do things. Um, and when I see people doing like that, I'm like, why are you doing well even with you?

[00:49:20] Like, I, like I see this, uh, this podcast that you created and it's, it's so much easier to not do it, to think about doing it and then not do it. So, uh, let me, let me get into my, this is, this is where I'm much more comfortable, where I'm the interviewer and I ask people things like, why did you start this thing?

[00:49:36] Because it is so much easier to not have started it. 

[00:49:39] Heather Winchell: Yeah. You know, I just, I really delight in celebrating the ways that people are leveraging their life and their skills to do something. And I really do think it matters, and it just feels important in this, I mean, probably in every moment of time, but certainly our current moment to focus, like we said earlier on, the delightful, the good, the true, the beautiful, the creative, the courageous.

[00:50:04] And so I'm choosing to give part of my time to do that. You know, I, 

[00:50:10] HR Sweat: and I totally agree with that because it, it's so easy in our current situation to focus on things that tear us apart. Like I. I kind of watch politics, like I watch sports, like it's fun, it's interesting, there's a gamesmanship to it, but I don't wanna be known by that.

[00:50:28] I don't want people to know like, oh, hey, this is hrs political affiliation. And that's the first thing they think of when they think of me. Like, I want them to know like, Hey, hrs the kind of person who loves people, loves joking around, uh, loves having a good time, loves his family, loves his church. It like, I want to be known by those kinds of things.

[00:50:46] But yeah, we, it's, it just, we feel like we. In our societies keep falling into these tribal traps of negativity where it's like, Hey, here's the outside people and we're the inside people and we're gonna fight with the people who aren't in our tribe. But when we focus on these good things, like the good things that people are doing, it starts to break those tribes open a little bit.

[00:51:08] And, and the way I even talk about sometimes is that, and not even breaks the tribes open, it expands the circle of who is in our tribe. There's this beautiful quote, and I'm trying to remember, uh, it, it was this woman and she was like, it was during sort of like the civil rights era, and she was talking about.

[00:51:25] Racism. And, and she said, um, uh, you know, the people around me are trying to, uh, draw these circles that exclude me, um, from society. And what I'm gonna drew do is not draw. I'm gonna draw even bigger circles that include them. And I'm like, that's a beautiful way of saying like, Hey, there's people out there in the world that are so different from me that think different than me, than me, that have different values than me, and I'm gonna find the goodness in them and I'm gonna bring us together.

[00:51:53] And it's, it's the only real way we can make all of these things that we want to do in the world and make a better place for the entire world. Yeah. I know that if you get to travel a lot, especially. Outside the United States, and, and I get this, I get this real, it's an interesting perspective because I spend most of my time when I'm outside the United States in the poorest parts of the world.

[00:52:16] So like I've been to the biggest slums in the world outside of Nairobi, in a place called the Mahari Valley. I've been in the, the poorest parts of the Philippines. I played, uh, baseball a few weeks ago with, uh, in the street with a bunch of kids in the Dominican Publix in one of their largest, most dangerous slums.

[00:52:31] Um, and uh, and every time I go out there, I keep thinking, I'm like, okay, I need to get my wife and kids out to these places because I want them to see that there's people all over across the world that are very, very, very different from them. But they're also just like them if you look for it. And it's one of the coolest thing, like I just saw these kids walking around with a baseball bat and not even a real baseball bat, it was a stick and a tennis ball, but they had baseball gloves on, so I knew they were playing baseball, and I was also in the Dominican, so everybody plays baseball.

[00:53:02] I was in this really dangerous barrio where, um, I'd already gotten clocked a few times by gang members and had to kinda go and just hide out for a little while. But, uh, uh, I drive. So we, we have security people when we go out and do these things. Not like co they're usually local people who live in the neighborhood, um, that know like, Hey, this is safe time of day.

[00:53:24] This is the smart thing to do. This is, and I drive them crazy 'cause I see things all the time. I'm like, oh, I wanna go talk to that person. They're like, don't, uh, and I'm like, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. But you know, I got to go play with those kids out there. And once we started playing baseball, then all the families came out.

[00:53:38] People that I hadn't seen, uh, out in the streets before. 'cause the streets were kind of like, uh, you know. People who hung out in streets, people who were dealing drugs or working the streets or doing all this stuff. But then all the dads came out and the moms came out, especially 'cause one little kid, uh, had just had trouble hitting the baseball.

[00:53:55] And so all the dads were like, no, no, no, we're gonna work on this. And like, it was really cool to see that, uh, something like baseball brought, uh, Americans and Dominicans together. Having a good, fun time, and it brought family together. It, it, it showed me the beautiful part of a really dangerous, uh, part of that country.

[00:54:15] Um, yeah. And, and it was cool, but you have to go look for it, and you have to go find it. And you have to believe it in people. You have to believe that people that are different than you are not worse. They're different, and that might be good. Right. You know? 

[00:54:27] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Well, yeah. I think it has a so many societal and communal benefits, but honestly, even just for individual people.

[00:54:34] Are you familiar with Huberman? Have you ever heard of his podcast? 

[00:54:37] HR Sweat: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anthony. Yeah. I love his podcast. He's great. Okay. 

[00:54:40] Heather Winchell: So he, like, there's so many episodes that pique my interest, but definitely the ones where he talks about the holistic effect of gratitude and like habits of gratitude and a posture of gratitude on your whole person.

[00:54:53] And, and I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but you know what? Definitely what I'm going for. My why is for the communal, like bringing together around things that are good and beautiful, but then also like for individual people. Mm-hmm. As it begin, as you begin to, to like shift and have more gratitude, like it enables you to be more trusted.

[00:55:12] It enables you to see those commonalities, which then brings the community together. So it is just like. Man, it's good stuff. And it's just so needed in a world that really has so many avenues for division, you know? 

[00:55:27] HR Sweat: Yeah. I, I love it. I'm, I'm in this really great spot where, uh, you know, I, like, I live in Oklahoma City, um, but a lot of my clients are out in Chicago or New York or LA or across the world.

[00:55:41] And so I don't have the luxury of, uh, hating people 'cause they're different from me. 'cause I just know too many people that are so different from me and loving them, you know, and getting to join with them on, uh, on projects that make the world better. Yeah. And like, I just think about all my clients, like, and we just, we span all kinds of people, like political people, religious people, non-religious people, um, to, I mean, just ev.

[00:56:08] Any kind of difference you can think of, we probably have a client that is, uh, on one side and the other of it. Sure. Um, and finding those commonalities and working towards a common goal, uh, it, it makes a big difference and it, it, it really does change the world. And I like, it's, it's one of the cool things about, um, uh, America that I've noticed is that we have so many organizations that care about the people around them in really big ways.

[00:56:36] Like in, in my world, the church really tries to do this in, in like a setting up, uh, food pantries and free clinics and counseling and building community and doing all these things for people who may never, ever step inside the church doors. Um, but they're, they're always out there trying to make the neighborhood better.

[00:56:57] A lot of churches say something like this I think is beautiful. They're like. If we disappeared today, we would want our neighborhood to miss us. 

[00:57:05] Yeah. 

[00:57:05] HR Sweat: You know, and uh, and I'm like, yeah, that's, and that's a lot of what I want in my life too. Like I want at my funeral, I want people to be glad that they knew me and that I was around and that I made every life better.

[00:57:19] That I touched, not, I was just there. We talked about this before. A lot of that comes from just, uh, I remember my dad passed away when I was a really young kid. And it, it's one of those moments that can either make or break a person and a lot of it is just how, how you do with it. Mm. And I, I, I got really lucky 'cause it, it made me, I gotta see all these people come to my dad's funeral and say like, Hey, I.

[00:57:48] I remember this great thing that he did for us. He, he had this really great gift of going to random places and then talking to people about their, about faith in like a way that you hear people talk about, be like, I don't think this is actually real. He would go to like a seven 11 and he would just start up conversations with a person and then just be like, Hey, let pray for you.

[00:58:07] Let me talk to you a little bit about Jesus. Let me invite you to church. Lemme do all these things. And the crazy thing is, is, is it worked. It wasn't like these awkward things where people were like, oh, okay, whatever. Like he actually had real conversations with people and uh, and I watched him get to change lives and I'm like, ah, man, I want be like that.

[00:58:25] And then I want to pass that on to my kids and everyone I touch so that they can be. Builders, they can be makers that, that everything that they touch, everything that they do makes the world around them better. Not for their benefit, but you know, for whatever good thing that they wanna do, for God's glory, for society, for the neighborhood, for whatever it is that they wanna do, that it just becomes better because they're a part of it.

[00:58:47] Heather Winchell: Yeah. That's, 

[00:58:48] HR Sweat: uh, it's, it's a lot of interesting things. Yeah. But, uh, and then the way I do is through stories, you know, tell a lot of stories about people doing that all over the world. So, 

[00:58:57] Heather Winchell: yeah. In your, in your storytelling, do you think you could remember some of the first stories that really shaped what you believed to be Yeah.

[00:59:08] Or make a good 

[00:59:08] HR Sweat: story? Um, let see, I, I told you about, uh, high school and almost getting expelled from high school. That was one of the, the first stories I did. But, you know, okay. So yes, there's, yes, there's two places that, uh, that I really look to for story inspiration right now that I think are telling stories in a really cool, interesting, modern way.

[00:59:25] And they're doing it with subjects that people have kind of. Abandoned to mediocrity. So, uh, first off would be there's this guy on YouTube named Johnny Harris, and he came from Vox, and he tells these really interesting stories about, uh, usually it's about like, uh, you know, uh, political, when I say political, I don't mean like, uh, American political, I mean like, Hey, what's this war in Myanmar about?

[00:59:50] And he does a really great job of doing it in a really mm-hmm. Interesting way of making it feel like a real story that you care about people. And he's like, he did, he did one on, uh, hey, why are the, um, uh, you know, ice cream, uh, machines that McDonald's always broken? And he gets into a really interesting way and he's had a really fun, interesting way of telling stories.

[01:00:10] And he, it's because he believes in the craft of storytelling. He has found patterns that work for him, and he's not willing to tell a bad story. So as he lays the story out and he's like, okay, well this is boring. Let's keep on working on it then. Uh, like it's not an offense to me that I wrote down something and started to tell a story that's boring.

[01:00:28] I'm like, it's boring now. It doesn't have to be boring when I'm done with it. And I love that he, he has that passion about it. Um, and then the, the other one is, uh, have you ever watched the Bible project online? I love the Bible project for a couple of, oh, yeah. They, those guys are master storytellers because they understand these giant threads that run through the Bible in a lot of really cool ways.

[01:00:53] So they, they can tell you the story about, you know, like s Samson, and then they, they bring it to life. They, they treat their audience. With a lot of respect. It's one of those places where I really got that respect from because, uh, sometimes we do, we do, uh, uh, Bible stories like this for kids. We're like, Hey, Samson was like a big strong guy, and he fought a lion and he killed that lion.

[01:01:16] Then he ate some honey out of that dead lion's body, and then he married this lady who cut his hair and he lost all his strength. Whoops. Um, you know, and then, uh, they took him prisoner and he, you know, pushed some pillars down and, and they, you know, crushed a temple around him. And that's the story of s Samson.

[01:01:31] And when you hear it like that, you're like, that's psychotic. What is, what is going on here? It's like, first of all, it's like the worst superhero story ever. And you're like, I don't, it sounds like one of those. Fairytales, that just weird thing happens and you just have to accept it. And so you start to think like, well, maybe the Bible is just a bunch of weird fairytales until you dig into the story of what's actually happening and you realize one that, uh, first Sampson is not supposed to be like a role model for you to model your life after.

[01:02:02] He's kind of an idiot. And that's part of the point is that he is in this long line of, of the Israelites doing these dumb things and, uh, always suffering the consequences for the dumb things they're doing. And it's like turning away from God and doing these things. But Samson. Starts off, uh, sort of in connection with God and he makes these vows, these nazarite vows they call 'em, where I won't cut my hair, I won't, uh, drink wine and I won't, uh, touch unclean things.

[01:02:32] And then he breaks all of those things because he, you know, he, um, he fights that line and then he sees honey in that line. He's not supposed to touch dead things, but he is such a glutton that he does it anyways. And then he marries Delilah 'cause she's beautiful and she wants to have wine at the wedding.

[01:02:47] And he's like, sure, you're pretty. I don't really care about my values that much. Uh, let's do it. And then, hey, I won't cut my hair. And Delilah keeps trying to like, you know, tease out of him where his strength's coming from and he finally like, tells her it's the hair and she cuts his hair. And you're like, you are a total moron.

[01:03:08] And the cool thing about this story is, is that this complete idiot. Loses all his strength. Everything he has, he's captured by his enemies. They're mocking him. They chain him up in this temple to a different God, just to, to mock him. And they're all there. Um, and there, there's these, this foreign nation that's suppressing the Israelites and God says, Hey, you screwed up every step of the way and I'm still gonna use you.

[01:03:33] And he is able to, in his last act. Hmm. Tear down and give his life to de uh, to defeat his enemies and save the Israelites from their oppressors. And uh, and so like when you hear the story like that, you're like, okay, it's so much deeper. And I think kids can handle that. You know, sometimes we tell those little tiny Bible stories that sound crazy, right?

[01:03:56] Um, but they're simple. And we're like, we we're just, we're not telling the kids to rise up to the level of narrative that the Bible is actually giving us these true stories. It's one of the coolest things about the Bible is that it's full of people that make a ton of mistakes. And that's so much better than just fake two dimensional superheroes that never do anything wrong.

[01:04:18] 'cause none of us are like that. So I, I love that the Bible project does that with these individual stories and with the grand narrative of, of the Bible. They're like, Hey, let us show you how this, the idea of the city runs through the Bible and they do it in this really creative way. Or let us talk to you about how, um, the, the idea of, uh, the dragon of chaos runs through the Bible and you're like, oh my gosh, it is there.

[01:04:43] I it's been there this whole time and I didn't see it. How brilliant. 

[01:04:47] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Yeah. And they, and they've got just great, yeah. Really engaging videos and things like that to go with it. So cool. 

[01:04:54] HR Sweat: They're, they're so good. They respect the audience, they respect the craft. Um, and there was like, you can tell they respect the source material of the Bible.

[01:05:01] It's, it's beautiful stuff. 

[01:05:03] Heather Winchell: Yeah. I'm curious, have you heard of the show, the Moth? Okay, so it's on NPR and actually Joel listens to it a lot and it's a storytelling platform. And I think that they will generally have like a collection of stories that have a similar theme and they'll present them in that way.

[01:05:22] And last year for Joel's birthday, our local venue hosted a Night with The Moth. And so people came in and, uh, I'm trying to remember what the theme was, I can't recall. But everybody told a story that like fit with that theme, but they were so wildly different. One of them was about a woman that had had a loss of her child or a miscarriage.

[01:05:40] One of them was about a man that like was working with Tigers in Siberia. And I mean, it was just so dynamic and diverse, but that, but they were all brought together and they were all such excellent storytellers and it was such a wonderful night and it was just, uh. It was just really beautiful to feel so deeply connected to these people and to the experience of their life because they were able to articulate their story.

[01:06:07] And hopefully it will be an art form that just continues to kind of like saturate through our culture. Hopefully people will return more towards like oral storytelling and, you know, even storytelling through video or through podcasting or whatever. Um, but it just, yeah, it's so delightful to be on the receiving end of a good story.

[01:06:27] It's so meaningful. 

[01:06:28] HR Sweat: What I love about, um, and, and what I pick up from that, that story that you just told about hearing other stories, is sometimes you see people in life and you're like, nobody understands me and they can't understand me. And, and I like, I just want to shake 'em. Like, that's not true.

[01:06:45] You're just not telling your story well enough because there are these common threads of humanity that run through each one of us. And yeah, the details of all of our stories look very different, but the threads, the heartbeat of these things we all share in common. And if you can get down to that and if you can show it in a way that other people can then react to that, that heart of what it is that you're going through or what you've lived through, or what you understand or what you see, then people.

[01:07:12] May not have like, lived your life, but they can start to understand you and see you as a human being. So, like, it's, it's one of my biggest things I wanna shake out of people. It's like, Hey, people can't understand me. I'm like, that's not true. Not only can they understand you, they want to, they really, really, really want to.

[01:07:29] Heather Winchell: Yeah. And it actually matters that you, and it matters. You guys find a way to make that happen. Yeah. 

[01:07:34] HR Sweat: But it's hard. It's, it's hard to, uh, take a life experience, take an idea, take a theme, and then turn it into a story that actually connects with people. It takes practice. You have to do it over and over and over again until you like,

[01:07:51] Heather Winchell: yeah. I feel like we've spoken quite a bit to what you find rewarding about the work that you do. I would, before we kind of close out our conversation, like to touch on what you find challenging. One of my favorite authors, Andrew Peterson, he's also a songwriter. He, he says in one of his books that. You know, we often have to come against opposition in order to bring something beautiful into the world.

[01:08:12] And so I'm curious, what does opposition or challenge look like for you in your work? 

[01:08:17] HR Sweat: Yeah. The fight. Yes. Uh, uh, we talk about this a lot. The fight to create something good. It is so hard. It is. Sometimes writers talk about it, like the blank page. Uh, editors will talk about like the empty timeline. It is, it is so difficult to have nothing and be like, I have to make something.

[01:08:35] 'cause then all your insecurities start to like, fill in. They're like, Hey, you're not actually good at this. You've just gotten lucky several times. Hmm. And I'm like, okay, well maybe, maybe that's true. Um, and, uh, sort of my combating to that is, is I do two things. Like I, I just take one step at a time. I'm like, what's the smallest productive thing I can do?

[01:08:55] Um, and then I also just work hard. I'm like, I'm just gonna work until it gets good. And sometimes great things come with work boots on them, but yeah. Um, the blank page. And, and having nothing is really, really hard, especially with, um, high expectations. So like if a, a client gets referred to us, so, so compassion is, we just, it was our first time working with them.

[01:09:18] And uh, you know, they, they have this great vision. They're one of the largest nonprofits out there in the world and they're doing really great work, but they didn't know us and we got referred to them and they're like, Hey, we heard you guys do good stuff, but our story is very important. It's very valuable.

[01:09:33] And we just, I don't know, we just don't want to hand it over. I'm like. We get that it's gonna be hard to build trust. Um, and, and one of the difficult things there is, is finding that voice of the client finding their story. And it, and it, it takes a lot of listening and it takes failing. Um, I remember with that specific client, I, I remember showing them several cuts and just, they're too polite to say it stinks.

[01:09:57] But I watch them and, and we do this, uh, we do our, uh, reviews, our storytelling reviews like this on purpose, where I want to be able to see your face the first time you watch it because your face will tell me a lot more than your words ever will. And so I watch them watch these videos and it's a video I've seen a hundred times, so I don't have to watch it.

[01:10:13] I, you know, my team and I, we put it together and like, I watch them and I see where they start to get distracted or I see where they get really engaged. Um, and I just remember like a few of these, uh, these stories like just weren't hitting. And I'm like, I haven't found their voice yet. And so that means I need to dig in and, and it feels really bad, especially for a guy like me who is very.

[01:10:35] Um, results oriented, like, uh, you know, like if I get a huge win, I'm like, yeah, that's great. I can celebrate for today and then tomorrow I gotta find my next result that I gotta start chasing. But, um, but yeah, finding that voice of a client, and especially when you don't have a lot of trust with them yet, or a deep relationship or a deep understanding of them yet is really hard.

[01:10:57] So, and it's 'cause it, and it, it's connected to that blank page of just like the unknown and you just gotta have to do your best and throw stuff out there and see what sticks. And then also be okay with criticism. Like criticism is not bad usually. Sometimes people are bad at giving critique and things like that, but criticism, when it's done well is done out of the desire to make something excellent and mm-hmm.

[01:11:26] You have to be okay. That like, and this, this is tough for creatives and craftsmen and artists is if we put something out there and people are like, oh, you know, yeah, it could have been better this way. And like, oh, I've poured so much of myself into this. I thought that was a great thing. Um, but you, you have to step back And, um, I, I've, I found that one of the things that helps me out with it is working really hard to not get defensive and then, but then spinning a lot of my cognitive power trying to figure out what are they actually trying to say.

[01:11:59] So when they give a note that says, Hey, um, I. I don't like the words we use here. Maybe we can change the words. What they're doing is they're trying to solve a problem that they're not vocalizing well. And and I'm like, and so sometimes I'm like, well, don't, don't try to solve the problem. Tell me what it is that you feel that made you go like, ah, I don't know about that.

[01:12:17] Just like, let's work through that feeling a little bit and then let me find a solution to that problem. Um, but you, like, you have to really become okay with criticism and then, but once you are okay with criticism, it kind of becomes a superpower. 'cause then nothing can shake you. You get out there in the world and people say something rude or mean to, you're like, Hey, that's a Tuesday for me.

[01:12:40] I, I get criticized every single day. Have a great day buddy. Like, I don't have to get upset about it. It, it really does become like, uh, like a suit of armor that, that makes you almost invincible. It's cool. 

[01:12:53] Heather Winchell: Yeah. 

[01:12:53] HR Sweat: But it's hard to learn. 

[01:12:55] Heather Winchell: Yeah, I can imagine it is. But I mean, even just going back to the story we kind of opened with, with that feedback that you got, I think that it's, it's good when you can have experiences of getting, and that wasn't necessarily criticism necessarily, but it's good when you can early on, have experiences.

[01:13:10] It was very critical. 

[01:13:11] HR Sweat: It was, oh, okay. It was, it was much needed Criticism. But it came. Yeah. But it came from a place of a guy who wanted to see me do better. 

[01:13:19] Heather Winchell: Right, right. So yeah, it, it's helpful if you can have kind of what, for lack of a better word, safe places of criticism that can really prepare you for, I mean, just the inevitable stuff out there that you're gonna get.

[01:13:31] Yeah. 

[01:13:32] HR Sweat: That, uh, that honestly, I, I had a professor in college, he looked like Teddy Roosevelt, and he was, he was very, like, he was just, well, well known for being like a kind of a mean professor. And he'd always say, listen, I'm not gonna tell you anything good about your projects. My job is to tell you what you did wrong.

[01:13:46] That was his whole philosophy and he was just, he. It was really, but, but what it, it did, it did make you a lot better. It, uh, it started to make you, um, immune to criticism a little bit. Not immune to it, but to listen for it and not break whenever somebody says, I don't like it, or it should be different. Um mm-hmm.

[01:14:05] And so it, it, it was useful, but it, it, it, it's hard to learn. It's hard to hear, but it's, it's one of these great things that if you can listen and start to critique yourself and under and see, it's hard to critique yourself. 'cause you just have so many blind spots, um, and you just see yourself in a different way.

[01:14:24] But to be able to listen and hear how other people see you, see your work, um, it's, it's really the only way to get better at something, and at least for me. 

[01:14:34] Heather Winchell: Yeah. 

[01:14:36] So 

[01:14:37] Heather Winchell: hr, I feel like we could probably have one of those conversations that turns into like a three and a half hour podcast. I know, and I really, I really wish I did not have a school pickup looming in the near future.

[01:14:47] But, um, this is, gosh, this has just been so much fun. And, you know, I like to close out my episodes with just some fun questions. So we're gonna kind of deviate from, you know, the story work, um, through 'em, what do we 

[01:14:59] HR Sweat: got? 

[01:14:59] Heather Winchell: But I'm, I'm like really excited to ask you this one because I'm just like thinking of the HR I knew in middle school and um, and just chuckling to myself.

[01:15:08] But if you could pick a theme song that played in a room every time you entered, what would the theme song be? 

[01:15:14] HR Sweat: Oh man, that's. That's such a hard one. Um, I would, I always told people, so my last name is Sweet and I always told people I would wanna play, I would want like seventies music to play when I entered a room and I would wanna become a doctor just so that people would have to page me and say, Hey, Dr.

[01:15:34] Sweet coming in. And then they would play this like, and I could like walk in like this really cool doctor. So I guess that would sort of be my theme. So it's not like a specific, it's like a, a type of music. Uh, I just think it would be fun to have Dr. Sweet come in, like, uh, it's like a groovy cat everywhere he goes.

[01:15:50] Heather Winchell: Oh, that's awesome. Are, do you have any plans to get your doctorate? 

[01:15:53] HR Sweat: No. No. It's, I, I've, I've had, uh, schools offer to like, uh, like, Hey, you don't have to pay. You can just come and get it. And I'm like, and I've talked with like the professors and I'm like, I. Kind of have more experience than you do, like the people you have teaching it.

[01:16:10] So it makes me feel bad and I'm like, and at some point nobody really cares at a certain level, you know, they care. They care what you can do, what you can make. 

[01:16:21] Heather Winchell: Well, but, but I mean, it would not be insignificant to be paged as Dr. Sweet. 

[01:16:26] HR Sweat: But yes, you're right. Then I get to be Doc. Of course I need to, uh, get my master's, then I can be master Sweet and make master sweet all the time.

[01:16:34] Heather Winchell: Yeah. There you go. Uh, what is your favorite way to spend a Saturday? I. 

[01:16:42] HR Sweat: I think I said this before, but I, I'm an introvert, so I love staying home. I love starting fires. I love cooking big cooker. Mm-hmm. I do this thing where, um, I pick a recipe and then I cook it a hundred times in a row until I perfect it.

[01:16:55] So I, like, I cook better steaks than I can get in almost any steak restaurant. 

[01:16:59] Heather Winchell: Good for you. 

[01:17:00] HR Sweat: Um, I cook some really good pastas. Uh, just, uh, a lot of fun stuff like that. I'm working on tortillas right now. Oh. But like these big wide floppy tortillas that are so hard to do and I haven't been, I've gotten really close, but I'm not consistent with it.

[01:17:15] Um, so, uh, that, that's kind of what I like to do. I like to be at home. I like to hang out with my family. I love my kids. I love my wife. And then we just, we do stuff at home. My kids are really in, they really wanna play chess a lot for some reason. And they think I'm really good at it. They're just really bad at it right now.

[01:17:31] So like, I teach 'em what Little bit I know. And then I'm like, so someday you're gonna have to beat me 'cause I know I'm not good at this. 

[01:17:36] Heather Winchell: Oh, that's great. Okay, so if you and the Liam Stand team could travel back in time and tell the story of a person or an event from history, what would it be and why?

[01:17:52] HR Sweat: You know, I, I think I. One of the, there's a biblical character that I've started relating more and more to that. I would love to tell his story better because I think he gets a bad rap. But you know, when, when I say, when I say, Thomas Disciple, what? What do you think? He's got a name, right? He's I named Thomas.

[01:18:12] Doubting Thomas, and like I, of course he doubted, you know, right. He like, he hung out with this guy who died and then, and then his buddies are like, Hey, he raised from the dead. And you're like, that doesn't happen. Of course you, that's the reasonable thing to think is, no, that doesn't happen. You guys are like delusional or something like that.

[01:18:31] But I also, I love that story because. Of, of Jesus' response was not go away from me. You wicked an unfaithful servant. You spent so much time with me. How could you ever doubt? His response was, come close and know me better. Look at the scars in my hands. Feel the scars in my side know that I am the Jesus that you love.

[01:18:52] And, and I see that all through the Bible, so I, I would want to go and tell Thomas's story because I think people would relate to that. And so that doubting Thomas wouldn't become a derogatory thing. It would be a relatable term or like, yeah, of course you doubt it. And thank God that, that he's bigger than our doubts.

[01:19:12] Heather Winchell: Hmm. Yeah. Amen. All right. Final question for you. So.

[01:19:20] I forgot my question, sorry. But now I remember it. 

[01:19:23] HR Sweat: You, when, when you were, uh, sending out, uh, like things we would talk about. So one of the things I was excited about is you said, Hey, um, I could give a shout out to people who I would wanna say thanks for doing what you do. Yes. And why, and I I have two things.

[01:19:37] One is more of a general thing. So to every single person who gets out and does something in life, something good, something for other people, especially something that nobody will ever see. So people who volunteer, um, at, uh, at a charity or a church or a Sunday school or whatever, or who, um, clean up their neighborhood park, like what you do makes a big difference.

[01:20:00] And it makes the world we are in so much better. And I've been to the places in the world where they don't do that and it's, it's just not the same. When you live in places where people care about their neighbors and they actually do something about it, it makes a difference. It makes a place that you want to live and that other people wanna be a part of.

[01:20:19] So if you're the kind of person who gets out there, or if you want to be, go out there and do that, that's one of the people I would wanna thank in general. But then, um, the other person is, uh, because I want to thank, uh, remember Griff ti, our youth minister. 

[01:20:33] Heather Winchell: I absolutely do. 

[01:20:35] HR Sweat: I love that guy. But so when my dad passed away, he became like my first surrogate father and.

[01:20:42] You know, God had this way of just always putting men in my life right when I needed them to. And he was the first person that did that. And this guy had become, had been a youth minister for like, I mean, he, I don't know how long he did it, maybe 15, 20 years. He did it for so long. And nobody stays as a youth minister for that long because they're always, it's a stepping stone to the next thing.

[01:21:01] But it wasn't for him. He loved youth, he loved kids, he loved people. He had such a great heart. And it changed so many lives. Like, I wouldn't be here today and like I, I would've been much close to where my brothers were after my dad died. I would've been a wreck if it wasn't for him. And the work that he did and the care that he put into like, uh, you know, an angry, sad, confused kid.

[01:21:27] And he changed the direction of everything in my life. And because of him, you know, my kids have a dad that's a better person because of that. And. Their kids, my grandkids will have dads and mothers that are better because of that. And he, and it's not just me. I know he's done it for so many people. And so I put out, you know, thank to to gva.

[01:21:51] Heather Winchell: I can echo that. Thanks. Wholeheartedly. Wholeheartedly. Yeah. 

[01:21:55] HR Sweat: Awesome dude. Yeah. 

[01:21:58] Heather Winchell: Well, hr, I end all of my shows with a personalized haiku. It's just an expression of why I had you on today and my personal thanks to you. So I'm going to read that for you now. Okay. A story well told both art form and stewardship.

[01:22:13] Thanks for doing that. Love it. Yeah. Thank you. Write it down. Don't too, an 

[01:22:18] HR Sweat: email. 'cause I want to keep it. 

[01:22:20] Heather Winchell: Oh, I'll send it to you in the mail. You can hold it. I 

[01:22:24] HR Sweat: love it. That's even better. 

[01:22:26] Heather Winchell: Yeah. Well thank you so much for joining me today. It was 

[01:22:28] HR Sweat: a pleasure. Anything Heather wants, I'm down for it. 

[01:22:32] Heather Winchell: Thanks.

[01:22:44] Thanks for doing that. Is presented to you by the apiary, a place for beholding and becoming, and thank you for joining us for today's episode. Before you go, I have a couple of invitations. If you found it meaningful, could I invite you to take two minutes to rate and review the show? I also invite you to help me create an upcoming episode of thanks for doing that, by nominating someone or suggesting a topic.

[01:23:10] Let's link arms to call out the good and the beautiful that we see around us because I really believe that finding delight in our divided and difficult world could make all the difference.