Looking In explains that conditioning has us believe answers we seek are outside of ourselves. The truth is, they are within. We can access them for the life we want. Most books about self discovery talk about it through the lens of spirituality. This is a practical and leadership-based book that talks about real tools that create a real difference in the world of business and general life.
Her approach to executive coaching is truly one-of-a-kind. She has been often told by clients who have worked with other coaches that her brand of coaching is completely non-cookie cutter and has created the most effective and permanent change in their lives. They say the tools that use they use for everything and it creates success.
One of the things I like to always remind people is we are humans first. Regardless of what the letters after our name are â CEO, COO, CFO. We get to look at how you talk about crisis. We get to look at how we respond in crisis as a human first. That reptilian brain at the back of our head, which is the fight, flight, freeze part. That is going to kick in when we come across crisis. Even as leaders, that’s going to be a part that they get to work with. It’s not a matter of shutting it down because it’s like people saying they want to just dismiss their ego. Good luck. We want to work with it. That’s probably one of the biggest pieces that I work with my clients on is how to integrate and work with that ego, the thing that it needs to chew on that’s actually going to serve us as opposed to putting us in a lot of times. Those typical leaders who want to just forge in and continue to be productive and consider themselves the go-to leaders, they can push too hard.
What I tend to find in these types of times is that we just see an augmentative kind of a larger-than-life reaction to what is typically our natural way of dealing with crisis as humans. First again, aside from leaders depending on how long they’ve been doing it can have some skill sets and strategies and that under their belt that can help them to do this, but I mean this is something that none of us have ever seen before. This is a type of crisis that is traumatizing people in a whole new way. So, we need kind of a different approach to how we’re going to handle that. Right now, there’s new strategies that I’m kind of innovating as we go with my corporate clients especially because that looks different than a single business owner at this point to some degree. Weâre just kind of opening up. I’m trying to get them to go back to curiosity, the place we were as a kid. We have to be open and curious because at the end of the day, it’s like well this is going to happen and you don’t know it’s going to happen, so let’s dial it back. Let’s work with what is right now. That’s what I would say just in the current environment. I know that you’re making these videos to be evergreen, so I love what Tony Robbins recently said about the time renaissance. We’ve been here before. We’re here again as human beings. Over time, crisis happens. So, really what I think is extraordinary about this time is where we’ve been through similar times in the past. We didn’t have the technology we have today. I mean for us to be able to pivot so quickly and to some extent bring our day-to-day physical lives immediately online where we can continue to have some of the quote-unquote normality that we had before is extraordinary. Let’s capitalize on that. Let’s look at where we can use that.
The one thing I want to say about leadership is from this idea of hierarchy of leadership to collaborative leadership, what I call the conscious leader, the fully owned leader, the one that is not just with the hat of this is what I’m expected to do right in the position Iâm in but the person who’s bringing their whole self forward and has that compassion. I think one of the biggest things we see now today and in a lot of articles and various things that are posted out there is that these types of leaders, the best leaders now have not just high IQ, they have high EQ, the emotional quotient, emotional intelligence. They’re able to manage how they are emotionally, not just how they act physically. I mean these are some of the trends and things, I think.
This time, for me, is incredibly exciting. I was telling my husband I was made for this time, boot camp of life for the time we’re in right now. For me, not to disqualify the difficulties that weâre all navigating right now, but we have a tremendous time to really rewrite a lot of how we’ve done things that have maybe not been serving us collectively as well as they could to really dig into those and say well how can we do it differently with intention and consciousness. So, itâs an exciting time in my world. Itâs definitely constantly changing, so you have to be both flexible and again like that keeping attitude. What can I do right now? What would I like to be in the future intentionally? Where would I like to be placing myself? Where am I kind of trying to navigate this shift? Also, if things come up, it’s the difference between the lens of expectation and the lens of acceptance. Â If we’re going along, as we have planned and suddenly things shift, what are we going to do? That to me, defines a leader, what you do in the times when things are not going to plan. To your point earlier, we are already in this time. The time is asking that of all of us. We’re all leaders to some degree. So, what are we going to do with it? We can create. I say that the creation energy is messy. It’s messing anybody who’s ever gone into an artist studio. It’s messy, and yet the most beautiful things come out of that mess. I really think from the hope perspective. I hope people can see that if we take away and strip away the storyline what it all symbolizes is actually quite tremendously exciting.
What I find, and certainly is true of my clients, is that true leaders have two main characteristic traits. Theyâre visionary and theyâre growth oriented. I do believe, at the core, that all human beings are naturally growth oriented. We may lose that through our conditioning and our experiences in our lack of belief, in our capacity, but I think we come it naturally. I think weâre kind of innately born to be growth oriented. I mean we grow, so that makes me believe we’re that way. Leaders are aware of this right there. I know throughout my life people would say when do you turn off? When do you turn off? So, Â what’s next, whatâs next, what’s next? This is good. I think part of it is what I try to also teach or two things because it’s not just about what’s next, it’s also about celebrating what we’re doing. Let’s look at what’s working, and let’s really take the time, like you said, during these times. Itâs about self-reflection. How can we be reflective and growth oriented, growth visionary and growth oriented, at the same time? The one thing I say is how leaders do this is, they have coaches. Itâs not just because I’m a coach. I mean I have coaches. I’ve had coaches since I started coaching. I had coaches before as an athlete. We’re human. We can’t get a bird’s-eye view of our own life. So, this is what I tell my clients looks like I’m just not doing give yourself some slack. You’re doing all these other things. This is what she hired me for. This is why you have coaches. This is why you have consultants. This is why you pay these people to be in your left or right pocket. It’s because we’re here to help facilitate what you just talked about. Where are we going to slow this down? How are we going to kind of open this up and analyze it a little bit so people pick the pieces apart of what the success is now? As we start to expand and as you tend to grow into that vision that you have, how do you foresee that things might need to shift and change?
One of the things that I see time and time again when I’m brought into companies is that a lot of them weren’t intentional in developing themselves. In other words, it’s like building a home without a foundation. They had this grand idea or they’re really good at something. Theyâre just like Iâll just hang my shingle and go out there and do it. The core things allow a foundational support for that company. A lot of what I do and my job is to, I mean of course I stay in my lane there’s certain things I do well and beyond that one of the things as approaches is to bringing in other people. To say, âOkay, here’s an operational specialist.â You may need to look at your operations in your systems, because they don’t exist or they exist, but they’re completely unintentional. Theyâre there, just not working fluidly, to help people see what they can’t see. I think, especially when I come in, my business clients tend to be stage two growth, which means they’ve gotten to this kind of place like you’re thriving but suddenly all the gaps start to show, all of those leaks start to really come to the surface. Theyâre trying to band-aid it. They’re trying to kind of stick the finger in the dike type of thing, and look, we need to core it down and look at why this is right. I start with core values. Some of the most profitable and successful and I mean from a place of sustainability, so everything is running internally really well, are those companies that actually are run by core values.
I sat down with one individual who’s in a company, here in North Carolina. I was introduced to him, because I was fascinated reading about him. He had created this model. I thought I need to sit down and pick this man’s brain about what he had done that had allowed him to do so almost with ease, the natural growth of this company in a very tough industry in sustainable energy which now is becoming more of a thing but when he started was not. How did he grow it so easily? When we sat down, he said I’ll tell you. My wife and I started this company in our living room. We started with a set of core values. Even to this day, we hire and fire by these values. Everything is determined by these core values. Even the way their offices were made, you saw the core values on the wall, but everything was symbolic and representative of those core values. So, we can be that intentional. Is everybody going to be? No. Does anybody have to be? No, you don’t really have to be, but the closer you can be in that intentionality and setting that foundation and having those people around you who are going to support you. I think we were raised to be. It’s a badge of honor to be self-made. When in reality, I don’t like that term because none of us are self-made.First of all, we didn’t make ourselves. Our parents did. Second of all, weâve always had someone there to open a door for us, support us, or whatever. So, we’re not self-made. I think we need to understand the principle of it is that there is no shame in support. The best leaders, the ones who we put on these pedestals and say how that person is amazing, they have had so much support in their life. You just may not see all the supportive people behind them, but they have their own triage and they continue to for a reason that allows them to be those leaders. They can just focus on that zone of genius that they came here for it to be in that growth-oriented visionary. They have the people in the right seats to support the rest of the operations around what it is that they’re doing.
So, my main message is focused on coming home. I think it’s very interesting at this time, we were asked to come home. We were asked to come into our homes, stay put, and let’s let this thing ride out. I see coming into our homes as symbolic to this space that each individual lives within. We’ve been so conditioned to look outside of ourselves for security. We’re in a time where a lot of those systems that we have relied on are not meeting our needs. That’s really scary. I think it’s also for us to see that that’s not where it’s at. We’re not meant to ground externally. We’re meant to ground internally. We’re meant to find our solid self-own, who we are, why we’re here, and what’s our legacy. Those are the things I work with clients on is defining that right. If we have a vague understanding, it’s just kind of somewhere up here in our brain but we haven’t owned it. We can’t own it unless we’ve defined it. We can’t define it unless we’ve become aware of it at a foundational level. So, I would say take this time. You made that great point of being self-reflective. Take this time, because I think the biggest push is going to fix it. What am I going to do? Again, we’re so productive conditioned. How am I going to keep being productive? We’re not human doers, weâre human beings. We arenât within ourselves for a while.
I think some of the best support systems I have right now â I have a girlfriend who’s a hypnotherapist. She does this stuff where she takes you in. What is that feeling she said? Where do you feel it in your body? It’s in my stomach. Does it have a color? Does it have a shape? I mean really working with those sensations in our body. I had some of the most amazing ahaâs that trace back into patterns throughout my life that I wouldnât if I hadn’t taken that time with that support to really analyze, look at, and figure out. We have all the answers within, and we just think they’re supposed to be out here. When I ask my clients, âWhat do you think? It doesn’t matter what I think. What do you think? What do you feel? What do you sense?â We, again, have been taught to look outside for the answers, to look outside for the support, to look outside for the grounding. I think this time is showing us thatâs not where it’s at.
I would tell people take this time because it’s a gift. I know it doesn’t feel like one because those productive human doers and us are like I can’t do it the way I’m supposed to do. This is scary and I see things going away. In reality, if we follow the story line, that’s how we’re going to feel. But, if we strip it away and we look at, âWow, what if this time we’re really about something else? â what if this time really were a gift? â how would I have to look at this time in order to see it as a gift?â, then all of a sudden we see we’re spending time with family and with friends, again alone, in nature, and exercising. I didn’t know so many. I used to be the only one out walking. Now, it’s like everybody is walking in my neighborhood. It’s lovely. It’s beautiful. Weâre supposed to experience this. So, I’d say take the fear and transform it into faith that this time is here as a gift. You can’t live in fear and faith at the same time. I don’t necessarily mean spiritual faith. That is a big part of it for a lot of us. For people who don’t feel like â Oh, I’m not religious or not spiritual, have faith in yourself. I think this is testing our capacity as human beings more than anything ever has in our lives at least at this point. So, have faith. What if this were a challenge to show my capacity to myself? What if it were? How would I look at this differently? How would I go about my day to day differently? How would I deal with fears and triggers that pop up for me differently? Reach out for those supports. I mean, this is not the time to do it alone. I know that some people out there say that. I always would ask us a question to a client what do you feel about that? Well, I don’t know. Well, if you did know, what would it be? We can ask ourselves that question because there’s that immediate reaction of I don’t know but what if I did know? What do I see now? What do I sense now? That’s what I would love for your viewers to take away from today.
TRACI’S BIO As a Leadership & Performance Strategist, Traci is a crackerjack at assisting her clients to clearly define their personality, passions and purpose to create a targeted and congruent strategy to assure success in any area of life. With unique strengths in translating both verbal and non-verbal language, Traci assists individuals and teams to apply effective tools and approaches to identify core issues and challenges that are blocking desired objectives and outcomes. Her clients learn and practice better communication & resolution strategies and are able to create and sustain more cohesive & cooperative situations and environments, while experiencing more fulfillment and pleasure in their lives.
It’s OK if you don’t have a YouTube channel yet. I was there not that long ago.
Have no fear! There is information in this post that will help those without a YouTube channel get started like the video at the very end of this post. Don’t scroll to the bottom just yet. In addition, there is information that will help those who already have a channel consider 3 easy ways to capture more videos on a regular basis.
QUICK TIP: Don’t underestimate the power of action “today not tomorrow” and the power of your smartphone.
HOW OLD ARE YOU? I’m 53 and started this website in April 2020 without any strategic planning. You can do the same thing when it comes to YouTube whether it’s starting a channel from scratch or getting more video content on your YouTube channel. No Excuses! Don’t overthink it! Just make it happen!
Not getting started on YouTube years ago was a huge mistake on my part. However, it’s never too late and I’m not going to beat myself up over the past. I currently have two active YouTube channels and just launched a third YouTube channel. However, I struggled for several years to take action. Suppressing the thought of starting a YouTube channel became easy to do because excuses were/are the easy way out of most anything.
It’s true: Quality video and audio are important parts of a video, but you don’t have to have a $1,000 to $2,000+ setup ( mic, camera, lighting, software, etc. ). Waiting until you have the right equipment is no reason to put off getting started with a new YouTube channel today or continuing to expand your current YouTube channel with more video content.
QUICK TIP: The best still camera or video camera to have is the one that you have with you and you likely have your smartphone with you 24/7.
RECORD VIDEOS WITH ANY OF THE THREE EASY WAYS BELOW:
SMARTPHONE – USE YOUR PHONE AND JUST DO IT! You can record video just using your phone and nothing else. There are some great editing apps like Videoshop and InShot for you to do video editing on your phone in a matter of minutes. But keep in mind, you can just use the RAW video clip, so don’t let video editing be another excuse.
QUICK SMARTPHONE LIGHTING TIP & PHONE POSITIONING:
Use good indoor window lighting or shoot outdoors with the light source in front of the face. Consider holding your phone landscape style like the ladies above.
ZOOM A second way to record video for YouTube is to do two person discussions using ZOOM like you see on the Videos page of Hope Now 2020. You can use the built in webcam and built in mic on a laptop. Although I don’t use my phone for ZOOM discussion recordings, that’s something you may want to look into. Personally, I recommend being stable with a laptop or desktop. ZOOM has a FREE option and an entry level low cost monthly or annual option. I use the paid option and record to the cloud. If you don’t have a webcam and/or mic ( could be the case with a desktop ), they can both be purchased for under $100. Again, no excuses. Just get it done!
SCREEN-O-MATIC There are several ways to record screen capture and/or your webcam, but I like screen-o-matic which is what I use as of this post for much of my webcam video capture when I’m not using ZOOM. I don’t like ZOOM video quality and I firmly believe the quality is better with Screen-O-Matic using the same webcam as I use with ZOOM.
Note: The banner below is an affiliate banner which I could get a commission from. However, I do use and love Screen-O-Matic, so I’m not just trying to make a buck. None of the in body links in this post are affiliate links.
GARY VEE: I had never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk until a few days ago. He has three YouTube Channels that I know of: Gary Vee ( 2.6M+ subscribers ) and Gary Vee TV ( 289K+ subscribers ). If you can overlook his foul mouth, you can get lots of great information. But he does have a CURSE FREE GARY VEE ( 11.7K+ subscribers ). He is truly a GIVER! You may want to pick up a copy of CRUSHING IT as well.
From my short time listening to Gary Vee, I have come away with a few key things: it doesn’t have to perfect, be yourself, start a podcast, start a podcast, start a podcast ( more in a moment ) and use social media but be unique to each social platform because users respond differently on Twitter than on Instagram for example.
Gary admits that he has been at it for several years putting in several hours per day everyday and not just Monday through Friday. He told a new YouTuber that had been at it for just 2 months that he should be thinking 7 to 11 years of 4 hours per day everyday. But even then, there is no guarantee of success. Keep in mind that getting your channel and/or regularly posting content is the goal of this post not trying to be the next Gary Vee: You are you. Let Gary Vee be Gary Vee.
QUICK PODCAST TIP: You can strip out the audio from your YouTube video using something like UniConverter from Wondershare and BAM!, you’ll have an MP3 to post on your podcast channel. Currently, I’m converting the audio from video interviews to create MP3’s on the Podcast page of Hope Now 2020. There may be a FREE option online ( be careful ) but I use the paid version of UniConverter.
Note: The banner below is an affiliate banner which I could get a commission from. However, I do use and love Podbean, so I’m not just trying to make a buck. None of the in body links in this post are affiliate links.
TONY ROBBINS: I have been listening to Tony some recently. I first started listening to Tony Robbins around 30 years ago on cassette tape. One of the things the Tony has been saying for years is “TAKE MASSIVE ACTION!”
“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” ( Tony Robbins ) So I’ll ask you now, what decision are you going to make right this moment to shape your own destiny based on what I have shared so far in this post.
WILL YOU DECIDE and ACT? It’s one thing to make a decision, but to actually put that decision into motion is entirely different. Don’t mistake strategic planning which is great. But actually setting the plan into motion and making things happen is far greater.
LET’S WRAP THIS UP! There are numerous videos on YouTube about starting a YouTube channel. Today, I found the one below which lead to me writing this post. Since the video was posted within 30 days of this post, I thought that I’d use it rather than one from 2019 because that would be so 2019.
The video seems well done, so I thought that I’d share it with you below. Obviously, you can search on YouTube for many more videos on getting your channel started. Remember, don’t just watch videos and continue putting off starting your YouTube channel or expanding your content on your current YouTube channel.
WARNING: Gary may drop F-Bombs & use foul language.
Maybe I’ve been under a rock, but I just came across Gary Vee ( Vaynerchuk ) today. He currently has 2.64M subscribers on one of his YouTube channels and 289K subscribers on another YouTube channel.
Most of the transcript from the video above is on this post for those who like to read. WARNING: Gary drops F-Bombs which I’m not a fan of and none are included below:
[Gary V] This is all I know, I’m blindly consumer-centric, and as long as you’re blindly consumer-centric…
[Becky] What do you mean by that?
[Gary V] All I do is pay attention to what people are doing, nothing else, nothing else. You can punch me in the face 8,000 times, I’m here to get punched.
[Becky] He’s a best-selling author, motivational speaker, and marketing guru.
[Gary V] Hustle would be putting all your effort into achieving the goal at hand, and for me, that means, making every minute count.
[Becky] Gary Vaynerchuk, simply Gary Vee to his legions of followers on social media, is a consummate communicator, dishing out advice on everything from best business practices to how to live a happy life with a heavy dose of F-bombs.
[Becky] I recently caught up with the lively New Yorker in Dubai to get to know the man behind the brand and find out how he keeps one step ahead of the competition.
[Becky] What does being a contemporary communicator mean?
[Gary V] It means that you are blindly religious around this. It means that you understand where people are paying attention, whether that’s Twitch or TikTok or believe it or not, organic reach on LinkedIn or pre-roll on OTT, it’s understanding that modern television commercials and modern print ads and modern radio ads are overpriced, outside of the Super Bowl, and it means that, the Facebooks and the Twitters and the Instagrams and the YouTubes and the pre-roll Spotifys are grossly underpriced, and then are you capable of creating the creative, the videos, the pictures, the written words that are contextual to those platforms, not taking a commercial and putting it on YouTube, to make the agenda successful.
[Becky] You are a pain in the ass to the industry who ought to know all of this. Nothing you are telling me actually is brand new. This has been around for time, so what makes you different from the rest of the industry?
[Gary V] I’m all about where is the media underpriced, where is it overpriced. I would obviously wanna buy underpriced, so for me, social media, not all of them, the current state of certain media products within certain media platforms is so wildly underpriced, Faceboook, Instagram Stories, LinkedIn, pre-roll YouTube when you tie it into the Google search. So I’m all about underpriced attention, quite a bit of that is happening on social media today, in 10 years, it might on Voice or something else. I’m completely unemotional of the platform, I’m completely emotional about consumers’ attention.
[Gary V] I think I have single, I’d literally think that I have one of the best ideas for a social network.
[Gary] You got your perspective.
[Betty] So you said, I think 30-second spots on TV are bad, I think five-second pictures, eight-second videos on TikTok are good, and I think three-minute and 19-second little docuseries on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram are good
because they’re being deployed against places where people are actually watching it.
[Gary V] I love that sentence. I don’t know what else to say,
it sounded exactly right. I mean that reality is it’s like, it’s so funny I have no interest in holding up the past. I ask people, why is it that writing with a pen, on a piece of paper, a message, and then sending it in the mail is heralded as this noble act, but a text is demonized as not warm or great communication.
The reality is it’s the message, not the medium. And so, for me, I’m just super focused on, if a client gives me $10 million to make something happen,
I want that to be successful, and requires being a day trader
of where communication is, not a mutual fund buyer based on past performance.
Striking a platform while it’s hot matters way more than if that platform actually exists in a decade.
[Betty] You have first mover advantage, still just. The business is built on the fact that you had first mover advantage. Gary, how do you stay relevant?
You scale your own business. How do you avoid becoming that traditional media agency?
[Gary V] There’s several ways. One, I will never take my company public,
that’s how I avoid it. Two, this is all I’ve ever done. You know, in 1996, I launched one of the first three e-commerce wine businesses in America,
and by 1997, I had one of the most meaningful email newsletters. I bought Google Ads the day it came out. I started the first long-form YouTube show
or one of the five first long-form YouTube shows in 2006. I invested in Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Uber before they became what they were. This is all I know, I’m blindly consumer-centric and as long as you’re blindly consumer-centric…
[Betty] What do you mean by that?
[Gary V] All I do is pay attention to what people are doing, nothing else, nothing else, I do nothing else, and as long as you do that and behave towards that, well then, what everybody else does, which is actually try to figure out how to work in the B2B world, how to make margin in the short term, are always vulnerable to that. That is probably the thing that I’m most confident about, which is that this has been written, and I will continue to rinse and repeat this model at 55, at 66, at 77, at 88, and I mean, and here’s the good part, and if I don’t because I got stale or tired or complacent, I deserve to lose.
[Betty] You say you are completely platform-agnostic.
[Gary V] I am.
[Betty] You’ve talked about those in the business of marketing strategies being a full day behind the curve.
[Gary] Yes.
[Betty] To remain relevant, you need to be, you know, on the say as it were, on the money. What’s happening tomorrow, Gary?
[Gary] I don’t know. See, that’s the beauty of being completely and utterly day-trading-focused, I don’t know. Look, I clearly see trends that make me believe that Voice, you know, Google Home, Alexa is going to be incredibly powerful as a front-facing framework, as an operating system.
[Alexa] Cancel anytime, terms in the Alexa…
[Gary] Yes.
[Alexa] Should I start your free trial and pay I’m Still Standing?
[Gary] Yes.
How dangerous is that?
Alexa sent me pizza, that’s powerful.
Google, tell me about the election. Think about how powerful what comes out of the Google Voice is at that moment. So I do see Voice as an interface brewing, but I have no passion, you know, when I get most heralded, people talk about me being a futurist or a Nostradum, I laugh, I’m like, I’m none of those things. What I’m very good at is when TikTok is happening right now, Iâm very loud about it, and I see it, and more importantly, I make on it, and I test it, and I see the business results.
[Betty] Does it bother you that the medium, the media, the new media, or platforms that are, some will say, creating huge anxiety for their users? Does that worry? Are you in the business of anxiety-inducing content on platforms that are bad for the answers out there?
[Gary] No, I don’t believe that at all. I actually completely take a different take. First of all, people have always been consistent, people have always had anxiety, people are insecure, people are trying to keep up with the Joneses, people have parents that create entitlement, which leads to insecurity. If you look at a picture somebody in beautiful Dubai, and you have FOMO because you don’t, there is far more important things things going on there than you following things on Instagram. Magazines were creating anxiety ’cause all the models in it were tall and skinny for all the girls that went through Vogue in 1992. Television creates anxiety with its actors and movie stars. Everything has the potential of creating anxiety.
[Betty] So let’s talk about how you’re being judged at the moment. There are those who say, he is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong about media, adding, and I quote, we get the gurus we deserve, and you could not invent a more suitable spokesperson for social media. A big guy in the traditional media landscape said that about you.
[Gary] Yeah, that’s probably the most exciting statement that I could get from somebody who’s an executive in the ad world. That comes from a gentlemen who’s never actually run a business. You know, I did marketing to put food on my family’s table because we were immigrants from the Soviet Union, and when I joined my family business, that’s how we lived. That gentleman went to business school and is been an executive his entire lifeat a holding company and has never had to earn a dollar that actually means something in merit. He’s only sold reports and PDFs to other corporations. I’m top on the field because I’m winning, I’m winning. They know media is the fastest-growing independent agency in the history of the industry. I’m winning, that’s why they’re upset.
[Betty] You are a die-hard Jets fan.
[Gary] Yes.
[Betty] They are not winning.
[Gary] They are not.
[Becky] At present. What do you do about that?
[Gary] First of all, I love the way you segue, what am I gonna do about that? I am, since the time I was, since I was seven, I’ve loved them. By the time I was in fourth, maybe by the time I was 10 or
11, I have been saying to anybody that was willing listen to me that I was gonna buy the New York Jets. So what am I gonna do about it? I’m going to amass the wealth and the opportunities to enable me to buy the Jets when they’re up for sale, and then I’m gonna win Super Bowls.
[Becky] I love your style, Gary Vee. There is a green knitted jersey that, as I understand it, will sit proudly above the name of the Jets at the stadium. Why, tell me about that jersey.
[Gary] I appreciate you bringing this up. I literally don’t like stuff, right? I don’t wanna buy anything other than the team. I don’t like stuff. But there is one item that rules my soul. When I was seven, I fell in love with the Jets. All the kids in the neighborhood had jerseys. I ran into the house, mom, I need a jersey. My mom laughed at me because that’s not what immigrants do, we don’t spend $25 on a football jersey. I would cry and I was sad, I continued to go outside for the next week not wearing a jersey while everybody else did, you know, it’s the 80s kids, we went outside every day. And then finally, like 10 or 11 days later, my mom, at night, had knitted me a Jets jersey with my name Gary on the back, and my favorite number five, and it’s the single most important item to me. It represents absolutely everything about my journey and about my parents and how much I appreciate them for, you know, it’s so crazy, with all the great things that are happening to me professionally and personally.
[Becky] I’ve heard your story before to a certain extent, you know, the pride that you clearly have in being an American.
[Gary] Yes.
[Becky] How does it feel to live in this era in America? Does it worry, are you proud of the country?
[Gary] Am I proud of the country, I’m proud of the country. I’m not proud of all the behaviors. I’m proud of my mother. Do I agree with everything she does, absolutely not. But, look, I think whatever your politics are, I believe that anything that looks like nationalism or us against them is always massively detrimental. It eliminates so much of the good that happens in the human spirit. And so, I very much dislike the tone of demonizing anything from the outside.
I started my business when I was 24 years old. Itâs 25 years later and weâre still at it. Itâs super exciting to see what happens over 25 years in a business. There are ups and downs and itâs been amazing. That was really what I wanted to talk about today, what Iâve learned over those 25 years: the good and the bad, mostly the good. I mean itâs just amazing to be in business for this amount of time.
This year, I came up with a mantra for Hummingbird for our 25th anniversary. It is reflect, restore, take flight, and it has to do with reflecting on 25 years. We have been looking back at old work, and itâs so funny how even the processes of design have changed. Tools available to us have changed so much, also just the people that I have come across over the years, many of whom I still talk to like you and so many amazing people Iâve met over the years. I am currently on the board of the Cary Chamber of Commerce, and the Cary Chamber is where I started. I walked into you in a Chamber meeting because I didnât have work. I was looking for a job, I walked into a Chamber meeting. I wandered around. I met three amazing men: Mike Anderson with Advent Screen Printing, Michael Curran with Greenscape and Franklin Hill Farms, and Kim Pasfil with Carolina Job Finder. Those three guys helped me and gave me work. I got my business started, and I was in an industry I had not worked in before. I still am, so I really didnât have a big background in the industry that Iâm in when I started my business. I had no idea what I was doing with my business.
My father owned a shoe store, and I was working in the shoe store when I was four years old. I was riding an elephant as a promotion for the shoe store when I was six years old, so I had a little touch of marketing there. I have a sales and marketing background, but I hadnât worked in it. I didnât have a business background, even though my dad ran a business. I did not understand finance. I did not understand what I needed to do to really run a business, and so itâs been quite a time of reflection just to think about all the things Iâve learned. It is amazing to think about the tough time that Iâve been through.
Itâs amazing you had Martin Brossman on a couple of shows ago. Martin, I think he introduced us, right. Heâs a great friend to us, and Martin talked about life being a roller coaster. I remember I donât know what year it was. Probably 2002 or 2003, I was at a networking event. It was a NAWBO networking event. Thatâs the National Associations of Women Business Owners, which Iâm on the board of that organization, and Iâve been in it for 25 years. Itâs an amazing organization. This year it was Christmas time, and I walked into a party. There was a woman there who was sitting next to me on the couch who I highly admire. Her name is Starling Jones, and sheâs another long-time woman business owner who I have known since I started my business. She said, âHow are you doing Wendyâ, and I said, âOh my gosh, running a business is like a roller coasterâ. I remember a woman whoâs in my industry jumping all over me, and she was like âOh, you donât say that. You need to put up a better front than that that. Everything is wonderful, and you never admit that you are having problems in public.â You know what David, I had a moment right then and there when I realized that Iâm transparent and thatâs who I am. You canât always pretend like everything is always going to be perfect, because itâs not, and if youâre telling people that, then youâre kind of tricking yourself. You might not really have the right outlook on life.
As I reflect on 25 years, the adversities are there. I mean, when I started my business, I had nothing. I was 24 years old, and I couldnât even afford to buy a meal. I was straight out of college. Iâd have a job for a little over a year that didnât work out well for me, and I walked away from it. I went to a Chamber event, because I needed lunch that day. It turned out it was a great expo, and I met some great people. They really helped me, but that was the reality of it. Iâve been through you know.
In 2001, it was really a tough time, and I got to a place where the word bankruptcy entered the conversations with my family. I had to make some really tough decisions. I had a champion. I had an advocate that I met in 2001, and I was in really just like a really, really low place. He was just amazing. He was a CPA. He helped me look at my finances. He helped me learn things that I needed to learn to run a good business. I learned how to look at the balance sheet and understand what the banks were looking for. I learned what PNL meant to my cash flow. I think so many business owners never learned that. They never learned how to look at their finances. You didnât learn to really be able to predict cash flow, and I was taught that, you know. I was taught that at a time when you are in your 20s a six-digit mountain of debt seems really big. Iâd never owned a house before. Iâd never had that kind of debt in my world, and it was really scary, one super problem for me. By the end of 2002, I had paid down all the debt, and it really was from the grace of meeting the CPA who helped me put together a plan, didnât charge for it, was an advocate for me, and just was there to help. That was amazing.
Again in 2008, I had my daughter in August of 2008. In 2007, I got a loan to buy an office condo. I bought real estate that year. It was an amazing year. In 2008, I had my daughter. Three weeks later, I came back and had to do layoffs. You know, it was up and down and up and down. When we say rollercoaster, I mean the rollercoaster ride, it can happen fast in business. My husband says the only reason I have survived out of business is because Iâm just super. I have a lot of grit. I wonât give up. I thrive on it. In some ways, I think Martin mentioned that the rollercoaster ride is fun, and it is fun, but it can really get you down. You have to keep that positive mindset at all times, because whether it is financial times or whether it is having issues with employees, which I can tell millions of stories. I can talk about employees that have thrown chairs across the room. I can tell you about employees who have stopped me at the park and tried to chase me down. I can talk about the wonderful employees who have come back multiple times. Itâs all a rollercoaster. Itâs all positives and negatives. Itâs about that balance of life that really isnât a balance. Itâs up and down. I mean as I reflect thatâs what I think about, and itâs amazing to get through it and learn from it and come to the top and come to the bottom of the rollercoaster and start back up and having to change. I think embracing change is such a big part of success in business. I would say the fact that I enjoy the change, and I embrace the change. I learn from the change each time so that I can do it all over again. Thatâs been super amazing. Those are my reflections over 25 years. Those stories can run really deep and really long, but I think, at the end of the day, embracing the change and understanding that itâs okay. I donât have to say everything is great all the time. I might say itâs unbelievable. I mean you have heard me say that right. Unbelievable can mean a lot of things.
Like I said, I came up with this mantra: reflect, restore, take flight. I think for the points about going forward, I think the restore and take flight are the pieces that you know everyone needs to really think about. Restore is about looking at things through a lens and saying: How can I tweak it? What do I need to do that is new? Do I have new ideas that maybe Iâve tried to get off the ground but I havenât had time? When you get a chance to take a breather, these are the times. What are the new ideas or what are the things youâve always wanted? How do you rework the things that worked for you before? Sometimes, we do things that are amazing that we forget like 3 or 4 years later. Itâs like, âWow, remember when we did that; Oh, we need to do that again.â We did that this year. Years ago, I did Valentineâs, like the heart candy. I delivered it to customers with a thing about how we like their brand. Irie did that idea, this year, because it was such a neat idea. You come up with ideas and you execute them, and you forget about them. We all need to remember that rituals are important to people. So just like you get up every morning and you get yourself ready and you go to your run or whatever you do on a regular basis, we need rituals and business too. I think a lot of business owners are doing all this stuff. They keep moving, and they keep going. They forget, âOh, that was amazing. Let me do that again and again and again.â Thatâs part of marketing. Thatâs part of what I do. Make that part of restoring. Think about new ideas and think about how to expand on things that have worked before. Do some strategy and really take some time to think about it. Give yourself a purpose in what it is you are doing and that way you can take flight. Thatâs about just doing all those wonderful things that youâve created for it in your world. That will help your business take flight, whether it is understanding your finances more, whether it is that great social media activity of creating a video podcast kind of situation and starting to put content out. Whatever those ideas are that you want to jumpstart, just reflect on them, and think about how that needs to work so you have purpose.
Thatâs something Iâm trying to work on personally right now. Iâve always been known as a creative person, and thereâs perceptions around that. Iâm also part of Hummingbird, and so I think people think Iâm very flighty because I talk fast, or I have a lot of ideas and all of that. How do we take a step back and say what is the purpose of what it is that weâre doing and make sure that we communicate that to everyone around us? I think thatâs super important to growing a business. I think itâs super important to people understanding itâs all about great communication. Always being able to explain youâre purpose in what you do, thatâs something Iâve working on right now. Itâs been 25 years, and Iâm in marketing. Iâm still trying to figure out how to communicate really well about how I can help people about strategy and what my purpose is in helping people, which is really to build their value at the end of the day. Thatâs what Hummingbird is there to help them do. I have to remember to let them know that on a regular basis. We hear purpose all the time now. Itâs a buzzword. You know thatâs your why. I think thereâs a reason thatâs become a buzzword is that itâs important to know that and to communicate that really well. I always have purpose, but I donât communicate it well. I think, as business owners, we have to learn how to do that. We can be the personality types that most business owners are. Weâre quick starters. Weâre with the entrepreneurial spirit. We kind of run with things. We make things happen, but everyone around us doesnât understand why so with your team, with your clients, with your advocates that love you making sure that they understand why you do the things that you do really helps cement your reputation. It just helps you communicate your why, and thatâs unbelievable.
Before she could even read, Wendy Coulter was helping her dad sell shoes in his shoe store. Back then, promotions and marketing meant going on the radio to play guitar or riding an elephant in the town parade.
A lotâs changed, but entrepreneurship certainly runs in the family. After graduating from the School of Design at N.C. State University with degrees in Architecture and Industrial Design and a minor in Communications, Coulter entered the workforce for a bit. But in 1995, she founded the business with a desire to put her own ideas to work, creatively solving problems for small businesses.
For Wendy, the hummingbird symbolized what she wanted to do: fly. Hummingbirds can fly forwards, backwards, sideways and upside down. Over two decades later, Hummingbird Creative Group is doing it, thanks to a diverse and dedicated staff. And, Wendy is still intent on sitting down personally with each client to understand the essence of their brand.
With over 25 years of sales and marketing experience and over 20 years of design and branding experience, Wendy Coulterâs passion is to help businesses more effectively communicate their positioning, differentiate their brands and grow revenue. She has grown Hummingbird with a commitment to move marketing initiatives forward for clients in a way that profoundly and positively impacts all areas of their business, and she encourages her team to exchange egos for listening, connecting and driving engagement to help clients live the brand as much as communicate the brand.
Hummingbird Creative Group is an award-winning full-service branding agency that helps companies define brand strategy, develop sustainable brand messaging and implement marketing tactics through advertising, graphic design, sales enablement, public relations and online marketing services. Under Wendyâs leadership, the company has won the âPinnacle Business Awardâ from the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, as well as âBusiness of the Yearâ, âEmployer of the Yearâ and âSuccessful Achievementâ awards from the Cary Chamber of Commerce.
Wendyâs team at Hummingbird has also won numerous design awards including two Davey Awards in 2015, two Marcom Awards and two Davey Awards in 2014, two Mature Media Awards in 2013, an RBMA Quest Award in 2010, two MAME Raleigh Awards in 2009, two American Corporate Identity Awards in 2007, two American Corporate Identity awards in 2007, three American Corporate Identity awards in 2006, Triangle ADDY Awards in 2004 and 2005, and silver and bronze international Summit Awards in 1999, 2000 and 2008.
Wendy has won numerous awards for her civic work in the local business community including the âTop 50 Entrepreneurâ, âWomen in Businessâ, âWoman Extraordinaireâ, âMovers and Shakersâ and the â40 Under 40 Leadership Awardâ, just to name a few. She is actively involved in a variety of community and civic endeavors, and frequently presents on topics such as branding, marketing, advertising and design.
There are two continuum’s in human beings: The continuum of Iâm comfortable and things are going well and that to me is the risk of being a rut. I like the definition as a rut is a casket with the ends kicked out so thereâs a risk there. And thereâs a continuum of complete breakdown, where you are paralyzed and not able to move like a stunned deer and thatâs equally a problem.
My interest and my passion is how do we get ourselves so weâre leaning into life and we have a sense of urgency with life. I think for most of us life is most fulfilling when itâs more like a roller coaster than when weâre enjoying a beautiful boat ride with lily pads and relaxing.
I want to share a story from years ago when I went to Japan. I was very interested in zen and meditation. I have studied all the known religions. When I was in Japan, I wanted to learn about the culture. I got a tour of the zen monasteries and I said why are there stacks and stacks of barrels of sake at the monasteries? I mean, imagine going in an American church and seeing barrels of beer waiting to be opened, you would ask questions wouldnât you? The tourist guide said that it is for our semiannual or twice a year celebrations. So I said what youâre saying is the monks meditate about six months up in the mountains eating very simple food and living very simple life, then you have a rip roaring party with barrels of sake and run through town with giant torches almost burning the place down, completely plastered and then come back and meditate for another six months. She said yes basically.
It is eye opening because we have this idea that life is all about this perfect balance. Well, life doesnât come at us in perfect balance. The key of it is life is more like a roller coaster and the truth is those who enjoy the roller coaster see it as an adventure. It doesnât mean there arenât times when itâs really scary, but if we can refrain from that fear and start yelling with joy and excitement then things can start picking up.
When the market collapsed years ago, I asked Linda Craft â I asked what are you going to do? Linda said the same thing I did in 2001 and she lists four or five things when it looked like the world was ending. There were events in her career that had occurred and I said whatâs that, she goes Iâm gonna ask the question how do we succeed now and how do we make money now?
The risk of a disaster occurring can be just as dangerous as the risk of us being so comfortable. We can become complacent and I think thatâs a a tragedy in life. We have to watch both out for both of them not just what do we do in these times, but when we get comfortable enough where weâre complacent, what do we do to keep ourselves at an edge that keeps life invigorating and exciting.
In a talk, I gave them bunch of quotes and said which one grabbed you the most. Well, 2/3 of the class said one of my quotes grabbed their attention the most and the quote was âif your life is boring, itâs because you are boringâ.
Life begins outside your comfort zone, so itâs very important we always keep something active in our life that pushes us outside our comfort zone like when I first started to learn how to shoot from you, that was outside my comfort zone. I was even afraid of letting anyone know. What is important is that you do to keep yourself on edge. What do you do to push yourself outside your comfort zone?
Pick up something that you love to do that you actually think you canât do and then prove yourself wrong by taking it on and give it a time period. Itâs okay to fail. Tragically a lot of younger people whose parents are our age didnât give them enough opportunities to fail to have any confidence and thatâs really sad because failure in getting up again. That ritual is the doorway to real confidence. If you win all the time, you wonât trust anything. You wonât know where your boundaries are, where your wins are or where your gift in the world is.
The person who doesnât succeed asks the question am I going to make it and the person that succeeds ask what does it take to make it? They may choose to stop at some poin, but they stay in that question.
In coaching people, the interesting thing to me over the years of doing it is how many times the main stopping of ones success is within their reach and within themselve. It’s often their biggest obstacle to becoming successful.
The first step is start challenging your beliefs that you canât do things. Now, if you think you can jump off a mountain without a parachute, you need to pay attention to the laws of physics. If you want to leave your job on faith but you have a special needs child that needs insurance you get from the job, you need to be mindful of that. This still has to have a grounded in reality component, but the biggest thing is to start asking what would you love to do, what would you really like to do then start testing out what would it take to get there?
What will often happen is it may morph into something else or it may morph into the side thatâs fulfillment, but it may not be the primary job. Starting the process of learning to stand in whatâs possible while keeping your feet on the ground is a very important discipline to create and so you begin working on it step by step.
When I was back in IBM, I was getting the co-op students and taking them under my wing to help them out because no one really wanted the new guys from school to work with. I was practicing coaching with them and one of them said do all co-op students have to do all of this life planning coaching and stuff along with the job? I said, âI donât know but this is how I do it.â
One of the co-op students was Stanford and he wanted to have this own radio station. I checked back in with him years later. I said, âYou didnât get the station you want, we did a lot of planning on it, it didnât happen.â He said no actually what happened is from our coaching I realized I really want to have my own business and a more fun and accessible business was security support and computers. If he had not gone for the other, he would not have seen that one.
Iâd like to share one more story on a gentleman named Tyler. He played the guitar, but I did not know anything about music at the time. I said, âTyler would you work with me, Iâm building my coaching skills.â So on a whiteboard, we massively mapped out his whole dream of having a studio where small bands could come. It was designed like many studios, so they could practice. Sadly, Tyler died of a motorcycle accident. When I was at his funeral, they described his accomplishments. What I saw is what we mapped on that board that day. He actually accomplished all of those things.
For most of us, the biggest thing thatâs holding us back are excuses. Are you going to transform your excuses or be enslaved by them?
My main focus is the success coaching and it infuses all aspects of my speaking, my training and my social media management. All of that comes from the fact of what I do to help people to have meaningful lives, so that on their own deathbed theyâll be moved to tears by the life they lived. Thatâs core to my mission. It infuses everything I do. It may manifest itself as a social media management certificate program, as sales success coach, as helping a doctor be able to be more likeable in his practice so his ratings go up or a sales professional exceeding quota so he can do more with his family.
You will never go wrong by starting with being grateful for what you already have no matter how little it looks. Start with it, being grateful is a great place to start. Even if you feel like you have nothing, thereâs always something. _____________________________________________________________________________
Martin Brossman Bio
Martin Brossman is a leading authority on social selling, LinkedIn and online marketing with more than 20,000 followers on social media platforms.
He is a business coach, consultant, and a dynamic trainer known for his insight and humor. A member of the National Speakers Association, Martin is a popular speaker on social media marketing and professional development topics. He is a presenter at North Carolina community college Small Business Centers and Chamber of Commerce venues. Martin also provides customized coaching and training for individuals and groups, integrating social media, social networking, and reputation management.
His 20 years of professional experience includes 7 years with IBM, where he received the “IBM Means Service” top customer service award, and 13 years developing and operating small businesses. Coaching since 1995, he developed a certification / mentoring program for Coaches in 2003. Corporate clients and organizations Martin has worked with include: IBM, SAS, GlaxoSmithKline, Environmental Protection Agency, Association of Proposal Management Professionals, Women Business Owners Network, The Triangle American Marketing Association, Decorating Den Interiors, Professional Photographers-NC, North Carolina Florists Association, NCPMI, NCACPA, Triangle BNI, and NC State University.
Martin teaches a Social Media Management certification program through NC State Universityâs Technology Training Solutions. He holds a BS in Math / Computer Science from St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, N.C. He and his wife currently reside in Raleigh, NC.
Charles teaches people that times are what they are, they are neither good nor bad, you make them into what they are. Sometimes youâll go through something and youâll grow from it. Another person goes through something and theyâll destroy their whole life, the situation was the same. It’s the personâs perception. It’s how they handled it. Itâs how they thought it was going to work out or wasnât going to work out, so thatâs what affected them.
Charles typically tries to teach people to let it be. Itâs going to be you that makes the decision on how it’s going to affect you. If you are mad about something, that doesnât necessarily mean I got to be mad about it too. We have to make a decision and many times, we forget that we have a choice. Circumstances are what they are but you have a choice on how it’s going to affect you. How you are going to respond to this particular situation? You do not have to be afraid. Fear is a choice. Anger is a choice.
Charles chooses to wake up happy, and for no reason, he doesnât have a reason to be happy, just be happy. If you do need a reason, start counting your blessings. Start counting all the good things that are going on in your life. Start looking at the house you live in, the car you drive, the air you breathe, the food you are eating. Charles says that he wakes up to a beautiful woman every morning, thatâs a blessing. So start looking on those things that are good.
Where your focus is, energy also goes in that direction. If you focus on negative, if you focus on your problems, then you will get more of those things. God has given us a great ability that whatever we put our attention on, it grows, it expands, we get more of it, you have a choice with what you want to grow your in my life
Do not allow anything negative to be spoken, no negative social media, no negative phone calls. You have to realize how creative you can be right now. Build your own mindset. Fear and creativity cannot exist in the same space. Fear and faith cannot exist in same space. You have to choose.
You can redirect a conservation, bring up the positive side of the negative thing. We have to learn to pay attention to our thoughts and pay attention to what weâre saying, pay attention to what we are thinking. The initial reaction is – thatâs hard. But you just have to do it over and over and over again, it’s going to be easy.
You positively, absolutely have a choice on how your day is going to go, how your life is going to go, how your health is going to go â you have a choice. That choice starts with a mindset. Mindset is developed through habit. So if you create a better habit, you will develop a better life. Now in order to develop a better habit, you have to recognize the bad habit. The way to recognize the bad habit is say to yourself: âIs this getting me the result that I want? Is this making me a better person? Is this making my relationships better? Is this growing my business?â â If a habit is getting in the way, then thatâs a bad habit. You have to start to change bad habits. You got to practice. It takes some time.
You have to tell yourself that you love yourself and that you are a good person, because you are creative, you are wonderful, you are magnificent. If God has already decided that you are his masterpiece, you are his righteousness, God has already decided that you would not be here unless he wanted you to be here. You have to always say to yourself that you are wonderful and magnificent each day to make that biological change in your physical brain.
Always look on these three things choices, habits and mindset â your life will change.
Charles W. Johnson was born and raised in a military home with strong moral beliefs. Being the son of a retired Sergeant Major and an assistant teacher, it was instilled in him at an early age to strive for excellence without excuse. As he was motivated in his life, he developed a passion to motivate others. Raised in the small rural town of Lumberton, NC, he excelled academically, athletically, and socially. After attaining numerous awards for leadership both in the classroom and on the athletic field, he used these traits in the corporate world.
Charles attended Winston-Salem State University until his passion for leading led him to opportunities that would take him to new heights. His professional career began as Sr. Vice-President of Marketing & Promotions for Danbla Records, an independent recording company in Maple Wood, NJ. There he exposed the company and its artists to a national audience with an appearance on one of the national iconic television shows âThe Jay Leno Showâ and to international audiences with a concert tour of Italy. While developing nationwide relationships with retail music stores, radio and television stations, he took the plunge to create his own production and management company.
The leadership skills Charles has developed throughout his life have led him to speak to literally thousands of people of various backgrounds. He has inspired and taught through his weekly inspirational teachings, various local and national news and magazine articles where he has been a featured writer or interviewee. His weekly âEncouraging Wordâ video message to subscribers, âThe No Limitâ internet radio showâ, the âMotivational Mondayâ conference call as well as daily posts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram social networks. Also, Charles is the author of the much-loved book entitled âI Am Samâ Ten Keys to Success from Green Eggs & Ham and the newly released âAffirmation: The Power of Wordsâ. Charles also Pastors The Well Church, Raleigh, NC
Charles has been blessed to speak nationally for the National Symposium on Juvenile Services, on the collegiate level for UNC Chapel Hill, Winston Salem State University, and Robeson County Community College and Pembroke State University. Charles has also been fortunate to speak on the local level to community youth groups such as the Hoke County Daycare Association, the Robeson County Youth/Teens Association, Our Youth Matters Inc. of Wake County. He has presented to several business networking groups and Chambers of Commerce across the state of North Carolina. On the corporate level Charles has trained the senior management staff of NC Medical Board and Senior management staff of Allied International Refrigeration Corporation. Charles has been interviewed on national television and radio networks both sacred and secular. Charlesâs goal and purpose in life is to be the coach, cheerleader and inspiration for people around the world helping them to go from good to great and from great to phenomenal!
Charles has been married for 28 years to the lovely Pamela Lane Johnson; they have two talented sons and two beautiful granddaughters.
Pictured Above: Super Jack with his family and his Jeep buddies.
Although I am a professional photographer, the best camera is the one that you have with you: I was out rinsing pollen off the cars when this parade of Jeeps came through our neighborhood and I didn’t even have my cell phone on me.
The Jeeps circled back around and stopped about 3 houses up from our house at Super Jack’s which gave me a chance to grab a camera. I grabbed my smaller Canon M50 and the battery died about 3 shots in. I changed the battery and the battery started to go red. Then, I did what I should have done to begin with. I grabbed my pro-gear with a flash and got the shots that you see pictured above.
Jack has terminal brain disease and had a rough week. His Jeep buddies decided to visit: Jack smiled. Jack laughed. Jack drove his Jeep. But Jack wasn’t the only one smiling. Super Jack brought many smiles to the faces of those hanging out on the street on a beautiful Saturday while the world is going through a global crisis in April 2020.
Although it’s a reality of the world we live in at the moment, I’m not mentioning the “C” word. It’s mentioned enough on the news and all over the internet. However, stories like Jack’s are a reminder that there are other challenges in life, but Super Jack also reminds us to smile, to laugh, to play.
Family and friends coming together in the street on a beautiful Saturday, trying to stay 6 feet apart and enjoying the simple things in life like a little boy, Super Jack, riding his Jeep smiling and laughing while bringing smiles and laughter to the faces of others during a global crisis.
We all need some hope right now and Super Jack delivered with his contagious smile.
