WEBVTT
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This program is designed to provide general information with regards
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to the subject matters covered. This information is given with
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the understanding that neither the hosts, guests, sponsors, or station
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are engaged in rendering any specific and personal medical, financial,
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legal counseling, professional service, or any advice. You should seek
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the services of competent professionals before applying or trying any
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suggested ideas.
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At the end of the day, it's not about what
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you have or even what you've accomplished. It's about what
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you've done with those accomplishments. It's about who you've lifted up,
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who you've made better. It's about what you've given back
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Thanzel Washington, Welcome to Inspire Vision. Our sole purpose is
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to elevate the lives of others and to inspire you
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to do the same.
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Tom Welcome to the show, Doug.
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I'm very very happy to be here, looking forward to
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this interview, in this dialogue with you today.
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Yeah, I am looking forward to it too. I think
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the whole topic that we're going to talk about is
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so important in today's culture and what's going on. What
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I'd love for you to do though, and I find
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this always interesting. What's your background and how on earth
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did you write this book? What brought you to write
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the book? And you can you name it, let the
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audience know the name of the book, and so forth,
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but also what's the motivation behind it? Where you decided
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to write this book and get into this whole discussion.
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Well, let me deal with the easy part first, the background.
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I am the oldest of ten children born and raised
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in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nine of us are still alive. Seven
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of us live in Cincinnati, so we see each other
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quite frequently. And I was the oldest of those ten.
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So I was the example in many ways good and bad.
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And I was educated by the Jesuits, which if you
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know anything about the Catholic religion, the Jesuits are the intellectctuals.
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They are the writers and speakers and university professors of
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the priesthood, if you will. And I think the greatest
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lesson that the Jesuits taught us and certainly me, is
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critical thinking, you know, knowing not just the fact, but
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the source of the facts, and being able to discern well,
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you know. And so I matriculated from ten years of
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Jesuit education into business. I've been in the advertising and
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marketing field, done everything from pitching clients to in some
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cases writing copy and directing commercials and so forth. I
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got into entrepreneurship, founded a couple of companies. I had
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my own consulting firm for many, many years, and we
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excuse me, we found our way into the corporate turnaround.
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Quite by accident of the years. A colleague of mine
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and his client felt that I could help his company
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that was in deep trouble. And I said, I've never
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done something like this before, and as so often happens,
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they said, but what we know you can. So I
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got into that world and it ended up being probably
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the second major career I had after advertising and marketing,
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because I started getting calls from bankers and lawyers and
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accountants who had clients who were in trouble. And that
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trouble arranged anywhere from tax problems to marketing problems, through
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financial messes and so forth, and so that's where I
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spent probably the majority of my career. Doug and this book,
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sort of diving into the second part of your question,
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I frequently say to people that this is the book
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that was never supposed to be a book. One of
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the passions that I had over the years was collecting
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quotes from leaders, and those could be people in sports,
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people in business obviously, people in politics or religion or science.
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Anything that I found inspirational to me, I would I
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would write it down, predating the days of Google docs
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and so forth. But I probably had a notebook or
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two full of these quotes, and probably about eight or
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nine years ago, I started looking at them in the
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way of could this be instructive in a venue other
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than business? You know, because every one of these quotes
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from the business leaders anyway, was said in the context
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of their business, you know. It was in a shareholder letter,
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it was in an annual report, it was an interview
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of speech they gave, and it was decidedly business. And
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I thought, could they apply elsewhere? And I found that
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many of them could be instructive in personal relationship, And
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I started writing essays that included a little biography of
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the business leader, because many times, you know, to the
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casual observer, they don't know who this person's You know,
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we all know Steve Jobs and Warren Buffett and Bill Gates,
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but we don't know anit Erotic and Carly Freina and
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you know, others like that. So I started writing essays
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and giving them to my three adult children and some friends,
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and somewhere along the line somebody said, we think these
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ought to be an interviewer or a newspaper column rather,
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and I poop pooed that idea. I wasn't interested in it,
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didn't think it had legs. And finally I sat down
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one day with a writer friend of mine, a newspaper
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reporter actually for the business press. He works for a
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big conglomerate here in the US, and showed him a
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few of these over lunch, and he really liked him
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and said, man, I think these are good. This could
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be a weekly column. I think your friends are right.
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And I said, ask Steve, I don't know if I
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want to do that, but I did give him permission
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to pitch his editor. He said he wanted to do that,
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and so I said, sure, why not. And by that
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time I probably had twenty or thirty that I had distributed,
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and he pitched his editors. They got back to him
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and said, hey, tell your friend, these are really good.
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The problem is we are not an op ed newspaper.
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We are fact based business weekly reporting on local and
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regional businesses in a variety of markets around the US,
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and this doesn't have a place for us, more or
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less an op ed advice column. So but they followed
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that was saying, tell your friend it ought to be
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a book, you know, if he had enough of these,
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it could be a book. And so he shared that
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with me over another lunch and I said, no, that's
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never going to happen, And through a very twisted, winding
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road with him and a few other people, we actually
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ended up submitting it through him and with him to
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some publishers that he knew, and I developed a couple
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on my own and loan behold, one of them got
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back and said, yeah, well you want to do this thing,
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when are you going to have the rest of it done?
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And that became a sprint because the the previous whatever
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it was, seven years or so, had been casual writing, dabbling,
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playing with ideas, and now it was gee, when are
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you going to have this done? And so I submitted
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a final manuscript to them in January of twenty twenty three.
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We spend most of that year with edits and everything
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else that goes on, as you know, and it got
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published late in twenty twenty three, and here we are today,
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So here you are.
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And what's the name. What's the name of the book.
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What's the name of the name.
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Of the book is the Business of Relation and the
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subtitle is using the wisdom of great executive to create
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thriving personal connections. But if nobody remembers all of that,
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it's simply the Business of Relationships, and it's on Amazon.
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Well, and you know what I find interesting, and you
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you kind of alluded to it. I've done a little
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bit of consulting in my life, and what I found
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interesting was that as I was working with very small
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business owners, not at year level, but as I was
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working with small business owners, oftentimes it was their life
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that was affecting their business, and as we created business protocols,
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it naturally flowed into their life protocols. And so I'm
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not sure that you can separate the two. And you
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kind of alluded to the fact that, you know, here
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they are talking about business, and yet if you apply
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it to personal all of a sudden, there's incredible, incredible
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wisdom in what they say. And what really motivated you
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about relationships? What is the situation today that actually said
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to you? You know what, I'm going to use these quotes,
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but I'm going to use these quotes that focus on relationships.
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Well, I think for me it was a relatively easy choice,
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because relationships are important to me and should be important
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to all of us, you know, whether that is a
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fausal relationship, a sibling relationship, family relationship, colleagues, friend, et cetera.
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I think having a talent for building bridges rather than
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burning them is something that we all need more of today.
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And I started to encounter Doug some statistics that are
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just shocking to you know, when you say that here
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in America, for instance, you know, this is a seven
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point eight almost eight trillion dollar problem in business with
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failed relationships, because it impacts productivity, it impacts longevity on
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the job. You know, employees that are that are under
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stress in their relationships are sixty two percent I think
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it was sixty two percent more likely to quit abruptly.
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You know, we have terms like workplace ghosting, bare minimum, mondays,
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quiet quitting. All of those things excuse me. All of
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those things speak to just failure in our relationships. And
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I think the one that is saddest to me is
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that here in America. You know, and I realized we're
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talking long distance. You're in Thailand, I'm in Cincinnati, Ohio.
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But here in America, in the richest country in the world,
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arguably the most powerful country in history, you know, a
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beacon of democracy at times, you know, sometimes better than others.
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But you know, in this country that has so much
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going for our children are three times more likely to
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grow up in a single parent household than the worldwide average.
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So you think about that for a minute. It's not
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thirty percent more, fifteen percent more, it's three times more likely.
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And I think that speaks to this individualistic society. You
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alluded to some of it in your comments earlier. You know,
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this individualistic I've got mine, hope you get yours mindset
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is damning our children to a situation that is just tragic.
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Well and we as we live politically, at the relationships
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that are going on, it's just horrendous. And I can't
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even imagine how that's going to affect our children now
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ultimately and our grandchildren if that doesn't get handled. And
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it is interesting that this has really become a focus
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I've found with many people and a concern of how
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are we going to repair these relationships, how are we
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going to help these relationships because becomes something of a
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positive nature. And as you say, and I've never heard
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that statistic that they're three times more likely to be
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in a single family home, that's that's horrendous.
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Yeah, yeah, it's just it's just tragic. And I have
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a lot of respect and a lot of regard and
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a lot of hope for the single parent who is
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doing his or her job. The basis that is a
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tough assignment to be both the father and the mother
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and the household, regardless of gender. And I think that
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when you look at something like that, you say, what
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is that mess said? If if a relationship that they
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look at as foundational they want to have, confident, they
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want to enjoy, you will the family unit, what does
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it say to them if those foundational relations become transaction,
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become transition as well? I think that it is not
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a good message to have that child hold for his
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and when when when agencies are trying to place foster
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children and can't find homes for them because the system
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is jammed up? You know, again, these are these are
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victimless or I'm sorry that the child is is a
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victim and not able to arguably do anything about.
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This or her own What do you think cause of
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what's the rit cause of all this?
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I think over time there's probably several things. One of
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the stats that I saw recently was the decline in trusts,
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especially in America. Not only institutional trust, with personal trust
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has declined significant mid seven. In nineteen seventy five, it
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was said by Gallant that about fifty three percent of
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Americans believed that they could trust. That is now thirty two. Wow,
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you have sixty eight percent of our American population saying
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I can't trust another personal I place very little trust.
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And it started institutionally. Certainly it exacerbated with COVID in
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the isolation we felt in and I think the technology
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contributed to it as well. We don't have to trust
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each other as everything is at our fingertiss. We have
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AI to do all the research we wanted to do
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with Amazon to deliver all the things we want. We
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have grub Hub or door dash to deliver all the
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food we could want, and we can isolate. And isolation
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breeds mistrust. It puts people in an echo chamber of
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life like minded folks, and anyone outside that echo chamber
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is frequently not trusted well.
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And it's interesting, is you know I'm on Facebook, and
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I'm on a number of social media sites because of
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the podcast and the reels and so forth, and what
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I find interesting. For instance, even with TikTok, you know,
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I'll be looking at mine and then kind of checking
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things over, and here will be a message and I
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immediately most of the time, will go to AI, as
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you mentioned, and ask the question is this true? And
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I will tell you that at least thirty percent of
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those presentations that I watch are not true. They're downright lies.
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And so yeah, how do you get to a point where,
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if you have the ability really to check things out,