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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Self-Initiative Project Podcast.

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I’m your host, Jim O’Brien.

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Hey, hey, and welcome back. Welcome to Episode 54. You know,

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we’ve been doing this podcast now for four and a half years,

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roughly. Right at four and a half years.

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And I realized that I had never taken a second out to say why it is we’re trying

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to do what it is we’re doing here with the Self-Initiative Project.

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So I know this will probably be a fairly quick podcast, maybe my fastest.

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I don’t know. We’ll find out.

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But I wanted to put together an episode where we talked about why and what our

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mission is and what we’re trying to do here.

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But before we get started, just anecdotally, you know, I run this podcast about

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once a month because I have a life and I have a full-time job that I do.

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And every month I work to bring material that I think will be useful or someone

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might be able to take a nugget of information away from.

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And I have all this equipment that I set up for the podcast.

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I don’t leave it out all the time because I don’t want it cluttering up the

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place and I don’t want it collecting dust and all that good stuff.

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So every month when it’s time to record, whether I have a guest or not,

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I’ve got to get all of that gear out my digital recorder my

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mixing board and plug in all the cables and get

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my microphone in place and all of that and every month

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I have the same thought man I hope this works or I hope I I get the knobs in

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the right adjustment or the cables in the right place so hopefully this time’s

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no exception we’ve got it done there have been a couple of faux pas on podcast

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in the past hopefully this won’t be one of them.

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But after four and a half years, I thought it was high time that I kind of took

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a minute out and steered away from topics of personal safety and preparedness

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and whatnot and talk about why we’re here.

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And if you’ve been following us for any period of time, you know,

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you’ve probably heard me say this before.

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And if you’re new or if you haven’t heard me say it before, the Self-Initiative

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Project was founded on the premise that we are all responsible for our own personal

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safety and preparedness.

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And if you don’t follow that or if you don’t subscribe to that philosophy,

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you’re probably not interested in what we’re doing here and what we have to say in the first place.

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But that was kind of the genesis of forming the Self-Initiative Project in the

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first place, you know, and that’s kind of why I came up with the name that I

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did, the Self-Initiative Project.

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Like, you have to take initiative for yourself and work on that to then have,

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you know, to take on and have and understand that you’re responsible for your

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own personal safety and preparedness.

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But we really hadn’t talked about why. But I want to,

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give you some examples, because I think so oftentimes we think that bad things

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can rarely happen or will never happen to us.

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And I’m always asking myself the question, and I’ve posed it to other guests

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on the show as well, you know, what can we do to get other people,

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more people invested and interested in their own personal safety?

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And no one seems to have a good answer. But, you know, Over the years,

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I’ve seen a lot of examples, as I’m sure we all have, if we’re honest about it.

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About people getting into situations that if they had been more knowledgeable

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or better prepared or owned their own personal safety, they may have avoided

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some things or just had some basic knowledge and training, right?

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You know, you’ve probably heard me,

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if you haven’t, I did a podcast, it was my podcast 46, where I talked about

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who am I, you know, who is this guy, and more about me and my personal safety journey.

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So if you haven’t listened to that, I recommend going back to that on podcast 46.

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But, you know, one of the things that I talked about there myself,

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which might be the cause of why I’m so vested in personal safety and preparedness

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now, and I don’t deny that it certainly isn’t a small part of it.

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But growing up, I was bullied and my family, my parents and my sister and I

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were burglarized two or three times over the years when I was growing up.

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And, you know, so I’ve seen firsthand what, you know,

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what can happen and, you know, what it means when you’re not prepared,

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when you don’t have the alarm system installed in your house to prevent the

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burglary or help slow it down in the first place.

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When you don’t have the self-defense skills or the de-escalation skill or maybe

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the sense of humor to help de-escalate, you know, whatever it is to avoid bullying. Yeah.

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Or not knowing what adult I can tell, or not feeling like I can tell an adult.

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So I personally have experienced at least, those are just a couple of things

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that in my youth I dealt with growing up personally.

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I had a neighbor a number of years ago wreck his sport bike right out in front of my house.

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And matter of fact, he hit my curb and took out my mailbox and his bike came

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to rest right behind my car that happened to be parked at the base of my driveway that particular day,

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you know, for whatever reason, it was just the coincidence and timing of things.

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And he had no helmet on and he got road rash pretty bad.

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And, you know, it was very clear that his wife was panicked.

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You know, she was worried about him. And yes, she called 911.

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But, you know, beyond that, there wasn’t really any knowledge about what to

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do for him or to try to talk to him and get him to sit down and calm down and

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rest and wait on first responders to get there.

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You know, not knowing if he had more severe injuries than, you know,

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road rash on top of his bald head.

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I had a VP that I worked under a few years back, VP in my IT department.

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And when I was there, I was fortunate enough that my CIO at the time allowed

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me to do some basic trauma training for the IT organization.

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And I did a couple of classes and had like 16 people show up,

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which was better than I thought was going to happen, but I was teaching them

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all how to deal with severe bleeding.

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You know, packing wounds, compression, pressure, tourniquet use,

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those basic types of trauma, trauma things.

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And this particular VP, she said, I wish I wish I had come to your class because

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she’s like, I don’t know that I know what to do.

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She’s like, my son was swinging on a rope over a river once and swung out over

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the rope, you know, over the river and let go and wound up lacerating his foot severely.

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And she’s like, I had no clue what to do. She’s like, we just grabbed him up,

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wrapped a towel around his foot and drove him to the emergency room.

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She’s like, but I had no idea what to do to stop his bleeding.

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And I don’t think she’s alone. I think there’s a lot of people like that.

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I’ve got another friend who, you know, he does the basics. He’s got a security

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system in his house. He locks his doors.

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But he’s not into the environment. He’s not into the topic like I am, right?

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Like, he’ll tell you, I just don’t care about that, or I’m not worried about that.

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So my point is, just giving you some of these examples, is illustrate that folks

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are all over the place when it comes to things like their personal safety and preparedness.

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A girl that I dated years ago never locked the doors on her house.

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She believed it was too much effort to get out for her or her children to have

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to get out keys to let themselves in.

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Now, you could argue that she might have been in an area where it was less susceptible

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to someone coming up or someone getting in or breaking in.

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But to me, it was such a foreign thing for someone in today’s times to actually

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have that attitude and be very flippant about their security and well-being.

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So there’s people, again, there’s people all over different places in mindset.

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That, you know, I’ve got a good friend since high school that,

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you know, he owns guns and he shoots once, maybe every two or three years.

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And, you know, he wants to carry concealed or keep a gun in his vehicle or ask

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me what defensive ammo to get, but he hardly ever shoots.

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I mean, even once a year counts, not much. And then he’s worried about defensive ammo.

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And I’m like, how do you plan on using that gun? You don’t even shoot that often

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to be good at it, and you’ve gotten no training.

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Of course, I don’t say it that way to him.

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But I do try to encourage him to get out and utilize that tool if he thinks

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he plans on using it in a home defense or self-defense scenario.

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And, you know, I think relative to preparedness,

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I think COVID has shown us all, or at least I hope it has, that we shouldn’t

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wait until the last minute, until an announcement is made through the wonderful

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media news channels that something bad is occurring.

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And we saw that with COVID, right? We saw people rushing to the stores to hoard

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things, whether it was, you know, Lysol Clorox wipes, rubbing alcohol.

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N95 masks to protect against viruses.

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You know, those disappeared off the shelf almost immediately because everyone

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went into this panicked state and they waited until the last minute.

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Not that in the case of COVID, it was really a last minute thing,

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but it was a situation that arose out of nothing or came up very quickly, seemingly.

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And so everyone panicked and then there was hoarding and then you couldn’t get

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supplies and the supplies that were available were reserved for hospital staff and first responders.

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You know, we found ourselves in a bit of a pickle.

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So COVID, I think, caught us or a lot of us off guard, myself included,

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but I also did have some things in stock already. And we’ll talk about that

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another time potentially.

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And then most recently, I’m just going to bring it up timely,

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Hurricane Ian, Ian, however they’re saying it.

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You know, that is a case of, again, you should have some supplies in place already, like water, food.

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Batteries, flashlights, candles, a hand crank radio, those sorts of things.

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And you shouldn’t be waiting until something bad happens to think about getting

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prepared and having supplies in place.

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So again, those are just some examples of things that have happened even more recently.

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Things we, if we think about it, we probably all, and if they haven’t happened to us directly,

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we probably all, or a good portion of us have all known someone that has had

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something bad happened to them or have been caught off guard with something.

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So as I’ve mentioned already, I’ve talked about myself previously,

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which I really don’t like to do, but you know, in this context,

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I’m not a super expert. I’m like, I am not former military.

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I’m not former law enforcement.

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I’m not former first responder of any sort.

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I like to say that I’m just an average guy that took initiative and had an interest

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in learning these things for myself.

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And if you go back to listen to podcast 46, I talk about a lot of that stuff.

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But I think, you know, one of the reasons why people don’t take initiative and

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take responsibility for themselves is because they either figure first responders

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will always handle it for them or the simple fact that it will just not happen to them.

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Nothing bad will happen to them, or the chances are so low they’re just going to not worry about it.

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And we’ve seen time and time again that that’s not the case.

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Bad things do happen. We’re just lucky that they don’t happen more than they do.

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And as great as first responders are, and I’m very thankful for those men and

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women doing those jobs, those thankless jobs, we know that time to get to scene can be pretty big.

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And in the case of something like severe bleeding, time is precious.

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And so what are you going to do?

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You’re going to sit around and wait for them, or are you going to take initiative

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and responsibility to act for yourself?

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And so, you know, for me, I’m not an expert.

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I don’t view myself as an expert. I’ve done some martial arts.

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I’ve done some Krav Maga, I’ve done some firearms work, but I like to think

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that I’m like everybody else out there in podcast land listening.

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It’s just that I did take an interest and I did take the initiative and I own

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the fact that it is my responsibility.

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You know, my personal safety and my preparedness is my responsibility.

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So I’m, I’m no one special.

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And I’ve talked about that before, just as a sidebar note, talking about other

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related podcasts that I’ve done, you know, podcast 23 was why be invested in your personal safety.

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And I think that’s a good one for you to go back and listen to if you haven’t

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yet, as well as podcast 33, which is, you know, having the mentality of,

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Oh, it’ll never happen to me.

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And case in point, That podcast, we talk about a handful of situations that

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happened to the different folks that I actually happen to have on the podcast

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as guests, talk through their stories because things can happen.

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You know, the question’s been asked, as I mentioned a minute ago,

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that, you know, I’m always wondering what it’s going to take to make more people

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interested in their own personal safety and preparedness.

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And don’t like to think this the case, but I think the reality of it is until

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something bad has happened,

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folks are not so willing to look after themselves because they don’t think they

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need to, or it’s not top of mind. And I’m here to tell you that’s not the case.

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And I would rather be proactive and preemptive and ahead of it than having to

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deal with it and follow up and respond to it after it’s happened.

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So why are we here? So when we started, because I’ve done so much,

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and again, just average person, but I’ve done so much.

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Yeah, I got some certifications, yada, yada, yada. I’ve taken a lot of classes, had some training.

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I thought when I started this four and a half years ago, I thought I’ve got all this knowledge.

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I want to be able to give back. So I should start trying to figure out how to

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disseminate this information out to the public at large for them to have available

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at their leisure and at their disposal.

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So that’s how I came up with the podcast to begin with. As I said,

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I’ve got all this information in my noggin. I want to share it and get it out there.

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And that’s kind of how and why we came to be.

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The point of this, and getting to the point that I’ve been dragging this out

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this whole podcast for, is why are we really here?

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And I think the thing that separates me from a lot of folks is it is because

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I believe that being safer and prepared is better.

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My why is I believe that being safe or safer and prepared or more prepared is better than not.

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That coupled with the fact that all of this information that I have,

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all this knowledge that I’ve collected over the years, I wanted to share out there.

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And, you know, I think it’s Socrates, and I may have mentioned this in past

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podcasts, but I think it was Socrates that says, I can’t make you learn anything.

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And, you know, I can’t, I certainly can’t make you do anything, but maybe what I can do.

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And of course I’m paraphrasing and messing up his actual quote,

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if he actually ever said it, but he said, I can’t make you learn anything,

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but I can make you think about it.

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And so even if I can’t motivate you to do anything different,

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I might make you think about it if you’re listening to us or following us on social media.

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So like I said, the why is because I think being safer and better prepared is better overall.

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But as I’ve said many times over podcasts, and if you’ve been following us for

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a while, you’ve heard me say this more than once,

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I do firmly believe that if I can get out one piece of information that makes

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someone think about something that they hadn’t previously,

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that I’ve done my job, and if someone acts upon something I’ve said or some

00:17:24.203 –> 00:17:29.143
information that I’ve provided to them, and it changes the way they go about

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something and what they do for themselves or their families.

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Then I’ve really accomplished my goal, what I setting out in doing this podcast.

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So that’s my why I believe that being safer and prepared is better.

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And I wanted to help share and give back by sharing the information that I’ve amassed over the years.

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So, uh, and if I can do it, you can do it.

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So with that, we’ll wrap up this quick episode.

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I appreciate you listening. i encourage you to

00:17:59.544 –> 00:18:04.344
go back to listen to our previous podcasts and i hope you’ll join us for futures

00:18:04.344 –> 00:18:12.164
future podcasts and if you like what you’re hearing then please share and recommend

00:18:12.164 –> 00:18:18.664
us to your friends and family we would greatly appreciate it thanks for so much for being here so.