Here's a question I have for you. If you are not willing to invest in yourself in general, let alone during hard times, why would you be surprised when others are not willing to invest in you? And I ask you this question because so many of you

are really sharp talented people, but you get in your own way. You overthink things. You make yourself busier than you need to. You fall into this trap of thinking, it's not the right time and it's not good enough and you're not ready and that's a lot of the stuff that will hold you back. This is what our live events and our coaching are made for to help you overcome this.

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So go to artofcoaching.com slash events.

Artofcoaching.com slash events.

That's artofcoaching.com slash events right now. Check it out, check it out. Welcome to the Art of Coaching Podcast. I'm Brett Bartholomew and at a young age, poor communication nearly caused me my life. Now, I help others navigate the great area of social interaction, power dynamics, and communication. So they can become more adaptable leaders, regardless of their profession, age, or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you're in the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advise you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership, you're in the right place. I'm glad that you're joining us. Let's dive in. All right, a nice quick episode for you today. I feel called to do these episodes a couple times a year because I think back to a time when my dad and my mom took me to see a Christmas Carol from Charles Dickens. And if you recall and whether you've seen it or not is not the point, but in it, Scrooge kind of gets a retrospective on his life, right? He goes back and sees a lot of the things that he's done, that he's not proud of, patterns that he's repeated, what have you. So when I was thinking of this week's episode, I thought about, well, you know, what do I always try to do or what do I want to try to, how do I want to try to provide value this week? And it was something along the lines of, you know, So when we start getting into the fall, which we're not right now, the time of this recording it's May, 2026. And this is going to be relevant, no matter when you listen to this. But if we start getting into the fall and the holiday season, people start getting sentimental again. They start reaching out. They start telling people they appreciate them. But then they start thinking about, man, I didn't do that early enough in the year. And I let myself get busy. And I did this next year, I'm gonna get better. And it leads into all of the resolution things that we see. And I've always found the months between, let's call it March and the 4th of July. And probably even really August to be pretty interesting. Cause I wish I had a cool nickname or moniker for him, but they're kind of like these super busy months that just fly by. April and May everybody gets into the grind. By this point in time, all these things that they were gonna do into the year and the new energy, they're kind of sucked into the reality of what their job requires now.

They're sucked into the reality of whatever life's requiring of them.

For many of you, if you have children, your kids are going to be out of school soon. I know Bronson's going to be home with me in the summer, which will be interesting, because this will be my first summer ever. I think other than COVID, when I had him as a baby, when I'm still trying to get my job done,

but still need to be the best father possible.

And then it gets into vacations

...