WEBVTT

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Wait What Really OK.

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With your host, Loren Weisman.

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This is a fully licensed theme song

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for the show about stuff
that makes you say,

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Wait What Really OK.

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I haven't done a Wait What Really OK in
a while and what I'm sharing is the most

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proud thing I've ever been a part of and
bypassing any album, any song, what I did

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as a drummer, what I did behind the
scenes as a drummer, what I did as a music

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producer, TV, the consulting, the
strategy, the communication, the speaking.

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All of that to me pales in comparison
to what I just put out with my daughter.

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My daughter and I have released
a book from both of us.

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It's called Alphabet Animal Adventures
Across America: A to Z with Friends, Foods

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and Places to Go. There is nothing I've
ever created in my life before and I'm

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sure nothing after that will have the
meaning that this does and the story

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behind it and the elements that just
make it into one of the most amazing

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experiences that I've been able to
have creatively with my daughter.

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Three and a half years ago,
let's just jump right into it.

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Three and a half years ago I was working
in my office and in my office I had at

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that office in that house I had some
posters of some of the other books and my

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books on the shelf and my daughter knew
even at that age that I worked with other

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people and I helped them with their
books as well as writing mine.

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She came in at one point and said, I want
to write a book and I thought it was just

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the coolest thing. Then it was I want
to write a children's book and we talked

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about some of the children's books that
we read together and the stuff that we've

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enjoyed. And it was a fun conversation.
She took off, she was doing other things.

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Being busy.

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And the same day, I think it might have
been an hour later, she came back in and

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said, I want to write a book with you.
And that was one of those tear-jerking

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moments, just thinking
how cool that could be.

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And I said, absolutely. Let's. And then
it was unfortunate because it was the

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immediate follow up of,
oh, well, we can't do that.

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Well, this is too much.
Well, I can't do this.

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Well, I can't. We can absolutely do this
and we can absolutely do it together.

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And we talked for a little bit right
before I had to get on another call.

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After that call though, before she went
to bed that night, I said, we'll start the

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foundation of this book this weekend.
We'll start it on Saturday morning.

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And she asked, what's a foundation?
We're just going to write.

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And I said, I want to show you a little
bit of what I do with other clients and

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what I did with my book.
And we'll do that together.

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She was interested. So fast forward a few
days, we're at a Panera together, and I

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laid out a little this Excel sheet
and then this notepad next to it.

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So the Excel sheet was on the computer
and there was a notepad next to it.

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And I began to draw ideas
and then ask her, okay.

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What's this book going to be about?
What are we going to do for a theme?

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I wasn't trying to turn her
into a client by any means.

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I wasn't trying to go too complex, but
I wanted to give it a foundation of

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something that had the
validity that we could create.

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Not, you know, crazy, proper formatting,
but something to give a base to teach her.

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How to build, how to build pieces, how
to stand out, how to just amplify the

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creativity and also at the same time not
feel bound to a structure, but allow a

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structure that could help her to create.

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So we talked about different
ideas and we talked about animals.

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And when she was even before she was
born, I used to go to this bookstore.

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And at that bookstore for a number
of weeks before she was born, I got a

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different animal there each time and
brought it back to the crib in the room

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that she would eventually
have. And it was A through Z.

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And we named all these animals, me and my
ex-wife, and we named these animals and we

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had them there for her. And
she kept them for many years.

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She still has some of them. Some of them
are in storage, some of them, who knows

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where they are. But there was something
about those animals and we talked about

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that. And she had this
sort of raised bed with

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it was like a higher bunk bed with this
space underneath and all these animals for

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the animals from then and the new ones and
so we talked about an animal theme and we

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talked about naming each of the animals.

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Then the alphabet concept kept coming up.

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The concept of, okay, where do we make it
a little bit more with an alphabet book?

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And we looked at some of the books that
she read and we came up with this idea

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together. This was not me leading her. It
was her being guided with an idea of how

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to find the creativity that was in her.
This is so much her and I love that and I

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love the creativity of it and in some ways
while I was kind of opening ideas or you

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know orchestrating directions
it was her who drove.

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It was her who created. The vision
was hers and I was along for the ride.

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So what she came up with and what we
decided together was that each animal, it

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would be the, you know,
A, like A for alligator.

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And we named, you know, we named Arnie the
Alligator, which was the first animal that

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I got. And it was named after my
grandfather on my father's side.

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And then we said, okay,
where's Arnie going to go?

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And we looked up a map on the computer and
we started seeing this theme and she began

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to say, okay, well you know, let's have it

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go to different names,
A to Z in this country.

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I thought that was cool. I was
a little concerned about some of

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the weirder letters,
but we got through that.

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So our first set and we spent probably
the better part and it was fun, it wasn't

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work, but we spent the better part of
I'd say three to four hours on Arnie the

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Alligator and that he would end
up going to Atlanta, Georgia.

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And where was he going
to go to? An aquarium.

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And one of my favorite no, I won't say one
of my favorite, my favorite aquarium is in

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Atlanta, Georgia. It's
this beautiful aquarium.

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If you haven't been and you're
through Atlanta, try it out.

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You might like it. And from there, this
theme began and then we kept adding to it.

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What else can be a letter?
And I said, I don't know.

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What do you think? She
came back and said, food.

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And again, my strategic mind was like,
okay, we're going to get kind of funny

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with the Y's and the
Z's, but no, let's do it.

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This is creative. Let's do it. So it ended
up being apples for Arnie the Alligator in

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Atlanta. And then it was a
theme of different places.

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And I brought some of that. I said, but
you know, we could find different places

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for museums, to places for kids. And my
daughter immediately picked up, oh, these

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are where we can show them places where
they can go, and if they're traveling,

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they can visit to these
places. I love that concept.

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It was beautiful. So we
began to have the template.

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And so that was why we spent a whole
bunch of time going back and forth.

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Figuring out what we were going to do. And
then, in that template, we built the whole

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book off of that. There was another part
as we talked about the illustration part.

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She loved the Where's Waldo and the
elements of trying to find things in

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pictures. Can we do something like that?

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Can we hide something? I said, absolutely.

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And we thought about it together and I
proposed to her, I said, why don't we hide

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the letters?

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So on the Arnie picture, we'll hide
an A somewhere for people to find.

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And we did that.

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It ended up being a long process.
A lot of things happened.

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A lot of stuff happened with my
health. I was away for a while.

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I'm still dealing with certain health
issues that I'm working my way back from.

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And during this process where it got
longer and longer, and then when I was

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away, we were doing certain
stuff by FaceTime and the phone.

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And there was a negativity of, we're
never going to have this book happen.

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And I explained to her, I said, not now
doesn't mean not never or doesn't mean

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never.

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And I told her that the smallest seeds
that we plant, the smallest elements that

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we do each day can add up, can compound,
can bring us to this next level so that

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we're there. We don't know the date. We
don't know how we're going to do this

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quite yet. But we can do
it one step at a time.

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And these little steps occurred. And then
on some visits we said, okay, what's the

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location going to be? What's
going to be the background?

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What are going to be some elements
that maybe the characters would wear?

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What should be happening in the background
in some of the places that are a little

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bit more

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surreal or challenging or okay, we can't
find, you know, we had a little trouble

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with Y.

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And as opposed to a particular location,
it ended up being Yvonne the Youthful Yak

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spooned yummy yogurt yapping
away in Yuma, Arizona.

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So Yuma became the point.

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It was hilarious at times and going
back and forth and finding the different

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elements of what we could create.
And then what we switched around.

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Getting into some of those back pages
and the end of the alphabet, it became a

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little bit challenging. And figuring out,
going, okay, what you know Z, okay, well

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zucchini, that'll be kind of easy.
But X was a challenge for a bit.

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And we were both looking up
things of what would be X or V

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and not in trying to get to, okay,
we need to check this off the list.

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But this one day when we spent a whole
bunch of time with the letter V and

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eventually the vulture that we had and
naming the vulture and where the vulture

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was going to be, it was time
spent together that was amazing.

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It was time spent
together that was loving.

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It was time spent
together that engaged us.

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And it connected us. And it wasn't for
the end result and the end all be all.

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It was an experience in the moment for
that moment, for many moments to come, as

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well as for a goal to be
completed down the line.

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And that made it even more fun.

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As we got to the point where everything
was written, and the way that it was

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written, we picked words. I helped to put
together the final sentences, but we would

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pick words of how we would structure
the sentences, of feelings.

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So for example, Bertram the Bashful
Bear bit into breathtaking blueberries.

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And you know, it was everything from words
that kids would recognize to words that

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they might not have heard of before, words
that would challenge them, and words that,

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you know, could offer them something to
go, okay, I've never heard that word, to

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then listing these real places and
following the legal parameters of how we

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could list them and what we could show in
the background and what we couldn't, to

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some words to know. We added words
like nimble, opulent, polite, quirky,

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remarkable, selfless,

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just to name a few, for a younger child to
potentially connect with as they ask and

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they can see it in the back of the book.

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We hid some other items besides letters.

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My daughter liked the letter concept, but
she wanted to have some other things back

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there. And then in the last stage,
it was creating what we wanted for an

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illustrator.

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And for that illustrator it was the
descriptions of colors, of tones of what

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we wanted to do and how we wanted to do
it, what we wanted in the backgrounds,

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what we wanted in the foreground. And what
ended up happening, the one part of this

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book that was AI but to me is honorable
AI, is one that we mention it on the

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front, on the back and everywhere.
MyStoryBot is something we used for the

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illustrations.

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I tried throughout

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a two to three month period to try
to find an illustrator for this.

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And I didn't have that much luck. There
was one illustrator, there was a lot of

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talk, there was a lot of excitement, there
was a lot of this, and then, you know,

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handing off the idea, going, this is
what we came up with, this is what we're

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thinking, and then being handed
something back that was just.

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They hadn't read the page at all that
we sent them, and they just chose to do

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whatever they wanted
to do. I realized that,

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where things were at, what it would
potentially cost to get it done the right

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way and hand off the 26 pages of
illustrations, call it 27 with the front

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cover and the back original concept.
It would have been a small fortune.

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So I looked at AI and I'm not anti-AI.
My viewpoint, and I've shared it on the

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website, I've shared it in other episodes,
is using AI in an organic, authentic,

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honest way that's transparent.

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So taking I found MyStoryBot and what I
found that I really liked about MyStoryBot

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is that I could upload

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every page.

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Every illustration concept from the
characters of what we wanted from them.

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And we were very specific, and Olivia
was very specific, my daughter was very

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specific about it.

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I think I can say her name
here. I'm saying her name.

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I'm not editing that out. My
daughter was very specific.

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I'm not going to edit it out. You're
going to see it on the cover of the book.

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She was very specific about it because
it was very close to the image of

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a little bear that we got or
zebra that we got at Build-A-Bear.

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And so it had to have certain attributes.

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I changed some of those attributes so, you
know, for licensing and imagery and all

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the legal beagle, it was correct. But we
had the nuances of what we wanted to see,

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of what we didn't want to see. And
in uploading these to MyStoryBot,

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I was immensely impressed

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that it wasn't, again, one of those
books, and there are so many of them, with

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children's books and adult books. They set
in a prompt and send me this, and boom,

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and done.

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When we first got back what
MyStoryBot did with the main 26 pages.

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It was incredible for me to see
that it was what we had envisioned.

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But it was now, it was there
and it was shaped there.

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And there were small
nuances on every page.

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And we adjusted them. And
MyStoryBot allowed that.

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As we went to MyStoryBot and said,
okay, this needs to pull here.

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This is a little bit of an issue
here. This is a little bright here.

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I can't see the letter
I'm trying to hide here.

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It's just too hidden. This element here,
I'd like to change the expression here.

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The juicy jelly beans
in Jamestown, Virginia.

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Jerry the Jolly Jellyfish
was juggling them.

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And the background was great,
and the image of the jellyfish.

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And I know that there probably aren't
really jellyfish in Jamestown, Virginia,

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but there was something off in the
juggling, and it was my daughter that

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caught it. And we caught it, we added in,
saying we'd like to see this, we'd like to

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see that. And we really were able to not
only see something that was well received

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from AI and brought back
in the best way possible.

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But in those small edits, it was the
meticulous stuff that hit right to where

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we envisioned it and right
to what we wanted to see.

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And in that, and in having I mean the
total page upload at the time of all the

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notes that we did and some of the stuff
that I didn't show my daughter because I

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didn't want to overwhelm her. A lot of
times when I was taking certain notes I

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was taking notes in one folder and

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not to go, okay, because I remember at one
point she's like, How is this a 70-page

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book? I said, Olivia,
it's not a 70-page book.

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It's 70 pages of how we make sure it's our
book and every element sits exactly as it

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needs to, to show that it was us.
She even began asking about AI.

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Well so we're just doing
AI. AI's doing it for us.

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And I wasn't deceiving her. I was saying
we've done too much to say AI is doing it

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for us. These are the exact instructions
we would be sending to a real person.

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And on these edits, these are the exact
instructions we would be sending to

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somebody to edit these
things. AI did the job.

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We created the concept. AI
delivered the illustration.

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We edited that. It's ours. And
she began to understand that.

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So

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to me it's the use of
it with transparency.

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And I state that in the book and online.

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We use MyStoryBot. This is how we used it.

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This is how we created it together.
This is how long it took us.

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From there on the completion, on a special
day after a couple day visit that we had

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together, I asked her if
she wanted to publish it.

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And I walked her through,
she sat with me, and very

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determined, very committed, I kind of
expected her to get bored and be done.

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She was right there next to the computer
looking at every single thing happening.

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And I walked her through the aspect of
this is what the copyright is, and this is

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how we file for what's called an ISBN, and
this is how we get a Library of Congress

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control number, and all the pieces, and
some of the stuff for the filings where I

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began to set up I would do a little
bit later when I wasn't with her.

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But I walked her through all the pieces of
the publishing and I used the publishing

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model that I use and I've used in the past
and I've shared with some of the people

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that I work with. And we had it up and
being checked and being reviewed that

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day. A week later. It was
correctly and fully published.

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As of right now, it's
on Amazon as a Kindle.

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You can get it as a paperback little
eight and a half by eight and a half book.

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It's glossy, it's a nicer paper, and
because it's the Amazon thing, the price

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is a little higher than what I'd like, but
anything lower it would have actually been

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a negative point coming back and it
would have been a little bit problematic.

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It was sent through also the IngramSpark
system, so it'll be available on Barnes

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& Noble both online and people can order
it in stores, Books-A-Million, many other

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places, many distributors.
Many library systems.

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I'm looking forward to getting it into
the county library and even into her own

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elementary school and
following a great format.

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And again, beyond that, it's not this
thing of you know, some kind of incredible

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massive selling system or
some kind of profit system.

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This is something of a dad and a
daughter, an idea that we stuck with.

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It wasn't a not-now.

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And it was not a never. It just took time.

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And as we did this over time and pieced
it together the right way, the last phase,

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the last lap was much faster
than many of the middle ones.

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And to be a part of this with her, to
watch her be excited, to watch her grow,

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to watch her in the final stages of the
little edits that she wanted shifted, the

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things that she added, and then the
memories that I have going back.

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And I have pictures of her in different
places, and that's most of our thank yous

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is where we worked on it. We
added in Panera, Starbucks,

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different locations, Culver's, places that
we worked on the concept or laid it out or

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scratched it out or wrote into the massive
Excel sheet that I ended up building.

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And I look back on this as just one of
the best and greatest ways to connect.

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And something that I hope that other
fathers and daughters, or mothers and

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daughters, or fathers and
sons could consider trying.

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It's not for popularity. It's to showcase
what's possible and what can be connected

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to and what can be promised
and what can be delivered.

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That's what this means much more as I look
at the book and I hold it in my hand, I

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see promises made, I see creativity, I see
struggle with times, I see doubt, and I

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see this end result and the pride when she
said, I am a published author and I was

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welling up. Because she
is. And she did this.

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And we did this. And we got
to be creative together.

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And we got to create together. And we said
she started this off in that day in the

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office saying this is
what she wants to do.

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And we did it. And it
took time, but we did it.

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And I am so proud of her work.
I'm so proud of this process.

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This book and where it goes from here. I
want to record an audiobook with her so

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that people can read along
or kids can read along.

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I want to see inside of this Dadau
Publishing imprint that I created, short

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for Daddy Daughter, that for other books
she might want to create by herself or

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with friends. She's talked about, you
know, wanting to write a book with

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friends, that now here's a model and
here's a place for her to create.

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I'm looking forward to her getting her
first copy which is going to arrive to her

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tomorrow afternoon.

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Even more so when she gets
that copyright notice.

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And the other element that expands this
and extends this book is each of these

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places. And this is a not right now, but
it's not never, of us to get to go there

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with that book and go to each of these
places where we sent each of these animals

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and the foods that they tried to open up
my daughter to try new foods and try new

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places. I also think about the
idea of some book signings for her.

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She's seen pictures of me. She's seen
things I've done with book signing.

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She goes, I want to do one of those.
We can absolutely do that for you.

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She said she wanted to practice
her signature a little bit.

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Now that the book is out,
I think that's really cute.

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And again to give her an experience and
see what this draws and what this ignites

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for the follow through and for the next
steps of her creativity and what she'll

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commit to and see that certain things
are going to take a little longer.

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But that when you plant the right seed
in the right soil, when you lay the right

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foundation and you build with patience,
perseverance and love, so much more is

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possible. I think beyond this being a
children's book that's out, that this is

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one more step on her journey
for her to see that dreams

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are reachable. And while this was a small
dream and a small promise, as she grows

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bigger dreams, that she understands the
small steps that she can take to reach

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toward them. And just how
much she's capable of.

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She is such an amazing, beautiful,
intelligent, creative, caring

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girl. And I love to see her amplified,
excited and inspired to bring

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all those elements and all those
pieces out into the world for herself.

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And to share with others.

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I'll leave it there and my wish or prayer.

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If you have a child, what's
something that you could do?

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What's something you could do to connect?

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And it might take a minute. Is it a book?

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Is it a song? Is it some
art? What could you create?

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What could you talk about
creating and put out there?

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It doesn't have to go on the
biggest scale by any means.

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But what's something that
you could create together?

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And in that, allow it to amplify and
ignite so many other things, so many other

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possibilities, and a new
drive and determination

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in that child to see not just
that anything's possible.

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But that everything that they put their
mind to, that they commit to, that they

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follow through with, that they learn,

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can set up a road, can set up an
opportunity, can set up a possibility, and

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00:26:02.350 --> 00:26:04.850
allow their light to shine.

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That's all I got. That's this episode
of Wait What Really OK, talking about my

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daughter and Alphabet Animal
Adventures Across America.

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Have a good day.

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Wait What Really OK.