Let's Talk with Leaha & Rhonda

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Hi, my name is Leah Crawford. And I'm Rhonda Nolan. And you're listening to the Let's Talk with Leah and Rhonda show. For all the beautiful entrepreneurs out there, this is for you. Good morning, Las Vegas.

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Hey, Leah, how are you doing this beautiful Saturday morning?

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Hey, I am well rested after a flight delay, so it's good.

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Alright, welcome back to Las Vegas.

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I know.

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How was your little mini vacation?

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It wasn't mini, it was a vacation.

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Okay, okay.

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We did a lot of stuff, so it was absolutely amazing.

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I would tell anyone as an entrepreneur, you need that reset. That's fantastic. And you need to take some time, take some days and just do nothing. I mean nothing. Don't. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Even have your meals brought to you. Just do nothing. That's a beautiful thing. It is. It's a beautiful thing because you need to reset and rethink so that you can come back refreshed. Good, good, good. I feel refreshed. Did you do any yoga? Absolutely. I told you nothing. Nothing? Nothing. But you love yoga. I absolutely do and absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. Turned the phone down. I was staying at my sister's house. So the children were playing outside, playing by the pool, doing the things that children do. And I was, I was laying there. I watched, I binge watched Suits. I watched all seven, all seven seasons. Okay. I watched all, it was four days. I watched all seven seasons and giggled, cried, laughed, got mad, everything. So every emotion just for four days I didn't do anything but the rest of the time we were really busy. So good time. That's good. Very good time. But today, doing a little bit something different. We got another author here in the studio with us and we're going to talk to her just about you know why you know why books you know because books like they used to. It is Miss Linda Lockett. I met her at a Juneteenth festival, actually. It was a bunch of authors there and they were talking about their journey, their books. And she had children's books, which I think is when you teach a child that reading is fun. I wanted to bring her on so that she can talk about it. So Linda, welcome to our show. Welcome to the show. Hey guys, thank you so much for inviting me here. I'm it's really an honor to talk about Why I decided to be a self-publisher and and do Landis Day of Church It's because I just was trying to fill out the to try to Write a memoir earlier during kovat 19 us and once I kept going back to chapter 1 I found out that wow I think jump the one is going to be very more exciting to share with everyone, especially young people, when you talk about my experience of going to my family church, which is almost 250 years old. So that is why I have become a self-publisher and I plan to do more self-publishing, things like this in the future. Okay, so stop for a minute because I want to talk about it because you said something that is huge. 250 years. That's huge. Because you're talking about, and let's just do the math so it's 23 now 50 is 73 and then go back 200 years 8 1783 77 73 1773 where is your family's church located is here in Las Vegas or somewhere else it's in the backwoods of Lowndes County Mississippi Oh the dirt road Wow there's a picture of it on the front cover of the so it's still there it's still there and people still going to church So there's a set of people getting older. There's 60 70 80. We might have 15 show up maybe five on some Sundays One sunday a month, but that's huge. That's historical landmark. It is very very much now. Does your family? Are is your someone in your family the pastor of the church and they're there? Yes. Oh, yes. Yes for the lines There's a pastor. Yes. Yes. Oh nice. Nice. So tell us about this book, Lana's Day at Church. It's a beautiful, beautiful cover book. Oh, it's a cute little girl on front. Tell us all about that. Well, the book basically follows Lana, which is basically me, on my Sunday day trips when I went to the church in the country. I made it so that when I go through the road, I kind of pass by all the little wooden houses because I was raised in a little wooden shack. So we pass by all the Little Wooden Shacks. We go past the antebellum houses, which were very rich white people. And then we go across the bridge, which is a big thing there with the catfish. And I have the catfish just talking to the little girl, telling her as an affirmation that it's good to go to church. The cows say the same thing. It's an affirmation of children that going to church is a good thing. And of course on the inside of the church we have the people singing and shouting and the preacher preaching and it shows children that we can really have a really good time in church. That's fantastic because we all need the Lord. Whoever your Lord is, we need Him. I remember as a child, I'm from the South originally, from Arkansas, and my grandmother was very, very spiritual. So in the summer times, when we go to visit her, we would absolutely go to church several times a week. And we always played, you know, with the other church children. So yes, I have church in my backbone.

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How about you, Leah?

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My family, well, we went to Catholic school. Okay, so not necessarily, so not necessarily, we weren't going to church every Sunday, but in Catholic school, you go to, you know, you go to church, you go to church, go to mass, go to mass, go to mass, and knew all the sacraments and went, you know, just, it was interesting, but self publishing, self publishing. gone to so many conferences. I had promoted the book to so many publishers. Some of them were from the big five. And they told me, well, we really don't like some of the direction you're going with your book, or we want to change your book, or they wanted to have some content control over my book. And after three or four years, I thought, no, I think I better go with self-publishing because it gives me more control over my content. I have higher royalties, although I do pay out of pocket and I don't get all that big advertising that the big five gives me. It also lets me as a black self-publishing author to be able to tell my story my way from that perspective. Got it. So now with marketing, did you so you so you do everything you do your own marketing, you do your own advertising. Yes I do. But people are able to acquire your book through Amazon? Amazon.com coming, Barnes and Noble. Soon, I will go on a couple more websites to promote it as well. I'm planning on doing a TikTok commercial. I have a commercial right now that I'm running, but it for some reason, Amazon only is letting it run in European markets, but I'm hopefully can put it on a platform here. So this book is in other languages? Spanish is coming in Spanish. It's coming in Spanish. Yes. Now is Lana, Lana has a day at church. Is Lana going to have her first day at school? That may be, that may be in the future yes. Okay. So Lana can have her, because people can grow up with Lana. They can. People can grow up with Lana. Yes. And Lana can do, oh God, Lana dolls and I mean just a whole bunch of stuff that you can do. Exactly. That was the plan. As a matter of fact, I am trying to market that little bracelet that she's wearing to have people wear that when they get the book to also have the bracelet. The book and the bracelet. That's a nice Christmas gift. That's a nice Christmas package.

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That's a nice Christmas for a little girl.

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Yeah.

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For a little girl.

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Actually the doll, the book and the bracelet would be nice. Yeah, but you want to know something, Zuu, it reminds me, do you remember Judy Blume?

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Mm-hmm.

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And Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. Remember Margaret?

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Mm-hmm.

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And we went through her life as teenagers.

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Mm-hmm. So, I mean, it brought some good memories, some good memories.

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All right, so what else do you do? I mean, who, what else do you do? Well, as I said, I'm a college professor in a local college here in town in Las Vegas. I write books. I also write poetry. I've also done a little singing. So I also write songs. I have done a lot of work in non-profit here in the Las Vegas area to raise monies for scholarship for children, especially in diverse communities. So those are the things that I do. That's fantastic. So ladies and gentlemen, Lana's Day at Church is a book you could get for your children or your grandchildren or your nieces and nephews and Amazon is a place to go to look for the book or at the website which is lanasday.com that's l-a-n-a-s-d-a-y dot com again that's l-a-n-a-s-d-a-y dot com

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Okay, I love it. I love it.

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So self-publishing, what are the steps that you had to go through with self-publishing? With self-publishing, you're sort of all by yourself. So I had to hire my own developmental editor to make sure that everything is in place. I had to go to RISD or there are some places like Fiverr's that you can get people that are very affordable. Or some people charge you $600 to do the work. I was only charged maybe $169 to have a person who had worked with some big five companies to go over the work before I decided to see how it would hit my audience. So that's what developmental editors do. I also had to hire my own artist. Stephanie Enduro, I thought she did a wonderful job on that. She's an illustrator, right? She did all the artwork in the book. She did a wonderful job. She did an absolutely great job. And I had gone through maybe five or six people that gave me some artwork that just was not expressing what I wanted to express with the church or with the way the face looked. And I wanted to make sure that she had all the right features. I also had to of course publish my own website. I had to do my own sales work by going on Amazon and filling out these forms to make sure that I have a platform to sell the book. So it's quite a bit of work to do it by yourself. It sounds like it. But it's so rewarding. Yes. Yes. Okay, so what would you tell someone that is looking, is writing, has a book written, or has written a book, and is just sitting there, they don't know what to do. Ah, they don't know what to do. First of all, you've got to get the word out there, even if you have to go to a couple of local signings in town, like every other week, tell your neighbors, tell everyone in your church, tell everyone at your job that you have the book. Of course, social media is so important. You have an Instagram account, which is coming next for Atlanta. Facebook, of course, work with WordPress, do your own websites. Speaking engagements, So it's all about putting the word out. No one knows that your book is there. It's not going to get sold. It's not going to get sold. Now, did you hire an attorney to do your trademark? Very good question. I was lucky enough to get a copyright attorney who worked for some very big names in in California. of a friend of Oprah's boyfriend, I think, Stedman, who actually gave me a good name of attorney to help me with the copyrights and the trademarks parts, and it kept the price down. That's great. That's so important, you guys, when you come up with a concept, that you make sure that you trademark your concept, name, face, whatever it is, your logo, whatever it is. That's the start. That's the start.

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That's the start.

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That's what we talk about all the time, those startup costs. So let me ask you a question. How much do you think overall, did it cost you overall to start this project? I started out with, let's see, it was $1,500 for the illustrator. I think it's around $600 probably with getting the printing done for about for the books. I also had to buy some equipment of my own in order to do like Adobe software software things like that. So we're talking maybe like maybe four hundred four hundred forty five hundred or five thousand and then did you start did you start your business did you get all your business stuff first like your business license all that stuff yeah and then you did so it was more than that so of course the LLC was $400 by itself. Yes. And that's another thing. You need to have a Nevada license.

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Mm-hmm.

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And you got to renew it every year.

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Yeah, and renew it every year. And have to do the copyright. That was a lot.

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That was a lot.

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That was a lot. Well, you want to know what? Thank you because I, because a lot of us want to do things, but that we want to do them and really don't understand that it's steps. And if you skip a step, doesn't mean you don't have to do it, but sometimes just being aware that there are things that you need to do in order to self-publish. Now, do you plan on... I guess, well, the next one should be a lot easier because you've already went through a lot of the stuff with the first one, right? Yes, it should be a lot easier. Yeah, the concept of the face of Lana herself and the little dog that's in there is a picture of a dog that I had just died last year. The dog will play an emphasis on a couple of other books that I'm going to do in the future. But yeah, the next one is not going to be hard at all because I've kind of laid out the plans for it. Nice. I'm looking forward to seeing the Atlanta doll. I know.

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I think that is absolutely with the bracelets.

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I mean, you start out with a book and you can go into so many other different areas to make money, you know. And if it's your passion it's not work. Merchandising is very important. Yeah but if it's your passion and you see your passion come full throttle imagine walking in Target and you see your doll there. Your book and your doll. And a bracelet. And a bracelet. Now you're saying stuff that I would never say in public but that is exactly how I envision it. Yeah, I know. Because the thing is that but you have to be ready because when you go into stores like that you're talking about distribution and a whole bunch of other stuff and you have to have the backing in order to make that happen. Exactly. Because that's money but if it's an amazing concept and it's something that people are talking about you know but I guess that's why people go with the mainstream even though you don't get a larger you just get more the more volume. Right.

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Exactly. More volume.

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But I appreciate the fact that you did. I

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thought the book, Lana is absolutely gorgeous. Isn't she gorgeous? She is

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gorgeous. Her pecan color. That's right. Yeah we fussed a lot about the color. I didn't want it too light. I didn't want it too dark. I didn't want it to look, you know, in between. In between. In between. No, that is huge. That is huge. So if you, what advice would you give to someone if they came and asked you, how do I do this? What would you tell them? The first thing is try not to listen to so many different people's opinion. Go with your heart with what you want to write about. If you want to write about the environment, you want to write about whatever civil rights today, whatever it is, you've got to it got to come from your heart. And then you in each day, you've got to write something every day. And once you write something every day for an hour, you're not going to lose time and you have to read it. I spent almost four years reading some of my content to a writing group. to figure out to test the waters to see what people think of what you're doing. Also, I would also have family members listen to what you're talking about. They count. They're people that are going to buy your book. Doesn't have to be just the professionals. I also suggest that you get a good program, word processing program to write everything. And also look at other books. You can look at other books that are out there that are similar to yours but you want to make sure that you're on the right path. Those are the things I think you should do. Why did you choose children's books? I chose children's books because my experience at my ancestral 250 year old church was so powerful and has followed me so much in my life through college as a professional and what I do, how I treat people. I just thought this would be a great story to share with children because I had a great experience in the church as a child. As a child and be able to articulate that and to look at the, because I know there are like other books like I know what my favorite book when my daughter was growing up was There Were No Mirrors in My Grandma's House. And Honey, Sweet Honey in a Rock, I think it's Sweet Honey in a Rock. And me and my daughter read this because it was just talking about just her having, you know, don't look in the mirror, don't let what you see or what you believe other people perceive define you. And it's, remember the first time she really listened to the song and then she was reading the book. She read the book every day for like three years. That is awesome. Wow. And really doesn't, I mean, and it's funny because I, matter of fact, I'm gonna go find the book and I'm gonna go take I'm a senator read this again and see if it if it sparks something but it was a there were no mirrors in my grandma's house it was a song that they turned into a book so that's another thing you know have land is gospel music gospel is very important if it wasn't for the West African drumbeat that we brought with us we probably would not have jazz or hip hip-hop so the music in the in the black church is very important as influences all in every way and every shape that is important as well that is very important that is very important that's right if you're a book lover or love to read love to give gifts https semicolon backslash backslash Lana's day and L A N A S D A Y dot com. Lana's Day at Church. Well that's the name of the book, Lana's Day at Church, but the website is Lanasday.com. However, you can find the book on Amazon.com to help enrich their lives.

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To help enrich their lives. So she's talking about her day at church and it's an easy read. Yeah. It's an easy read and it's fun. Now what age group is this for? I'd say 0 to 12, I would extend it. Okay. 0 to 10. 0 to 10. Okay. So elementary

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school. Yes, exactly. Elementary school children. Now, have you ever gone and read this book to elementary school? Only on zoom. I, well, I, there were a few that showed up for the June teeth and they, and their children really loved it when I did the June team freeze when I met you at the library, but I have read it to a few children on Zoom and they've been kind of crazy about it.

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Oh, that's good. That's good.

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And then I guess because if you read the book to the child, the child loves it. And then you got the doll and the bracelet. It's sold.

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It's a done deal.

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It's a done deal.

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Because when they look at it and you know, children, mom, can I have your baby here? You know, just that easy, just that simple.

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Yeah, I cannot wait.

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I have been talking to a company to do the beta doll and they are very expensive just to do the beta doll is 2000 and to produce some other dolls will cost me another 6000. So I'm saving up for that. So that that is a dream to see that doll at targets. Got it. Got it. That would be great. The other thing is you said you're a professor. You're a professor. Yes. Professor of political science, political science. How you like that? I love it. I fell in love. Actually, I fell in love with politics. But when I was going to the church, because the members of the church were all involved in the civil rights movement, and the whole neighborhood, and we all had the female writers and Martin Luther King come through and different and Ralph Abernathy, come through and it was so and my interest was to at age eight, I remember that I always knew I wanted to do something with politics or to teach politics. So in a political science class, where do you start? In Poli Sci. On the first day of school, we talk about, well, first of all, let them know that anything we talk about in this class stays in this room. We talk about anything. Doesn't matter if it's gay rights or or whatever, or whatever. Quick abortion. Yeah, yeah, everything.

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Everything is political, right?

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Everything is political. Yeah. And so they have a freedom to talk about what they want to talk about. But the first week is we do go over a lot of Supreme Court cases that is very interesting. But we basically talk about the basic freedoms and liberties that we have in America. The first few weeks. OK, so during election time, do you do they talk about the candidates? Do they talk about the issues? As a matter of fact, I have them do a paper on their favorite candidate. You have a little paper on it. Oh, that's interesting. I do. OK, so you make them really dig in because first of all, they have to pick somebody. Yeah, they do. They have to pick somebody that's currently running. Now, does it matter if there's no it doesn't matter what they're running for. So it could be Board of Regents, it could be Council, Commission, President. No, President. President, who's running for President. Okay, so you do pick the office. Yes. So you have the pros and cons of who's running for office. Because I know the big news this past week is Trump getting the indictment. That has been the big news all week. That's the big news all, yeah, because I was on the East Coast. So I was on, and that's all everybody, I mean from the beach to Sesame Place.

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Everywhere you went. Everywhere I went.

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Everybody had a phone. You know, the adults was off, the kids running in the water, they looking at the phone talking about, you know, trying to watch to see what's going on because this is going to be a big race next year. It's going to be a big race. Big race is coming up and it's going to be very important. So entrepreneurs, as we tell you all the time, if you are new to Vegas and you want to vote, this is probably one of the easiest places to cast your ballot. Exactly. One of the easiest places to cast your ballot. You know, you will get all the lovely mail that's about to start hitting your mailboxes in about three weeks. Yep. And it's going to be a lot of a lot of stuff going on. But research and understand what the people that you're voting for, what they stand for. But I would challenge you, though, Professor, in putting the children, asking them to write about the local politics is local. And the stuff that affects us the most are those down ballot races. And what we find is people just focus on that top race and they don't look at, you know, the senators, Congress, county commissioner, you know, just the different races and learning about those candidates because they put a lot of money into when you're running for office. But not only that, they impact our everyday life. And then even understanding this valley, because this valley is not like most cities at all. You know, you got three different cities. Well, yeah, much. No. The message in this area, Clark County has multiple cities. You have different people. We're depending on where you live will determine who can make decisions in your area. And I think children have an understanding of that. That's good that you bring that up because in our college syllabus, we have a section called local state and government. So that's very important. It was also teach Nevada constitution with this course. So we do go over all of those office and local offices in that segment. And it lasts about three or four weeks. And we concentrate on all those offices.

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You just name. Yeah, because I mean, I was watching a rapper and everybody focuses on DC and I'm like DC DC is cool But the stuff they talking about most of the time that's it's local you need local

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representation the local representation Understanding that if you see a law and the law is not right They just had a session where they just changed a whole bunch of stuff Right that impacted a lot of people yes, and need to know you know what does a state senator do? What does a state assemblyman do? But what does a city councilman do? What does a county commissioner do? They get tested on all those questions. Yes. I know. I think I think that I think that's huge because young people dialogue with young people. That's right. That's right. They don't want to hear what older people have to say. They don't. They like she's old. She don't know. That's how I felt. I was like, you old. You don't have a clue. Not knowing that I should have been listening to you. Exactly. They had the wisdom, the history and the wisdom. The history and the wisdom. Well, Linda, I want to thank you for coming on our show today. I truly, truly, truly appreciate it.

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It was a pleasure to meet you and I look forward to having future conversations with you.

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Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on the show today. Thank you so much. You're welcome. You've been listening to Let's Talk with Leah Crawford and Rhonda Nolan.

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I am Leah Crawford.

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I am Rhonda Nolan. And we're so happy you're listening to us this Saturday morning. Hey, entrepreneurs, I just want to tell you about a couple of things that are coming up. The National Women's Business Council is having a NWBC Women in STEM roundtable on August 17. And you can register today at NWBCAUGUST2023 roundtable at eventbrite.com. In other words, eventbrite.com and look under the National Women's Business Council for you, small businesses that are looking for grants. Hello Alice has several grants out right now. They're looking for people in all types of businesses, restaurant business, biking business, you name it. They have grants for you and you can visit helloalice.com for more information on the grants that are available to entrepreneurs. I want to add something Rhonda because guess what? What? Monday, y'all don't know, the babies go back to school.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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The babies, Monday morning. Okay so, for those of us that have to travel during the time that all those people are down back on the road, summer's over because you know traffic gets light when you take out school.

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The teachers trying to get to work, children trying to get to school, that's a whole lot of people moving. So, they are back to school Monday, but there's a back to school fair today. If I'm not mistaken, William McCurdy is doing his back to school fair today. So if you need the backpacks, I mean look around, everyone is doing back to school fairs, they're giving the children backpacks. Today at the Skyview YMCA.

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Skyview YMCA, yes. YMC. Sky View YMC. Yeah, yeah. So you want to you want to get out there and let's put our, you know, let's help our teachers. Yeah. You know, Clark County School District, if you are a parent, because we need all the help that we can get, because one day those children will be making decisions for us. Yeah. So we want them to be prepared to make those so they can make good decisions. All right, y'all. So until next week, until next week, I see you having a May 8th

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when workout because I'm working out next week y'all. That's right people get out there and get your exercise in have a fantastic weekend talk to you next out there and get your exercise in have a fantastic weekend talk to you next

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week. Bye.

Transcribed with Cockatoo