Well, good morning, everyone. I am excited to be here today. We are participating in our Sun Readers program, which is part of the SunLeaders group.

And today we are honored to have Sunny Bearwald with us. We always focus local authors to the St. Pete and Greater Tampa Bay area. I don’t know if my camera is going to pick up that beautiful cover right there, but Sunny is with us today and we are in our third and final discussion here of Sprinkle It With Sunshine and Sunny.

We left off at a specific portion of the book and you’re going to kind of bring us into that discussion right there. But first I want to say hello. Good morning.

How are you? Good morning. I am doing so well. I am so looking forward to today, to our discussion.

This has been such a fun journey for me and I’m so appreciative of you, Eric and Josh and Carrie and everybody and getting to know Stephanie now today. And this has been just an amazing little journey to get out there and talk about my book and the everything I’ve been through to reinvent myself after my first career, which was motherhood. Yeah, that’s.

We had such a powerful discussion. I guess it was two weeks ago that I was scribbling notes. I sent you a follow up email.

Yes. You know, I’m a life coach and business coach and I found so much that I could use from that discussion. So I’m thankful to you for that, for sure.

And on that discussion, Carrie was with us. Carrie, I want you to have a chance to say hello and introduce yourself to everyone. Hello.

Hi, everyone. Gary, what do you do? What do I do? I connect people. You know what, you’re one of the best at it.

I was just having a discussion yesterday about that. So I don’t know if you were. If your ears were tingling, but I appreciate all that you do in that area.

So thank you for that. Yeah, it’s something that I kind of. And that mission, believe it or not, was brought into focus during an exercise that I just thought was not something you could do in 20 minutes with Carol at one of our Sun Leaders sessions that she led on purpose and things like that, because I think it was whatever, whichever pillar it was, that particular meeting, and I spent most of it certainly answering the questions and going, yeah, you can’t in 20 minutes come up with your purpose
and understood.

And yet as I was filling it out, the thing that just kind of jumped out at me really was because it used to be helping people make their lives easier, whether it was for my family or for business or whatever. And then this connector idea hit me, and then it just like a. Like a light bulb went off and hit me or smacked me over the head.

I’m like, it’s not just that I help people connect to one another, as in what we do, all of us that do the various networking that we do, but my career is actually connecting prospective clients to the businesses who are trying to attract them. Because when we’re. When we’re advertising and marketing, we want to make sure that our goal is to obviously be successful and get people to interact with those clients.

And, um, yeah, that’s what really music is designed to do, is create that top of mind. So, I mean, from a business, you know, I mean, technically, I guess, or specifically, I’m a musical branding jingle writer, like it says behind me. And that.

That vehicle that I provide is to make sure that when people are out trying to connect with prospective clients, that that message is heard. So, yeah, I. Purpose is so powerful, and it’s one of the. One of the really foundations I work with people on.

And I think it’s sprinkled through all these pages of the book that we’re about to talk about. And Sunny certainly talks about how she worked through these different variations of herself. Always kind of with that through line of her purpose.

She was kind of clear on it, and it kind of ended up moving into what she currently does now. So she’ll share that with her. But I want to get Stephanie to introduce herself as well.

Stephanie, welcome to the conversation. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Pretty duper.

So tell everybody what you do. I am. Well, I am a communicator.

You’re talking about connector. I am the community and donor engagement manager at daystar Life, and I find different ways to engage the community as a whole and get our message out to the public and encourage everyone to come and share the joy. Whether it be helping somebody out or getting help, we’re kind of the right community for it.

And yeah, I’ve been around for four months with them, and it’s been a wild ride. It feels like much longer. I think that’s a good thing.

Yeah, I think so. Awesome. So, Sunny, we.

It’s not like a cliffhanger, but in our last episode, we went all the way up to the review section, and before we pressed record and hopped on, you said something that was really important. As we think about just running a business and entrepreneurship. And that’s that difference between feeling like I’m bragging and actually promoting ourself.

And why promoting ourself is so necessary. And that’s really where we’re at in the section of your book. So tell us about that.

That is, that’s exactly this. Chapter 14 was reviews and proof. And the reason I decided to include this in my book is because it is so important for people starting something new.

I know we’ve discussed in the past imposter syndrome and so many people deal with that. I think everybody does at some point or time in their career and that. But it’s not, it’s not bragging to celebrate your success and to put it out there, to gain those reviews, to ask for reviews to, to put them for instance on your website, on your social media, on, in your book, whatever it is that you’re doing because it is imperative to the success and the growth of your company.

It is, it is what increase is your increases, your like your trust factor with the public. And if you don’t have that like and trust factor, you know, how do you build a business if, if people don’t trust you and don’t relate to you in one way or another. And the more you can show that, the more the algorithm is going to catch on to that.

Most everyone’s businesses nowadays are online somewhere. And that is just going to help you between what I do in my day to day career, which is SEO, blogging and social media marketing for small businesses, that SEO is one component of what I do but the other is increasing that like and trust factor and that is so important through reviews. So social media marketing.

Right. I struggle with it because I tend to be a private person. How much of ourselves are we really supposed to share share with the rest of the world when we talk about social media marketing? Well, it all depends on if yourself is your brand or what you do is your brand.

So if you are promoting yourself as an influencer then you’re gonna, you’re gonna need to put a lot about yourself. But for me I don’t, I, that’s on my personal social media. If I post anything it’s about my family because that’s my pride and joy.

But if I’m going to promote something about my business, it’s usually going to what we’re doing, the client results that we’re getting or the books that I’m writing at the time and then reviews for those books. And to me it’s a reflection of the work, not necessarily me. And so you kind of have to separate yourself a little bit from, you don’t need to brag about it, honey, like I always heard when I was younger, you know, and also when I was, you know, hot and heavy in the vocal world and singing,
that’s also hard.

But you have to put yourself out there. Because if you don’t just start putting yourself out there and saying, this is what I do. This is where I am an expert.

I’ve always said I’m not a mathematician. I don’t do mathematicals, is what I tell my kids. I don’t do the mathematicals.

That’s not me. And I will never tell you, let me help you balance your budget. Never going to do that.

But I am going to tell you the things that I am good at and stay in my wheelhouse. And I think that celebrating the success through that. And then.

And then another thing that we were talking about earlier was the continued learning and just always improving yourself and your skills. Because there’s always somebody better at what we do, right? There’s always somebody who’s learning something new. But that if we’re always staying on top, then that’s gonna help us continue to get those reviews and that proof and continue to make our own lives beautiful.

Right. So what was the term again? Mathematicing. What do we call it? Mathematicals.

Mathematicals. I’m crossing it off my list for you. Yeah, I don’t do the mathematicals.

What is the best way to phrase when you’re working with a client, when you’re seeking that review from them? You know, I just always am really honest with them. I just tell them, listen, if you could do me a solid, I’d really appreciate a good review, a good and honest review from you about my book, my services, whatever it is we’re talking about at the moment. Because that is how we attract the Google algorithm and that how we get more eyes on our business.

And the more eyes we have on the business, the more we can grow through grassroots. But grassroots are not necessarily just face to face anymore, Right? They’re online from people just finding you. So that’s.

I just ask them, honestly, if you could please do me a big, big favor, it would do a lot of good. Okay. And I think sometimes in our busyness, we either forget to ask or some of us are scared to ask.

And we’ve got to get past that hump, don’t we? Yeah, exactly. And that’s why the Reviews and proof chapter came about, is just, you have to. You have to do that, you have to ask for that and tell people, prove to others that you are the expert in your field essential in building our Brand.

Yep. So what’s the. What’s the statute of limitations? 25 years.

Go back. You go back 40 years. 25.

To Eric’s point. So back when there weren’t reviews and we had all these clients that we never had to ask for or didn’t use. Sorry, Charlie wants to be part of this conversation in the background.

I don’t. I hear Charlie. Him.

But yeah. So that’s why I’m muting when I’m not talking. Charlie, be quiet.

Apparently can’t open the gate to get upstairs. What can I tell you? But seriously, you know, one of the things that. That I’ve been working on, in fact, I have my colleague Eric, you know, from Hope Services, that we just met yesterday, and we’re talking about literally going in and how far back do we go? And do I go even further back than my current business? Because, you know, I’ve been doing this 40 years.

And even. Even with, you know, my prior company, they’re. They’re my clients that I work with and code and do we just.

Does the email just say, hey, long before there was, you know, reviews, we did some great work together. Would you mind bringing it to the. To 2025 and.

And putting something about how great it was to your experience? You know, it seems to me like that would be a reasonable way to ask. But I don’t know, I’m just curious if there’s any statistics or any research or if Google, by the way, cares about how you go about getting these, because I know they’re not real fans of, you know, posting requests, because they’re like. Yeah, that kind of.

It almost like your mail. You’re asking and trying to flood the zone, if you will. You’re making me think of Fred Flintstone out there with his little hammer and on the tablet.

So I have my ideas on it. Sonny, what are your ideas on it? I think there’s no shame in that game. I think that it goes towards your trust factor again and your likability.

If. If you have someone who you did great work for years and years ago, I see no problem with asking them to write that review. As long as they’re authentic reviews, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Yeah, I say we ask everybody in that. Was it a BlackBerry? The Rolodex? What do we used to keep. Yes, the BlackBerry.

Yeah. Right, right. And Sophie’s going to chime in every now and then as well.

All right, well, I’ll try to get Tonto to do his thing over here. So one of the things that you stressed for us, Sunny, was you wanted to make this book digestible. You intentionally wrote manageable chapters.

And from your review section, we go on to creator of beauty to Sprinkle it with Sunshine. So take us where you want to take us next. Well, the Sprinkle It With Sunshine is a little bit corny, but my name is Sunny, and that is my actual name.

It’s not short for anything, and it’s not a nickname. It’s what my daddy named me after. The song Sun.

Funny yesterday. What happened to that? Yeah, it’s gonna have harmonized dance. Yeah.

And Once upon a time, you didn’t really have a great relationship with the song until much later, Right? I didn’t. I. I don’t even really know the words to the song because I avoided it for so many years. Your book.

I did put it in my book, so I had to look them up, though, because it is. It is so much of, you know, it was embracing what my daddy named me before I was even born. And back then, I didn’t like it because it was Sunny and Sharon, and Sunny was the boy when I was little.

So I didn’t like that because it was a boy name. And then I was always getting military calls to join the military, and they would speak to Sonny, and I was like, this is she. Like, oh, my gosh.

Okay. We didn’t expect that. So.

So it was always. Everybody always expected the name Sunny to be a guy’s name. So I didn’t like it when I was younger, but now it’s just.

It’s so perfect for me. I think so. And I live in the Sunshine State, too.

So. Yes. I mean, it’s.

It just works. So Sprinkle it with Sunshine was. Is.

Is my way of saying, you know, toss some glitter on it or. Or just, you know, making everything beautiful and happy. I tell them I was talking to my daughters belly, pregnant belly, before she had the baby.

And I was saying, you need to come out, baby Faye, because it’s a party. When you’re here with Gigi, it’s just a party all the time, and you can’t wait to party with Gigi, you know, And I just. That’s my kind of mentality about everything that I do is.

Is sprinkle it with sunshine. Whatever that means for you. Make everything beautiful and fun and happy.

There’s too much sad in this world and too much hard that we all go through as individuals with our careers, our families, our homes, lives in general. So my philosophy is to sprinkle everything you do with a little bit of sunshine and happiness and beauty. Beauty not meaning physical beauty.

Beauty meaning the beauty of the heart, soul, mind, and the. The love that you put into something. So the ultimate in branding found organically.

Really? Yeah. Then at the end of all of your chapters, you either challenge us or encourage us with a time of reflection. Yes.

In this section, you ask us, what ways can you add sunshine to the life of another? What way can you add sunshine to the life of another? Which is a great thing to try to do daily. It is. It is.

It’s that. What was it years ago? It was the Ray Oak. That’s how you say it.

I can’t remember what it was, but the random acts of kindness. That’s what it was. So it’s kind of similar to that, you know, random acts of kindness and sprinkling sunshine on somebody else’s day, whether it’s buying the person behind you’s coffee in the Starbucks line or just giving a smile to the cashier at the grocery store and just how is your day going? And just sprinkling some sunshine everywhere you go.

So important. Intentional until it becomes habit. And significantly different from, I hope I don’t irritate anyone today, which is sometimes the lens I live through.

So it’s. I think that’s a better challenge than maybe sometimes of the way I go through life. So my days start early and I just, you know, I do some mediation business, and I was on an early call today, and I thought I did not do anything nice for this human being at all.

All I did was frustrate them. I’m mindful of that. And I couldn’t.

It was such an intense conversation. There was no way to sprinkle them with sunshine by the end of it. But thank you for that endorsement.

What’s next? Just following the book. It’s surprise course creation. Yeah.

I think this rolls right into just being aware of your surroundings and those who you’re speaking with and always keeping an open mind to your career. And, Stephanie, earlier you were saying that you had put your past, the way you grew up and the careers that your family was in and your LPN degree and then all the different things that you’ve done, and then you evolved that into who you are today, which was so interesting to me because that’s exactly what I did. I had all this experience being a
mom and raising my four children and all their AP courses.

I felt like I was in AP courses most of the time. And their dual enrollment and all that through their high school that When I came out, I had this large set of skills, but I didn’t kind of know where to go. And I kind of just was rolling dice, trying different things and we didn’t have chatgpt back then.

And so I was rolling the dice and trying to multiple, multiple things. And once I finally landed on what made my heart happy and that I was interested in and wanted to continue learning in. It has evolved over time.

And in the chapter 15 it talks about how I, how I created beauty and I honed in my brand. But then chapter 16 says surprise, course creation. I had so many people coming to me and asking me what is blogging? What does that mean? Mean why do you do it? Does anybody read it anyhow? And you’re so passionate about it.

What do you, you know, I, I don’t think anybody really understood what blogging was in my world. And then I started getting the questions can you teach me how to blog? Which I thought was really interested. And after I taught five people for free how to blog and, and they began blogging for different small businesses or for themselves.

It just dep the individual. I thought why, why am I do you know, I fully enjoyed that and I’m so glad I did it for those individuals. But I thought there’s gotta be more people out there that want to know how to do exactly what I do.

So I started creating courses and that has been a new kind of tangent to my business. And then it was the whole, the next chapter is what’s next again. It seems like every time I build another scalable way to share what I know and what I love, it opens the door to something else.

And someone told me at one point, you know, you really need to write all this down because there are so many women and men going from either a full time career and wanting a complete break and a complete change, or like it was for me a full time job raising four individuals and with a husband who traveled. So it was really all on me. And then taking that and going directly into something new that would be new and fulfilling for me.

So it was, it’s, it’s interesting that there’s always the next opportunity and the next thing to do. And then writing this book came up and I had written other books before, so that wasn’t out of my wheelhouse. I am a writer, in fact, anyway.

But sharing that with others and the steps that they can take to go ahead and jump into that next career, whatever it is, when you didn’t have ChatGPT, I thought that was so fun. But you had to have the gumption to go ahead and get that done, go ahead and try that step out. And each time you find another avenue to go down with your career and with your choice of what you do each day, whether it’s like public speaking could be in my future.

I would love that. The books, more books expounding on this book, course creation, more courses and individuals, mentorship and. Or leadership with what I do, those things are all going to just continue to grow and evolve.

And then that leads you right into chapter 18. This kind of section kind of all rolls one to the next, onto the next, but never stop learning and growing and changing if you can’t be. I talked about this last time.

What was it? Tenacity with adaptability is a quote that my husband did and coined in his. One of his big messages. He was giving it being tenacious and being always going after that next goal, but always being adaptable because you never know what’s going to come along, like being a writer and a researcher, from what do they call card catalogs and encyclopedias to computers and learning through your computers and the Internet to now AI is helping everybody with everything, so that adaptability has
to continue.

And the only way to keep up with that is to continue learning and growing and improving your skills. And that’s. That’s so important.

And that’s. If you love what you do, if you love what you’ve figured out for your next career, your next section of life, then that will just be a joy. I get geeky excited when something new comes up and I have to learn about it.

And then sometimes it’s frustrating, but I eventually grasp it because we work hard to do that, and then something else will come up. Right, Right, right. So really, from kind of a few chapters back, it’s really talking about transitioning.

Right. Either something that looks interesting or exciting, that seems like a natural path forward, and then sometimes transitioning out of something that might not be serving you anymore. Absolutely, absolutely.

And then we move into top takeaways for more than 30 years. Yeah. And that I just.

I think that’s interesting because I wanted to summarize it all for anyone who is feeling overwhelmed or a little more lost in this process. In the beginning, you know, in the beginning, like I said, it’s rolling the dice and kind of trying to figure out what it is that you’re. That sings to your heart, that makes you happy.

And in that chapter, I just wanted to summarize all the points that I had brought up. So it’ll Be easy takeaway for anybody who wanted to just really go back. If you, if you weren’t like writing notes or underlining or filling in, you could go into that chapter and just, and just know that a life well lived comes from aligning your values and your actions.

And that was the biggest takeaway, I think, from that section is aligning your values and your actions and always being driven by your personal. Whatever your moral values are. So a minor would be like emphasizing my faith, family, passion, flexibility, determination.

Those are kind of all words that I use to describe and to fuel myself every day. Is this aligning with my faith? Is this aligning with my family? Is this aligning with my personal passion? Am I being flexible? And do I feel like I can continue to be determined in this career line? So. Right, right.

Makes sense. And then we’re almost at the end of the book at this point, aren’t we? We are. That’s chapter 20 is you’re meant for greatness.

And I think this is, this is so important to really sit on and think about because every one of us was created for a purpose. And whatever that purpose is, you have been given us specific sets of skills to be great in that. And I think if we can embrace that again, it’s kind of like the reviews improve thing, but it’s now it’s on yourself embracing that.

I am going to be great at this. If you, I, you know, you never see a football player who starts when they’re, you know, 10 years old playing football and they say, I want to be an okay football player one day, I’ll be okay. You know, that’s.

No, you say, I’m going to be in the NFL one day. I’m going to be big. You know, this is, this is what that child is saying every day.

I’m going to be the next greatest. This. Every singer that gets out there and wants to make it big in the world when they’re, they’re so young these days, like 14, 15 year olds starting music careers.

And they, they don’t start out saying, I’m going to give this a shot. You know, I’m gonna sing some songs and I’ll be okay. You know, they say, I am going to nail this song.

This is what I’m going to do. And, and it’s so important in our careers to do that too. To just always be encouraging yourself and embracing your own personal greatness.

And so that’s kind of what that was about. Hey, business owners got a blog, but no time for a podcast. The blogcast by Neiman Creative transforms your written content into a dynamic, listenable experience without the hassle or high costs of traditional podcasting.

Your words, your message, our audio expertise, bringing your brand to life in the podcast world. Turn your blog into a powerful marketing tool today by visiting neymancreative.com to get started. I love that thought of personal greatness, because so, so many times we fantasize and we think greatness has to be connected to something bigger than ourselves, be it fame or whatever.

And that’s not what you’re saying at all. No. And connect to your purpose, your vision, your passion, and find greatness in that and let that lead you to whatever it is that you’re going to find yourself doing in this world that we live in.

Right, Exactly. Exactly. And everyone, you know, everyone has that potential, like I said, and to do meaningful and beautiful work.

And I think it’s. It’s pulling that moral alignment, your vision, your drive, and all those things all come together and just staying true to who you are, and that’s going to produce your personal greatness. Also with all the other things like continued learning and being flexible.

So all these things kind of roll into one to. To produce your own personal greatness. Everybody has greatness in them, and everybody deserves that feeling.

So I want to check in with Carrie and Stephanie, see if you have any questions for our author. All right. Well, good.

And so was this view in life, your optimism and everything, was there a catalyst that caused this, or was this always kind of your natural way of looking at life? Or is it something learned? Or is it something that you just had in you? I would say it’s. It’s definitely something I’ve grown over the years. I think a lot of it was from my children, raising them and saying, oh, my goodness, you might be the best artist I’ve ever seen, daughter.

You know, and. And. And, oh, my gosh, I don’t think anybody can pop a skateboard like you, son.

You know, just all those little things that you say as they’re growing up, you. You’re constantly affirming them. And after all those years when I was going through the.

What am I going to do when my kids have all left the house and I have this empty home, and I’m so used to having a revolving front door with four kids, and I always had a friend over, so there were no less than eight teenagers in my home at a time back then, and I loved that. What I’m going to do with that silence, it’s going to be deafening at Some point. And my husband encouraged me a couple years before the last one left.

Let’s start thinking about what you love to do, and let’s start finding your joy. And we went on that journey together. And as we were.

As we were trying to figure out all those things, I think my kids would come to me and go, mom, but you’re. You’re the best at this. Why don’t you try that, Mom? You’re the best at that.

And they started, in turn, encouraging me. And so that kind of became. It was something that was always in me, I guess, but it became something that was.

I was used to doing on a daily basis with my children. And then it came back to me, and then I thought, oh, gosh, I’ve got to start encouraging and blessing and sprinkling sunshine in other people’s lives, other than just my kids and their friends. And that I have a lot to give and a lot to teach.

And I’m excited to do it because that’s kind of what I’ve been doing my whole life now. So I hope that answers your question. Yeah, that’s amazing.

And I was going to ask, do you do, like, group talks or anything like that, or are you open to doing that? I think this topic is very important, especially, you know, with the work that I do. There’s a lot of people with the federal cuts and all of that that have lost their jobs or that don’t know if they’ll have a job, and they’re like, the job Corps got caught 50%. So a lot of those kids that were, you know, learning these things or getting that confidence from these kinds of sources are, you
know, gonna relate to your story and just.

Is that something that you’re open to doing? Absolutely, absolutely. Public speaking on smaller groups, larger groups, young and old. I absolutely want to always encourage others to do exactly what I’ve done and help them along that path.

So, yes, I would absolutely love to encourage and speak with others. Absolutely. There might be some collaboration we can do as a group here.

That would be kind of exciting. So, having just been to a panel discussion through the Tampa Ad Federation last night on AI, I’m curious whether you are using AI if you’re fearing AI as someone who is in an industry that certainly AI is diving into quickly, whether that impacts you, whether you’re. Whether.

Again, just. I’m just kind of curious because I. I know there are so many tools out there. I think the.

One of the biggest takeaways last night was basically when it comes to prompting garbage in Garbage out. We all, we understand that, but of course, where do you, where do you see that? I’m just curious where you see that in the context of writing, speaking, blogging, you name it. You know, there’s, I think the more AI develops, it’s, it’s going to be a great help for productivity for everybody in every career.

Pretty much it’s going to span everything. But I will tell you, when it first came out, it was probably, it was probably the hardest hit I’ve had since starting this career. Sunk my heart, like, oh my goodness, if a AI can do this, then what value am I? But I had to readjust and adapt to how am I going to use this? So now I need to become the expert in using AI so that, and learn it so that I can understand how it can help me.

And it has become like a personal assistant sitting beside me and saying, hey, I need to research this, this and that. Can you jump in there and, and give me everything? You know, that said, you can’t always trust what it comes up with. You’ve got to go to the source yourself.

If it says Oprah Winfrey said this, you need to go to Oprah Winfrey’s website and make sure she said that. So I think we need to approach it with caution and always double check everything. And I think that’s one of the biggest problems we’re seeing with bloggers right now is they’re putting in information and getting out junk.

And that is going to be very evident. And I can tell if something’s written in AI like this, and I think that is going to be a problem for a lot of people who are thinking they can get some cheap SEO work on their website and it’s not, it’s not going to work for them in the end. You need a human going in there and really critiquing and tweaking the information.

So I think people are doing themselves a disservice to think that if you’re not, if you are, let’s say, a plumber and, or something like that, and you think you’re going to write your own blogs for your website and you have no experience in writing or, and no understanding of SEO and things like that, you’re going to do yourself a disservice. So then I had to come to those terms with AI and learn that I am still valuable. I do need to hone that skill so that I understand it and I can become
friends with it and I do use it, but it does not do my writing.

It does it’s my research assistant. Now, correct me if I’m wrong in this, because I think last time you mentioned you have clients that maybe submit work to you. Do you do editing also? I do.

I do do some editing. Is it creating more work for you? When they present something to you that is written with AI language, does it create more work? Or is it. I would think it does.

It does. But the funny thing about authors, and being one myself, I can say this. Authors don’t like to be critiqued on their work, although they need to be critiqued on their work.

And they’re asking for the editing, but they don’t like to hear it. And so when you have to call them out and say, I’m really sorry, but this has a lot of AI language in it, that’s very difficult, and I hate having to do that. But I can give them the specific terms that they’re using repetitively within their AI work and help them to remove that and just express how important it is for them to really read your work.

Read your work out loud. Read what Chat gave you out loud. But the biggest thing I can’t use anymore, I can’t use the word thrilled, because AI is always thrilled about everything I am.

So if you’re trying to find copies, I’m thrilled to say I can’t be thrilled anymore. What other AI giveaways are there that you can kind of share with us in the world of. Okay, go ahead, Stephanie.

The emojis. When they leave the emojis for marketing stuff, you can tell that that’s chatgpt, because I use the exact same prompt that they’re using. Right.

For marketing stuff. But I went in and I edited the edit that I was sent by ChatGPT afterward so that it didn’t seem like, you know, AI. But that was always a debt giveaway for me was the little emojis.

And actually, I have to step out and meet with my president of the board. You’re leaving us? We’ll say hi for us. Thank you so much, and we’ll talk soon.

Yes, thanks. I’ll see you guys later. Thanks for being him.

Tell them we all want to collaborate with them. Yes. All right, we’ll see you soon.

So what. What giveaway were you going to tell us about? Sunny? What did. In a world of.

In a world of. That sounds like a movie voiceover. Yeah.

In. In the. In the digital era, those are really bad.

And whether you do this or that, that is a. It’s a. Don’t.

You just. Don’t you just. Because I know there are tools and I don’t know that they’re specifically in OpenAI or chat or whatever, but there are tools that you can take your writing and it will basically make it Google and SEO friendly or point out the.

But is that just more AI doing that? Does AI do its own AI editing itself over itself to, to be able to say, yeah, that’s going to be a red flag. And I don’t know who decides because Google changes its mind all the time. What’s the right algorithm? What’s the right number of this or that to get your, especially on your SEO stuff? I don’t think there’s any way you can say that a machine at this point could write an actually SEO optimized article.

I, I, I don’t think, I don’t think there. You would have to put a lot of programming into it, the AI, to, to get it to do exactly what you want it to do. I always go back through everything and add in the optimization for the article because it’s, it’s not, it’s not there quite yet.

But I don’t put a Beyond them, but. And then Grammarly. Yeah, exactly.

And Grammarly, when you, you know, a lot of college students use that for their editing, but there’s now a check for plagiarism and check for AI language. And it just highlights for you the sections that sound like AI. And sometimes even my writing, they, they say it sounds like AI or something, but it’s just because those, they’re picking up on those words.

I think part of the challenge is it’s getting better and better and better and better. I mean, I literally was talking with these guys from Spectrum and they have this whole, I forget what it’s called, but they have a program where they basically will enter a prospective client’s website, whatever, and in three minutes it spits out an actual TV commercial. That’s actually.

Okay, that’s the scary part. I know I’m the one that brought up AI, but I want to, with two minutes to go. And I know I always, well, you know, because in Josh’s thing at the end, I asked the God question, which just kind of threw everybody off when it came to truth and not truth.

But so all three of us, I think if I know your histories a little bit, were that person, Sonny, Eric, Carrie, that when they were however old it was, I’m going to be the next opera empress, you know, you know, phenom, I’m going to be the best actor, I’m going to be Barry Mano. Here we are at 9:59, and we’re. I’m not going to say how old.

I think I may I. I’m pretty sure I know I’m the oldest one on the room in the room, but do we. Do we, as do we still aspire? When do we decide that’s no longer the aspiration? And. And to your point, I’m okay with.

I’m just going to play, you know, down at Blackleaf every once in a while or. Or so. I’m just curious for all three of you because I know, Eric, you’re.

One of your catchphrases is no regrets. So at what point do we decide, yeah, that was a fun idea, but I’m okay now. Or is it always that kind of like in what’s the book I’m drawing a blank on right now, where he never goes to Mecca because he doesn’t want to be disappointed.

Sure. I can’t. Can’t think of it right now.

But anyway, when I read that book, I was like, oh, my God, the dream is always going to be there. But if you go and it didn’t happen, you’re disappointed. So don’t go there.

Live with the dream in the future. Right. So who wants to go first? Well, I have a couple of things, but first, my mom said something recently, and my grandmother had said it years before.

She had said at one point, she says, you know, I’m 80 years old and I still want to have another baby. There are always things that, you know, she’s. My mom just recently got chickens.

She lives in Dunedin and she got baby chickens. And I said, mom, what would possess. You don’t want baby chickens? She goes, something to care for, something to love.

It’s a new baby. And so as women, that is kind of something that stays with you and you’re always wanting more. But as entrepreneurs, it’s kind of the same thing.

You’re always wanting that next thing. So I think when it doesn’t serve you anymore, that’s when you’re okay to say, okay, that was really fun. That was a great ride.

I had a great time doing that. But I’m ready to move on to something different, whether that’s country club life or a whole nother career or a whole nother. You know, reading all the.

My mom also did one time all of the golden. Oh, what’s it called? The children’s books that had the little badge on them. Right, right, right.

Golden Ribbon. What was it? I know exactly about. Yeah, she wanted to read Every single one of those that has ever been out.

And that was a goal of hers. And so I think, I think our goals, when it no longer serves us, we say, okay, I’m done with that and move on. And I think that’s a little Marie Kondo kind of thing.

Exactly. Doesn’t bring me joy anymore. Thank you for giving me the pleasure of buying this thing I never wore.

Now I’m getting rid of it. Right, right. Sorry.

So what do you think, Eric? Well, I encourage people in the work I do daily for unconditional self love and self acceptance. Yeah, you don’t have to be anything other than you are in this moment. You’re absolutely a thousand percent perfect in this moment.

Now, once we accept that, what’s next? What is it that you aspire to that’s healthy, that’s fine, that’s okay. But we don’t have to be a preconceived idea of what the world wanted for us, what our parents wanted for us, or even what we thought we wanted for ourselves. If we accept that this is pretty darn good what we have right now.

And then when I talk about no regrets, if I start to regret, that is really negating all of my blessings that I have in this current moment. And I think that if I were to pursue the 20 or 30 year old Eric now, I wouldn’t have everything I have now. I wouldn’t have my five kids and my grandbaby and a 36 year marriage and the opportunity to work with people.

It would morph into something else. But I like what I have right now, so. Yeah, I mean, I want people.

And the funny thing is that I’m coming up on 60 and I created such a, such a life for myself that I almost became passive. And you can’t really be passive as an entrepreneur. So I came up with a term in the year 2025 which is Zen aggressive.

I can be at peace, but I’ve got to be aggressive in pursuing what’s the next step. So that’s my, that’s my goal for 2025 is Zen aggressive. Zen aggressive.

I love that. It makes me chuckle. Yes.

And every now and then, you know, I’m feeling like maybe I’ll go out and read a book by the lake or something. It’s like, oh, I gotta do something more. So I don’t know.

Carrie, did you want to chime in on it at all? Well, so it’s interesting. I, I think it was last week there was a, A, I forget what, what of the many Zillion things I listened to and watch. But I think one of the takeaways that I like was don’t build your life around your business, but build your business around your life.

And I think that’s kind of so. By the way, Eric, if you want to go read a book by the lake, you know, it’s okay. I think when I. Another thing that came from one of our Sun Leader exercises and boy, when, when we sat around that day and I, I thought we were going to talk about things that happened in our life on, in our business.

And Carol gave an example. Hi Carol. If you watch this on repeating where there was a.

Had a horrific situation with her son and she left for I think, I don’t know if it was three, six, nine months, but left and how could I do that? And came back and found out, you know what? My life, my business, it’s all still here. It’s all. It’s okay to stop and take a break.

Not, you know, the world’s not going to end. Now some people are in situations where they, maybe they can’t actually do that, but apparently you can. Yeah.

Yeah. If you go to the lake, you know, maybe it’s. You said you’re an early riser.

Maybe you get up and read at 6 because most people don’t want calls at 6 o’ clock in the morning to be. And that’s the funny thing though, right, is you start to find that Zen. It’s like, well, maybe I’ll read all day, maybe I’ll read all week.

Right? Right. So instead of a zoom, so, so instead of a zoom, what do they call it? A zoom scroll or death scroll. You’re.

You’re doing a Zen scroll. I’m doing an old man turn the pages scroll. That’s what I’m doing.

You’re filled. And to your point, today, in fact, I am doing exactly that. I’m leaving something that was beautiful and served me for a while and it no longer serves me because I need what aligns with my family, my life, my passion, my goals.

My fate is to move to a new home. And my house is on a truck right now being delivered. And that’s where I’m headed to is the new house in just a few minutes.

So we continue to talk about transitions and it never stops, does it? It never stops and it’s taking whatever and you know, I loved living here. Where I live, I’ve lived for the. For quite a while now and it has been a blast.

And I don’t want to leave it but taking everything into account in my life that I do with my faith, my family, my passions, what I do. And I’m just adjusting it to be more available for five incredible new lives in this world. My grandkids.

That’s beautiful. Yeah. So you are literally, once you hang up with us, you’re going to get back to moving, Like, Yeah, immediately.

So putting my overnight bag in a suitcase or in my. In my car, and I’m driving to the new house, opening the doors and telling the movers to bring it all in. Well, I have absolutely enjoyed our time together.

Sprinkle it with Sunshine by Sunny Bearwald, our author. Right here. It’s a remarkable gift, and I appreciate, Carrie, you being part of our conversation and, Sunny, for you sharing your work with us.

We’re going to publish this recording that we’ve done, try to tell everybody about it. And listeners, if you’re out there, pick up this book. And then to the first part of our conversation, if you get the chance, leave a review.

Right, of course. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Any final thoughts for you? Just thank you so much for this time, for these discussions. It’s been so much fun and so interesting to get into, learn about everybody’s lives and everybody’s entrepreneurial journeys and to feel also like we’re kind of all in the same boat. It’s really been nice to feel that, yeah, there is that comfort, isn’t there? That we’re not alone, no matter how often we think we are.

There is commonality. I think that’s a beautiful thing. And go out and sprinkle somebody’s day with sunshine.

I love that. So, sun listeners out there, that is your commandment. Go out and sprinkle somebody’s life with sunshine today.

And until next time, we appreciate you. See you soon, Sam.