Good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Eric Nutting.

I am the owner of the Growth Coach of St. Petersburg, Florida, founder of the Sage Approach. And none of that matters, because what matters today is we are here with some incredible human beings. We call this group Sun Readers.

It’s part of a group called Sun Leaders. And we get the chance to cover a different book every quarter. And this is our first year.

We did not have the chance to have a group discussion with Dr. Crystal White, who is our guest today. And she was our first book of this program of Sun Readers Program, the book that we did. And she’s written several, and I want to have a chance to talk about that a little bit.

But she. The book we, we worked on with her was Check in, which is a process that Crystal shares with everybody. I myself have utilized it in my mediations, in my group coaching.

So I’m excited to talk about that a little bit. And rather than me blabby blab, Dr. Crystal White, friend, fellow sun reader, sun leader. Hello.

Good morning. Hi. Hi.

So thank you for the introduction. And it’s really humbling to watch people read a book and then actually put it into use because that’s why we, what, you know, that’s what reading is about, that we actually take whatever we have consumed, basically, and then actually utilize it in some way. And so instead of kind of reviewing or explaining what check in is about, we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a check in.

And it’s, it’s something that if you come to my house for dinner, we do a check in. If you come to a workshop on Zoom, we do a check in. You can come to a live program that I facilitate or I co facilitate, we most likely do a check in.

And so kids from ages 4 all the way up to the other end of the spectrum can do it. So how it works is a leader chooses a prompt or a question, and everybody who is presence answers the same prompt. And the only guidelines are, is that there’s multiple ways you can interpret the prompt or question, and there’s multiple ways you can answer it.

And so really is up to you how you perceive it and also what you choose to share. And the other guideline is everybody gets around to share their first response without being interrupted by the other listeners or participants. So this creates a cohesive kind of answering opportunity, and it gives us a chance to actually step back and listen before we ask questions or we jump in or we have a singular conversation.

So when somebody’s answering, all you do Is, is listen and how we know it’s our turn to go is that somebody volunteers to go first and you call on who you’d like to hear from next until we’ve all gone. And then usually in a group we, we process it just a little bit, but that’s how check in works. Is there, do you guys have question? Well, I think you guys don’t.

You’ll have questions later. Right. So today the check in is what matters most in a fast paced world.

So whoever would like to volunteer to go first and then you call on who you’d like to hear from, including me, until all four of us have gone. What matters most in a fast paced world? Yeah. So for me it’s focus.

You know, I have to, I have to, I have to determine what it is I want to accomplish or change. Same thing. And I have to put my attention on that and, and try to keep my attention just on that and to slow down enough to do that.

Because I am a, I am product of the fast paced world. I am a recipient, I am a participator of the fast paced world until I say no, I’m not doing that. And I’m really enjoying this week because, and it’s typical for a lot of people, but for this week I’m just, you know, I’m doing a couple of things that I want to do and I sell real estate for a living and I have a closing today that I don’t even have to be at because everybody’s a mail away.

And that’s perfect, that’s perfect for my slowdown, for this, this week. So I’ve, I’ve enjoyed spending time reflecting, but I have to slow down and I have to focus. So because I’m a shiny object person, I’m a squirrel person and, and I know that about myself.

So that’s good. And so for me it’s, it’s slowing down and focusing. Thank you for asking that question, Josh.

Knew that was coming. It was a coin toss. I love focus.

That’s, that’s a great one. So if I can’t say that now, I’ll say truth. I think it’s a absolute problem, you know, like disinformation and I mean anybody can write any news story, publish a fake scientific paper, whatever it is.

For me, that’s been a importance throughout my life is how do we understand what is or how do we get closer to reality. So what’s the closest we can get to reality objectively? Because then everything I think ripples from that. The way you treat others.

The way you make decisions, whether you’re in a leadership position or not, is based on the truth of facts or data that we’re looking at, whether it be climate change, which is a real thing, by the way, or political implications or whatever it may be health, you know, with, like, coronavirus and things like that. So I think truth and padding, logic and reasoning and the scientific method into that is more important than ever today in order for people to rise above the noise and have actual,
meaningful, accurate conversations that affects everybody who shares a reality, because that is a fact. And I’ll throw it over to my main man.

Enut. Thank you, Janae. So, you know, I’ve lived a somewhat hectic, chaotic life, like all of us have, and I’ve worked out of the house for most of my life in one way, shape or form, and we had five kids and other life forces running around.

So there’s part of the world that I had to slow down. And then we throw technology on it, which has been moving forward at a fast pace my whole life. And I think the challenge is always slowing the world down.

So the. The easy answer for me is just quiet. I just have to create quiet.

I don’t even have to think. I don’t even have to do deep thinking. I just need the world to shut up.

I just need the noise to stop. And I do that sometimes by unplugging, leaving my phone behind all day. Like, I won’t even have it near me, which is a kind of a new thing within the last maybe year or two, because I used to think the world needed.

Everybody needed my immediate response. And then I realized, oh, goodness gracious, I’m not saving lives. I didn’t know.

And I thought I. Well, I could think I was wrapped up in my own importance. And I. And when we do this entrepreneur journey, somebody gets you, and then you think, oh, I’m going to lose business if I don’t respond immediately. And I don’t know, I’m just kind of.

I’m kind of. I need to slow the world down. And I do that by seeking quiet.

And I don’t even listen to the radio anymore. I used to listen, like, if I was in the car, I’d have the radio on, listening to whatever horrible stuff was on the radio. I don’t even listen to that anymore.

Maybe sometimes talk radio, but. And that’s why I do this motorcycle stuff, because there’s just the noise of the road. So anyway.

Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet. All right, Crystal, it’s your turn. What matters most in a fast paced world? Okay, I don’t have, I don’t have any panacea.

Aha. Like medicinal answer except for a trick. And I think that trick is the presence of our heart.

And when I ask like how present is my heart here in this world? That’s yeah, that I think that’s how I measure success by is is my heart here? Even if things are. Lots of things are going on around me and I, I have both. I have lots of things going on around me and then I have not a lot of things going around me.

And if my heart can be present in all of those conditions, I feel like that is where the magic happens and that’s the quality indicator of connection is can we be present together and can we be present together from something that’s in here that’s inherent and camp can’t be defined by our, our norms or our culture. I feel like that is the quality ingredient that, that helps us connect. At least it is for the people that I want to connect with and am choosing more and more to serve and also follow
and inform or equip in some ways.

So presence of the heart my answer. I typically go a lot. I’m gonna, that’s the end of check in.

I always say this. People often choose me last because I’m so small. But I typically when I go last, I could just go on and on because it’s my floor and I’m an extrovert.

And even though I’ve done this a billion times and I probably have done it a billion times, I’ve done it at least a dozen times this quiet week. I could, I don’t know why, but sometimes when it’s my turn to check in, it’s like I just, can I just have so much to say. It’s, it’s still a thing for me to manage is being succinct with my responses when I’m the last person, when nobody’s waiting on me, I still can need to learn how to be succinct.

So. So if that’s the end of check in, am I allowed to start asking questions? Of course. Yeah.

Okay. A few things. When you run check in and you hear somebody and you’re thinking, okay, and I know your, your thought process on this.

You’re. You’re as long as it takes, right? That’s your thought process on it because you want everybody to be heard. That’s part of this process.

For me, when I facilitate it, I’m thinking, oh, this person needs to just kind of ramp it up a little bit. Do you ever think that? Of course, yeah. So typically what happens, especially when you first do check in, you’re not even thinking that.

Right. Unless you are really emotionally intelligent and you’ve come in with those skills or you come in with kind of group facilitation training, or you’ve run meetings and it’s like Carol said, you’re focusing on bandwidth in a group or you’ve been trained in extroversion and introversion and, and you know how to wield the power of them both to serve the group. But there are always people, to be honest, that don’t know how to manage their expressions.

On the flip side, there are people who don’t know how to manage their expressions and they under share. Right. And I can sense that too.

And it’s something that I put in the back of my head, if we’re going to facilitate or work together in the future, that that is an opportunity for them both to grow in their public articulations of values and needs and ideas that we, we need to work on both. So as a facility facilitator in the moment, are you saying that you just kind of catalog it and think, okay, we’ll deal with that next time I’m with this person, or do you have a tool in the moment to manage that most? For me as a facilitator,
most of it is non verbal. And if the speaker is physically in a room, there are so many non verbal signals people give people who are going over and over and over, they’re just right, they just haven’t tuned into those signals.

And equally. So there are also signals when you’re like, come on man, give me more. Because we all kind of, we all took up some space here.

But there are people that are like, well, what matters most is quietness. I think that’s what matters most. And then move on.

And you’re like, oh man, I don’t don’t know anything about this person except for quietness. And we don’t give them cues as much as we give the oversharer cues. So it’s just really important to be thinking about what gets our focus and what gets our attention.

And it’s the people who actually under share that I’m more like queued into for me. So a key component of this process is making sure the group has some safe safety to share throughout whatever session we’re running. Right.

I think it’s implicit also in the culture, whatever culture you run, for example, that under sharing, if you’re at a family dinner, 80% of the time you’ve got a stranger and you’ve got a teenager in the room. 80% of the time they’re going to be like, how quickly can I get this over with? Right. So that’s a culture.

But if it was just a group of teenagers and I come in without like the family system, then it’s the culture that you ask the question in and the nature of the question. Because if you don’t have a lot of time, you could ask a question that’s very punctuated. Like what do you.

Yeah, like very, very punctuated. Like what’s your favorite? Well, we did one in Mindful Men, which is what’s your favorite dinosaur? And it turned out to be one of the best philosophical leadership questions of 2023. That was 2023.

But you could ask a very punctuated question like what’s something you missed a deadline in this week? Right. And people can just be very concrete with the questions. So you can’t control that.

But there are ways that the culture can actually set up both safety and efficiency or emotionality or vulnerability or whatever it is. So the question and the culture kind of can set some conditions for how much or the quality of what people share. Good question.

So as a facilitator and you have the person that’s going on and on and on, and I’m one of those that it makes me nuts when they do that. How do you. Because they’re not paying attention to the non verbal cues at all.

How do you rein it in? Or do you. So that’s a, that’s a tricky, that’s a tricky thing. So if it’s your first time and you’ve.

It just depends on how much trust you have with this person. Because if Eric was doing that and, or if I was doing that, I, I’d be like, yo, wrap it up in front of everybody. And I’d have no problem doing that if it’s a brand new person.

Like, let’s just say men come to Mindful Men without sometimes knowing I’m facilitating it or leading it. And they come just seeing a sign, right. And they don’t know what check in.

They don’t expect check in. And we sometimes do get people who now are on a third topic and I do just let that go. And when I say let it go, it’s just we’re learning a lot about that human and we’re building trust by allowing them to do what they usually do.

And we don’t have agreements or anything. I don’t have any agreements in that moment to shape him or her, him in this case into a better check, a better space share, conversational space share. But if we’re out of check in and they start doing that, I will interrupt a perfect stranger and being like, hey, you lost me, we gotta move on.

Or can you say it again in one sentence and. But usually I don’t do that in check in. Does that answer your question? Yes.

It’s not what I wanted to hear, but. But it’s an answer. Yeah, I get it.

Yeah. So. So I was always taught in facilitation and reminded over and over.

You let people be themselves before you come in and observe. Like Josh was talking about observing reality. You let them do it before you come in and you prompt them because it’s way more powerful to say, hey, Eric, I notice it’s your first check in.

And I noticed, you know, you, you shared a lot. Is that typical for you? And then, then you’re bringing insight. Cause most people when they’re sharing, they don’t have that insight.

Right. Well, and so it’s a gift of leadership, is giving, making observations without judgment and that, that’s leadership. And I don’t think I came up with that.

It was like, I think this is, I forget her name, her last name, Susan. But she wrote Fierce conversations and she said the person that describes reality without judgment will emerge as the leader. And we can do that outside of check in.

But check in sets us up in order to really see and observe people. But if we start to manage them, they get socialized and they’re not in their, their natural kind of way of doing things, it’s much harder and they don’t trust anymore because you set them off. Okay, really quick.

There’s also ways that like corporations or particular cultures intentionally do not do check ins in order to keep people in a box and confined and, and under whatever, I don’t know, in that box. So that, that made me think of that, just wanted to chime in on that for sure. So my theory on that, and I’ve seen it and I worked with the Department of Defense, there’s always people who are like, we don’t have time for check in.

And I said, well then let’s make it very short, make five minutes. But the minute we stop doing check in is the minute we start to objectify people. And it’s so easy to get people to do things transactionally for us if we objectify them.

But check in helps us remember that they have all these Sorts of human humanness. And so I think sometimes it is both out of incompetence and then also lack of training and then also very specifically where people don’t want to hear from one another. Right.

It’s incompetence, not trained or specifically part of their strategy or guiding people or getting them to do what you want them to do. And I think that overall strategy informs everything else because that strategy is so strong and then gets people used to a routine of not checking in and therefore they’re just a cog in a wheel and now that they’re just part of the machine, which is normalized all from that strategy. I think, I think a check in could actually solve a lot of problems.

Done. Right. It’s a powerful book.

Yeah, thank you. I did not create the process. It’s like a, it’s a, you know, it’s a repeated recipe from multiple disciplines that, that the book is a manual of how to do it, where to do it, why to do it.

And it’s like most, you know, I didn’t invent it, I just like captured it here. And there’s multiple ways you can do it. I do believe that if all we did is check in more and it became more conventionalized, that it would set the necessary conditions for other dynamics and groups to emerge that are more just and more challenging, to be honest, to manage.

But I think we’re up for it now. I think we’re getting more and more willing to do it. So.

And you guys are evidence of that, so thank you. So, a couple of things on that. First of all, just as a side note, Josh and I went to the center for Health Equity and Crystal, I shared it with you after we did it because I was so excited that somebody was doing this.

They connected to some Indian tribe. Josh, wasn’t that right? I can’t remember what tribe it was. Yeah, yeah.

I couldn’t remember the specifics, but it was really cool. Yeah, Very impactful. And Crystal, I hope at some point in time I can get you out to the center for Health Equity and just kind of live through that experience.

I think you would really enjoy it being a leader in this, in this tool, but a place where I struggle in check ins if I have a larger group. And it must be the way I’m explaining it because sometimes people will jump in and want to participate in a conversation before everybody has a chance to check in. And that’s really diffusing the power of check in, right? Yeah, for sure.

But it’s also like life where People aren’t listening, you know, what you’re saying is not actually being heard and there’s like just something else interfering. Or it could be for me, sometimes I’m not very succinct and clear in my instructions and for other people it’s like that person was in their head having another conversation while listening to you. So it’s always something where you get to say, hey, hold your, stay within yourself.

That’s like one thing I think, I hope, I hope I put that in the book. Stay within yourself or hold your questions till the end or not right now. Or like sometimes physically it helps so much more energetically when you could just put your hand down being like, hold that thought.

There’s no interruptions while somebody’s sharing. And so it is, it is disruptive. But at the same time, when you hold the guidelines, you hold the group to the standards of it, then they see the facilitator as doing what they said they would do and you know, honoring the guidelines.

And oftentimes we have leaders who say this is what the guidelines are, but they aren’t willing to show I will, I will intervene when the guidelines aren’t being met. And so it’s sticky, but it’s, it’s more, what’s more important is you’re upholding the process for the group’s benefit, not for your benefit to be like, ah, I caught you. And believe me, if you catch somebody doing that, they are never going to do it again.

I’ve never seen somebody repeat twice interrupt because most of the time they get, they’re overly excited or they just weren’t listening. But I’ve never ever had anybody do it twice. It’s time to stop thinking about your website like a car.

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Carrie, thanks for joining us. I know you had. Speaking of interrupting.

Nah, I’m glad you’re here. Yeah, I had a. I told Eric I had a client that said hey, can we do this at nine? I said sure.

And of course he just bought, so I can’t complain. We. Well that’s.

First of all, congratulations on that. That’s awesome. But it’s always great news.

So you want the good or bad news is this is just too. I’m going to stop going anywhere else other than sitting at my desk and doing zoom calls. That’s where the money is.

Absolutely. I’m kidding. We’re in the process of just kind of really wrapping up because we’ve got to get Crystal on the road in five minutes.

Should we do a quick check in with Kerry? Yeah. Carrie, What. What matters most in a fast paced moving world? What matters most in my fast paced living world? Is that what you said? Fast paced, moving fast paced.

Oh, slowing down. Perfect. I don’t know that’s the right answer.

What matter? Well, Eric knows this. Pick one of the nine and get it done. Right, Eric? Is that what we said? That’s, that’s almost a direct quote.

Yeah. Yeah. So you think that’s.

Yeah, I think for me, as I very fondly tell anybody who asks, including the psychiatrist, I said my, my Adderall I think is actually what it is because the adult, it’s generic. But my Adderall is really good at letting me focus. It’s really at telling me what to focus on.

And medicine doesn’t do that. So my focus, I think for my check in is to really get better at that. And I think a big thing and this is where whether it’ll be something I do with Eric or a, a, a counselor of some sort is to really determine if the things that I’ve been holding on to as bucket list dreams are important enough for me to keep holding onto them and feeling, I don’t wanna say disappointed.

Cause maybe that’s what is, you know, how is it still important? Cause it definitely consumes a lot of this space. So that’s, I think that would be a big focus for me moving forward. Yeah.

Carrie, so you didn’t hear our check ins, of course, but you just basically took Carol and Eric’s and made, made a combination answer like both focus and slowing down. And it’s just very, it’s fascinating because you didn’t hear. If you would have heard, you would have picked something completely different.

Most of us like, like to be special in our check ins. But it’s very fascinating when somebody joins and they’re, they say something. It’s validating to the whole group that these things actually it’s not rocket science.

We have the wisdom within us and the group carries a lot of wisdom. And if we just give people the opportunity to share, then like we, then we have, we basically have a roadmap to awesome life together. Right.

If we just. So I’m going to ask a quick question and you’ll forgive my, my vulnerability in asking this only because honestly, it’s been a while, but is there a specific chapter somewhere that is check in for families? I’m thinking with my, with my entire family here. We, a couple years ago we did a goal setting thing and then we talked about some other things and maybe still doing something similar to that while they’re here this weekend.

But I didn’t know it just, I thought maybe we could do a check in and I didn’t know if there was a specific language for how that might read. Yeah. So the instructions would be exactly the same.

And I’ve done it with kids that are three exactly the same. And now those kids are like 11 or 12 and they’ll run check in when I’m there, meaning they’ll come up with a question. But specifically it’s the same guidelines.

It just requires somebody to facilitate coming up with a question. Sometimes with kids, I trick them to be engaged is I ask them to come up with a question instead of me leading it. Well, just to clarify, the kids are 20, 30 and 32.

So. Yeah. Okay.

Your, your children that are your adult children. Yeah. How do I say this? I have a.

I, I said it. In unconventional communities, it’s helpful to say like you’ll, you’ll always be my son or daughter, but you won’t always be my kid because they’re not kids anymore. They’re adults.

So you’re with your. Yeah. They’re not children even.

Right. They’re not. Right.

Well, and Eric knows because we’ve had some conversations so that that last sentence. Eric knows that last sentence may actually change in 1 8. So it’ll be.

Which is a whole nother. That’s a whole other. But the guidelines are the same.

And, and there’s tons besides the book. There’s 52 questions in the back of check in the book that I wrote. But there’s.

You have, we’ve seen huge products on the market like mass production of table questions that you can put on your dinner table. And there’s like questions for families. And those are very inexpensive and easy to access and they’re more specific for families.

But I would, I would just use the questions in the back of the book. I now have to intervene because we said hard stop at 9:35. Crystal, there’s a national check in day.

That’s April 10th. It’s April 10th. April 10th.

And somehow you made a national check in day. That’s pretty exciting. But then you’re an author of several books.

This is your latest. It is Unconventional Communities. It’s excellent.

I just took a chat. Several books. Right.

And you’re probably working on maybe another one coming up. Maybe. Yeah.

And then you have a couple of groups, Free Leadership. You mentioned Mindful Men, which is part of Free Leadership. Right.

Well, just succinctly. So we can let you go. What do you want our audience to know about you and, and how we can interact with you and your work? Yeah, good question.

I believe Free Leadership is a 5013C. So it’s a nonprofit. It’s.

It’s unrelated to. Well, there’s connections of, to my authorship. And I want to be clear, I don’t write books for money.

It really is to be a messenger and to have it and have that information available for people to do whatever they want to do with it. The most important way that you can get engaged is by what you guys are doing, which is taking something that you read and then having social conversations about it with it and using it. So Unconventional Communities has six main themes that communities can dynamics that they can adopt.

And I do think it’s incumbent on any person that calls himself a leader and is involved in group facilitation to, to read that book and to be looking at the dynamics of how we connect and how we interact in order to shift us into the next highest state we can have as humans together. So please read the book. You can reach out to me at Free Leadership Inc.

Or my business is called the Executive Shaman. You can email me crystalheexecutiveshaman.com I will have a group that goes over these six disciplines in a three month period so that you can, you can read the book but also practice the skills and creating those dynamics with me. And if that’s of interest to you, then you just have to reach out to me at this time.

Awesome. Okay. I need to release you.

Yes. Thank you. So happy, happy new year.

I hope 2025. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you so much, Crystal, for being our first sun readers author in SunLeaders. It means a lot. Glad we were able to retroactively come back and do this and it sounds like maybe we can have a repeat returning author and read your other book, one of your other books in the future.

We got a couple more lined up, but yeah, of course. Yeah. Isn’t it so heartwarming when you really do consider it how many tools there are out for out there for us to really become the us that we want to be.

And I, I, I know that this group and any group that you, that we start right. It has, there’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears. And I do commend you for blazing the trail.

And I, I just wish that your hearts are also full. And if there’s a way that I can facilitate the presence of your heart or whatever, then you guys reach out to me. But I think it’s, it’s 2025 is going to be a wild ride and it is going to be like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.

And we will need our mentors and our guides and our allies and our friends to not only bring us hope, but also to bring, to show us their skills because we’re going to need a whole big toolbox. So. Right.

Thanks for that. Yay. And as we were thinking about, you don’t have to be a boss to be a leader.

Right? You don’t have to be the boss to be a leader. You just got to shake up and be present. Garrett, Crystal, Thanks.

We’re still recording. I think we’ll just do a quick round the table because we didn’t have a chance to really introduce ourselves. And with the thousands of people, viewers and listeners out there, I want to make sure everybody has a chance to say hello.

So let’s, on my screen, Carol, you are first up. What should we know about you? And like what’s, what do you look forward to in 2025? Great question, Eric. Thank you.

I’m Carol Hasbrouck. I’m the author of the book 10,000 Miles of Miracles, which you can find on Amazon under the same name. And it’s about a journey I took traveling 10,000 miles and doing volunteer work across the country with a friend.

It was completely God inspired and God led and donation based. We left home with $500. We had no idea how we were going to do it, but by golly, we made it three and a half months and 10,000 miles through the, the blessings of people and the direction of God.

So what I have in store for 2025 is taking that book on the road and sharing the messages of that book with others. And I’m, I’m scared. And that’s good because it means I’m getting out of my comfort zone.

And I, and I. My check in was focused, so I am determined to focus on that new part of my business. I also help people create memories in their homes by buying and selling real estate. So I’m kind of like caught between the two.

But it’s okay. I can work it out. I’ve got Eric helping me as a business coach.

Eventually once I get going, I’ll have Josh helping me with my marketing. And who knows, Carrie, there might be a jingle in there for me. I’m thinking for sure an entry music for your speaking engagements.

100%. And we’ll, but we just need to make it, we’ll make it dual use because if the music and the sound and the theme works, we can use it for your real estate marketing too. Perfect value, double value.

And then. Yeah, I was thinking that side of how you were saying that. I was thinking you need a, you know, like the, like the baseball.

You need walk up music. Yes. Yes.

So. And I like what I just said that I’m taking the book on the road. For me, that sounds much more comfortable than I’m becoming a motivational speaker.

So that’s when, when we’re working on this. Just so Eric and Josh and, and Carrie know, that’s, that’s my goals. Take the book on the road.

I went on the road. Now I’m going to take the book on the road. Are you going back to the places you went? I certainly could.

That’s a great idea. Be cool idea because we had wonderful media coverage and of course lots of support. So thank you for that idea.

Yeah. And then write a book about that and call it another 10,000 miles of marriage. Mike, do it again.

Mic drop. But I would definitely go to the number one. If you literally had media coverage in those places, go to those media people and say, hey, they’ll, they’ll have you on and maybe promote, you know, your, your talk.

That could be. Yeah, that’d be. Yeah, we had great media coverage.

I worked hard at getting that media coverage. But what we were called Dames Gone Wild. And I’m sure that’s what got us the media coverage.

Like who, who are these ladies? But we didn’t take our tops off. Right. So for anybody who’s watching.

Too old for that. Who’s ever watching this recording. We recorded views of the, the views of the speaker are not necessary.

We recorded a book discussion with Carol because we had the chance to. She shared her book with us during our Sun Readers experience. So go back and listen to that and reach out to Carol and we’re excited to see that.

And you take the road here. Coming up in 2025. Josh, you’re next on the screen.

What should we know about you? All right, well, I founded Sun Leaders, so I just appreciate everyone here on this call. Crystal, for being our first author. Carol, for you being an author, for you guys being on the leadership team.

To everybody listening, it’s, it’s really amazing the community we built. And so for 2025, we’re going to where we’re going to expand that and also tighten it. We’ve been covering how, we’ve been really focusing what Sun Leaders is trying to accomplish and then aligning our programming accordingly and really working on enhancing people’s leadership skills personally and professionally.

So that’s on the Sun Leaders front. There’s so many things. Sun Leaders, fun leaders, it’s, it’s, it’s all fun.

And if you’re interested, just go to sunleaders.org and you can get more information or you know, check out the other podcast episodes. Subscribe to it.

There’s. This will be, you know, maybe episode 6057 just came out. It was actually an interview with Carol interviewed me, which was really great.

I look forward to listening back on that. But there’s tons of great engaging conversations. But my, my full time gig is I’m CEO and founder of Naiman Creative, which is a creative production and marketing agency.

So we just, we help grow businesses, we help propel people to meet their goals and achieve their dreams, whatever their vision entails. And that’s just a blast. Specifically for 2025.

Something new that I’ve been cooking up. We’re going to really focus on families so we can start hitting B2C. And ultimately I just released it to my family.

I created then it’s password protected so you can’t, you can’t see. But ultimately that’s a hub for us and every one of us in the family has an account and we can publish articles, whether it be a recipe or a memory or, or travel or a book review. And we all.

It’ll be an index, a repository for all of our family memories in one spot. And so what I’m planning on doing is templating that out. So another family, for instance, Carrie’s family, if you wanted to buy that, you just, you get the website free and you pay monthly to keep that alive.

And it’s going to be Seriously affordable. And then on top of that, we’re going to work on family podcasts, so we’re calling them family casts. So you could also get a family cast.

Your family could have a shared podcast and also have that on there so you can document your history in audio form. So that’s a focus of 2025, which I’m really looking forward to. It’s very, very exciting since you and I get the chance to be around each other a lot.

I hear a lot of these ideas from the beginning and how you pull them all together. It’s very, very exciting, this idea. So 2025, growing family, growing business.

It’s going to be incredible. All right, Carrie, you’re next. Oh, okay.

I thought you were next because I was last to the call, but sure. So I too, I guess am an author. Two time bestselling author.

Actually a chapter’s worth of an author for a book called one of the second ones called how to Maximize youe Network. We have a third one coming out called Networking is not a dirty word and it’s really interesting. I never really thought about.

I don’t do much with it because, you know, it’s not my speaking when I speak. I really haven’t gone on tour to speak about networking. It’s more about, you know, marketing and branding and giving a fun talk about, you know, the history and the background and the value in musical branding.

Of course, course. So. But I’m excited about a lot of things coming up.

But yes, as Carol mentioned, I am the jingle writer, as you can read behind me. So a lot of fun, exciting things if I can then as, as I’ve shared with Eric, compartmentalize them so I can do them all in a. Don’t let anyone over run and overtake the others because I think that’s the biggest challenge we all have is we only have so many hours in a day and you know, we want to be able to focus on the things that we’re excited about.

Like I think, I think Josh can attest to the fact that I think it’s been at least six, eight months we’ve been swearing we’re going to get in and put those vocals together. But we just. Business and like it’s the way we haven’t done it.

So we’ll do it eventually, but we certainly will. But yeah, so, but you’re, you’re. I love your idea.

We actually, my family has ever since COVID had a weekly family chat that we do every Sunday on Zoom. And it’s really, you know, some weeks, you know, less exciting information shared than others, but it’s a way to keep in touch and it’s really kind of cool. So I think, I think your idea has some, some opportunities to, to market, brand and scale and I would even once it’s up and running, I might suggest the put it in front of the one Million Cups community one Wednesday morning coming up and get
there because they’ll, they’ll tell you they love it, rip it apart and give you all the great feedback you could possibly want to, you know, to tweak it, improve it.

I’m getting my, I’m getting ready to launch, I believe I keep saying it and we’re really close. An actual e commerce site that I’m pretty excited about and once I get all the logistics on the back end done and that’s going to be really, that’s speaking of six years later, taking it off the back burner up to the front and now going to launch, which I’m excited about. And so, yeah, pretty exciting year coming up if I can keep it all together in song for a musical I’m working on yesterday.

So, so there’s a lot of stuff going on and that is how long it takes sometimes, isn’t it? I mean, some of these projects, they come forward when they’re supposed to come forward. Well, and you know, I think I shared with you, one of my dreams is to write a musical and musicals that get to Broadway. There are six, seven, eight year projects, most of them, sometimes more.

So you gotta, if you’re gonna do it, you gotta be committed for the long haul. So. Awesome.

Yeah, I look forward to all of that. Yeah. Okay.

So Carol, Josh, Carrie, thank you so much for being part of this book discussion. Our guest today was Dr. Crystal White, author of the book Check In. Her latest book is Unconventional Communities.

It was a pleasure to have her here as well as everybody in the discussion. We’re looking forward to an exciting 2025. Listeners, viewers, please engage with us if you have questions.

Any one of us would be happy to have that conversation and of course, follow us@sunleaders.org I’m Eric Nutting, owner of the Growth Coach of St. Petersburg, Florida. Until next time, we will see you soon on the Sun Leaders podcast.

Sa.