Hey friends, welcome to the Wabi-Sabi podcast. This is episode number 174. Happy New Year. Welcome to 2025.

Also sending my love and condolences and my heart and prayers and also my support, donations and help over to my friends and fam in my home state of California.

And I indeed grew up in Southern California where fires were a normal part of our lifestyle.

And we were always aware that they would happen.

This is a state of emergency.

It is a tragedy.

And I hope that we can help L.A. together on this pod.

It's interesting because about 50% of my business is in L.A.

And 50% is in New York.

Other places include maybe Hawaii, Tokyo, Sydney,

and Canada in certain areas like Vancouver or Toronto. But this is a really difficult time

for everybody in Los Angeles. I want to start with a moment of silence with you for all of our friends and family

who are grieving out in LA. We all know multiple people that have lost their homes and we all know

dozens of people who've been evacuated. Here's to the wildlife that was lost, the cats and dogs,

the individuals who may not have made it, and to those who are suffering at this time.

Take a deep breath in and take a deep breath out i have a graveyard of podcasts myself that i've put out here and there over the years, there's probably dozens.

And I did not feel like they were good enough for you.

So I halted on putting them out.

But I did feel like it was important to speak to all of you today because we started out so beautifully into the New Year and into the Golden Globes.

And everybody had this sense of like, wow, it's 2025.

I'm ready for it.

I'm here.

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