Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Full Auto Friday - Round 79

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Rapid Fire Q and A to finish off the week: 1. Unhealthy relationships, fatherhood, being a part of your children's lives 2. Performance anxiety 3. The desire to serve, switching careers later in life, how to directly impact your community Enjoy

Ladies and gentlemen, what's going on? It's Friday. Q&A. We're doing a hotel version of Fallout on Friday. And you'll know what I'm talking about if you watch the video. But I think that's what I enjoy kind of so much about this process. We can do whatever we want to, wherever we want to. Easy to go mobile. But I digress. Let's get into this. Before the episode, though, let's talk about the sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Benchmade Knives.

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And stop messing about. Upgrade your electrolyte game. And that's it. Let's get into this. Fallout Friday, number 79. I'm looking at danger close now. Here we go, everybody. It's Friday. It's Q&A. Like I said, this is the hotel version. You can probably see the light off of my, what would that be, viewers left, my right?

Outside of this window is the beautiful city of Los Angeles. And that's actually a complete lie. What I'm staring at right now is a parking structure that's about 17 feet away. So I actually enjoy L.A. for many reasons, and I cannot wait to get out of here. But before that, let's do a little bit of Q&A so we can all get into our weekend. I have three, three that I know I'm going to get to, four if I have enough time, depending on how much I ramble. And let's get in this. Question number one. I want to try to keep this as short as I can while still providing enough details to give an honest perspective.

I am 28 years old, and 14 months ago, I became a father. Congratulations on that, by the way. My own father is a coward and left when I was very young and chose not to have any contact with me growing up. This has always made me determined to do everything in my power to be there for my own kids whenever I became a parent. My partner, I are not married and were only together for six months before she got pregnant. These things happen, I guess, and I told her I would support whatever decision she chose to make because it was her body, and nine months later, our son was born.

Since then, our relationship has been quite a dumpster fire. I did not understand the extent of her emotional baggage and self-sabotaging tendencies. I recognize the fact that I can be an absolute moron and have my own bag of bullshit riding around the backseat, but I'm generally at a loss on how to deal with this person. It doesn't seem to matter how hard I work or how helpful I try to be. She is never content with how things are. She has a very negative outlook towards herself, life, and almost everyone we know. I also can be judgmental at times, but as you would say, I try not to give other people

too much free real estate in my head. She is resistant to any suggestions I make on how she could find help to work through some of her issues. She is angry nearly all the time and keeps pushing me farther and farther away. It is becoming so hard for me to keep investing everything I have in trying to make things better. I'm afraid she's going to leave me and I won't get to give my son the kind of family environment he deserves and that I longed for as a child. I have become very depressed and I don't understand how to find my way out of the way. this mess. I find myself wishing none of this had happened, which is a terrible feeling because I am also so very grateful for my son. Any insight would be appreciated. First off, I'm sorry that you're,

that you are going through this. And the first thing that jumps out at me about this is not something that directly ties into my own situation and my decision to leave my marriage. But there are similarities. One of the biggest hiccups that I had when I came to, when I came to, but when I was coming to the decision that I knew that I needed to leave was the impact that it was going to have on my kids. Now, my kids are obviously much older than yours. And what I will say is you, from that perspective, this happening now, the potential of this relationship ending right now, I would say is better from the respect that the child is going to have no memory of it.

So you can take an off ramp onto the road that you are currently on right now, and you can paint the scenery however you want it to be moving forward. It sounds to me like you are headed towards a little bit of a car wreck in this relationship. And if you can see that coming, you know, the advice I would give you is do everything you can to avoid that. one of those options may be just getting off the road. For my kids, they were a little bit older, and I was really worried about how it was going to impact my relationship with them. I did think about how it would impact their relationship with their mother.

And the issue, not the issue, but what I was considering was that they were older, their processing ability, and how it might impact them all individually. And it was a very difficult decision to come to. But the place that I arrived at was that I could be a better person. I could be a better father and influence on their life. If I could arrive at a place where it was healthier for me, that I could be a better version of who I wanted to be for them. And by doing so, there was that risk that it would have a negative impact,

but it would provide me and allow me the opportunity to do a better job than I was doing previously. I can understand completely your headspace on the situation with your father, your father leaving and not wanting to have anything to do with you. What I'll say to you is this. There's a difference between a father leaving the situation and having no contact with their children

and a father arriving at a place and realizing that the relationship that he is in with their mother is not healthy and that both people are not behaving as the best versions of themselves and making a decision to leave that environment and create a healthier environment for themselves and then being intimately involved in the life of that child. To me, that's like the difference between a left turn and a right turn. One is somebody who is,

in my opinion, a terrible parent who leaves and has nothing to do with their kids. The other one is doing everything they can to be the best parent possible, even though they may not cohabitate or live with the mother. The choice is yours. Obviously, your father chose the first choice, and it had the impact that it did. But you can make a decision for your own health and still be there for your child. One of the decisions or the decision points that I got to for my own situation was I asked myself a question. Actually, I asked myself plenty of questions, but a couple of them that I asked myself, okay,

the situation that I'm in right now, fast forward and I find any of my three children in the exact same situation that I was in. What advice would I give them as a parent that loves them unconditionally and wants the best for them. Would I tell them to stay or would I tell them that they would be better served if they were to leave? The answer for all three of my kids was that I would absolutely recommend my kids that they had changed their situation. And inside of that, there's a difference between, you know, going back to your dad here briefly or the fact that he just left. There's not much of a difference between, in my opinion at least, between a parent that makes the decision to completely leave and have

nothing to do with their child and stay in the house physically being there, but still have nothing to do with raising their child, a complete and utter absentee parent. There's such a huge difference between physically being there and then actually being involved in the life of your children. And I have fallen short of that in the course of my children growing up. And they're now 18, 16, and 13. I feel every day like the sands of time are slipping through my fingers and I have less ability to be relevant in their lives. But earlier in their lives, there were so many situations where I was physically present but mentally checked out. And it would be very easy for me to say, hey, that was because of my old job. And there was an aspect of that, but it was still a choice. I could have

reallocated and rededicated my time towards raising my kids in the way that I wish that I would have. And I can't take that back, so I'm doing everything I can to try to improve that in the future. But I, again, there's the parent that bails, and then there's the parent that's there that's not actually there. And I'm not so much, I'm not sure that that's any better. What I know isn't better is setting an unhealthy example for your children in an unhealthy relationship, which if this fast forwards, and you're saying right here at the bottom as well, you're worried that she's going to leave you. Based on what you have described me in this email, it sounds like you are in what I'm going to describe as an unhealthy relationship, and I'm not saying that that can't be fixed. But if you're

worried about losing an unhealthy relationship and you're hanging on, hoping that it continues and not really doing anything about it, or it sounds like perhaps your partner is unwilling to do anything about it, I mean, I believe the textbook definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, but expecting a different result. So toss that one around a little bit. Think about, you know, the choices that you have made up into this point. And I would say the biggest thing to do is ask yourself, who do you want to be for your son? And is it possible to be that person in the relationship that you are in? And this is not to paint your significant other in a negative light. This is to say that you really only can control one thing, and that is yourself.

And if you see this train wreck or this car wreck way up here on the horizon in the future, the best advice I can give you is potentially look at some of the off-ramps and change the destination. In doing so, you still can completely commit to being completely involved in your child's life, being physically present, but also emotionally checked in and mentally checked in to their development as well. That is what I think you should be focusing on, not necessarily this desire to maybe drag this through the grinder with this one particular person because, you know, maybe this person isn't the right person for you. Having said that, you guys have a child together and it is your obligation to do the best

you possibly can. It just may not be possible to do that in the situation that you are in. So hopefully that helped. All right, question two. Here's some background to my question. I've been writing music for more than a decade now, singing. and playing guitar, and I feel like I've come a long way in terms of performing and songwriting. I've spent literally years working on my own songs, improving my songwriting as I become a better

singer and guitar player. I know I have a decent repertoire of music, and my performance ability is probably more than enough for open mic nights, events at bars and cafes where anyone can come up and perform. Here's my issue. I'm absolutely fucking paralyzed by the thought of performing in front of people. Not only am I terrified of performing for people, but not a single soul actually knows that I write and play my own music. If I were to die tomorrow, no one would have known. And the fucked up part is that this aspect of my life is one of the things I'm most proud of. I'm incredibly proud of my music, but I can't bring myself to share it with others, even though I want to. I've enjoyed success in other areas of my life, but the confidence

from those experiences does not translate to this. My question for you, you is this. Do you have any advice for overcoming this fear of performing? So the simple advice, which I'm sure you've gotten, well, it doesn't sound like you may have asked a lot of people this question, but I suspect the advice that you would be given if you were to ask other people, it's going to sound very simple and it's not easy at all is. How do I get over my fear of performing? That's right. You go up and you perform. I'll get a version of this question often when it comes to public speaking. I'm terrified of public speaking. And I've actually I've seen studies where, not even studies, probably, but they're just articles that say people have a greater fear of death than they do of public speaking, which is insane to me.

Because death is the end of it all, at least, you know, in the potential simulation that I hear people talking about that we might be living in, whereas public speaking, even if it goes horribly, horribly wrong. And you have the worst representation of who you are in the topic that you're speaking on, nobody's really going to know about it. other than that room, and you can move forward and past it. Like, that's the absolute worth case scenario there. So I think it probably is just more fear of the unknown. But I totally get it. Fear of standing up in front of people and presenting something and being willing to put yourself in that environment where they get to sit there

and they can quietly judge you or loudly judge you, however they choose to. But put yourself out there, putting yourself out there, and you're being vulnerable and worried about the potential outcome from that. I totally get it. I experienced that myself when I started public speaking. What I'll say about the easy, you know, the simple solution that it gave you when it began, when we began this question when it came to either public speaking or performing, the good thing is the hardest time is going to be the first time.

After that, or at least my experience after that, when it came to public speaking, because I've never done any musical performance of any kind, I cannot play guitar or sing, is that it incrementally gets easier, and then you will eventually reach this tipping point where your comfort outweighs your uncertainty. And then it's actually going to improve even more, because you'll start having a commanding presence in that environment. You'll have confidence in who you are and specifically what it is that you are doing, but it takes time to get there. The first step in that is going to be the hardest. Now, a question for you. let's say we arrive at the end of the track and you're on your deathbed and this is a portion of

your of your life that you are the most proud of and get the most empowerment and enjoyment from and you've shared it with nobody how are you going to feel about that if you arrive at the end of the journey and you never took those steps and you never put yourself out there and you never allowed yourself to be vulnerable because you were worried about the consequences I suspect that anybody in a situation like this you could change the the topics a little bit, but if you arrive at the end of the journey and you held something back, I think what you're going to be, if you were asked to describe how you feel about that, what I think most people would say is they regret their decision of not taking that first step.

So if we can agree that that's what would happen at the end, then perhaps we should take action now to avoid that. Again, it's the very similar to the first question where you can see, the future, a potential issue, and you have a lot of distance between now and that issue, and you have the opportunity to do something about it. Take that opportunity and change that trajectory. For you, specifically, I know very little about music in performing, but I'm sure in your world, in your life, I'm sure that you have people that you would consider to be very close friends who you value their feedback, and you know that even if their feedback would potentially be negative that they're going to round the edges on it because they care for you.

I would say, find a small group of people or even just one person. Maybe just start with one person in your life that you absolutely trust and play in the song. Or open your world to them a little bit. Like, crack that door and let them see through it and be like, hey, I haven't told anybody about this, but this is something that I really enjoy doing. And I am terrified of doing it in front of people. but I really want to try and I would like to do

either play a song for you or sing. What I think would happen is that person would feel awesome that you selected them for one but two, like I said, they're going to give you that honest feedback. And it's obviously not a packed amphitheater, but you'd have one person there. You're still going to have to perform.

You're going to have to get out of your comfort zone. And if you can get through that, maybe you let that other person find two other people that could come and watch and listen the next time. then let those two other people, each pick two other people. I think you could probably figure out where I'm going with this, slow and incremental. I don't think you have to do open mic night to begin with unless you want to go up in front of strangers,

and then I would probably recommend that. I would get in the car and drive somewhere where you know you're not going to know anybody and get up in front and perform your heart out. And then you get to go back into the car and you can never tell anybody about it if you want to. Or it could be amazing and you could put it on YouTube and you can. be the next Justin Bieber. And I, again, don't know much about the music world. So that might be a terrible example, but I think that little fucker is pretty famous. I'm not so sure about his talent, though. That's, again, for more experts. But you could do all of those things, and you could

incrementally inoculate yourself to that stress and uncertainty and fear of getting up in front of people. And for people who, real quickly, I'll talk about public speaking, I would recommend the same approach. I wouldn't necessarily go to an open mic night, but I would start. with figuring out what it is if you were tasked with giving a presentation and practice the presentation in a room by yourself as if you were presenting to other people though. And then incrementally bring people into that and ask you for feedback. I would also recommend recording yourself and watching it back. It can be extremely horrendous and painful to listen to your own voice, but what you might catch are comfort words like like and um and pauses and things that

you may hang on and it'll really help you chip away at what it is that you're going to present. It's something that I highly recommend for people who are going to speak professionally. And this option is actually available as well. Maybe for this person you are completely and utterly uncomfortable performing physically in front of somebody. Record yourself and send it to a buddy on your phone. Send it to somebody and let them give you that feedback. And it might be terrible and it might be great or it might be somewhere in between. But at least you're getting it out there. My whole answer on this question is designed around not having somebody arrive at the end of their journey in life and have regret for something that they wish they would have done for years. So figure out a way to drill a little bit of a hole in that dam that's holding you back and let a little bit of water come out.

And then as that grows, we can talk about putting a dynamite charge at the bottom of that thing, blowing it wide open. And who knows? like I said, maybe you can become the next Justin Bieber. But you got to get out there. You got to figure out a way to get past that threshold. Question three. Probably be the last one for the day because the flight is impending. Here we go.

Andy, I feel like I'm at a crossroads in my life. Oddly enough, due to a combination of age, recent parental suicide, regret and not serving and vaccine mandates. Allow me to explain. I regret not serving in the military to my core. My grandfather served in the Army in World War II. and my father served in the Navy during peacetime in the 70s and 80s. I tried to join the military twice in the past.

As a sophomore in college, I talked to the Marine recruiter who basically said, come see me when you finish your degree, which I kind of forgot about for a while even after graduating. Several years later, during grad school, around the 2009-10 time frame, I talked to Army and Navy recruiters who basically told me I was too overweight and previous injuries would likely disqualify me. I will turn 41 later this year. So needless to say, I have aged out of the opportunity to join the military. So I finished grad school and have been working as an engineer for DOD contractors ever since.

Two years ago, my dad committed suicide. He had retired a few years before that and spent most of his retirement slowly drinking himself to death. I guess he got tired of that and had no desire to see wife, kids, and grandkids anymore and literally blew his brains out. He did not leave a note. I loved my dad, and he was a good man. but since then I have vowed to be different from him and better than him in any way that I can. For example, at 40, I lift and do CrossFit and in a pretty good shape and feel like I'm on the path to being close to the best shape of my life.

I remember when my dad turned 40. He did almost nothing but work and looked and the vibe felt like he was on the downward trajectory towards end of life. So I'm trying to make changes in every facet of my life to do things he never did, like make amends with family, changed jobs, moved so my kids could have a connection to their remaining grandparents and aunt. Here is the newest wrinkle in this tale. As I'm sure you are aware, the president has mandated that all federal contractors get vaccinated. My company has no choice but to comply with this, and it's being flowed down through primes via contracts. I personally feel that my health care is my decision, and after having COVID with almost no symptoms or adverse effects, feel the vaccine poses more risk to me. I have been toying with the idea of pursuing a different career for a couple of years,

specifically in LEO service, and the local county sheriffs have publicly issued statements that they will not mandate the deputies get vaccinated, giving them the choice to do so if they wish. In light of all of the aforementioned, I am seriously considering attending a police academy next year in pursuit of an LEO career. From a physical standpoint, I'm pretty close to the same shape I was when I played college soccer with a lot more muscle, so I think I'll be okay from that standpoint. My biggest hang up is concern from my family from a worry perspective and likely seeing my salary cut to a third of what it currently is.

I am proud of the sacrifice, or I'm proud that I can support my wife staying home with my two-year-old daughter and supporting my 10-year-old son's activities as well. If I pursued this path, my wife said she would go back to work, but I don't know if her making that sacrifice is worth my desire to serve in this way, even though I desperately want to serve and directly impact my community. What are your thoughts? I could really use advice and don't even really know who to talk to about this. I would appreciate any feedback or advice.

I'll start with, that's horrendous about your father. Suicide is one for me that unfortunately has touched my life in a pretty close proximity more than I would have ever cared for or more than I would ever wish on my worst enemy. And it is a decision that just leaves more questions that answers, at least in my experience. So I'm sorry that you had to go through that. I don't know if there's a way to turn a suicide into a positive, but your desire to be a better version of yourself

or a better version of what your dad was able to do. I think that's probably the best that you can do. I can say for myself as a parent, all I could hope for my kids is that they are able to do exponentially better than I have in every aspect of my life. I think that's probably the hope for every parent is that you could either provide for your kids, even though I would advise against providing for your kids too much,

but create a foundation from which they can do more than you were able to do, a generational leveling up, if you will. But still, that's incredibly rough. At least you're using it as, I hesitate to use the term motivation, but it sounds like that's what you're doing. I think that's the best that you can do. On the COVID mandate, you know, the, I'll let people sort that.

one out. My theory on this and on most things in life is I want people to make educated decisions. When it comes to the COVID mandate, I've said this before, talk with your health care provider and make the best decision that works for you. And that's it. I'm going to leave it at that because people need to have the ability to make a choice. You, it sounds like, are not going to have that choice if you were to stay with your current occupation. And what I will say is this, though, there's no reason that there's no guarantee, I should say, that the sheriff's office won't change their tack, the tact of their jib or the cut of their jib in the future. So just be careful with that. They may say one thing now, and they may have to change it into the future. And I'm not saying

that I think that's going to happen. What I'm saying is being careful putting your eggs in one basket is generally, generally a good idea. So just because I stated that now, you never know, right? Leadership can change. And with leadership, the winds of change can come in as well. on the on the service aspect i don't come from an leo background so i can't really talk about whether or not the physicality of that job starting at 41 would be a good idea or not what i would highly recommend that you do if you're really pursuing going down this path of thinking about it is go talk to that organization and let them give you the feedback itself or themselves i'm sure that there's going to be a physical entry test for you to start that program

what i would say is that for any program that has a physical entry test for everybody listening to this who would ever want to go into a program that has a selection or screening process that has those test gates from physical performance make sure that you are not having to execute a herculean effort to achieve those standards those standards should be achievable on your easiest least motivated least physically feeling like really just getting after it days all right they are the bare minimum they should not be something that you can only achieve with this insane effort. There's a reason, like it buds. When people, there are test gates in each one of the phases and buds and a test gate to get into the program, people will say, okay, cool. Yeah, I can meet that standard moving on to the next. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You can meet that standard, that's good. That's a starting point. Now you need to be able to crush those standards because trust me, that's just the standard to get into the door, right? It's going to get harder for you once you get in there. This is just the absolute baseline that they're looking for so they can start grinding you away. So make sure you can meet them, make sure you can exceed them, and sit down and talk to the people at that organization and let them give you some honest feedback about the pros and cons of starting in your 40s.

I would say there's some pros when it comes to a life experience, problem solving. You've already demonstrated that you have a higher education. Oftentimes people will confuse education for intelligence and they're not the same thing. Oftentimes they can't exist in the same person, though, but you have a lot of laps around the sun of complex problem solving. already working in organizations that I'm sure have a rank or a leadership structure. All of those things are incredibly positive, and they're all going to help you when it comes to a mental perspective working in an LEO environment. So there definitely is some pros to going into that later in life.

The service aspect, you know, if you, it sounds like you're going to have to make a change based on the fact that you are probably going to lose that job. Involve your wife in the conversation. That's the biggest piece of advice that I think I can give you. If right now she is able to live a life that she wants to and she's not working, but she's able to take care of the kids, if she wants to do that and she takes pleasure in doing that and is empowered by doing that, you know, I'd be cautious, drastically upsetting the dynamic that you guys have. I'm not saying that it couldn't work, but it could be a little bit of a rough road until you guys get it figured out.

And at the end of the day, when people hit me up about serving, And you open up the beginning of this talking about not being able to serve in the military or making the choice not to do so. And I'm actually recording this on Veterans Day. So this will come out on Friday. This is being recorded on Thursday. I hear people express often their desire that they could have served earlier in life, the regret that they didn't make an attempt to do so. And what I'll say to you is it's not the only thing that you can do. I have friends who were medically disqualified from service before.

They don't even need to go talk to a recruiter. Like, they're out. It's an impossibility. And sometimes, well, it's just like, it's this hanging weight that they feel like, you know, it was a wish or a desire. And I totally understand that. But if you're physically disqualified from serving, where you've gotten yourself to a point where you're too old to serve,

every ounce of energy and every second that you put into, looking in the rear view mirror and putting any thought into what could have happened is robbing you of what still can happen in the future. I understand how it could be a weight, but at some point, I hope people, regardless of whether or not they timed out or they had a medical disqualification, or just chose not to serve and got involved in their life and then now look back on it with regret, I really hope that they can put that weight down and move forward because I'm telling you right now, it just holds you back. And there are so many other ways that you can serve. And I've said this pretty openly on the podcast before. I would support a mandatory service. I actually think it would be a

great thing if young men and women in this country had mandatory service for two years. And I don't mean in the military. What I mean is service for something other than themselves. It could be doctors without borders. It could be the Red Cross. It could be in a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, fill in the blank. But for two years, and I think it would be even better if they got to travel while doing so. Travel for two years and serve anything but yourself. It would give you some better context for the world around you. I think it would give you appreciation. And they would enter, you know, at the age, I would call it from 18 to 20. And I'm not advocating for this. I'm just making up things that right now seem to kind of make sense. So from 18 to 20, I think you would

arrive at the end of that, a more capable 21-year-old at the end of that process. I think there would be a lot of benefit from that. Now, as people get older in life, some of those options aren't even possible. And, you know, your desire to serve in the LEO community is great. And again, I would highly recommend that you pursue this if you think you're going to be able to see it through, obviously taking into account the potential complications that it could have on the nucleus of your family and how things may shift. But let's say that it's not possible for you to actually go down this path.

And you still have this incredible desire to serve. Making an impact in your community. I think that's actually what you even said. Yeah, it is. I desperately want to serve and directly impact my community. You can also do that without having a badge. You could run for local office. You could get involved at a deep level in community projects around the area with which you live.

You could go and help out at your kids' school. You could volunteer your time there. You could be an assistant coach or a coach for activities for young men and women. I look back at my life and some of the most impactful people in my life at very malleable ages were the parents that were there coaching. And trust me. molding the kids as they grow and in teaching them and empowering them and imparting on them, you know, at that time, probably would say wisdom to them.

They probably would say it would just, you know, someone so-and-so just likes to ramble. And I don't understand what he's trying to say. The messages will become more clear later on, but the ability to do that is directly impacting your community. And it's like the ripple effect. You drop that knowledge or provide that example at a young age and it ripples out and it goes out and it goes out. and I actually think that's how we can generation hopefully start to course correct some of the bullshit that is going on in our country right now. I wish more people would actually do that.

Have a direct involvement in their community. LEO first responder, yep, that's amazing. But there's so many other ways to directly get involved. And also, you could be an LEO and then still do all those other things. You could still volunteer at your kid's school. You could still, like I said, do all of the coaching and find ways to directly impact with your community in a way that would have benefits. not only to yourself, but to the greater community at large.

So hopefully, I mean, that's the advice that I would give you. Go into this with your eyes wide open. Go into it with realistic expectations. Have open and honest conversations with the people directly in the core of your life that this is going to impact, but then also with the organization that you are trying to become a part of. They may give you a hard no. And if they give you a hard no, it's for the right reasons.

It's actually probably for the safety of the community and for your own. own safety and for the safety of the occupation in and of itself. I'll give you the same advice. If they give you that hard no, put that weight down as soon as possible and look forward to something else. I'm in my 40s as well, and the one thing that I've determined is there's always another way to make money. So you will be able to work this out as long as you are willing to continue to grind away whatever needs to be done to provide for your family. I think that's the best that you can do. But yeah, let me know. I mean, that's, again, that's my advice.

Hopefully that it helps. I would say reach back out to me. I would love to hear how this went for you and the choice that you made at the end of the day. And that's it for Full Out Friday, 79. See you guys on Monday. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube. I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in.

People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks and leave a zero star review or the lowest stars possible. If you have a question, comment or suggestion, you can go to clearedhotpodcast.com. And there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox. And the last thing, if people are interested in helping out, what you can do is fly the old flag.

And by that I don't mean an actual flag because they don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats, whatever it may be. Again, clearedhotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab. and hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you could tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it. The biggest thing I can say is, thank you.

I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.