Transcript
WEBVTT
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July 4th is behind us and fair season is upon us.
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Today, we look at the mad dash towards success and we pause in attempt to unify our community, stand for our people and save America.
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Let me tell you something Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you.
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Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations?
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you.
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When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense.
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Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be.
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The whole day gone by.
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What a deal, what a deal.
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How diggity day am I Am?
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I so excited to be back with you.
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How do you do, boo?
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If you're asking me, I think you are looking beautiful.
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Just want to put it out there to you.
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Just want to put it on the table.
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Okay, that's what friends do.
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We just put stuff on the table.
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Sometimes we put junk mail on the table.
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Maybe a loaf of bread, maybe some soups, get all fat and stassy.
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That had nothing to do with today's show.
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I don't know why, but there's a video that the wife showed me, I don't know, a year or so ago during the wintertime, of this lady getting interviewed by the news, like what are you going to do during the storm?
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Just going to eat breads and soups and make lots of desserts and just get all fat and sassy.
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So I don't know why, but that just sticks, sticks, okay.
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So I didn't.
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I didn't mean for that to uh come out, you know, but it did, and that's what life's all about.
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Sometimes you just let things out, and I'm here to let a few things out, okay, I mean, that's what we do every week, am I right?
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For those of you that have been listening to share the struggle podcast, you already know what we do, so get your ones up.
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I acknowledge you.
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I want to say thank you for being a day one, for being an original one, for being an og.
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To the rest of you, welcome to share the struggle podcast.
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I thank y'all for tuning in, for listening, for participating in this little community building exercise that we have here, this spiritual, positive vibe for this spiritual tribe we're building.
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I appreciate you.
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You can find all things podcast related over to wwwsharethestrugglepodcastcom.
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Yeah, all right, y'all, I'm going to try to do things lickety split as fast as I can today, because I got a hell of a lot of things to do today and I'm just over an hour away from an appointment for a little Miss Paisley rain, so we have to get a lot of things under control.
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So we're going to start by a little recap of the weekend.
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I hope everybody listening had a fantastic 4th of July.
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A beautiful, safe, happy, healthy 4th of July.
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That's what I want for all of y'all.
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So I hope that's what you guys had for a weekend.
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You had a great weekend For us.
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As you know, if you listened to last week's show, we were at Bentley Saloon getting ready for 4th of July.
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We started setting up last week on Wednesday and then we were open all day on the 4th and then Friday, saturday, sunday.
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We had a good weekend.
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I think I haven't actually had time to go through and look over all of the numbers in detail based off the last day, but we at least tied last year, maybe exceeded it by a couple hundred bucks, I'm not quite sure.
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I'm going to look into that a little bit more, but all in all I think that I can confidently say we more than matched last year's event.
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So, up a little bit, we didn't have any real gangbusters of a day.
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A little bit.
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We didn't have any real gangbusters of a day.
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Actually, I want to say our best day was a good ways off from last year's best day, but the rest of our days were more consistent.
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All in all, we finished pretty strong.
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If you listened to last week's show, you know that this is when our schedule really starts to ramp up.
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We had the 4th of July at Bentley Saloon, leave there on Sunday.
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On Tuesday, the day that I'm recording this show, the wife and I are going to be hauling the camper out to set up for our very first fair of the year, only to return so I can go back in the morning with the rest of our gear to spend all day on Wednesday setting up, which is the day you should be listening to this if you listen on the release dates, on winning Wednesdays.
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And then Thursday is the first day of the fair.
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Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday From there we're going to move our camper to our next fair.
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Come home, make some more product.
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Head out to that fair Sebago days.
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We're going to do that fair, for I think it's three days.
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I want to say it's a Friday, saturday, sunday.
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Then we'll return home, get back to production.
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I have two DJ events.
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You can catch me at Bentley Saloon Four.
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It's a Mullet and Daisy Duke night.
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That's going to be Friday, july 26th, and then I'm hired for a private party on the 27th and then the following weekend is Little Miss Paisley Raines baby shower.
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So that's my next month.
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Right there, just kind of putting it out there to you.
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So when you encounter this level of busyness, all hell breaks loose.
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And typically we are a little better positioned for success this time of year Because, because traditionally I would have spent all winter making product, stocking product.
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That wasn't an option this year.
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Life happens right.
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Family went through some stuff, we had some financial struggles, all those things.
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Amen, hallelujah, we've all been there, right?
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You guys don't need to hear me complain about my stories and struggles anymore.
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You get it, you understand, you know what it's all about.
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So this year has been a lot of, let's just say, massaging of the checkbook, the events book and any other book you could possibly think of.
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Okay, that's just kind of how things have gone this year.
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What that means in common English, in basic math because I'm an idiot and I only speak in redneck terms what I'm trying to say here is when I make some money, I spend some money.
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When something comes in, I pay a bill and I invest back in the business, and I am often making products after one event to get ready for the next event, until I can get ahead of my events.
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So I'm hoping the next few weeks land well, that we, you know, just crush things with success and then I can come home, take a couple of weeks to really just put things into overdrive, double down on the business, on the brand, and stock things up and get ready for the big task at hand, which is our two biggest events of this year.
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That is currently on the schedule.
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I mean, stay tuned, we might add more things.
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Right, that's just kind of how we're doing things this year.
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So that's the big grand plan.
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But what happens until then is a lot of late nights, early mornings and crazy shifts.
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So just to give you a little bit of insight as to how things have been going over here, for Loud Proud American, what we've been doing is going to an event, working, coming home, working, going back.
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That's the benefit about being at Bentley Saloon it's only a couple miles down the road.
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So what we did last week was, on Wednesday, I went over, set up our tent as much as we could really, just kind of putting grid wall up and getting some things set, getting some product on the walls.
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Then I came home, work some more at night, get up in the morning, make a few more products head over, finish the setup before we open the doors and then work the day, come home from the event when it's over and get back in the office, back in the lab, and start making more stuff.
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Right, that's just what our schedule has been.
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Here's a snapshot.
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Here's a Saturday snapshot for you.
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Get up in the morning, get yourself an iced coffee Okay, because you ain't doing none of this stuff uncaffeinated Crank out 25, 30 hats, head on down to the saloon, open up our doors, for I want to say 11.
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And then keep them open until maybe 7 o'clock.
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I want to say and then keep them open until maybe 7 o'clock.
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I want to say so you're talking about a good eight hours at the saloon trying to sell.
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You've got a couple hours in the morning doing some production stuff.
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So you know you've got a nice well-rounded 10, 10 1⁄2 hour day.
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Okay.
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Now you come on home, try to throw something in your yak, turn on your equipment and get back in the dungeon in the lab making more product because you need it, because you need it for the events that are coming.
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You're trying to produce some stuff for your friends' businesses.
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Matt and Sarah at Ledgway Farm need some new apparel, some different stuff for some staff shirts for the fair.
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This week, toby from TLR Property Services needs some more safety shirts and I got to go into full production mode for the things that I need for the fair.
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So you get back into the lab, you start working around let's say 8.30 or so and you crush it until 11, 11.30.
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That's just how things go.
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So you have your 10-ish hour day, 10, 10.5 hour day.
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Come home, put another three, four hours in and then you're getting into that 14 to 15 hour workday.
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That just happens to be the only way to make things work.
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So on Saturday you put in that 14, 15 hours, you drift off to a nice peaceful blackout, sleep, wake up in the morning, get back in the lab and make some more stuff.
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I was blessed on Sunday because the wifey went back to the saloon for me.
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She ran the tent and I stayed home and crushed some production, made as much stuff as I could, then we went back to the saloon, or I went back to the saloon to join her.
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That's a little insight as to how our days and nights are going right now.
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Now, when we were last giving an update on this, I mentioned to you we took the La Proud American Express, the new LPA school bus, for its first ride of the season and didn't go quite as planned that the caliper seized up.
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We blew a power steering cooler out of it, transmission lines were leaking, she was overheating.
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All hell went loose, right.
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But it made it over to see my brother from another mother, mr christoph chris woodcock and his boy noah over there, and they took um this, this beauty, this black and tan beauty.
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We've been building under their wing and have been working on it all week.
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So we have a massive checklist of things that need to be done on the bus, but right now we are trying to handle the critical ones, the safety ones, the functionality ones, the ones we need to actually be able to use the bus.
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So I left the bus there and Noah has been working on it as much as he possibly can.
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So on Sunday the plan was for me to go over to meet Noah and install one more seat and take it for a test ride.
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When I was moving it we lost a brake line and I'm just going to assume it's because the caliper seized up.
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Those lines probably got super hot.
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They're under complete stress.
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You release those things, fix the caliper.
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All of a sudden, new fluids, boom.
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There's a weak point.
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The bad news is that I wasn't able to take the bus.
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Our plan all along has been to take the bus from Chris and Noah, drive it over to the saloon, load everything up from that event.
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So it's already loaded for our next event.
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I don't have to waste another half a day trying to load things up.
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But you know, life doesn't always go according to plan.
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With that said, I want to give a Winning Wednesday Weekly weekly shout out to my man, noah, for all of his hard work and efforts on getting this bus ready for us.
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He worked all day Saturday in the heat.
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He worked 4th of July in the heat.
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He worked all day Sunday trying to get this bus to a spot where he could drive it to the saloon for us and then we would load it up and take off from there.
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Uh, you know, when you're under pressure and you're trying to figure things out, things just don't always go your way.
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Noah went to the parts store four frigging times and every time they gave him the wrong fitting or the wrong tool, and then they didn't have the right fitting, so we had to wait till Monday to get the ones from an actual GM Chevy dealer.
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So he worked as tirelessly and hard as possible on this to make this happen.
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The shitty thing for us was that our schedule had to change, no fault of Noah or Chris.
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Those guys are going above and beyond to make this work for us.
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The fact that they're working on a holiday, they're working on the weekends that's exceptional shit right, and I applaud them and I'm so stoked and thankful for everything they did for us to have this bus.
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It means everything to me.
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I'm so grateful for that.
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On Sunday, we just kind of changed our schedule around.
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So, after not being able to grab the bus, we just kind of changed our schedule around.
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So, after not being able to grab the bus.
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I came home, went back into production mode.
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Allie went full pregnant.
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Okay, we got about two months to go baby and she's in the tent.
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It's 9,500 degrees.
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She's got sensual air, with the fans going.
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She's planning a baby shower.
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She's slinging merchandise, she's making things happen.
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I'm here making things happen.
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The staff at the saloon Sammy's bringing out popsicles and ice water to the wife.
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It's a team effort.
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Okay, it takes a damn village.
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I get done some production.
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Go spend the rest of the day with the wife.
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We close our tent at five o'clock.
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Instead of packing up, we shut the doors and then we come home.
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We come home and I go back in the office and I go back to making more product for the fair Make products all the way until about 8.30, 9 o'clock, the sun's down, it's cooled down.
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We go back to Bentley Saloon.
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This time it's me, my pregnant wife and my mother who's still dealing with a broken rib or sternum, and we go back to the saloon at 9 o'clock, turn the lights on and grab all the clothes and all the grid wall, load up the truck, come on home Nighty night.
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Okay, that's another well-rounded day.
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On Monday.
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You get up, you do your thing, get the chores done, get your coffee, go down to the saloon and me and my mom pick up the rest of our stuff.
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And I am proudly here to say on Monday, my man, noah, got it done and the bus is on the road.
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Oh man, the loud, proud American Express.
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We might not have everything tied down, strapped down, we might not have everything working, we might have wires hanging, we might have shit in places it ain't supposed to be, but I'm happy to say you can find me behind that wheel on that Loud, proud American Express and that baby is loaded to the gills with product.
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That baby is loaded to the gills with product.
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We're hitting the road.
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Wish us luck, baby.
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Wish us luck.
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I've been out there loading the bus up today.
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I've already changed twice today and it's only 10.30 today.
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Just telling you.
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It's been aggressive.
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I got up at 5.30 am, brought my mom to work.
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I was getting propane for our camper tanks at 545.
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By 6 am I was home putting the propane tanks on the camper.
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We're getting shit done today, baby, been loading the bus.
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I changed twice because I'm sweating my ass off.
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I'm dropping some sweet bars on this podcast.
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I'm going to wrap this up.
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Go to Ms Paisley Raines' appointment and then me and my beautiful wife are going to hitch up to the camper haul that son of a bitch to the fairgrounds, set it up, build the shelf for our tent, mosey on back home and then I'm going to plug back into that office until 11, 12 o'clock tonight, making magic happen because I am sold out of some of our most popular sizes and our most popular designs.
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But while I'm here recording this podcast, my phone just lit up to tell me that Supercolor just dropped off some prints at my doorstep.
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That means I can restock, I can reload and I might even be able to drop something new on all y'all.
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Wow, I didn't stop to breathe there.
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Okay, maybe it feels overwhelming when I'm saying this, because it's a lot.
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Okay, today appointment, camper home, pack print press morning, load things up, maybe make more stuff if I'm not quite done, and then hit the road Jack, head on out to the Osprey Valley Fair and finish building our display, because the first day of the fair is on Thursday.
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So you can find Loud, proud, american at the Osprey Valley Fair Thursday, friday, saturday, sunday, and you can find some of our closest and best friends set up right there with us.
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Matt and Sarah Perkins from Ledgeway Farm, the whole Pettengill clan is going to be there for Wollstone Woodcraft and the fam over at Underdog Metal is going to be there as well, not to mention the rest of the regulars that you'll find there.
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Wow, that's a lot right, but that's a little screenshot.
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That's a lot right, but that's a little screenshot.
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That's a little snapshot.
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That's what I'm here to tell you about Loud Proud American.
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The brand, the mission, the dream, hot diggity.
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Damn, that's a lot, it's a lot.
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I got a lot going on, you're damn right, I do, but I love you and until the next segment, I gotcha.
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Loud Proud American is a lifestyle brand, dedicated and determined to represent the American spirit, with an unrelenting commitment to provide made-in-the-USA products.
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If you would like to join the 2% of Americans that buy American and support American, head on over to wwwlalproudamericanshop.
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Together, we can bring back American manufacturing.
00:20:06.990 --> 00:20:08.698
All right, all right, all right.
00:20:08.698 --> 00:20:11.258
Okay, y'all, I'm going to flip the script.
00:20:11.258 --> 00:20:13.336
We're going to go in a different direction today.
00:20:13.336 --> 00:20:18.041
Thank you for letting me spew out a recap on Loud Proud American.
00:20:18.041 --> 00:20:20.316
Give you all a little insight on what's going on.
00:20:20.316 --> 00:20:21.641
I appreciate you.
00:20:21.641 --> 00:20:24.366
I feel better just getting it off my chest.
00:20:24.366 --> 00:20:24.710
Okay.
00:20:24.710 --> 00:20:29.393
It feels that much more achievable now that I've put it out into the universe.
00:20:29.393 --> 00:20:31.357
Thank you, thank you for that therapy session.
00:20:31.357 --> 00:20:40.284
I'll send all y'all my deductible or bill, my insurance, and then I won't pay it because I have enough of those bills already.
00:20:42.250 --> 00:20:50.213
We're going to go in a different direction today, a direction I don't often go, but I think we need to go, a direction that I've been avoiding going.
00:20:50.213 --> 00:21:19.826
But, seeing as how we're coming off the heels of Independence Day, seeing as how we are here celebrating America and our freedoms and all the beautiful things in life that we often take for granted, like the ability to launch a brand, to chase a dream right, the things that I'm getting to do, the ability to launch a brand, to chase a dream right, the things that I'm getting to do, the ability to record a podcast, and each and every one of us tune in and celebrate and listen week after week there's some freedoms that we take for granted in this country.
00:21:19.826 --> 00:21:32.454
So, with all those things said, I have been avoiding a political conversation.
00:21:32.454 --> 00:21:34.201
I contemplated having a conversation before the debate.
00:21:34.201 --> 00:21:35.765
I contemplated having a conversation about the debate.
00:21:35.765 --> 00:21:42.185
I've contemplated having conversations about all these court dates and trials and all these things.
00:21:42.185 --> 00:21:56.182
But I've avoided those things because I feel like it's everywhere and that so many of us, so many of you, are turning in and listening to us, listening to each and every week's episode of the podcast for a break.
00:21:56.182 --> 00:22:01.858
Sometimes we just need a break from the political landscape, from all the craziness, all the nonsense.
00:22:01.858 --> 00:22:28.362
Sometimes we need to tune in and have a conversation about other struggles in life, things that we can feel connected to, things that we can share opinions with, experiences, with that we can find safety in the fact that we're all suffering, the fact that we're all striving and struggling, but we're all pushing forward, we're pressing forward, we're continuing to pick ourselves up, we're continuing to believe and chase and someday achieve our dreams.
00:22:28.362 --> 00:22:33.241
That is what Share the Struggle podcast is all about.
00:22:33.691 --> 00:22:43.941
I've been avoiding the political conversation, but something has taken place over the past few days that I really need to get off my chest and this is a plea.
00:22:43.941 --> 00:22:52.019
This is a plea to everybody listening to all of you that have been listening to Share the Struggle podcast, whether this is day one or you are a day one.
00:22:52.019 --> 00:23:04.340
We are building a positive vibe and a positive tribe, this community that we have established, that shares these positive values and thoughts and outlooks.
00:23:04.340 --> 00:23:15.979
I'm coming to you, pleading to you, begging of you to unite your own community and to stand up for America.
00:23:15.979 --> 00:23:32.728
There's a few things that are happening that have me extremely nervous, and I mean, let's just be honest, there's a lot of things that have all of us nervous, right, but the latest one that's on my mind is something that's been going on when it comes to the upcoming election.
00:23:32.728 --> 00:23:40.223
I don't think we need to go back and recap the fiasco that was our last presidential election.
00:23:40.223 --> 00:23:57.226
I don't think we need to go back to that, but I think that quite possibly, we could all agree on something that we could eliminate the potential fiasco from happening again with a very simple thing called voter ID.
00:23:57.747 --> 00:24:02.098
Okay, this is not shocking breaking news here.
00:24:02.098 --> 00:24:14.857
Actually, I've seen a lot of research on this and I've read a lot of studies, and most of them are coming back saying that 81% of Americans want voter ID.
00:24:14.857 --> 00:24:21.685
So let me just point out something when is a valid piece of identification required?
