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Action
13 Plays1 year ago
There is no coaching without action. One of coaching's revolutionary concepts is that reflection alone is not enough for a process to be effective. Coaching emphasizes the importance of supporting clients in clearly identifying ways to translate their insights into a sustainable movement beyond the coaching session. On the other hand, we also understand that no good action comes without reflection. This balancing act between reflection and movement is one of the most valuable aspects of the coaching process and a skill for every coach to develop.
#action #reflection #coaching #coachingskills
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Transcript
Introduction to Prime Space Podcast
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Welcome to Prime Space, a Prime Coaching Academy podcast with your host, Elias Scultori.
The Role of Action in Coaching
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Hello, coaches.
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Action.
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Action, action.
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I want to talk about action here today.
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I still remember very clearly when I was in my coach training and one of the facilitators said this phrase.
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There is no coaching without action.
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And that was imprinted in my brain.
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I never forgot about that.
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And as much as I try to shy away from black and white statements like this one, I went to explore, right?
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You know that for me is very important.
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The question why is very important in coaching.
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I did a podcast a few weeks ago about that.
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So why?
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Why is this person saying this?
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Why action is so crucial for
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for coaching.
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And here's my reflection on that.
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And I think that this is the revolutionary aspect of coaching.
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One of the revolutionary aspects of coaching.
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Reflection alone is not enough.
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We can't spend an hour...
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weeks, months, years in a process of reflecting and reflecting and reflecting and having beautiful insights and lots of new perspectives and wonderful.
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And that is very rewarding, right?
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I love reflection.
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And we say that the culmination, the apex of a coaching conversation is that aha moment.
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We all love that aha moment.
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So having that moment of reflection and having those insights is wonderful.
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But we know
Core Competencies and Action Plans
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that if we are not able to apply those insights, if we don't support our clients into finding specific processes or ways to bring those insights into reality...
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The likelihood of those insights to vanish is huge, right?
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And as I said, we can spend years in reflection, reflection, reflection, and years pass by and we look back and we are still stuck in the same place.
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So that's why action is so important in coaching.
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That is where the ROI of coaching is, right?
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It's the ability of the coach to not only support the client into reflection and bringing into an insight, but it's the skill of the coach to support the client into implementing those insights, into creating...
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a system for them to bring, to translate those insights into their day-to-day life.
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And that's why the core competencies are so beautiful in supporting us coaches, in supporting our clients around action.
00:03:30
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The core competencies, if we read the core competencies and understand what is behind these core competencies, we are going to see very clearly that they are telling us that, okay, insight is very important, evokes awareness.
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This is one of the skills of a coach.
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We support the client into evoking awareness, but we don't stop there.
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There is a whole competency after evokes awareness that is a crucial aspect of coaching and a foundational aspect of coaching.
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Insight alone is not enough.
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Reflection alone is not enough.
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We support the client after the client has that insight into now what?
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So what is the insight?
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So one of the first things that a coach does moving into that space of what is next with a client is to support the client into very tangibly say, these are the insights that I got.
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This is my takeaway.
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here are the things that I created for myself during this conversation.
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I want to remember this and this and this.
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These are the points that are very important to me and that I was able to generate during our reflection time.
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Okay, so you generated this and this and this.
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These are the points.
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Okay, so what are you going to do about this?
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How are you going to apply these insights moving forward?
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So what is the effect of these insights?
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after we finish our coaching conversation.
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How are you going to go about your life after you had these insights?
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So it is that moment that the coach gives the clients to really think things through.
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Okay, I had these insights.
Systems of Support for Clients
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I had this takeaway.
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I am able to see this more clearly.
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So now, of course, I'm going to do this and this.
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This is how I'm going to bring this to my life.
00:05:39
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This is the movement that I want to generate for me based on the insights that I had here.
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But action alone is not enough.
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The core competencies are there to tell us exactly this, that action alone is not enough.
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So how many times we say that we are going to do A, B, C, D, and this is my to-do list, and I have a to-do list, and a year passes by, and the to-do list is still there?
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The skill of a coach is also to support the client and to create what I call systems of support.
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What do you need to make sure that you are going to take those actions?
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What are the resources, the level of accountability, especially self-accountability?
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What can get in the way here?
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Let's take a moment to really reflect on what you need to set in place
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to make sure that the likelihood of you implementing those insights are higher.
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You see the beauty of it?
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We are not only thinking partners towards an insight.
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That is a huge part of coaching.
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But one of the greatest skills of a coach is to support the client into after that reflection...
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How are you going to implement this?
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And creating a substantial plan that includes a very clear understanding of the insights, an application of those insights, the movement that I like to use the word movement, and the support, the systems of support that will support the client into making sure that they really apply properly.
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Or take the actions that they created for themselves.
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That's a crucial aspect of coaching.
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I say this and I want to emphasize this because reflection alone, insight alone is not enough.
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And coaching, right?
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Understanding.
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People that really understand coaching will know the importance of action.
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And we need to be very mindful of it.
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Very mindful.
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This is one of the beautiful points that coaching brought to us, brought to this world.
00:08:04
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The importance of not only reflecting, but the importance of creating, supporting our clients into creating this plan for them to move after the coaching conversation.
00:08:20
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But
Balancing Reflection and Action
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I have to say one more thing here.
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As wonderful as action is and important as action is to coaching, no good action comes without good exploration.
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This is truly a balancing act.
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So as important as having the skills to support the client in building an action plan, it is very important for us to also have the skill of reflection and the skill of exploration.
00:08:57
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It's a balancing act between both of them.
00:09:01
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We are very well trained to find the problem and going into a solution.
00:09:09
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This is the problem.
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This is the solution, right?
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Our organizations these days are very fast-paced and we need an answer immediately.
00:09:17
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What is the problem?
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What are you going to do about it?
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So our minds are very well trained to go from identifying what the question is and immediately trying to find what are we going to do about it.
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So one of the skills of the coach is to widen the gap between problem and solution, question and movement, situation and awareness.
00:09:42
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We widen the gap about that and we stay in that space of discovery.
00:09:47
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That's why we say that coaching is not solution-based because we are not concerned about the solution.
00:09:53
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We are concerned about the exploration.
00:09:56
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Because we believe that by having a very in-depth exploration of the situation...
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the movement that will cause, it's going to be a natural occurrence of it.
00:10:10
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So we don't need to be so worried about the solution because it will come.
00:10:15
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It's of course that if we have this beautiful exploration, something tangible is going to show up here for the client to move into.
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And we can't take that for granted.
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As I said before, we need to support the client into being very specific about it.
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But we focus on this exploration.
00:10:35
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So as you can see, it's a balancing act.
00:10:39
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We can't have exploration and reflection alone without action, but we can't have action without exploration.
00:10:46
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And our goal as coaches is to have the skills and the awareness to support the client into that process of exploring deep enough so that they have a movement that is substantial and it's not a superficial movement.
00:11:06
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It's not just a band-aid.
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That is our goal in coaching, to have that balancing act between reflection and action.
00:11:16
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Reflection alone does not do much good.
00:11:22
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But action without reflection is superficial.
00:11:26
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We want both of them.
00:11:28
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And I say this because in the years of experience I have, coaching, training, mentoring, supervising other coaches,
00:11:39
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I see that we come into these two groups.
00:11:41
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Some of us have more of a tendency towards action.
00:11:45
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Some of us have more of a tendency towards reflection.
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We love reflection.
00:11:49
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I myself love reflection.
00:11:51
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Love that experience of exploration, the curiosity.
00:11:55
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And the aha moment is so rewarding.
00:11:57
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So we love that place of reflection.
00:12:01
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And some of us are very well trained to what are you going to do about it.
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Very action-oriented.
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It's neither.
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It's both.
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We need to really be mindful of the tendencies that we have and really build the skills in both areas, both the exploration, both the reflection, both the discovery and the movement.
Forms of Action in Coaching
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I want to say one more little thing about action.
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I'm using the word action so often here in this podcast.
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And I want to clarify this because usually when we think of action, we think of something tangible.
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This is something that the client is going to do.
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This is a particular action that is going to move the client forward.
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And this is the step that the client is going to take.
00:12:51
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One of my signature phrases is, action comes in many different disguises, and we need to be very mindful of that.
00:13:00
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Action can be something very tangible, but action can be reflective.
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I need to think more about this.
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I need to brew a little bit more on this situation.
00:13:10
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Action can be forward, but action can also be, I'm going to take a step back.
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Action can be, I'm going to stop and wait.
00:13:19
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There are so many ways that action can come.
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If you know my prime model, I don't use the word action.
00:13:26
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I use the word movement.
00:13:27
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What is the movement that this insight, this discovery has caused?
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So it is important for us to have the skill to support the client into identifying exactly what is the movement that they want to generate for themselves based on this reflection.
Conclusion and Call to Action
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So bottom line here today,
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There is no coaching without action, but there is no good action without reflection.
00:13:57
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And our job is to do the reflection.
00:14:01
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That is fantastic and wonderful, but it is also a crucial skill of coaching, a revolutionary idea of coaching, that after the reflection, it is so important for us to also support the client into a movement forward.
00:14:17
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So...
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Let's practice.
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Let's practice this balancing act between reflection, discovery and movement.
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And let's see what we can bring to our clients and make our sessions even more effective.
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Everyone, thank you so much for listening.
00:14:35
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And please don't forget to subscribe.
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Remember, we have our YouTube channel.
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that we have all of these episodes there and you can subscribe to the YouTube channel as well.
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Tell your friends about our podcast and I will see you next week.
00:14:51
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Take good care.