Sa. All right, everybody, welcome. It’s lovely to see you. I guess I. I’m not really using my microphone voice.

I feel like I’m using my outside voice because I want to make sure you all hear me. Can you all hear me? Okay. Okay.

Great. So, first of all, welcome. I’m happy to see you.

Welcome to this edition of the live podcast with the Sun Leaders Podcast. We are here today to celebrate one year of existence. So let’s hear some noise for that.

We’ve done a lot in a year. We look forward to a lot more in 2025, and that’s what we’ll talk about today. First, let me tell you for the listeners out there, my name is Eric Nutting.

I’m the owner of the Growth Coach of St. Petersburg, Florida, the founder of the Sage Approach, and a proud sun leader. Today we have Josh Naiman, the founder of Sun Leaders, and I’m going to let him speak a little bit about who he is and why he does it. But I want to remind everyone that our very first podcast of the SunLeaders podcast, which is a sharecast model, so we have several hosts, was a live podcast that celebrated the kickoff of this entity.

So, Mr. Naiman, welcome to the big program. What would you like to tell everyone about you and who you are and why you do what you do? Oh, boy. Well, I’ll keep this brief.

And first off, I just want to thank every one of you in this room. Look at this community and the support that we all have for not only the community, but each other. I just wanted to get right off the bat that every week we meet, it honors me, it humbles me, and I’m more and more motivated, inspired by all of you guys.

But as my warm welcome from Enut, as I call him, Eric Nutting, my. My business coach. I’m Josh Naiman.

I founded Sun Leaders because I saw a hole in networking in the community where there was a lack of education, focus, and specifically on leadership. So we’ve been massaging what Sun Leaders is, and we’re going to kind of dive into what we’ve pinpointed as a leadership organization to really tighten things up and even focus more to uplift each other. Even better.

But just a little background on me. I’m a father of one and one other is due in three weeks. So if you don’t hear from me, thanks.

I’ll be at the hospital. I’ll still answer you, but it might just be delayed. He’s not going to answer you.

I mean, in good time. I’ll always answer just depends on how long it takes me. I founded and I’m a husband obviously to Hyundai, who is a son leader as well, but she’s taking care of our kid and growing her other one.

I’ve been a creator and a musician and designer for as long as I can remember. I just like making things that weren’t there to begin with. I don’t know how many of you have that tug, but it feels really good when you make something that wasn’t there before and it either sounds good or looks good.

So that inspired me to create my business Name and Creative. We do branding, websites, audio production, podcast production. There’s my audio director, Jordan Rosenberg, and I’m very happy.

Yep. Thank you, George Orr. George or Phone Call George Orr Binks.

That’s great. But if you’ve heard any Sunleaders podcast that’s produced by Jordan, even the music was written by Jordan, so he crushes it. So thank you, Jordan.

You mean a lot to me, as does everybody in this room. Let’s see. Also, I wanted to say that what we do with Name and Creative is just work with businesses to help elevate them and make them grow.

So we work with them on their specific strategies. It’s not a one size fits all. It’s very specific and personalized and long term growth.

So just my little pitch there. But speaking of long term growth, that’s what Sun Leaders is about, both individually, personally on your growth, but really focusing on how we can help each other. And we’re going to dive into a lot of how we’re going to do that even better in this upcoming year.

And I should stop talking. You’re doing great. I do want to give a quick shout out to where we are for all of you local people listening, we are Web City Seller by Green Bench Brewery.

Many of us are enjoying what we like to call an adult beverage. So it’s a great space to be and we thank them for letting us be here. How are we doing on the gift giveaway? Do we have time to give away right now? I want you to give something away right now.

I want to check quickly who is new with us, who’s never been here today. If you are comfortable, any new person wants to come up to the microphone, introduce who you are, why you’re here. We’ll give you an exciting gift to walk away with.

Anybody feel comfortable doing that? So your name, your business or what you do? Yeah, it’s all. No, it’s all good. You can just leave it like that.

Yeah, yeah. My name is Sarah. I am an insurance broker with Goose Head Insurance.

So first time here. I’m super excited to meet all of you guys. And.

Yeah. And Sarah, what brought you here? How did you get here? Why not like, how did you drive here? But who brought you here? Diana did. Wonderful.

Thanks, Deanna. Thank you very much. Yes.

Fantastic. All right, Josh, what does she win? You win 100 gift voucher to the law firm of Douglas G. Jackson.

New people. Is there one more? And one more new person. One more, please.

There’s a new npr. Oh, there we go. All right, come on down into that microphone.

Who. Who are you? Oh, my name is Teresa Ngambi, and I am coming from Zambia, and back home in Zambia, I’ve worked with children and women from different societies. I’ve done TED talk twice, and I’ve done BBC interviews twice.

I’ve an award to my name. I’m also a fashion designer. Like you said, it’s very satisfying to create something that’s different.

So I give myself as an example. When I’m on stage, I like to create and I like to connect with people. And I love to be in a space that’s so much of positive energy.

I’m more into. I’m interested in spirituality, and my main message in the world is to. Is love and peace and unity.

And part of the music that I do is based on that. And I love. I’m passionate to save the world and to keep it safe and that every humankind to.

To look at each other beyond color. So I’m so happy that I met Eric. I was on my way to, you know, looking out for opportunities and see what this space is about.

When I first came in this space in St. Pete, the first feeling I felt the energy was love. So, yeah, I mean, I was loved. This place embraced me, and I feel like I’m home.

It’s very warm and pleasant, and people are very. Their energy is very safe. I feel loved to be here, and I am so thankful to meet each one of you.

I’m so happy and honored to be here. Well, we. We love the fact that you.

All right. That you invested your time with us. I would not let you leave.

She gets a fantastic shirt. All right. Have we missed anybody? Any new.

New people? I know there’s a couple sitting over there who are new. Come on. Okay, well, thanks.

All right. It’s okay. We don’t force anybody to do anything they don’t want.

But next year, you’ll be at that mic. Oh, yeah. Here it is.

How we doing? I’m Jose Castellanos. I work with Tim. We’re both business development managers at Republic Bank.

I’ve been one that I’ve been living here in the same P area for going on seven years now. I will piggyback on that. Being someone that moved born into California, went to Indiana and lived here recently.

This is a very welcoming town and I love the opportunity every time. I know Dan from a couple other networking groups and being a customer to it’s one where this town is phenomenal. You meet one person, you might know everybody after that.

It’s a great town to be and ever growing family always too. Thank you. You’re in a good space.

Thank you. All right. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. You get a $10 gift certificate to Green Bench. $10 gift certificate to Green Bench.

Anybody else? We good once, going twice. There’s going to be some other spots where you can get to the mic. We’ll get you out of your comfort zone.

All right, Mr. Naiman, we are going to shift into this portion where we get to reflect a little bit and I’m going to move us through it rather quickly because we have a schedule we have to keep. But tell me, how has this year been just in your thought process of SunLeaders? What have been our victories and what went as expected and what were the surprises? However you want to answer that group of questions, take it away. Well, I had no idea he was going to ask that question.

Thank you for such a wonderful question, Eric. You’re welcome. So I honestly, there’s so much going on that I had to write my thoughts down because otherwise I’d be scatterbrained.

It’s overwhelming. Reflecting on what this last year was. I’m so honored that Eric is my right hand man, vice president, and that we have a leadership team to help make this thing work.

It’s wild. We have our first ambassador as well. I mean, it’s crazy.

It’s so cool. So with, with year one, just an overview. It was an enormous year of growth both for Sun Leaders and what I saw individually with so many people who were there at the beginning and even new people who may have started doing the podcast and have told me that they’ve grown from that one component of Sun Leaders.

It’s a big one and it’s in and it’s a reflection of what Sun Leaders is. But that’s super encouraging for me. We built the community.

I know we have both in this community and we brought the community out and we’re going to do Much better about that. This year, what’s cool is we’ve established ourselves, we have a brand. Look at this logo.

Look at the badges that people are wearing. It’s cool. We have a website, so we’ve made this a reality.

And I’m very grateful and honored that it’s a reality that I’ve birthed. But you guys have taken and run with it with me, and we’re all now holding hands, victories. The big one is the SunLeaders podcast that I want to focus on.

It is an embodiment of, I believe, what SunLeaders is coming together, bringing guests in from the community, talking about the community, bettering the community through our conversations, learning more about each other. And even the podcast hosts have grown. And I’ve heard it from several people that may.

Man, I didn’t. I didn’t know about this podcast thing, but I loved it. And I’m.

I’m. I’m getting better at speaking, et cetera, et cetera. And that warms my heart.

And I know Jordan being sitting through every single episode, recording it. The feedback that he gives me directly right away is incredible. So you guys are crushing it, and I look forward to more people joining that.

We have a new host already in the room that’s just about to sign up, and I know some more people are interested. I want to focus more on bringing the community together and I think, you know, getting out in the community both with volunteerism and fun leaders. And guess what? In order to get ahead of that, we’ve brought on Carol Hasbrouck, who has been our Sun Readers author and volunteered and said, I want to be on the leadership team.

I want to help out more. I’m all about fun. All about fun.

Love it. So thank you very much. She’s going to be heading up the volunteerism out in the community, so maybe that’s a good time that you wanted to make sure that the leadership team had a chance to say hello.

One of the reasons I’m trying to get as many people to the mic as possible, because this is recorded, other business people get to listen to it. And if they’re interested, they get to contact you by listening to this, this podcast. So, leadership team, if you’d like to approach the microphone, tell us who you are about your business and what you do for SunLeaders, that would be super duper your role.

It’s on your name. Please approach the microphone. We’ve got coming to the mic.

Need to be reminded of what he does. Hey, everybody. I was just teasing Josh because I Love what I do.

Anyway, I am Dan Dan, your payroll man with Landmark Payroll. But when I’m not doing payroll, I am community relations, blah, blah, blah, with ever with Sun Leaders. And really what I do is I bring the community to Sun Leaders, but I bring Sun Leaders to the community.

We all know a lot of people and if we don’t, we get to know them immediately. Okay. And I think that Some Leaders is such an amazing creation of Josh’s, which has all become all of ours.

And the more people that we can get the message out to, the more members we’ll have and our family will just keep on growing. So if you’re going to shut me up now, I’ll stay here till 5 o’, clock, but thank you. Well said, Dan.

All right, just come on to the mic. Yeah. And our next leader.

Hello, everyone. My name is Adam Morris. I’m the treasurer of Sun Leaders.

Oh, to the mic. To the mic. Okay.

All right. You can tell I don’t talk into mics very often, but yes, I’m the treasurer. I do have more of a behind the scenes role, but as we kind of get rolling, my, my role is going to be, you know, way more in front.

And it’s, it’s pretty awesome to see how much we’ve grown and what we’re moving into and can’t wait till he tells you a little bit more about that later. But yeah, in my business is. So I own Be Smart Accounting.

We do bookkeeping for small businesses, so it kind of makes sense. I’m Treasure, so. All right, thank you.

Thank you. Everybody. Clap at that guy.

Travel time to get to the microphone. Hello. Hello.

I’m Alex Segos. I work with the law firm of Douglas G. Jackson, and we are a law firm of the community.

So what we do in the, you know, that actually makes money would be business law, estates, wills, probate. We do some civil litigation, and also we are into VA law. So it’s very important that we support our veterans and make sure that they are getting the money that they are so well owed and as stated as being a part of the community.

So part of my job is to be part of everyone and all the things that you’re doing and really try to elevate the different businesses, the different nonprofits. And so that kind of really rolls into what my job is here with the Sun Leaders as the membership manager. So what that means is essentially you come in, you, you get to meet me.

Yay, Lucky you. And then I get to know you. And so I make sure that You’ve filled out your paperwork when.

We’ll get into that in a few. But you filled out everything that you need. We make sure that you understand when we meet, what we’re about, and then we kind of talk about how we can help you.

So I’m very much into not surface level relationships when it comes to just people, businesses, everyone in here, everyone that wants to be a Sun Leader. I really want to make sure that we have a clear understanding of who you are, what you’re looking for, and that way it kind of just spirals downhill. Right? So then now I know what you do, so then I can then help you and introduce you to others.

And that’s what it’s about. It’s about connecting with others, connecting in the community, and making sure that we can uplift each other the best that we possibly can. So I’m glad to be here and I. If you have any questions, I’m the one to go to.

So thank you all. Awesome. Thank you very much.

And then we have one more person in our leadership team to hear from. Hi, everybody. I’m Carol Hasbrouck and my day job is in real estate.

I help people create memories by buying and selling homes. And I’m also a speaker and an author, and that’s where my heart is. So Eric and Josh are helping me with that on my role here.

I’m in the fun that just comes naturally for me. So. So I’m going to be working in creating some fun leader events that we do on one of the Fridays of the month.

And so input is great. If you have ideas, let me know. And that’s it for now because I just started last week.

I think so. Yeah. Awesome.

Fresh. So what I’d like to do right now is bring somebody up to the microphone who has not had a chance to tell us about who you are and our listeners about your business. And we’ll give away another prize.

And in this case, we’re going to say what Your relationship with SunLeaders has been and what it’s meant to you. So if anybody wants to share how Sun Leaders has contributed to your world in this year, we would love to hear from you. Going once, going twice.

All right, Deanna, now you were up first. Please appropriate the microphone. Hello.

Hello, everyone. I’m Deanna Barcelona with Westpark Mortgage Group, which is out of Tampa, although I live and play in St. Pete. As a broker, I have access to pretty much any loan product you can think of.

So first time home buyer, investor, down payment assistance, you name it. We have access to it. In my former life, three years ago, after changing careers, I was a professor.

So one of my favorite parts about the job is teaching, so. So never, ever, ever feel bad about sending me a question or an inquiry. It’s kind of my favorite part.

Sun Leaders, to me, I can’t believe it’s been one year. It’s just a super cool group, and I invite people all the time because of that. Like today, it’s loving, as you said, it’s welcoming, and it’s St. Pete based, so I’m a proud member and I’m glad to be here.

So thanks for having me. Thank you so much. Glad to have you.

I appreciate that. And what. What.

What is sir Gift? Thank you. And I also brought gifts, but it’s kind of like while supplies last, I think there might be more than 18 of you. So I will put them maybe in the back and you can just pick one up on the way out.

All right, awesome. Thank you so much. More prizes.

Dr. Poli, did you want to come up as well? Come on up. Yeah. One of our newest podcast hosts.

Oh, yeah, the newest and a wonderful podcast host at that. If you have not listened to Dr. Poly’s new episodes, boy, oh, boy, you in for a treat. Take it away.

Good afternoon, everyone. I am Darrell Pulley. I’m the spiritual leader of today’s church, and I was invited to Sun Leaders by Carol Hasbrouck.

I’m one of the new podcasters. As a part of the group of podcasters, and I was always nervous about doing a podcast. I speak, but podcast is like a different type of animal, a different agent.

And I was so nervous about doing it, but with the help of Joshua and with the help of Jordan, they made me so comfortable in doing it. And I’m just so grateful to be a part of Sun Leaders and to be able to share mental health strategies and practical tips to help people live better lives. So thank you so much for having me, and I’m grateful for this opportunity.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yes. That’s the last Sun Leader shirt on the. The first run.

Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.

So a little bit about where we’ve been. You. You spoke to that Josh.

Let’s talk about where we might be headed now. I want to just plug our book club for a second. So we have our podcast, we also have a book club, and we focus on local authors.

And I want to just run us through the books, and we do one a quarter. I want to run us through the books that we’ve had so far because it’s a great opportunity for listeners to catch up. We had check in with Dr. Crystal White.

We had the Healing Sutras by Anadita Paulus. We had 10,000 miles of miracles by our very own Carol Hasbrouck right here. And Hurricane is our current book by Diane Nutting.

We will start the first quarter of 2025 by Finding youg Lighthouse, A Leadership Guide to Navigating Change by our very own Janine Perlstein. So we’re looking forward to that. So Aside from podcasts, Mr. Naiman, aside from our Sun Readers group, what can we look forward to in 2025? Yes, thank you for asking, Eric.

First, I wanted to share with you our leadership team have been spending three hours in three hour sessions of lunch strategy sessions to tighten up what we’re doing as an organization and help tighten it up to focus going into the new year. And I wanted to share our revised mission and description of what SUN Leaders is. You guys ready for it? Because it was lengthy before and we’re tightening it up and it was not easy.

Took us three hours to get these few sentences, but they’re very specific and very important sentences which I hope you all appreciate and connect with. So the first one which is most important, what is SUN Leader’s mission here? It is to strengthen, educate and elevate leaders in the community. Those three words are very specifically chosen.

Strengthen, educate and elevate, AKA the acronym See so we can see each other, we can be seen by others and seen in the community. That’s how we can remember it. So hopefully you guys dig that.

And the description has shortened greatly. So SUN Leaders empowers leaders by fostering growth through engaging meetings, skill building exercises, shared ideas and mutual support. With a focus on accountability, feedback and encouragement.

We inspire confidence and collaboration, equipping members to better themselves and strengthen the community. Each word of those were very carefully chosen and so hopefully you guys feel the titan nessity of it. See if I don’t write it down comes out like that.

That’s right. But so, so those are mission and description and then we can kind of freestyle over our vision on what, what’s coming. One thing is that we’re going to actually form an entity which Adam alluded to.

He’s going to actually have to manage books because we do things, we’re active, we have a podcast. There’s, there’s different things going on with expenses. We need a bank account for that.

We need to be formal. So we’re going to do that in 2025. How cool so it’s going to be even more legit.

And then once we do that, I can launch the shop. There’s several other shirt designs that have been co designed because the first podcast recording we did, we had people define leadership in two words. And so from those, I designed shirts.

And those are going to go on shirts and mugs and everything. And so we’re going to open up shop, we’re going to pack programming and tighten up programming to have very specific speakers, but not always speakers. We’re going to also conduct exercises throughout.

And those exercises and speakers are going to be specifically tailored towards core tenets of what we are as a leadership team going to define next, which are tenants of leadership. So we’re going to come up with 10 tenets of leadership that and then descriptions of those tenants. And then from that, we’re going to specifically program each week that we meet with something that speaks and resonates towards that core tenant of leadership.

So that we’re very intentional with how we’re approaching how to elevate ourselves as leaders personally and in the community. And so we’re really excited about that. And along with that, once we start the new year, we’re going to have every sun leader define what they’re working on each quarter.

And that’s going to be public, at least to the membership. And so we’re going to be able to look at it together. Oh, David’s working on prioritization this quarter.

And so we’re going to be able to hold each other accountable throughout these exercises and speaking engagements to align that goal of David’s or whoever it is with what we’re doing. Again, being really intentional about what your goals are and how we can facilitate meeting those goals or at least helping them along within our meetings. And then along with that, coined by Eric Nutting here, we’re going to have Sunbuds.

It was Sunbuds, right? I love that. Yeah, you made it. Sunbuds is going to be our, like, accountability buddy system.

So we’re going to hook people up if you want to be, and you guys are going to be paired as sunbuds to help each other be accountable towards those goals each quarter. So we’re really being specific about the programming and how we’re using Sun Leaders as an actual platform for change and intentional action. Are you guys feeling good about what the words I’m saying so far? Is it? You like it? Okay.

Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Obviously, we’re going to continue the book club. We’re going to be in the Community more with volunteerism as well as Fun Leaders on the off weeks.

The last Friday of the month, the fourth Friday, this is like First Fridays, but it’ll be Fourth Fridays or Fun Leaders. And then there’s obviously Sun Readers. And we’re also going to do a dinner, several dinners throughout the year for all the podcast hosts.

The Sun Leaders podcast cast hosts to get together to grow specifically within the podcasting realm. Help each other come up with better ideas on marketing and conducting your interviews with guests, etc. So as we think about volunteerism, we are here in the Edge District.

That’s where Web City is located. And we’re going to partner with them on their quarterly. Is it monthly or quarterly? Their cleanup.

When is that? Does who has the date to the next cleanup? It is next. I think it’s next Saturday. Next Saturday.

And we’re verifying that day. But what we’re asking of everybody is there’s no limit to how many people can participate. We get here early in the morning.

I think they maybe have. I don’t know. I don’t know if they have a donut or I. But we have coffee and donuts.

That’s worth the free admission right there. And then you get to meet people and clean up the district. And since we’re here in the district, that’s the first one we picked.

You said is it 8am next Saturday? Next Saturday, Meeting at the Moxie. Everything is provided by Keep Canal’s Beautiful. And there will be donuts and water and coffee.

So meeting at the moxie, 8am and if you have a T shirt, a SunLeaders T shirt, we’re asking you to wear it. We are, in fact, trying to get our name out there so people understand who we are and what we do. But we would love to get that, get some people out there for that.

Of course, and more to come. Shall we give away a gift? Yeah, that sounds good. How about a hundred dollars? Okay, so gift voucher.

I’m gonna invite somebody who’s not been to the microphone yet to come up. Tell us who you are, what your business is, and what you hope to gain from sun leaders in 2025. Hmm, interesting.

Anyone? Can I not win and just say, sure, I can fix someone to win. Okay, that sounds good. I’m going to give you this envelope.

Hi, my name is Dana Hemet and I am from Modify. We are a digital marketing agency and we too do web design as well. Web design as well.

Different business models and helping a lot of people out there. But I actually have a Question. Who is the last person who in the room has referred somebody in the last month to someone else, and they’ve gotten new business from your referral? Ah, Alexis put her hand.

Well, no, this is from. You can’t have it. Great.

So, Ryan, come on up here. Ryan. Ryan is going to win this gift card.

Thank you. And, Ryan, anyway, it’s really nice to be here with all of you. I’ve actually met Ryan.

He has an incredible company. You should listen to his podcast. I’ve listened to several the podcast.

I’m excited. I have a background in podcasting as well and broadcast news, so it’s very exciting what Sun Leaders is doing. And if you’re new to Sun Leaders, I say get involved because I’ve seen a lot of things happening in St. Pete, and this is one of the more welcoming communities, and the education programs are awesome.

So you guys are doing a great job. Don’t know if I answered your questions. So, as you look forward to 2025, how can sun leaders best support you? 2025? I think you should just keep opening up your doors to people, you know, not making it so not close.

Like, offer the. Like, you said welcome one and all. Maybe just, like, make people feel comfortable, whether they’re experienced business people like myself or they’re new or they’re solopreneurs or whatever it is.

I think just making sure that you kind of welcome anybody, and I don’t necessarily mean from, like, how they grew up. I mean, like, what kind of a business they’re doing. Awesome.

Okay, thank you very much. And I think also, you know, the fact that you mentioned connecting and referring. We’re all trying to make a dollar in this world called capitalism.

So the more we can connect people, the better off we’re going to be on that side of things. That concludes that portion of our interview. We often times have what we call sunpods.

We break out into pods, and we work on an issue or a challenge or an item or a topic. And, Josh, you had an idea. You called me on the phone today and said, hey, why don’t we do this? Do you want to tell people what we’re doing? And then we’re going to pause the recording, work in partnerships, and then we’ll hit the microphone and share what we’ve.

What we’ve worked on. Right. Thank you, Eric.

You’re welcome. So, as you can see, Carol is passing a number to everybody. So you’re going to get into pairs, and ultimately we’re going to put five minutes on the clock.

We’re going to turn off the mics. And then the goal is for you two, who hopefully maybe don’t know each other too well, come together to decide on the most simple, basic definition of leadership you can possibly make that resonates with the two of you. Should we say five words or less? Or do you just want to go with your definition, no more than one sentence? If you can do it in five words, that’s great.

The shorter the better. That’s the challenge. And the challenge is also going to be to how can.

How can two of you who have different maybe, opinions on what leadership is come together to make one epic definition of leadership? Does that sound good? So my personal goal for this is by the end of this section, everybody’s business and everybody’s name will have a chance to be heard in this recording so people can learn about you. There are a lot of junk websites on the Internet, cluttered, neglected and forgotten. Nobody wants to visit a site with outdated information, broken links, and
security vulnerabilities.

That’s why Neiman Creative is here, to make the Internet and your business more tidy. Don’t let your website become a digital junkyard. Reach out to us today and we’ll make sure your website is well maintained with fresh content to boost search rankings, keep visitors engaged, and grow revenue.

Connect with us at infoamencreative.com or visit our website at Naimon creative.com to get started. Okay, welcome back, everybody. So that was a lively conversation.

This is what we call our sunpod session, something we do frequently in our meetings that meet the first and third Monday of every month at 12:30 right here at Webb’s City Cellar. So please edit that part out and just use Josh’s correct one. Oh, it’s all good.

Goodness gracious. Sakes alive, ladies and gentlemen. I haven’t had any.

My last one was like, a week ago. The question of listeners, how many beers have I had? 0. So listen, the Friday, not Monday.

As a. As a general rule, listen to nothing I say for the rest of this podcast. So, listen, we’re going to have eight different people approach the microphone and tell us about the work you did in your pod.

What we’re going to ask you to do is tell us who you are, the name of your business, who your pod partner was, the name of their business. And then we’re going to ask you to tell you the. To tell us the results of the exercise.

But I want to tell you this next gift. Whoever approaches the microphone first gets this next gift. It’s important to explain it because you might not want it.

So be careful who approaches it. Is lunch with me on me. I will pay for lunch.

And then we do a, what I call a walkabout through Sunken Gardens because it’s something. It’s a board I serve on. And so that is our next.

We got someone racing up to the mic. All right, we’ve got our mic. All right, I’m looking.

I’m go to the mic. Really looking forward to that. It’s awesome.

Okay. All right. So hello.

And what did we discover in our. In our sunpod? I’m Mary Kay. My business is HTML health through music and laughter.

And this is Carrie Wright and he is the jingle writer for sound branding. So we came up with kind of a similar thought and since we’re a team, he’s going to read the thought. Okay.

This is our combined thought. Oh, cool. So Mary Kay kind of when she thought leadership, her brain went to ship.

So a leader is the captain of your ship that directs your team to get the most out of each member. Whoa. All right, thank you.

Thank you for that. Thank you both. Well done.

That’s awesome. All right, enjoy that lunch and walkabout. Yeah, absolutely.

You both are invited. That seems. Absolutely.

So we just have to coordinate schedules. It’s a couple second to the microphone. We’ve got eight couples all together.

Here we go. We got Scott coming up to the mic. He’s approaching.

He’s on approach. He’s there. Hello, I’m Scott Pearlstein with Alchemy Academy, and my wife Janine was working with us.

We were a threesome with Doro Pulley of Today’s Church. And we are a small vowel over five words. And so we’re pretty proud of ourselves.

And to us, the definition of leadership is inspiring people toward a shared vision. Very, very nice. Please enjoy this custom business card hold.

All right, who is next? Come on up. Hi. I’m representing Paul Myers and his business is Bay to Bay Solutions.

My name is Dana Hemet and I represent, modify, and we came up very quickly. It was. We didn’t know each other that well, so I’m proud of what we said we came up with together.

It says develop, motivate and empower people to achieve attainable dreams and goals. Dreams and goals. I love it.

Awesome. I have two hats now you get one. Do not go away empty handed.

All right, his leadership, please approach the microphone. Approaching. He’s on approach.

It’s looking like a smooth landing. Hello, my name is Eric Putkonen. I work actually, I own the AI Whisperers building personalized AI assistants for companies.

And my partner was Sarah Santangelo of Goose Head Insurance. And so as we were kind of talking about what is leadership, we kind of just summed it up as the act of herding and empowering. I love it.

Act of herding and empowering. Gift. Here is your hat.

All right. I think we’re halfway there. We should have four dynamic pods to hear from.

All right. I’m Adam Morris of Be Smart Accounting, and my partner was Dan. Dan, the payroll man of Landmark Payroll.

So what we came up for, what a leader is, it’s a person who has a responsibility of getting the job done while also inspiring his team to be better. Okay, awesome. Thank you.

All right. You get an intelligent. Who is next? You get.

So inspiration is a big thing. Okay. My partner was Ryan here, and we had a discussion outside.

We. We had a really interesting discussion. So my.

My response here is going to be a little bit different. We had a chat about whether leadership is intentional or not. And I think that it is, or at least we agree that it is, because there’s a lot of different examples that you can give.

But when you’re consciously taking responsibility for the examples that you’re setting for others, that’s when you’re being a leader. Awesome. I like it.

Don’t go away yet. You have to introduce yourself, your business, and Ryan and his business. Okay.

All right, Ryan, if you need help, why don’t I have you? I want a friend. You first, David. So my business is a social community.

It’s. It’s a. It’s a community group that’s focused on personal growth, relationship building through activities.

Its name is Evolve. And I’m hoping that we’re going to be able to do something here soon. Carol.

With fund leaders, because we have contacts at the Imagine Museum, and they would like to do an event with both my group and with SunLeaders, so. Fantastic. All right, thank you.

I’m David Pavone with Evolve. Thank you so much, Ryan. Hi, I’m Ryan.

I’m the founder of CIO Legal. I’m a legal IT support guy. I’ve been doing it about 20 years.

Just founded my business this past year. I’m really involved in the legal technology community. I’m mainly just like a fix it it guy.

So it’s like, it things bothering you? Whether you’re in E commerce or you have, like, digital marketing or whatever, you could call me or reach out to me, and I could probably help or might know somebody that could help you out. I primarily serve attorneys just because that’s the industry that I’ve been in for so long. But I manage Office 365 for businesses.

I get involved in all kinds of ways. Like I had. Well, here’s a good example.

I had an attorney just the other day that was like having trouble filing something for a deadline on the court website. And it was like, oh, this PDF is prompting errors and the website’s not accepting it. I’m going to miss my deadline.

I’m like, oh, no problem. You just have to click this, click that, boom, boom, like five minutes it was filed. She’s like, oh, my God.

I was tearing my hair out last night for two hours. It’s like, well, just call the IT guy. You’ll be all right.

That’s me. Thank you. So we have three more pods to hear from.

Who is next. Hello again. It’s okay.

I. I met with Jose and it was cool. He’s from Republic bank and he does lending too, so we got to bond over that, but a little bit different. So nuanced enough to be able to refer to each other.

He does more personal and car loans. And we did not hear the assignment about what is leadership. But very quickly, before we came up here, said, we agreed that it was really, in one word, all about empowerment.

I love that. All right, good work both of you. And Deanna, you get this wonderful wine mug.

That’s my brand, Bergjois. So if I said about West Park Mortgage earlier, the other thing I do for fun on the side is I created a brand called Bourgeois, which is inspired by the city of St. Pete and a play on the nickname of the burglar instead of Bourgeois or Bourgeois. Kind of cooler.

And the. That. That’s mine.

Yeah. And, and, and it, and its intent was. It hasn’t gotten there yet because I’m focused on other things.

But to sell it with the idea of that all proceeds go back to St. Pete based charity so that you wear the brand and you use the brand and then you feel proud because it’s supporting the city. I love it. It’s great.

Wonderful. What pod have we not heard from? Is that everybody? That’s everybody. All right, wonderful.

Having said that, we have one final gift. We have one final gift. Has everybody had a chance to be heard on the microphone? If not, please come on up.

Yeah, maybe tell us about yourself and then your book that we can look forward to for sun readers. That’s a great idea. Fantastic.

Hi, I’m Janine Merkel Pearlstein. I’m a business anthropologist With Alchemy Academy, I help businesses and leaders to truly stand in their strength and step into being the powerful, recognized leaders that they’re meant to be. So starting in Q1, we’ll use my book, Finding youg Lighthouse, a Leadership Guide to Navigating Change, as the book.

And it’s a journey, a guided discovery journey into your own self, your leadership, self style, helping you to get out of your own way and stand in your strength. Awesome. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing. So we, that is just for those of, for those listeners who have never had the chance to visit us here at Sun Leaders, that’s some of the work we do. Again, we invite you here not on Monday, but on the first and third Friday of every month.

And we are just about ready to kind of wrap this up. Mr. Naiman, I think so. With everything we’ve talked about today, our activities, do you have some final thoughts that you’d like to share with everyone? Well, I guess my definition of leadership is to strengthen, educate and elevate other leaders in the community.

So that’s what we’re doing as Sun Leaders. So I don’t know, I just felt like obligated, like, hey, that actually fits with the definition of leadership. I also wanted to say that there was, there was a discussion out there.

David Pavone had spoken about it. Where they got into is leadership intentional or not? And these are the conversations that we’re going to be having through the next years. Very intentional conversations about those particular topics, diving into what is leadership? Who is leadership? What do we do with leadership? How do we get better at leadership? And so I’m very interested, excited, motivated, humbled, and other adjectives from all of you.

I’m going to stop talking because I think this is already a wonderful episode. Dan, Dan, you always raise your hand, always the last word. You’ve got to come to the mic.

I have a question for both of our hosts because you guys are really good leaders. Do you believe leaders are born or made? Oh, boy. Could be.

Anne. Sorry. Bring it on, baby.

Huh? There is a thought process that events create leaders, but not everybody is equipped to lead. So in that thought process, a lot of the work I do is trying to get people to at least be leaders in their own lives. If we can be healthy within our own person, then we probably have a more positive effect on each other.

So that’s, I would like to say that everybody has the potential and has a leader within them. But then another conversation that was going on later was who are we leading and why is it important. I just want healthy human beings to exist on this earth so we can all thrive together.

So that’s. That’s part of my viewpoint on that. Mr. Naiman? Well, it’s not as sophisticated, but I kind of look at it as someone being born and you’re born into an environment and maybe you didn’t get the best hand dealt to you, but think of all the people who had a really bad hand that did well in life or got out of it, you know, So I think Carol had just squeaked in that it’s not an or.

I think it’s an. And leaders are born and they’re made, and it depends on the hand that you’re dealt with and then how you change that hand or exchange the cards or figure out how to play a different game because of the environment that you were in. And you need to get out of that particular game.

It’s so dynamic. And that’s the beauty of the world, the people in here and the things that we explore. And I think that’s why you heard eight different definitions of leadership, plus yours, plus mine.

And if everybody were to come to the mic in isolation, there would be 25 different definitions of leadership with the commonality 100 with something that pulls it together. Yeah, for sure. There are threads.

Agreed. And. And I think that’s kind of the beauty and the purpose of what SUN Leaders is, is to find those threads and to tug on them together and.

And weave a nice ugly Christmas sweater together or something like that. That is not on the fun ones. That’s not on the notice.

Fun leaders. Okay. I didn’t know that was going to be so controversial.

I apologize. I pulled the wrong thread. Thanks for the question, Dan.

Dan. More to come on these wonderful discussions and more in 2025, for sure. Yes.

So one more time, let’s make some noise because we got a little quiet. Let’s hear, everybody. One year celebration.

I appreciate, appreciate each and every one of you and your involvement in SUN Leaders. It’s nothing without the group. And we have to figure out how we serve each other.

And then we have to figure out how this entity serves you individually and serves us collectively. So I appreciate you being here. SUN listeners out there, please, you know, without sounding cliche, please follow us like us and engage with us, because without you engaging with us, I’m not sure why we’re here.

So please ask questions you’ve heard from a lot of different people today. If anybody piqued your curiosity, please reach out to us and we’ll connect you so I appreciate you. Until next time.

We are the Sun Leaders of St. Petersburg, Florida. Guys, it’s been one whole year of the Sun Leaders. I think that on three, we need to all say Sun Leaders.

Are you ready? 1, 2, 3. Sun leaders it, Sam.