Finally Friday with John & Melissa

Hello. Hello.

Welcome to Finally Friday. We've got to bring Instagram on. So this is this lag in this thing. So we've got to sit and wait and wait and sit. How's your Friday going? Ours is going very, very good. We had a great day. And welcome to Finally Friday with John and Mel. I am John and she is Mel. As you can tell. So we hope your week's been good. We've had a great week, didn't we?

We have had a great week. We've had a very creative week, I feel like.

Yeah, it was a really good week. And that's the aim of Finally Friday. What we'd like to do is get together at the end of the week we made it and have a conversation about, uh, life, creativity, Fresh ideas. Fresh ideas. How to pivot to what's next for you, um, because that is part of what we're both doing is pivoting in our life. Full-time author, full-time painter slash awesome person. How you going, Hang Dallas?

Oh hey, welcome!

Got a bunch of people. Nazi 1033, well that's a great tag. Yeah, there's a bunch of people there. Reds and cigars. Come on now. Oh, now we're talking.

Cat Lover 921.

Yes, good to have you here. And, uh, you know, you're welcome to drop messages in the chats as we go through. We've got a few things we want to talk about. A couple of things coming up, uh, we've got a great guest coming on in the next couple of weeks. Just been talking to him. Christopher McDonald wrote this tremendous book, Natural Born Heroes.

McDougall.

Yeah. McDougall. Great guy, great book. I don't know, I don't know if he's a great guy yet. I'm assuming he's a great guy.

We love the book.

Love the book. A tremendous book. And I'm gonna do a book review on that in one of the brilliant Symbolics things coming up. So we'll talk about that.

And, um, also next week, coming up next week, we have Matthew and Michelle Einson. They are traditional naturopaths coming on.

Do you want to tell them about that offer first and I'll put it in the chat?

Oh yeah, sure, um, so over the last couple of weeks I've been telling you guys about my experience doing their heavy metals assessment, and so if you didn't catch those, just briefly what I did is they do a heavy metals assessment on you and it tells how your body is uptaking, if you have any heavy metal Um, reactivity going on in your body, or, and it also tells you how you're uptaking vitamins and minerals, which is awesome. Um, it sort of gives you a nice snapshot of the environment that your body's working with and how it's responding. So, um, I found it to be an awesome and really easy process. I just had to upload a recording of myself, um, just, you know, they tell you how to do it and So they— it's all done by frequency and it's through your voice and a picture of my face. Um, and so they're doing it for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Yes, they have a free offer. They're giving 30 of our people, um, free assessments.

Finally Friday mob.

Um, so that is, uh, for women for Breast Health Month, which is October. Um, and so I think John, John dropped the Link in the chat there, and our code is PHX30.

So yeah, if you want it, it's all you. Like, get after it.

Just go sign up for it. It's totally free. There's— they don't—

no strings on this one. Yeah, they do a lot of work. We do a lot of work with trauma people, um, people who've been trafficked, trauma recovery, and we use a lot of frequency medicine in that space. We're big proponents of that stuff. So if, if this would interest you, please. And they're going to be here next week.

They are. They're coming on next week on Finally Friday. And because, um, you know, we are all about creativity and fresh ideas, and their approach to health is very creative. Yeah. And just taking control of your health and understanding what's going on in your body. They are some of the most creative people that we know, and they are— they get just as geeked out about—

Totally geeky.

Health as John and I do about— John does writing, I do painting, you know.

So, and we've got Tony Mantos coming on as well next week. Uh, he's a Nashville producer, songwriter, singer. If you've got— know anybody in your family with autistic kids or suffers from autism— I don't know if you suffer from autism, it's just like one of those things we have— um, I'd really encourage you to get on. Tony's done tremendous work in bringing awareness to people in the autistic community. And he is just a nice guy. I did a podcast with him, I don't know, 6 or 7 months ago, and we've asked him to come on.

So they will all be on with us together, and that's sort of our goal with Finally Friday is to have, um, a chat and to always have more than one guest. So it's a sort of a roundtable about creativity.

So why don't you talk about creative momentum? You wanted to— you said you wanted to talk about that with people.

Oh yeah, so creative momentum.

So because we went away, we went away for a week because we're tired, man. It's been a while and, uh, we wanted to try and reset.

So we wanted a little unplug. So, uh, we went to, uh, the lake over here, not too far from our house here in Texas. And, um, it was just nice and quiet and there was plenty of time for me to paint. And John was writing. He finished the novel. And so I had some time to reflect this week on creative momentum. And, you know, you don't always have big blocks of time to create. John and I, over the last year, have been trying to hold aside Mondays and spend all day Monday, me in my studio and him writing. And, and that's a big block of time. And my reflection was that, you know, you spend all week— I have, I have all week, I'll have all these thoughts in my head for paintings and things I want to try, or things I want to— like, I want to learn to draw cats, or, you know, whatever it is.

Um, and of course you do.

It's in my mind all week. And then I get to Monday, and if anything is wrong about Monday, like I wake up and I'm not in a great mood, or maybe I don't feel well, or whatever, I've lost my whole creative block for that week.

Yeah.

And that is tragic, you know. So, um, I was thinking more along the lines of little and often. And what I noticed while we were away for 4 days was the fact that I got to get up and do it every day. Uh, the first day was a little bit, you know, you, you feel a little clunky getting going. And then the rest of the week, I was ready to go and I dove right into it and I didn't have to do any warmups. And I, and so it built a little momentum this week. I was really surprised at how quickly the paintings were happening, uh, the second and third day. And so I was like, what if instead of setting aside one whole day out of our week, then I, that I just set aside maybe 1 hour or 2 hours each morning. Yeah.

Um, and if you've got any insights or thoughts for yourself as creative folks about how you deal with creative momentum, Because we were so— so we normally set aside Monday to write, and I try and get another bit on Wednesday and then another bit elsewhere. And, you know, it's similar for writers as it is for painters. You get into a character and a set of dialogue and you think, oh, I know where this is going, and what about this? And you wake up in the middle of the night and all of a sudden it's like, oh, what do I do? Like, how do I, how do I make this? Whereas if I had an hour the next day, I could get up and just go and do that even for an hour. So I think, I think part of it is we're looking at actually changing our whole work schedule, and we're very fortunate to be able to do that. We are full-time in both worlds at the moment, creativity and, you know, doing what you got to do, hustling.

Paying the bills.

Paying the bills. So we're trying to, we're trying to rejigger all of that so we can consistently have time, like every day.

Even if you only had 20 minutes every day, if your hands are doing something, like if you're a painter or, you know, and you could set aside a half an hour, um, to keep your tools sharp is how I feel like. So I'd be very interested to know how other artists do that, if you're out there and you want to chime in, um, and how it affects you to do it every day versus 1 day or 2 days a week?

I think as a writer, I'd find it hard to just do 20 minutes. Yeah, like, I, I like to have at least an hour. Um, and if I'm doing an hour, I know I'm, I'm pretty much just going to be doing editing because I find I need more time to create. I need room, you know, to get into a character and start to plot out dialogue and see where things are going. So I think it is craft-specific.

Maybe.

I think it's whatever it—

Right. I imagine as like a potter or a ceramicist, you couldn't just have a 20-minute session.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know either.

So if anyone's out there and you've got some thoughts on, on what that would look like for you, I'd be very interested to talk to you about that as well. So, um, there's a new series on one of the streaming things by a guy called Stephen Lawhead, um, and it's about Merlin. This is his book on Robin Hood, which I, I think is actually better than the Merlin series. So particularly if you've got kids like teenagers, young adults wanting to get into a little bit of fantasy stuff, this stuff is very solid. Like the Merlin King Arthur stuff, I thoroughly enjoyed. As an adult, I really enjoy these. So there's a shout out to Stephen Lawhead.

Do you know what the name of the show is?

Something, something Merlin, like The Rise of Merlin or something like that. That's from his first book.

What are we streaming in, Alan? Do you know?

Prime.

Prime. Okay, we're watching it.

Because I was looking for the books, actually. I think I lent them to someone and That's an unfortunate situation. Um, they passed, and I'm not going to go around and ask for my books back. I feel kind of awkward about that. What do you do with that?

We have an anniversary coming up. I, I may restock your, uh, Lawhead collection.

My Lawhead books collection and read those.

Hi, Janine.

And so these are great, like thoroughly enjoyed these as a book. And, um, he's got a lot of pushback on it. Um, he's a faith-forward sort of guy. And these books are exceptionally suitable. He wrote them in the in the vein of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, and has done an exceptional job. And his weaving of the art—he obviously loves Wales because that's where King Arthur set, and that's where Robin Hood set. So I I can only tell you to give that a go. You'd love it. And I've got a whole bunch more book reviews coming out. I try and push them out every Sunday. I do put them out every Sunday, and I. Filming some more tomorrow.

And, uh, tell us about your fresh idea for this week. So we were away, we went shopping, uh, at the bookstore that was there.

First of all, we went into Half Price Books, which I love and which I find totally intimidating. There's too many people, there's too many crowds, there's no way to get down the aisles, and I don't know where I'm bloody looking at because there's just so many books. And I went into Barnes& Noble the other day, and I needed another book because I just finished reading, uh, Country for No Man, which is brilliant.

No Country for Old Men.

Yeah, thank you. That one too. I read both of those, and I'm gonna have to do a book review on that because it's just a phenomenal book. Um, so we went into Barnes& Noble, but the problem turned up again. There are so many books. So this is what I did. Got out my phone. Took pictures— book took pictures. I took pictures as well, pictures and pictures of, um, of the sci-fi section and the fantasy section. And I dropped it in the chat because I do a lot of stuff in there about writing and, and bits and pieces. And I said, recommend me a book. And it was perfect. Like, it took all the angst out of it. It scanned every copy Every, every article, every spine on the shelf and said, right-hand bookshelf, down the bottom, on the left, blue spine. This is the name of the book. And it was fantastic.

Based on what it knew already that John had read and enjoyed, it was able to recommend to him books that he should like.

Yeah. So AI's got a use.

Yeah. So I— this, this is a thread that has run through every Finally Friday. for weeks now is how we're using AI as artists. Don't be afraid of AI. And so this was a fresh idea of how to use AI this week, I thought.

And let's qualify that a little bit. You're human and you're the only— AI is not human. AI cannot reproduce your craft or your art. And you need to get really comfortable in that. But what you also have to get comfortable in is using AI to your advantage and to be a force multiplier for the creative arts. I've actually started working with a company that is data-driven AI, very on the forefront of what's happening, to start to craft my audience. And it's really, really exciting. at some of the stuff that we can do in terms of how I can connect as a writer with people who are more than likely going to want my book.

Our words for the year were intentional connection. And it's been very interesting to me because in my mind, when we set that as a goal for the year or as our course that we were charting for the year, intentional connection, it had all to do with human relationships and Um, but I, I never could have imagined how AI could help us make connections with other humans. Yeah. Um, I just thought, I just thought it would be us, like, you know, going out to coffee with someone or, you know, whatever. So it's been amazing.

It is. And the reality is, like, for writers at the moment, writers are very scared, uh, because there's like 200% more books in the marketplace than there are the people to read them. Um, they're very scared that their craft is being stolen and copied by Amazons, etc. And they are. They just, just are. Amazon is taking classic books, first editions, one of a kind, splitting them down the spine and photocopying and throwing them away because they just want to rate that book for its words and its, and its intent and its content. Which is absolutely tragic. I find that a tragedy. It's just, you know, whatever. But, you know, it is what it is. It's a world— the thing is, we live in this world now, and you can't kick against those goads. I think what you've got to do is personally be really intentional with your authenticity in your art.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's, that's really important. And there's a whole move now amongst, you know, millennials and Gen Zs to be analog. You know, we just used to call it Saturday as Gen X. Like, we only have a bloody new analog, you know. Turn the TV off and we're analog. And people are going around with their analog bags, you know.

Yeah, I, I was watching, uh, a, a content, uh, producer from Ireland, and they were saying that the ladies there all have an analog bag. when they want to go out to coffee, they leave their phone at home and they bring their analog bag, which is like a book, I guess, and a sketchbook maybe, or a pen.

Bloody analog bag. And probably their big bloody Yeti cup.

But I don't know if they have— I think that's a Texas thing.

That's very much a bloody Texas thing.

I don't think that's a, uh—

That's an Austin thing, a Dallas thing, a Plano, Southlake thing.

So it's interesting. But, uh, so creatively this week You finished the novel?

Yeah, I did finish a novel. Um, I've been— I finished this novel so many times. So 7 years ago, I started writing my first series of fiction books, and, um, it's basically been an MFA, which would probably be a doctorate by now, I think, probably, um, in fine arts, in writing, because I needed to teach myself. I'd written 30-something non-fiction books, and I wanted to learn how to write fiction. So this was my 7th book. I've written 7, 7 books, 3, 4, 5, 5 books in this 7-year period. And then the last 12 months, 12 months, I've written 2. Last 12 months. Well, about April to— yeah.

Yeah. So 18 months.

18 months. 2 full-length novels. Totally different. All both of them neo-noir, but totally different. And so what's been fascinating to watch, but is I really determined to read as many books as I can, watch as many movies as I could in, in my genre, and it has propelled my writing.

It has really changed your writing.

Yeah. And it's been, and it's been really intentional with that thing again, is like If this is going to be my craft, I want to be very, very good at it. And so this storm of AI can get discouraging for us if you're a writer, if you're a poet, um, you know, if you're a painter, particularly in the digital arts, I think, because it's becoming so good.

Right.

And I think there's people who have been extras that are going to have to find new, new left turns in their own life and a whole range of things like that. But I, I just want to encourage you, we want to encourage you, is to get ahead of it in your head. Is don't be overwhelmed with this negativity. Is like, find a way to make it work for you because it is not going away. It's like hoping that the car was going to go away and, uh, you know, the planes were going to go away. They're just— this is— AI is here to stay, you know, for better or for worse. And, you know, Terminator, etc., etc. Um, but, you know, I think anything like this, you can either be a doomsayer or a go-getter.

And it's kind of— you can get on your front foot with it.

I think so.

And see how you can use it. I think pacing becomes an issue, uh, because everything's moving so fast. I think the, um, this sort of Pitfall that you can— it's feeling like that you have to move at that pace all the time and like keep up with it. And because you can be so much more productive if— and, and if you do any sort of desk job, you can use AI to be productive. And because you can, um, it, it means that you are running at this pace.

Yeah.

And the ability to slow down and Take time offline and do that. That ability is gonna need to be honed, I think.

I think so. I think the challenge we'll have is that everyone's saying AI is gonna be a game changer. They love that '90s phrase. So it's gonna be a game changer and a life changer. We're gonna have more free time. The problem is if you're a driven person, you're gonna say, I'm gonna Speaking from experience, I'm going to be able to get to this stage and I'm going to have more time. Well, the thing is, when you get to that stage, you've done so much and you can also see how much more you can do.

You've thought of 50 more things, more things that you can possibly do, and you just stack your days and you find yourself running at a pace that's not sustainable. I think especially if you're any sort of creative person, you're constantly thinking of new things that you can have your bot do for you.

And I think, I think as creative people, I think we can benefit the most from this. I think we can have AI automate a lot of things in our life in order to free ourselves up. But the discipline then becomes, with the space that we made, is to fill it with what is our passion. Yeah. And not pursue other things.

Yeah. For us, that's making art. And so if, if the whole point of doing our, our pay-the-bills work faster is so we have more time to make art, then we— it's our discipline, like you said, to keep— hold that space.

Yeah. Why don't you tell them about Deal With It, what we're doing, and I'll give you a book.

Oh yeah, okay. So, um, Deal With It is John's, uh, memoir. It's one of his nonfiction books that he wrote, and I I joined him in the writing of this one. I, um, and give my reflections at the end of each chapter. Um, and we first published Still With It, we self-published in 2017.

Yeah.

Um, it's done a lot of good. We've like given away a lot of copies through our foundation.

Sold thousands and thousands of copies.

And we've also, you know, sold quite a few copies. And what we decided to do is, um, just go through and do a refresh. On it, add some information to the back of it about our course that now comes alongside the book.

Um, are we gonna redo the COVID I wanna, I wanna call it Turning Shit into Fertilizer. Deal with It: Turning Shit into Fertilizer. We're having a little bit of an argument at the moment.

We may be retitling then.

We're definitely retitling it, but it's whether or not I get away to calling it Deal with It: Turning Shit into Fertilizer.

So we're doing a little refresh on Deal with It, and if you have not read it and you like a good—

If you go to the website, and you'll find those links on Instagram and also in the bios, and if you, if you, if you want a copy, it's— so I, I was trafficked as a kid and, um, for about 12 years, complex post-traumatic stress. This book has helped thousands of people with that sort of background, or people in the military And that, you know, really anybody going through anything, any hardship, hardship, having to overcome something, having to, um, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, kind of.

Yeah.

You know, and that's what Deal With It's for. It's just a very honest conversation about a topic that very few people have honest conversations about. So if you go to drjohnaking.com, um, and there is a link there on the website, on Instagram, or in the bio on most other places. And join the, um, what's that list thing?

It's called the Book Launch List, and all it is is we will send out an email when the book goes live. When we, um, we're probably a few weeks away from getting all the edits made.

And Janine on YouTube says, great book and course. Love you, Janine.

Oh, thank you, Janine.

Um, so, so hop on there and do that, and if you're in America, I'll sign, I'll sign your copy. When it comes out, you order it and I'll sign it and we'll ship it, ship it to you.

Also creatively this week, we started to rework a short story that John had written, uh, way back when we first published Deal With It, and we were gonna, uh, actually re-release that book together. So I'm—

Yeah, she's illustrating it. Yeah, which is exciting. It's our first project together, and she's redone her website.

Oh yeah, so I did. Okay, so I had AI build me a website, which was exciting. Um, and so that is now live. It's melryanking.com. So anybody wants to go check that out, I do not have all of my available art up there yet, but I am working diligently.

But if you go on there and, you know, buy one and you want one and you send her an email today, I'll make her give you a discount.

Yeah, if you mention Finally Friday, I think I'll give you free shipping. That's, that's a pretty steep discount right there. Shipping's expensive. So, um, negotiate, haggle.

I got a lot of artwork I've got to sell.

Oh, it is stacking up. So I had to, I had to get myself ready to get some out there.

Um, yeah, and the new website's great. We'd love to hear your comments on that. It's looking very, very well. And she's lying about the AI thing. It's um she did a fantastic job on it, and um it's very very very good, very very good. So any comments, any thoughts? Um we'd love you to put up links, Janine. We'll have to give you we'll have to do that for you next time. We'll get you all organized. You can come in as our moderator every Friday. Janine's a great friend of ours. Hey Janine!

Yes, Janine can be our YouTube moderator because that's what she's gonna be.

Everybody will actually get her in the back room.

Oh cool!

And she can come in as our producer.

We'd love for you to do that. Thank you.

So she's been with us. She went through the Phoenix Collective course, and, um, we might just— we should just have her on sometime to talk about the book and the course.

Janine's creative too. Yeah, she likes to cook, so she probably has lots of things.

And that's the thing, cooking is creative. Like, what is it that you love to do?

We have another friend of ours who makes sourdough, We should have Alicia on.

Oh yeah, she'd be good. And then our friend who loves to cook barbecue, like—

Oh yeah, wow, we have lots of people. We— okay, so we want to hear from you guys, um, if you have anyone you think should come on Finally Friday, or if you, uh, want to come on yourself, or if you would like for us to go out and source a whatever type of creative person.

We've got a literary agent coming on, we've got 2 very well-known authors coming on. And if Mel doesn't contact some of her art friends here in a little bit, I'm going to contact them because they're awesome. Mule, you're coming on. You've got to come on, Mule. You're awesome. And so yeah, that's what we're doing. So we'll call it a wrap if there's no questions from anybody, um, no comments, no thoughts. Uh, always good hanging out with you Friday. I've got a great Irish whiskey I need to have some of. And the missus is making pizza tonight. Yay! And we're gonna watch Merlin, I think.

Yes, we are. That's our Friday night.

And tomorrow we get up, we go to breakfast together. We're, we're rewriting a vision and our direction for the next little bit.

So, um, everything's happening so fast.

Everything's happening so fast for us. Like this, this—

So 9, 9 months into the year, we're gonna take a fresh look at what we thought we could get accomplished this year and Well, we really start our year in April.

We, that's sort of like our start of our year. We go through all that holiday period and April 1st.

We haven't even hit 6 months yet. Everything's moving really fast. So we've gotten a lot of things done.

But I've been, I think it's been really positive. I think those keywords like intentional and connection were really important for us this year. And I think it's given us, you know, a sense of focus. And like even Finally Friday, Finally Friday was a brainhead idea because I heard of this software called Restream, which means you can be on multiple platforms and, you know, goes out to about a quarter of a million people. And we were sitting in a, a club somewhere, like, um, a golf club, and we're just sitting there and we thought, oh, let's give this a go. Hey, Nikki!

Hey, Nikki! Sorry, there's a fly.

Love you bunches. You need to come on too. You need to come.

So good to see you.

Yeah, it is. So our friend Nikki's awesome.

Lower bunches.

And so we're just sitting there, I thought, why don't we talk about creativity? And it's gone nuts, like the whole thing's gone nuts. So what we're trying to do is have a reassessment of those things and decide how does this fit together for the future and what does it look like for us. And I think as creative people, um, it's very, very important for us to be reassessing. It's like I, I think if you're creative as a hobby, I think that's really good. But if this is the thing that drives you as a passion, that at some point I think you're going to have to invest in yourself and take that radical left turn. I don't think it means that you need— like, you don't want to try and support yourself as a writer because we make about $3.50, literally $3.50. Um, you know, you— there's very few people that are able to support themselves in their life And I'm planning to be one of those. I know I've set my goals very, very high. But I went to the museum in Ireland, the Writers Museum in Ireland. James Joyce, all of those phenomenal writers, every one of those people had another job.

They all had day jobs. They all had— it was amazing.

They, you know, they would teach or do whatever else, work for a newspaper, work for a university. So we want to encourage you is Start thinking of yourself as a full-time artist that supports yourself through other things, as opposed to someone who does other things is hoping one day to be an artist. And what will happen is you'll change your world. Your world will change. And you may not be able to spend the 40 hours a week on it you want to, but I tell you what, the 5 or 10 that you get to, you will see those in a totally different light. And you will start to understand that that is the passion and the thing that you live for. And I think that's the difference when you move from craft and hobby, um, or from hobby into craft. Like the craft of writing, the craft of painting, the craft of making and creating food, cake, beverage, whatever it is, you know.

Whatever it is.

And, um, I think that the, the hope we have for everyone is ultimately the very thing that you're passionate about is the thing that funds your future. But what do you do till you get there? And I think that's something that we need to be honest about and understand that this is a journey.

Yeah.

And you don't have to be frustrated along the way. You can be incredibly fulfilled. And that's all of that to say, that's part of what we find ourselves looking at 6 months into this year is, okay, we are, we are incredibly fulfilled as a couple. And we are very, very happy with where we're up to. But we're really, really excited about what the next thing could be. And we just feel it's time to start to shift it and focus. Janine says lots of plates spinning in the air and try everything. Yes. And that's very, very good.

Agreed. We, we did go through that season of saying yes to everything and seeing what Would stick, and now we're unyesing a few. Yeah, now now we're able to sort of hone in, which is great. I love it.

So we need to try and get Nikki on.

Nikki's in England. Oh yeah, time differences and all. It's probably a reasonable. Oh, it's getting a little late there by now.

So Nikki was like a disco chick, a DJ, DJ like back in the day, a writer.

Writer.

A raving fan. Like, Nikki walked into our life at a stage where, uh, we were believing for believing. And I, I hope that we had a chance to really impact her positively. But she literally changed our lives just with her love and belief in us as a couple. And, uh, she's wonderful. And the last time we heard, she was just started—

She was a purveyor of Fine children's books.

Yes, that's very good. Okay, Nikki, you're in. All right, I'm gonna drop you— and I'm gonna drop you a link after this. And, um, you have to go on and book a time. And the thing is, Nick, you don't know who else is going to be on there. Sometimes there's going to be people on there, sometimes it'll just be you, and it's totally random. And it starts around 4-ish, so which is kind of perfect for you, I'm sure. Um, so, all right, your deal. You're done, girl. I'm gonna text you. So Nikki's gonna be on.

Does anybody know anyone who makes craft brewed beer? Because I think that that would be an interesting person to have on.

I think they need to sponsor the show. I, you know, I want an Irish whiskey sponsor. I've been asking a couple of cigar guys to sponsor me. Because I should— I pretty much sponsor a few cigar companies. But, um, I love Irish whiskey. It's good. Irish whiskey doesn't love— Irish whiskey does love me, but only in very small amounts.

Yes.

Once or twice a week. Because I'm Indigenous Australian and Indigenous American, so I got a blackfella gene, she's got a redfella gene. So like, you know, we're 2 drinks in and we're legless and hopeless. That's probably me anyway.

So, so, man. So anybody have anything else? We thank you so much for joining, I will say.

And it looks like we're getting fancy. Like, we've got— we just picked up a producer today, and we just picked up a rock star for the next guest. And I seriously mean rock star. Like, this lady, like, some of the music she did and the things she did, like, yes, she was the business.

I may have to go pull out, uh, something to listen to. For tonight, for our date tonight.

Yes, and she is a total dark horse, and, uh, she's just the bomb. All right, hey, thank you, Finally Friday, for spending half an hour with us. Be motivated, be encouraged, and look, drop us an email, drop us a DM. We're actually pretty approachable. Um, so, you know, if we can encourage you, we want to encourage you. We want to speak to the greatness in you. And we want to surround ourselves with people who think that all things are possible and all things for good. Yes.

Sound good? All right. It is the weekend officially. We made it, everybody.

We did. Congratulations for like not strangling anybody, um, etc., etc.

If you did strangle anybody, I hope you're not in too much trouble over it. Okay.

You're classy.