All About Gratitude – Episode 281

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[00:00] Welcome to the Prosperity Podcast. We want to thank you for being here with us today. Kim, I want to thank you. Are you here with me? Yes. I’ll thank you back, Spencer, but you go right ahead. Well, wonderful. You noticed we started this episode a little different because this is going to be a special episode. This is the big, giant gratitude episode. If you had a camera and saw my face, you would see I have a big smile because I am thrilled to be here and to be talking with Kim and you. Kim has some amazing things to share with you today. Well, the first is how unbelievably awesome the podcast is because of the listeners. I’m just so grateful. It’s something that we started, what, three, four years, five years ago.

[00:57] I don’t even remember. We had actually done some blog talk radio prior to that and it wasn’t really getting us anywhere. I’ll never forget, somebody said to me, radio is about the past and podcasts are about the future. It was such an important message to me because I really want to be about the future. I am very future-focused myself. We just dug in on these podcasts and I just hear all the time from listeners how valuable they are. New listeners getting to know us well, existing listeners feeling like they get to talk to us more often than I’m capable of doing on the phone. I just get really, really good feedback, great questions. I’m just so, so grateful for all of our listeners, whether you’ve had a chance

[01:45] to pop in and make a comment on it or not or send a question or not is fine. I love that we’re able to share and that you’re, as the listener, able to benefit. I echo that. You said it so much better than I ever could and it’s such a pleasure to be here. There are specific things that both you and I are grateful for. I would love to turn the mic over to you and have you have a conversation with the listeners and tell us what you’re grateful for. Well, I’m going to start with the famed Spencer Shaw of Podkick.com because you’ve been so helpful in coming up with awesome content and it’s funny people in our industry that are brand new to podcasting often ask me, like, well, don’t you run out of content?

[02:34] And I don’t because of your good help. So you’re sleuthing through the various news sources and communities that are out there and asking questions and bringing to me ideas combined, of course, with our listeners’ ideas of what they want to hear is all we ever talk about. It’s pretty rare that I, in these days, in the early days, I came up with more of the content myself, but now I’m mostly just responding to people’s requests for information, which is just fabulous. So, Spencer, first of all, thank you. And like you said, if the camera were on or I could take a moment to clap and not blow people’s ears out, I would do that for you. And our work together has been awesome. So thank you. Well, thank you, Kim.

[03:17] I sincerely appreciate that. And then the other thing that I want to just be grateful for is being taught to be grateful. And this started on in our family very early on. It was something that my parents and particularly my mom was very adamant about, and it just became an absolute part of my life. And then I picked it up, I think, a little bit more thoroughly when I went off to college and was on my own. And I was at a Christian college. So, of course, spiritual gratitude was a part of everyday life. And yet, at the same time, it became very obvious to me how important it was, really, to just be grateful as much as possible and be really grateful in a proactive way. In other words, not waiting for somebody to do something to me or for

[04:04] me to be grateful, but to be grateful ahead of time. And then in my mid-20s, when I started strategic coach, Dan Sullivan, did the positive focus. We did the gratitude principle, and he was just all about being grateful, and you get what you’re grateful for, and being focused on not only being grateful for the material things that are obvious, like in our lives or in our business, but also upleveling it a little bit. And what I mean by that is maybe adding in the inspirational aspect or the spiritual aspect of what you’re grateful for. So, like as an example, we have a new swing on our porch. I got a new chair swing, right? And we actually haven’t had a chair swing on our porch. We’ve had other chairs.

[04:51] And I absolutely love the swing. Like, I’m literally physically grateful for the physical swing. And here’s the inspirational slash spiritual upgrade. I’m grateful for the freedom that it displays. Like, literally, as you’re swinging, your mind and your body are just kind of free. I’m grateful for the people that helped me find it and put it up. It was kind of in a tricky location, so we had to be sort of intentional about it, I guess. I’m grateful that we have the time to swing, right? I mean, that’s not something that everybody is able to build into their lives, and so I need to be grateful for that. So, those are examples of taking a material item and upleveling it to the inspirational aspect of that material item in your gratitude.

[05:44] Yes, you know, you actually missed one part of gratitude on that swing that I’m going to add. And that’s the picture I saw with you and Emma Dogg on the swing. She is so funny. I’d asked for the swing to be set very low because I have short legs, and I wanted to be able to just sit down and still have my feet on the ground so that I could swing. And Great Danes are known for doing this. They like to sit like human beings do on couches and chairs, and Emma’s not allowed on the couches in the house. She has this one in my office that she’s allowed on, which, of course, there’s plenty of pictures of that, too. But you are so correct. She walked herself. I literally, the thing had just gone hung.

[06:25] I sat down in it to test the height, and Emma Dogg came over and sat with me. Is that not just the funniest thing in the whole world? That’s so good. That’s so true, isn’t it? I’ll leave that picture to the show notes as well if people can find it. It’s quite a shot of Emma the Great Dane, and of course, you know, our podcast listeners get to hear her as well. And it brings me to one other thing that I want to share some gratitude for, and it’s, again, another aspect of my life that I’ve had probably, gosh, over 30 years, and it is Heifer International. Heifer like a cow, H-E-I-F-E-R, and the website is heifer.org, and it’s a nonprofit that buys cows and sheep and chickens and llamas and alpacas and goats and pigs and water buffalo and a

[07:20] million other things that are animal related and helps people, mostly in third world countries, but some in the US as well, learn better farming habits so that they can pay it forward. And the way that I found out about Heifer is because the person that was a nanny to her children, so actually I said it was almost 30 years ago, I guess it would be a little less than that, used to give them a $3.00 chick like a chicken as a gift for Christmas. Now, this woman did not have two pennies to rub together, and we were so grateful to be able to hire her. When the children were very young, she was quite elderly, and as soon as they got older, she was not able to nanny for them and actually passed on very shortly thereafter.

[08:11] Yet, I know that during the last years of her life that she spent with our children when they were still babies in the home was just an absolute joy to her, and so much so that she chose to give them a $3.00 chick at Christmas instead of giving them a physical toy or something, and that turned me on to Heifer.org, and it’s just been a fabulous place. And I’ll tell you, when I’m struggling with something, when I’m feeling ungrateful or I’m feeling stressed monetarily, which happens to all business owners, you know, the cash flow issues don’t go away. They just get bigger zeros on them. I pop on Heifer.org and give, and sometimes I give $20, and sometimes I give $100, and sometimes I give $1,000,

[08:57] and I just absolutely love it. I love that I can be very specific. Like, I can go on and give an alpaca or a share of an alpaca, and or I can go on and give a share of a Heifer, or if I’m feeling capable, a whole Heifer, and it’s just super fast, you know, right on the web, and they are able to tell me exactly where those dollars go and get put to work, and I also am able to look at the families that are benefiting from them and how valuable the pay-it-forward concept is, because if you get donated a pig or a Heifer or a water buffalo or an alpaca, you absolutely as a family have to raise it up and give one of its first offspring to another family in your community, and then teach them how to care

[09:41] for it as well. I think it’s just an absolute delightful concept. It’s been around for a long time, and I am just super grateful to be aware of it. Wow, you know, that’s such a wonderful story. Thank you for sharing that with us. Absolutely. And you know, it’s a principle of you giving first. I’m going to squeak in a couple of things that I’m grateful for. Please. And I’m going to say, I’m really grateful to have gotten to know you, both as a contributor on the podcast, but before I was a co-host with you, I was just behind the scenes. I was the Mr. Oz pulling the levers and doing all the things, and I got to hear your stories and get to know you as a person. And I heard your stories of when you had a really difficult day

[10:33] and you were just getting a phone call before you got on an airplane, and there was nothing you could do at that time. And so what you decided to do was think about everything you were grateful for, and that was a lesson that taught me. And then I was able to teach that lesson to my son. So that he can become more grateful when he gets overwhelmed with his schoolwork or whatever it may be. You know, I think for us on this podcast, we almost become like family after a while. We get to hear your stories and we all think, okay, we heard him a dog bark in the background. Okay, and we learn more about each other. And I am so incredibly grateful for that. Well, thank you, Spencer. It’s a definite double joy.

[11:22] And for you listeners, we, as I echo Kim, we are so grateful for you. And as we’re around this holiday time, one of the things that we would love to do is to hear from you. We would love to see you leave a review and a comment. And if you are shy and you don’t want to leave a review, we’ll send an email. Hello at partnersforprosperity.com and just say thanks. And you’ll get an actual response. But we want you to know how grateful we are for you being a part of this experience. Thank you for listening to the Prosperity podcast. To take control of your money and have it work for you, visit us at partnersforprosperity.com. If you liked this episode, make sure you subscribe and leave a review.