Join us for an inspiring and transformative adventure, as we embark on a roller-coaster of emotions and self-discovery with our esteemed guest, PhD. Michael Kaufman. Prepare to be moved by the personal anecdotes of individuals who found their way to leadership by extending a helping hand to others, all the while grappling with self-doubt on their path to success.
Our expedition takes a fascinating twist as we delve into the world of military leadership, discovering the true power of delegation and the fine line that separates effective leadership from its unraveling. PhD. Kaufman graciously invites us into his world, from being a CEO to becoming an author, sharing the trials and tribulations that shaped his journey.
As we unwind, we'll meander down memory lane to our first jobs, reminiscing about the days when our youthful naivety made us feel like millionaires with those inaugural paychecks. PhD. Kaufman unveils his courageous leap from a lucrative accounting career to follow his passion for social work, reminding us all to fearlessly pursue our dreams.
Our episode concludes by shining a light on men's mental health, emphasizing the significance of self-care, and the profound impact of sharing our struggles. Join us on this profound voyage, enriched with wisdom, introspection, and personal stories that will inspire you on your path to leadership and success.
Doing Good and Doing Well: Inspiring Helping Professionals to Become Leaders in Their Organizations https://a.co/d/4Ov5WG4
https://sparknstride.com/
http://instagram.com/spark.n.stride?igshid=zddkntzintm=
https://www.youtube.com/@spark.n.stride
Join us for an inspiring and transformative adventure, as we embark on a roller-coaster of emotions and self-discovery with our esteemed guest, PhD. Michael Kaufman. Prepare to be moved by the personal anecdotes of individuals who found their way to leadership by extending a helping hand to others, all the while grappling with self-doubt on their path to success.
Our expedition takes a fascinating twist as we delve into the world of military leadership, discovering the true power of delegation and the fine line that separates effective leadership from its unraveling. PhD. Kaufman graciously invites us into his world, from being a CEO to becoming an author, sharing the trials and tribulations that shaped his journey.
As we unwind, we'll meander down memory lane to our first jobs, reminiscing about the days when our youthful naivety made us feel like millionaires with those inaugural paychecks. PhD. Kaufman unveils his courageous leap from a lucrative accounting career to follow his passion for social work, reminding us all to fearlessly pursue our dreams.
Our episode concludes by shining a light on men's mental health, emphasizing the significance of self-care, and the profound impact of sharing our struggles. Join us on this profound voyage, enriched with wisdom, introspection, and personal stories that will inspire you on your path to leadership and success.
Doing Good and Doing Well: Inspiring Helping Professionals to Become Leaders in Their Organizations https://a.co/d/4Ov5WG4
https://sparknstride.com/
http://instagram.com/spark.n.stride?igshid=zddkntzintm=
https://www.youtube.com/@spark.n.stride
Hey, Dr Kaufman, how are you, sir?
Speaker 2:I am great.
Speaker 1:It's an absolute pleasure to meet you. Thank you for making your way to Spark and Stride, where conversations are sparked and put in motion.
Speaker 2:So it's a pleasure to be my honor. Please call me Mike. Oh, Mike, yes, I prefer that Okay so, mike Mach.
Speaker 1:So hey, man, let's get into it. I know we're here to discuss your book, but before we dive into that, like, let's have a little cold brew from Turnstile.
Speaker 2:Brewster Excellent, actually, right, and let's see where this goes. Man, yeah, I needed some of this at my age, you know, the blues can't hurt.
Speaker 1:Awesome, man, Awesome. So what's been going on with you? You look pretty tan.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am very tan. Just moved my little one into college and that was emotional.
Speaker 1:I have a six-year-old. Yeah, she's not going off to college. Yeah, so what's your little one? How old is she?
Speaker 2:18. Wow yeah, small school in Boston.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And it was great. It's exciting, but it's like all of our journey. I was just shocked by how emotional I got it at the goodbye. I thought I was strong you know, but at the end it was tough not to cry, so I did.
Speaker 1:And why wouldn't you right Exactly?
Speaker 2:I mean, it's your little girl right, yeah, and I think it was tears of joy. This is such a great journey, and that's one thing that I'm so excited to talk today about this book and also knowing a little bit about you. Like your journey, we all have one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:And now it's my time for my little one, my daughter, to go on hers.
Speaker 1:And thankfully she's in a position where she has the support, right, the support and the love, like she has a family that's behind her. I was speaking to someone last week and we were going through, you know, we were kind of like peeling back the onion a little bit on, like our individual journeys and just how different it is for different people and how everyone's starting line is not the same one, right, like we don't all start from the same place. So, yeah, no, all good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We all start somewhere different and you know there's just so much debate these days of like.
Speaker 2:when we grew up, there wasn't as much support but, in a way, did it make us stronger and ready to handle everything that comes our way? Sometimes I've questioned have I been overly supportive, doing too much for her or for the kids? And you know you have to think that through. I'm not exactly sure. Love is the key. So if you love your children, I think that's the key. And then we all make some mistakes and we've probably done a pretty good job, hopefully.
Speaker 1:So, mike, I want to ask you something. So I consider you from your bio that I've read and you know I've read different sections of the book, right, which we'll get into I'm always curious Did you see yourself? Was this part of your path of success? Did you see this? Did you envision any of this for yourself?
Speaker 2:Oh, you mean actually writing the book?
Speaker 2:Just your success, oh, Josh no, I, when I was young, I didn't really believe in myself. I doubted myself, I had low self esteem, I was really shy and quiet and these things kind of developed as I got older. So I just wanted to somehow be happy, I think, because when I was a kid I wasn't the most happy, I was sort of a sad kid. So no, what happened was is I think it all came from me is wanting to help somebody who felt like I did a little bit lost, a little bit out there, didn't feel that supported, that loved or whatever it may be, and wanted to be there for someone. So I just wanted to help people.
Speaker 2:I found that when I was volunteering which I did a lot in my 20s, or I did a lot even my teens I just felt great doing something for somebody else, focusing on other people, helping them, and I think by helping others I was healing something inside myself. So my goal was just on doing good for the world, doing good for people out there, especially kids. My heart was always in for working with kids in need, without a, without a family, without a love, without support, who were struggling and maybe were misunderstood, because I sort of felt that was me. So that was my dream was to help someone. So the funny thing is is the financial success of that is usually very low right.
Speaker 2:Being a social worker, a case worker, helping others.
Speaker 2:Nobody does it, thinking there's going to be some type of financial success at the end of that rainbow. What it is is for you're doing it because it's a calling, it's a passion, and for me that's what it all was. And, as you know, I started going on and getting more into education, which I never thought I would be. I started to realize that I love leadership. So when I got into organizations to be helpful, I also thought of, well, if I could run the organization, run the school that was working out, run the agency, I help more kids, I help more parents, I help more families. So my desire to help and I was always ambitious, so I think I always had that in me to want to do more, want to succeed, want to be helpful the two together. Just I started to rise up in an organization, started to love leadership. So when I started with that, then I thought, oh, maybe I can lead it, but there was a lot of insecurity there, so your own demons come out when you're becoming a leader of insecurity.
Speaker 2:So somebody gives you feedback and it's not great. I would get hurt and defensive and you can't be a leader if you're going to be hurt and defensive. So I had to learn how to you know, take in feedback, listen, and when you are hurting on the inside and you haven't dealt with your own issues, those demons will come out.
Speaker 2:When you deal with those demons, you can be powerful. So when I started dealing with them and put through my leadership admitting to people like I'm struggling here, it's it's hard for me to be tough I had this desire to be liked. So when I started getting into leadership, I wanted everyone just to like me. And there was one woman that worked there and said Mike, you're a nice guy, but none of us are going to like, follow you because you're you're just. You let everyone off the hook, you don't hold anyone accountable.
Speaker 1:So I've always been huge on empathy.
Speaker 2:So a big thing and I even mentioned in the book is the dichotomies. So if you're going to be empathetic, that's great understanding of people, but you got to be accountable also. So if you don't have the other side of it, someone's not going to take you seriously. Then if you're all accountable and you don't have the empathy, people aren't going to want to be led by someone who's just about the numbers, just about what are you?
Speaker 1:doing.
Speaker 2:So you need the two sides together. So I started all these things started to come together for me of looking at myself growing and realizing that, wow, I can help people. But I also can you know, lead and do well and lead people. I just found that people were, you know, resonating with things that I said as as time went on and they're like, wow, like you're a good dude, Like we want to follow you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah for sure, I could totally relate to that man. I think my first experience in a leadership role was during my time in Korea. So I was in Korea from 06 to 07. And what I learned very early on at the time? So in the Air Force, you take an exam on your Air Force knowledge and another exam on the knowledge of your position, of your job, and then they combine those two scores and then, if you meet the cutoff now you're promoted, right. So you go from I went from being like a senior airman to a staff sergeant while I was in Korea.
Speaker 1:However, I didn't get the actual stripe, the actual rank. I received my rank, oh my, my, so on. They call it like your so on date. The day that you actually put it on, it was roughly two months prior to going to my final one assignment, which was Italy, italy, right. However, while you're in Korea because it's they consider it a hardship tour there's no families there, so it's just you, and you're there by yourself, right. So what's interesting about that is that you live and work with the people that you see and you're living and working with the folks that you're serving with.
Speaker 1:So one of my supervisors at the time. He was a really, really, really good guy and, to your point, just, he had this. He was very insightful and reflective on his leadership style. One of the things that he taught me was that what you don't realize at the time is that everyone is looking, not just the folks that you're working with, not just the folks that you supervise, but you have bosses and they have bosses and everyone's watching, right. So everyone's watching, like how you do your thing? Do you lead by example? Do you lead from the front or the rear Managers lead from the rear? Leaders lead from the front, right? So what I'm saying to you, how I relate to what you just described, is going back to you know, his advice to me was you start out with a closed fist, you could easily open your fist. You can never start with a wide fist or open hand and close your hand in terms of leadership Right.
Speaker 2:Right, so so um yeah, no man. Well, you know I love your background in the military and I think there's so much to learn on leadership there. So I one of my internships was at the VA Hospital Lions.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 2:And I did a group for Vietnam veterans. I did it with a former Vietnam veteran he led the group and also former POWs from World War Two, if you can believe that. So I got to sit in and you know when I was what 22 years old and I realized everything that we learned about, you know, was in a little textbook on these wars, these major wars, and I didn't know anything what these men went through and and the strength and the courage and it was such an incredible leadership lesson and just to hear just that, with what the human spirit can go through, what we all can accomplish. And it really helped me when I was going for my doctor and I was on call If anybody was suicidal at Rutgers and the and the afternoons just to be.
Speaker 2:you know that, that experience of hearing from what those guys went through. Gosh, if you can be out in the field in a in a war time or battle or anything, or even trainings, I can do this. I can get in front of somebody at three in the morning who says you know they may take their life and I can sit in front of you, I can help you and let's get you the support you need. But I just learned so much from actually soldiers, former military, and actually what we all really just don't know what the service that you guys all gave to give us our freedoms now. So it was there's. There's just so much for us to learn to be great leaders.
Speaker 2:And if your ears are open, you'll hear it. So I think you know just your military experience. I'm fascinated by it. Yeah, no, I mean, it leaves you where you are today. Listen, brother, this is a conversation, so this is not an interview, for feel free to you know, come across the table with any questions you may have for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, how do you feel about delegation in terms of being a leader?
Speaker 2:So that's one thing I've got really good at delegating. I feel that if you're going to be a great leader, you want to create other leaders. I've always felt now there's there's different types of people. When you're leading and you see somebody that you think can be greater than you, I love to tell somebody that it's. It's such a badge of honor If you can like see somebody and they end up they're better than you, they, they're helping the organization, they're helping you. So let them be them. Don't like hold them back. So I love delegation. It makes your life easier. You, the more you delegate, the more you can think and you can come up with a vision for the business. When you're truly a leader, like you said, lead from the front. Give everyone the tools. When you don't delegate your two, maybe you're leading from the back because you're not really seeing the big picture. Let those create other leaders around you. When I hire people, I always say what's the next position you want in their first interview. What do?
Speaker 1:you want to be.
Speaker 2:You know, hey, I'm coming in as a teacher, but I would love to be a principal one day of the school. That's great. Let's you get in here and let's start talking about how we can get you there. So I think delegation is just a great skill set to have and something that we need to do, and it's the only way to make people competent. One thing that I learned when I started is when I was leading the first school, I ran. I thought if I had a teacher, I would be able to.
Speaker 2:If I left for the day, that fell apart. I'm an amazing leader, right, they can't do I leave. This whole place falls apart. But that's ridiculous. It's the opposite. If you've done a great job, you leave. Nobody even knows you left because you've created others that know what they're doing, they know their roles, they, they can run the place by themselves. So you know those little lessons you get. So when I let, when I would leave, and then it was great. I'm like now I'm doing a good job, because what did I do? I delegated. I let people know that they can run this as good, or maybe better than I can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely yeah, yeah, I think, with one of the first things I learned oh, I was a mentor to all those delegation in terms of being a leader, in terms of being a supervisor and what it does for your, your, the folks that that you're responsible for.
Speaker 1:Or you know, because in the, in the military, it's a little different. In the military, you know it's different, obviously, than corporate America or any sort of like institution outside of the Department of Defense, right, yeah, or outside of, like, the branches of service, because in a corporate environment, once you checked out at five or so, once you get off that Zoom meeting, you're pretty much on your own right. For us it's a little different because they hold us responsible for the health, morale and welfare of all of the folks that you supervise, right? So, should something happen to one of your folks again, to a car accident, they, they're in the hospital, they're getting a surgery or anything. The supervisor, your supervisor, comes to you with an update on what's going on with that individual person, because ultimately, that person is going to go report up when, I feel like in corporate America maybe a little different-ish kind of I don't know that it's you're charged with the health, morale and welfare of everyone in the sales department. I just, I don't know that that's a thing kind of you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And what I love about some of my reading on the military is there are times we talk about delegation, but there's also time for command and control, right when you, somebody, has to step up and not delegate take charge. Everyone wants to know their leader is willing to roll up their sleeves and do the most difficult thing that comes up. So you have to understand that. You know I need to take charge here. It's, it's my show. I have to do this and when it's time to lean back and let them all take it over. So it's just having those different skill sets. And you know, as a big sports guy like I, can throw a football with the right hand, which is the delegation. The throwing a football with the left hands really hard. For me, that would be the command and control.
Speaker 2:I always felt like that seemed like I was being too powerful or trying to, I don't know what I it just didn't feel as comfortable. But you need to work both muscles, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know both sides. Yeah, 100%, but also with the delegation part of it. What I learned early on is that it allows the folks that you're responsible for in terms of leading. It allows them the opportunity that you're letting them know that you trust them and instills trust in terms of like culture within the organization. I've seen it where you know some folks, for whatever reason. Let's just say there's a new system, a new database or whatever the case is and you're the one that's been trained up on it. You're somewhat proficient in it. You feel like you know what. It's just easier for me to do it. But in reality it's actually easier to pause, train two or three other people on it, right?
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:So what we try to accomplish in the military is to exclude or not allow for a single point of failure. Right, because that is just detrimental to the entire mission If there's solely just one person that could kind of like do one thing, right? So no, I definitely could relate to everything you're saying, mike.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the most fun I've had was creating new leaders. I would say something like we would call it hire for redundancy. A lot of organizations, when you're either struggling a little bit or you wanna you see a profit coming in. Most people are like let me cut costs to maybe get more of a profitability.
Speaker 2:My philosophy is invest, especially if you see some growth, even in the short run it may hurt. So I wanna get a few more leaders in. That may be one or two more than we need A. There's so many opportunities out there. People are gonna leave and find something else, but I want to develop leaders and to give them time to lead. What happens so much is when we have a.
Speaker 2:When I was running this company called SESI, we had 75 schools, so there was always a school we needed a school director for. What happens is when you hire a leader right when you have a need, they jump right in and do the job. There is no time to train, to learn the position. I wanna hire you three to four months before you're doing the leadership role so you can get our culture, you can sit and learn, you can actually listen. I would even create something like a passport. It would look like a passport. You had to get it stamped by the Human Resources Office. You had to get stamped by the operational side, the finance side, so you would go around, you would spend a day or two with each person, each category of the organization and really learn it before you do the job. So these so folks have an opportunity to truly learn how to do it. Yeah, so I love to just get people in, give them the time to learn, and it's just such a cool thing to see somebody realize their dreams. You want it for them and their families.
Speaker 2:All of us need to pay the bills. We're gonna have kids. A lot of us when we started, we were all young and we didn't have kids yet. So it was just like, okay, we make enough just to pay our cable and wifi, we're fine. But no, it becomes I gotta get my kid college, I gotta buy a house, I need a mortgage. So everybody performs a lot better when they're taken care of. So if we can grow, the organization can grow. But if you don't have a strong leader or leaders around you or people that can make decisions, it won't work.
Speaker 1:Wow, processing everything you're saying I really like that, the whole stamping the passport kind of thing, kind of like making your way through all the continents of the organization or states or however you wanna like. Equate it to Super cool man. Listen. So the book right. Yes, the book is called Doing Good and Doing Well. What made you, what sparked your interest number one, to write a book? Cause I can't imagine that being easy. But what sparked the title to the book?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think I hit on a little bit at the beginning that my whole life my calling was just doing good, just helping people. That's all I wanted to do with my life, and I found that, as much as I love that, as I got older and I evolved as a person, doing well also mattered to me, which meant leading an organization running something. So what I found is I'm a big leadership book person. I love leadership books and I found that all of them, or almost all of them, are written by MBAs, finance people, the GE CEO his book is incredible or even Pat Riley's book of leadership was really good. It was athletes, coaches, and I found that, well, who where's one of us? The nurses, the doctors?
Speaker 1:the teachers.
Speaker 2:where's our book written by us? And what I found with a lot of agencies. Let's just say you take a social service agency that may have revenue of $50 million and what everyone will do is they'll say, okay, who are we gonna find to run it? Let's get somebody with an MBA or a business person, which is fine, but they're not one of us. They didn't come through it. They didn't. They haven't sat with the client at their house, they haven't done a home visit, they haven't the blood, sweat and tears bringing clients to get their social service checks, going to the offices with them. So we are the ones that get that. We are good listeners. We understand crisis intervention. We understand how to listen and to communicate. So I think we have all the skillset, but I'm just not seeing a book that is from one of us that would resonate with all of us in the helping professions to lead.
Speaker 2:And I've taught as an adjunct at Rutgers. I started in 1994 when I started my doctorate there and I taught until about 2015. The only reason I stopped is because you know life and I was really busy, but I loved teaching grad school there and I just never saw a great leadership book. So that's a little bit of it. Also, when I was leading SESI, this was one company. We had 2000 employees.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know, we became a pretty big business 75 schools and I would do something called SBU Strategic Business Unit meetings. Four times a year I would get together with all the directors about 75 people and I would do leadership lessons. We would read, I would have them read books the Shackleton survival story and how, what he did to survive, or you know all kinds of different leadership books and we would all learn finance, how to lead people, how to look at yourself and grow. So I do all these fun lessons in finding your own joy, uncovering your own demons. So I was doing these lessons.
Speaker 2:I'm like now, what am I gonna do with them? Like everybody, when I was teaching it, they seemed to really love it. So it was a combination of okay, I've been a leader of an organization, I've taught graduate school at Rutgers for a lot of years and I just want one of us as helping people to lead the organizations that we work for, not go to the outside to find someone. So part of it was like I gotta, you know, if you wanna do something, you know, get off your butt and do it. And that's where I was. I was like let me write this book, let me, you know, maybe use it to teach a graduate school course leadership in the helping professions and I can use my own book, and that's sort of where it came from Motivated me to do it, wow, wow.
Speaker 1:So, mike, in regards to the book you just went through in great detail on, like, what inspired you? What was your routine for writing the book? Cause I think that's also important too, right, cause you're making it sound extremely easy right, you're like hey, I wrote this book, I was a professor, I did you know like I think there's a, I would have to imagine there was a little bit of struggle there somewhere.
Speaker 2:Oh, lots of struggle. I would say I'm not a triathlete, but I would think it's sort of a similar training for that. I mean from beginning to end it's. You know, we're gonna come out in November, so it was two years. So it started with, I think, the title, the desire to do it and then the outline that was huge to come up with the chapters.
Speaker 2:So the 10 chapters, picking what I wanted the chapters to be, and then it just a process of each chapter and writing it. And I have to give my one sister a lot of credit. She's an editor and helped me in a huge way.
Speaker 2:So if I didn't have her, there's no way this book would have happened. She's an incredible support, an amazing writer, great communicator. So having her to bounce all of these ideas off of it, to make sure I'm grammatically correct, like you know the right time to use a colon, semi-colon All of us forget these things that we learned in fifth grade. So just to get all these ideas done, and the first draft was almost like I almost have to go back to zero. So it's like you climb a mountain and then you sort of fall down the mountain, have to go back up, and when you fall, do you really want to climb back up or do you want to give up? So there was a few times you just want to call it a day. And then, while you're writing this, you don't know if the publisher is going to think it's good.
Speaker 1:I didn't even think of that part. Yes, and what? Wow, that's such a good point, dude.
Speaker 2:And here's yeah, yeah, what's really interesting is they really want you to write it in third person. That was awkward, so it can't be. I went to the store today and got an apple, like, and what they said is Mike, unless you're Brad Pitt or somebody like that, you know, nobody wants to hear I, I, I. It's more general story. So you're writing and you're putting all this stuff down in a in a general format third person. So that was an interesting process and one that was hard at first to accept. Now I love it because the lessons are more universal lessons. It's not just more about me and I do get that who.
Speaker 2:You don't want to just hear what I'm doing. You want to hear what the overview, what research you back things up with. So you have to back things up with research. That's really important and make sure that you properly give the credit for anything that you get that isn't an original idea by you. Just imagine all the you know the documentation you have to get in the footnotes to say, okay, this was from somewhere. Because I love making references to sports or social media, tv shows. I that when, every time I present, I love to throw everything in there. So just a lot of research, making sure that's all backed up, that's all done, and it was tough and you really just don't know how good it's gonna be until somebody reads it. I'm sure you even go through this like you may sit down with somebody for an hour and a half and do one of these podcasts and you may feel it was amazing. Then you watch it back and go well, maybe I could have done better.
Speaker 1:Oh 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm my biggest critic. Exactly, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:So I think it's a lot of self-reflection. I don't know that I could have done this when I was a younger guy, would have gotten frustrated and it wouldn't have been as rich. As there's something cool just about getting older and I'm actually embracing it, I thought I would struggle with it more. I love it because it's you gain some wisdom, you get humble. All these great things that just helped me to. Okay, this isn't going so well. Okay, I wrote something that wasn't that good and I was told hey, make this a little bit better. Okay, I can handle that now. That's great. I want to grow and I want to learn. So having that experience is good. To write a book, so you have something to say. But also it's just the life lessons you learn to get you through it. When it's tough, it's because it definitely is not. It's a journey, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, you mentioned before earlier in the conversation running 75 schools.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Can you just elaborate a little bit on that, Because you kind of like just that was a light flex.
Speaker 2:You know that was a really light flex.
Speaker 1:You just did there.
Speaker 2:That was an amazing experience of my life. So I started at this company in 1998 as a director in training of one special school for students with special needs behavioral disabilities.
Speaker 2:What does that mean? It means kids that look like me and you are like me and you, but may have gone through all kinds of different issues tough families, tough lives and they've been identified through the educational process and IEP and individual education plan was developed to say there's some issues here that we have to deal with. So I started as a director of training of this company. That was really small at the time and I worked my way up where.
Speaker 2:I love. So I started as a director of training, then I ran one school in Baltimore and then I ended up becoming a regional director and opening schools from ground zero about 10 or 11 in Maryland and then I ended up becoming that regional director. Then I became chief operating officer of the company and then when the founder retired she named me CEO. So I think that again is such a huge part of the book is hey, I did it. I started as just a director in training and not making too much money. I learned everything. I know how to deal with these kids, I know how to deal with the families, I know how to deal with the communities. I get a profit and loss statement, I get all aspects. I know how to deal with the banks. So I learned it all just by coming up.
Speaker 2:So I felt I was the right guy to run it. It was scary, but that's where it came from. So we started as something small and I grew with the organization and end up running it yeah, so that was a great experience.
Speaker 1:What was your first job that you actually received the W-24?
Speaker 2:I worked at a gas station pumping gas and back in the day when you had to like check oil, remember when you had to do that and I remember I was a hard worker, but I remember I was sitting reading the book Frankenstein and I remember the owner of the gas station said, mike, if I were you I'd stick with the books. I don't think you get cars that well. So I loved the job, but I took that when he said that like okay, maybe being an auto mechanic or in that field probably wasn't for me, but I still loved it. And I loved holding that wad of cash. Remember back in the day when you paid by cash to get gas and when they finally let me hold that, I just loved holding it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just want to add on to that. So for the folks that are listening, spark and Stripe Studios is in New Jersey, and New Jersey is a state where you do not pump your own gas. In the state of New Jersey, you have to allow the service attendant to pump the gas for you. It's actually a law, so that's right, we're the only state left. I think it was Oregon that I did not know.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was Oregon, New Jersey, and now Oregon does it. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 1:So, going back to what you were saying, folks are paying you in cash and you're just holding on to this.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Probably pretty dangerous.
Speaker 2:You're probably pretty dangerous. You know, I don't know about that you know, but wow. Okay, so that was your first job. That was my first job, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's gotta be such a wild thing to reflect on, given where you are now right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great. So now that you asked me that and made me go back into recesses of my mind, let me ask you what was your first job with a W-2? Wow.
Speaker 1:My first job with a W-2. It was I was a New York City lifeguard. Oh wow, I was a New York City lifeguard back in the mid-90s. That was my first. However, I had many jobs, actually, I take that back. That's, that is. I actually worked at the Palladium, which was one of the biggest nightclubs in.
Speaker 1:New York City. I remember the Palladium. Yeah, I was a busboy at the Palladium Nice. I don't even think I should have been working there just because of my age, but I remember getting a W-2. You know what I also remember. Okay, so you wanna go down memory lane?
Speaker 2:Let's do a little memory lane thing over here.
Speaker 1:So you remember the Palladium right. So I'm 14th Street, but in any case, do you remember Tad Stakes?
Speaker 2:Yes, you remember Tad Stakes.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Tad Stakes was. How would you describe Tad Stakes to somebody T-A-D-S?
Speaker 2:I mean just good, like good quality food yeah.
Speaker 1:So the way. So to your point. Good quality food it was. I guess you could call it like a steakhouse, but like a fast food steakhouse, do you?
Speaker 2:remember that, yes, one like you didn't have to be so rich to necessarily afford it.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, so that's the only reason why I even know of it, because at that time I wouldn't have been able to afford a real nice steakhouse.
Speaker 1:So Mike, check this out. So I'm working as a busboy at the Palladium, so we would go on Fridays and pick up our checks. So we would go at four o'clock. Actually we would go a little earlier because I wanna say, if I'm not mistaken, the check cashing place was closed by five or so. I could be off with the times, but ultimately we would get there late in the afternoon. You'd go pick up your check, yeah, and there wasn't like direct deposit, it wasn't like I could take a picture of it with my phone. So we would have to go around the corner. Me and the other busboys would go around the corner, cash out our check. And then there was a tad steaks on 14th Street, right up the street. So we would go into tad steaks. We'd get like a T-bone. So you walk in. Do you remember this? You walk in. There's like a line.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:There's a grill. They ask you what kind of steak do you want? Then they beat it down right Like they almost tenderize it right there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like the only fast food steak place I ever remember, in a way, right.
Speaker 1:And then you could pick like you would get like a baked potato, you would get almost like a wedge salad type of a thing, I gotta go with the baked potato, then Right.
Speaker 1:But I just remember feeling to your point, I just felt like I was rich. Yeah, right, cause I just got. It was a small check, it could have been more than $300, right, but you just had that water cash in your pocket. You're eating a steak and we would do all this on Friday, but remember we have to start working also. So we would go to tat steaks, we'd have our food, the garlic bread and the whole thing Garlic bread. Then you go back to the palladium and now you start setting up for the evening. So that was one of my first jobs in the city. I've had many and then, prior to that, I did tons of stuff where I wasn't getting a W2.
Speaker 2:But yeah, under the table type of a job. Yeah, yeah, I had plenty of those, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I can't yeah, Just wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we all started working around 10, 11, 12. You know, delivering papers or whatever Yep, just to make some money, yeah.
Speaker 1:We lived out in Rockaway Queens off of 116th street there was a wall bounds which was a grocery store and I just remember I would hang out in front of the wall bounds and just ask all the little old ladies if I could just put their bags in the car for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you would just get like a quarter per person. You helped spend the whole afternoon there. You leave with about $30 or so. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean just talking with you and getting to know you a little bit, like I just would love you to come talk to some of our kids in one of our schools. I would love to I think you have so much to offer. A lot of our kids have come from some some tough experiences and you figured out a way to make really good decisions in tough times where tough things face you.
Speaker 2:And that's what our kids need. They're great kids, the kids that I work with but when a decision is it comes to be made, they sometimes will make that decision that isn't helpful to them. But you figured out how to make these great decisions and you know pick in the military, where you could have gone somewhere different. I just think there's a lot of inspiration there. So I love being here today, but I would love you to come to one of my schools one of our schools.
Speaker 1:whatever you need me to do, I'm there for you. So just just tell me what you need me to do, and I love speaking to clearly. I love speaking to people right.
Speaker 1:And I also love putting myself in a position where I could like mentor and share my story too, because one of the big things that I'll share this with you, like I'm writing a book, so I'm writing a book, so I'm breaking down into three different, three different books, kind of like my journey. So the first part of it is just going to be like my early years and there was just like a lot of things that happened, a lot of trauma, just it's. I'm praying that it's going to be a good read and that it that it resonates with a wide range of people, right, I'm hoping that it also can affect and inspire the younger generation. That's to your point in these situations where they're trying to navigate and figure things out. I don't ever want it to come across that I made all the right decisions because I didn't right.
Speaker 1:Joining the military that I literally that was by accident, that was literally by that, that was, that was something or someone, much more A higher being or higher energy that guided me that way, and I always feel that things build on top of other Situations. So I feel like joining the military was a building block, you know, and everything that I did within the military was a building block. I feel like this is an attachment To what's already been established. I don't know where this goes from here. I Do know that my heart is pure and that what I want to do is help. Yeah, so if it's a podcast where we have these candid conversations and there's we discuss journey wellness, how did you get to where you are?
Speaker 1:I think a lot of times Young people can get, I Feel, sometimes without direction, you just without direction. Or what are a destination? You just aimlessly roaming around? Yeah, right, and I like to Share with folks. Hey, listen this, I'm not aimlessly walking around, I'm striding. Yeah, I have a spark and a stride. I'm moving in a purposeful direction. Come with me, yeah, come with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's do this together, you know so here's why I think your book has to be written. Is that, if you look at Instagram or everything today, what is it? It's everyone trying to look beautiful and perfect or showing some product, or they're at a party or there. Everything looks great. What your story resonates is with everyone who sits at home and says I don't look that great, I don't have 70 friends, I don't have a beautiful big old house or all these things. I'm just out here struggling. So is there something wrong with me? And I think what your book is gonna hit its way? It's. It's such a small percentage of what you see online. The 80% of us are the people who need to read your book that are out there. They feel a little bit isolated. They feel that I can't get out of this. I'm in a culture or where I this has been my whole life and how am I ever gonna be able to make it one day? That's why I think your book has to be written.
Speaker 2:That's why I? You know it really does.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you for my thank you for that.
Speaker 2:Like that.
Speaker 1:That that is, brother. I will reflect on this. You know conversation as I'm trying to piece this together. You know I my goal is to have it done, you know, within within the year. You know so I started a few weeks ago. In a perfect world I could have it done, you know, by springtime or so, but um, you know it's funny when you say you know, you were mentioning, you know, like the percent of people, that things are not going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know perfect, for they're trying to figure out what the next thing Should be, and I will share this with you. So the day that I met, the day or the morning that I was introduced to the possibility of the Air Force In the evening, I would work for a maintenance company and I would work from 11 To 7 in the morning and I vacuumed floors, I stripped and wax, waxed floors and I was in charge of like these. I want to say it was like the 51st and the 52nd floor of this building in midtown and I want to say it might have been like a law firm or something like that, but clearly you don't see the people, right, because you're there at 11 o'clock. You don't. You don't see anything, but what you do see Is their offices, the pictures of their families, right, their diplomas, and I just remember I would go up and down as I was cleaning on a break and I would just Periodically go into these offices. You know, because I'm cleaning these offices also I'm you know.
Speaker 1:I'm wiping things down and I'm vacuuming and I just remember, you know, I would have these views of Times Square at like one or two in the morning, where all the lights are on and that kind of thing, and I'm in this person's office, huge office, right Like with a couch and the whole thing, and I would sometimes like sit in their seat and just think to myself how do I, how do I get here, like, how do I, coming from where I come from, being dealt, the cars that I've been dealt, how do I put myself in a position to be successful? And then it goes even a little bit deeper than that, right, because now I'm looking at the pictures of their families. You know their vacations, you know, um, you know like the frame that has like where they went. You know Florida, yeah, bahamas.
Speaker 2:Martha's, you know.
Speaker 1:I just always said to myself like man, like how do I do that? Like I want to be able to, I want to do that one day, I want to be able to sit back. What get am I?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I was gonna say, but what you did is, instead of being angry or jealous about it, you used it as a motivation, and that, to me, is all about this book, and what you did was you used it as a motivation. All about this book, and what I want to get across to everyone is that is is take everything in and use it to motivate. Like you, you didn't get mad at that guy or that woman's office like oh god, and knock the picture over, saying how do you, why do you have this? And I don't? You said. You sat in the chair and you said this feels good, how can I get there?
Speaker 2:And that, if you feel you have an option, even even if it's in your own brain, maybe you nobody's told you that you're great yet and you have to figure that out. You saw that, hey, maybe I can get there one day, and this is motivating me too, and that's what we're. I think that that's what we have to do, and it seems like that's what your podcasts are about. You're having people on that are motivating and doing things that are really incredible and that we all, that regular people, can do. You know, and you're, you're given an array of that, and so that's why I feel really cool about this opportunity to be here.
Speaker 1:Oh man, Thank you. Yeah and you know is it's. We're very Sparking stride as a, as a production company, as a podcast. We're extremely, extremely young, right. Yeah, I think this will be like episode 14 or something like that. You know, um, when you're doing something that you love, it doesn't feel like work, and I've heard that For years while I was in the military and I think, man, like I want that feeling.
Speaker 1:Yes you know, and I got to tell you, mike, like I have it present day, present day, this does not feel like a job, don't get me wrong. It's really hard. It's really hard to have the visual component, the audio component, obviously, and Everything that goes on behind the scenes and that kind of thing. It's not easy, but I love it and it just doesn't feel like work to the like. I don't even go a bit further. Someone told me that you'll know what you're meant to do when you'll do it for free exactly so I it's my senior year of college.
Speaker 2:I I did accounting undergrad and I did really well in it. I got when you do accounting you get hired around january of your senior year and you're gonna start in the fall. I got hired by Ernst and young. At the time there was, I think it was the big six accounting firms I think Ernst and young was one. So everyone was saying, oh, mike, that's so great, you're gonna be an accountant and you're gonna make good money and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:I started getting a stomach ache in january every day thinking and this was I did the four years of school and I should be excited. While I was doing that, I was working at the center for cognitive rehabilitation and Rutgers, working with people with head injuries. And what's interesting about working with people with head injuries is they remember they the way they were before their head injuries? There was one young man that I worked with that Was a college student and his freshman year he got in a car accident. The first day there was a vice president of the bank that um saw somebody taking newspapers out of one of those newspaper bins and said hey, don't do, don't steal them all. And someone took a crowbar and beat him over the head with it, and he now lives in this apartment being taken care of and.
Speaker 2:I loved this, just helping them their stories and I wanted to be a social worker. I was like so that the, the woman that was working at the at there, my supervisor at the time she had something called an MSW, a master's in social work. I didn't even know what the heck that was and what. When she was talking about what a social worker does and when I was there I loved it. I would do it for no money. I wasn't. I was barely I don't know was I getting minimum wage. And I pivoted and right, I was in residence life undergrad so I knew I could be a resident director, which would help pay for my master's. I didn't know how I was going to pay for it, so I knew I had that to maybe help me defray the cost. And I switched. I called the gentleman Ernest and young that was so nice and said this isn't for me. I want to be a social worker.
Speaker 2:And I remember that Oprah Winfrey said something do what you love and the money will come, and do what you're passionate about and what what's really cool is. My mom is an artist, so art is not a field really where you make tons of money, right? So she was like, yeah, do what you love, because you know it doesn't have to be a doctor or a lawyer. Everyone just drilled that into my head. That's what you have to do. And when I told a lot of People that I really respected, that I'm going to be a social worker and I'm not going to do accounting, they thought I was insane. But I just knew it was what I would do for free. You hit the nail in the head and everything I was doing was volunteering and doing things for free American Cancer Society, big brother, all those kinds of things and that's where my heart was, so that when I made that decision, my whole life changed because it was Starting to do what I loved. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Mike, what would you tell a younger Mike?
Speaker 2:Oh gosh, um, I would say to believe in yourself a little bit more. Uh, don't be so hard on yourself. And just you know, enjoy the failures. And enjoy the successes a little bit, but enjoy the failures more. One thing I learned Is the climb is so much more fun than getting to the top of something, just everything that while you're rising you're so you want to get there. You want to get there and You're not enjoying the fun of getting there. And when I was doing, I mentioned to you about the company I worked as starting as a director in training, become in the ceo. I it was fun, but I didn't just enjoy it and then when I got to the top I'm like this is cool, but it's not as much fun as the climb was so maybe enjoying the experience more, embracing the fun, um, have a little bit of fun, don't have to get straight a's.
Speaker 2:If I was so into having like almost a 4.0 college and if I got a b plus, if you get a b plus, you're fine, you're still gonna get a job. Nobody asks me my grades Sure, you want to do well, you know, but I got so into just the grades and that mattered. Like it was the end. All be all was the, the good grade. It was what was I learning? That I just memorized enough to get an a. How about learn the material? And then, if I an a comes great, but embrace the material a little bit more instead of just trying to get the a. So I I think some of those things that the, the, the grind and the, the desire to succeed. Sometimes you don't enjoy the process as much as I should have or could have.
Speaker 1:Wow, mike. So you know, uh, spark and stride as a podcast, right? The four pillars of Spark and stride are wellness, mental health, resiliency, personal development. So these are the areas that I tried to Know. I don't, I don't feel like I need to pull out every single pillar of conversation in every single podcast, but this is like I told you before we're not walking around aimlessly. You know, we have a, we we're moving in a, in a direction with purpose, right? So, in regards to like wellness, yeah, your wellness, right, because it's it's wellness is different for different people, right? I'm just curious when do you find time for yourself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great question. So when I started, uh, working with kids back in the day in the 90s um, I would kids. I gave them all my home phone up. You don't do this stuff anymore. Give them my home phone. Or people call me. Three in the morning my dad just hit me. What do I do? Can you come get me? Will you take me to a doctor? I was so burnt out because I thought it was all about just helping as many people as I can and not myself. But I was taking it all home with me and it was a burden to take everybody's problems with me. And I remember I was on an airplane and it really hit me when that oxygen comes down. My thought was okay, if we, if we were to hit this where the oxygen was needed, I'm going to go run around, put the oxygen on everyone's face, and what they say is no, put the oxygen on you first, then, while you're breathing, then go around, help everyone put the oxygen on.
Speaker 2:I was like wow, that lesson was just so powerful for me. I'm not putting the oxygen on me first, and if you want to help people, you got to help yourself first and make sure that you're taken care of. So that was vital to me and I started thinking about myself eating right, exercising. I'm a gym fanatic. I work out every day a couple hours a day, and it's great for me mentally. So sure is it good as you get older, you know, and I love eating.
Speaker 1:So it's great physically.
Speaker 2:But no, it keeps me grounded, it's calming to me. So, exercise, spending time with family and friends, having fun, finding a balance. Being a workaholic, it's, there is some value. When you're younger it's like fun, especially if you love it. But you have to. You have to find balance in your life because you become less interesting the more one sided you are. So if you love concerts, go to concerts. Spend time with friends, have you know, do hobbies? You like sports? Do you do fantasy football, whatever it may be? Are you a collector? So all these things I've tried to embrace to make sure that I'm okay, because a healthy me can take care of everyone else and unhealthy me can't, whether it's that my own family or whether it's the people in my organization I'm leading or the people that we're serving. So I feel that wellness is huge.
Speaker 2:And one thing with men that I think is really cool about you and I talking right now, this is a new thing of men saying their issues and what's going on and what guys used to do with self medicate right, we would maybe drink, or or smokes or do things like that, instead of dealing hey, I'm anxious, I got some anxiety, okay, I'm going to get some therapy, maybe I need to take some medication for that anxiety or just to talk about what we've gone through and not feel it's a weakness to share our issues with each other. So, as a therapist, I thought of and I haven't done this yet of doing like a men's, group of men, of all of us who are out there trying to succeed and have families. We can come and talk like man. I just I feel like a failure today. I don't know what to do and we're all there for each other, because I think that this is something new, that's, that we're all starting to realize that we all need it. I think women have just been. Sometimes they're more evolved than we are.
Speaker 1:And they knew it way before therapy and admitting what's going on was.
Speaker 2:It's just a part of their DNA. And now, as guys, we got to do the same thing. You're still a real cool guy to say I'm struggling, I'm anxious, I'm hurting, I'm, I need you, man, I need some help, I need to talk to somebody. And the more I'm like that, the more I'm finding my friends come and want to talk and be there and you know you put, you know be there for and put your arm around him. Hey, man, I'm here, so that gives me. That helps me to to help other people. So that kind of wellness is just. I think about it a lot now and I'm just so happy that I don't have to hold those things in and I can share it. Yeah, and and and. Now, if you share with a guy, he's not going to think like you're weak, that hey, you're. You know I'm struggling, you're struggling. Let's, let's help each other.
Speaker 1:You know and in line with what you're saying, one of the very first things I said on the podcast I want to say I said, like an episode one or two, is that what I wanted to do after the military was be an advocate for wellness and mental health? Yeah, I struggle with PTSD, anxiety depression.
Speaker 1:When I was first prescribed my anxiety medication, I didn't take it for three months, mm hmm, it literally sat, you know, in a drawer somewhere and I, when I had to take the first pill, just felt like a piece of me was just going away, like my, my manhood, you know, and I just reflect on that now and I was like, no, like you were adding to yourself Exactly, you know, because what was really eating at you and was was really detriment, a detriment to yourself was the anxiety, you know, because there's so many other people to your point who rely on you right, like you have your family.
Speaker 1:You have this balance. You know you're, you're a first sergeant in the Air Force. You can't, you cannot appear to be weak, are you crazy? Exactly, right, the stigma that goes along with that, yeah, so, yeah, man. So I'm just here and I just want to continue to echo this message. Right, and I think it's important to like your point. You know, wellness for you is a specific thing, right, it's your family, it's your hobbies, it's having that balance and I think, to your point, more people need to hear that. Men, you know, like I think we're a little bit behind the curve.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In regards to how we deal with our personal issues and and that sort of a thing. You know like, for instance, like AA, right, aa, you get paired up with a sponsor or a mentor, right, who has, has a, has dealt with it already, and they're there as a, you know, as a guiding light or as a beacon, right, right, why do we need to be an AA to have that sort of support? Right, we don't. It shouldn't be that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, yeah, you know so exactly and you know what's interesting when you shared that you know with me just recently about you need taking that pill and that it was hard for you to do. I definitely think for anxiety I need one. So just you sharing that and knowing that you're a cool manly cool kind of guy.
Speaker 1:Thanks, man, and then you could do, you know it's inspiring me, like you know.
Speaker 2:I really want to revisit that, and so that you shared that makes me now want to take that pill, because I do think it would help me. I do I'm good at hiding the anxiety, but I think that I need it also. So this, that see this back and forth, that just wow, he can do it. Why can't I? So again, that's the wellness is sharing stuff with people, and then other people motivate you that, hey, this is cool, that that if I have an issue, it's not a, it's it's okay to do something about it, 100%.
Speaker 1:I think also like in terms of like, you know, like, like, like being a man, or, or, or. You know I know folks listening or watching you know they'll they'll throw in the whole like transgender thing and like, and that's just not what this conversation is about. And ultimately, to be quite honest and transparent, it's not about male or female, it's about being a human being.
Speaker 1:Right Like this is this is what I'm getting at. It's about being a human being and we all struggle with something right? We're not alone. So, but what I wanted to say is, when you're thinking about the stigma of medication and these kinds of things, I got to tell you quite honestly like the medication helps me. Yeah it helps me. We are whatever age you know we are at the moment. You look like you're 30 something years old.
Speaker 2:Oh, thanks 56.
Speaker 1:But, Mike, you know it's a 56 year old engine. Yeah engine lights gonna go on yeah it turns on.
Speaker 2:It turns on a lot. You know it needs some maintenance. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:So, like, stop thinking that you're running this. You know 20 year old engine. You know with low miles, like no dude, like it has miles, it has experience. You know like it just requires some maintenance.
Speaker 1:That's all you know, and it's not a stigma, it's nothing. You know clearly, you're, you're what we would call operational. Yeah right, you're, you're, you're functioning, you're running your company, you're running your business, you're, you've written your book, you know. So, yeah, man, thank you for you know. I'm glad that me being open about these topics have, you know, affected you to the point where you know definitely not appreciated.
Speaker 1:But hey, Mike, in regards to like your journey, right, your journey to where you are now, like, clearly, you have a track record for being successful. You've written your book. What would you like leaving here today, Right? When this goes out into the airways, when this goes out on YouTube, when this goes out on social media, what would you like folks to know about you?
Speaker 2:I guess I'd like people just to know that I'm a guy that just wanted to go out there and make a difference and help people, and that you know, if you're like that too, you can also be a leader. You don't just have to go out there and help people, which is great. If that's what you want to do, that's fantastic. But there is more to it and you have it in you to do more than just be that help, be a, you know, be that nurse or that, that teacher in the classroom or a social worker on the field, which is incredible. I loved it. I did it for years. But you can do more, and I'm somebody who nobody believed in.
Speaker 2:When I was young, everyone thought I was not going to do much. Nobody thought I was going to go to college. I was the quiet kid sitting in a corner when I moved. I moved a million times as a kid. I went to 12 different schools in 12 years. When I lived on one street, I became friends with this one kid, but the mom said oh, tell us, ask no name to come over one day, because we both didn't talk. We both sat there.
Speaker 2:I was a wallflower. I was scared of my own shadow. I didn't you know if I can do it. Anyone can is what I'm here to say, and that we're all regular people and trying to do extraordinary things, and I feel that that's what you know. I have been able to do which isn't me.
Speaker 2:I'm not an extraordinary person, but some of the things that I've experienced have been I mean, all the people I've worked with, the families I've worked with the families that I've been honored to work with and help have just shaped me and made my life so rich is that, you know, if you got a lot of time and you're just feeling a little isolated, go out and volunteer and help. That's something that turned my life around. One thing that a couple buddies of mine did it was called the buddy system at Rutgers undergrad and all of us, you know, in college, a lot of times you don't take classes on Fridays. So you know, okay, you want to go out Thursday night and party and have a great time, but then Friday, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2:How about you? You mentor a kid at the local school, at wherever you're going to college. Pick something to do and help somebody. It'll help you, it helps somebody and it gives your life, a mission and a purpose. So I'm just somebody who I didn't believe in myself. Other people didn't believe in me and just by doing and finding a passion I was able to resurrect myself and create something out there. So, and I, you know, just find some happiness, and I guess you know that's what I want to get across.
Speaker 1:Oh man, thank you man, that was awesome. Man, hey, listen, I mean, you know folks are going to see this and you know, I think that's going to hit home with a lot of people, you know. So, mike, I can't thank you enough for coming by Spark and Stride. This has been amazing, right. Like you're the first author to be on Spark and Stride, Do you want to plug any of your social media handle or your LinkedIn handle or anything you know? Plug your book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the book is on preorder right now. It's Roman and Littlefield as a publisher, it's romancom, so you can find doing good and doing well. It's right up on there now and it's on Amazon. That's a real cool thing to see. If you put in my name, the book shows up. It's all preorder now. It's coming out in late November, okay. So yeah, if you found some of this interesting, you want to give it a read? I'd love it.
Speaker 1:Oh man that's awesome, man, and if there's anything I could do, you know, in the meantime to be part of your movement, to get your word out, please. You know you got my number. I'm here for you, 100%. The next book, should you get inspired, you know, should the Spark happen again, where you want to write the next book, please come to Spark and Stride and let's discuss it.
Speaker 2:If you'll have me back, I'd be thrilled Absolutely. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Much appreciated Stay Spark.