Voices for Voices Season Wrap and Gala Excitement | Episode 123

Voices for Voices Season Wrap and Gala Excitement | Episode 123

Chapter Markers
0:00 Voices for Voices TV and Podcast
22:41 Global Goal Awareness and Progress
27:29 Voices for Voices

Celebrate significant milestones with us at Voices for Voices as we wrap our third season with a bang and gear up for the fourth-anniversary gala extravaganza come October! I'm your host, Justin Alan Hayes, bursting with excitement to share our strides in amplifying our outreach, including the recent grant that's breathing life into Project Purple. Tune in and become part of a community dedicated to mental health recovery, career breakthroughs, and personal evolution, as we bring you weekly episodes enriched with compelling case studies, insightful interviews, and practical tools every Wednesday at 4 pm Eastern on Hudson Community Television.

As we reflect on our journey to touch 3 billion lives, listen to the tale of our serendipitous breakthrough at Walsh University, which catapulted us onto a global stage via Dr. Ray Guarendi's show on the EWTN network. While we haven’t yet hit our target, this exposure has thrust us leagues ahead towards it. Stay tuned as our upcoming bi-weekly roundup episodes in 2024 promise to intertwine current events with our fervent mission to enact positive change. And let's not forget the anticipation building around our fourth annual Brand New Day Gala, a not-to-be-missed celebration of empowerment, influence, and the Voices for Voices community spirit, where your support can resonate through subscribing, donating, or embarking on a career with us.

Voices for Voices is the #1 ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health, recovery and career advancement intelligence.

Our Voices for Voices podcast is all about teaching you insanely actionable techniques to help you prosper, grow yourself worth and personal brand.

So, if you are a high achiever or someone who wants more out of life, whether mentally, physically or spiritually, make sure you subscribe to our podcast right now!

As you can see, the Voices for Voices podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real life examples, actionable tips and "in the trenches" reports and interviews from subscribers like you.

If that sounds like something that could help you grow personally or professionally, then make sure to join me by subscribing!
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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I am your host, justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices. Voices for Voices is the number one ranked podcast where people turn to for expert mental health recovery and career advancement intelligence. Our Voices for Voices podcast is all about teaching you insanely actionable techniques to help you prosper, grow yourself, grow your self-worth and your personal brand. So if you're a high achiever or know somebody who is, you want more out of life, whether mentally, physically or spiritually. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast right now and let your friends know. As you can see, the Voices for Voices podcast publishes episodes that focus on case studies, real-life examples, actionable tips and in-the-trenches reports and interviews from subscribers like you. Like something that you or somebody you know could help grow personally or professionally, then again, please make sure you join me by subscribing. So, before we get started with this episode, a quick programming note for those that are viewing this or listening to this particular episode the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast first airs at 4 pm Eastern time on Wednesdays, so that's when new episodes are dropped, and so, if you want to maybe circle that on your calendar or make a notation. That would be when those drop and we are televised here at the Hudson Community Television Station and there is an app and you can really find it through their Hudson Community Television, their Facebook page or if you go to find it through their URL, just on the web you'll be able to find. And so that's when the television broadcasts. You know, 4 pm Eastern time every Wednesday. You can find that. And then 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all prior episodes and then, once that 4 pm time frame from that initial viewing on television happens, all episodes all past and then, including that one on Wednesday, if it's a half-hour episode, you know 430. If it's an hour episode, you know around five o'clock that new episode. We'll be able to find on YouTube, all the audio platforms and we make announcements on our social media channels platforms, so we do TikTok, facebook, instagram, linkedin and then obviously YouTube. We put a YouTube short together. We're starting to do that as well to make that coverage expansive. So I just wanted to share that. We talk about a ton of topics and I feel like I haven't mentioned that for a while or maybe at all, like through one of our broadcasts. So, 4 pm Eastern Time every Wednesday Voices for Voices new episode drops. Voices new episode drops.

Speaker 1: 4:43

So we're going to go into some of the milestones we hit as an organization Voices for Voices in 2023. In case you may have missed, our 2023 gala Some of this information we did share at that particular event and then again, another programming note you can find all of our galas, so the one we had in last year, 2023, the one in 2022, and the one in 2021, all those are on our Voices for Voices YouTube page so you can find that there, and our 2023 version is actually out in 4k. So it's pretty, pretty awesome to to check out in in high, let alone 4K, so it's really a treat. If you have some time, you want to look through that and watch that. That's definitely worth it. So, as you may or may not know, we are in our third season. So, as we started, you know, season one, episode one, and now we're well over 100 episodes, with a majority of them coming from the television studio here in Hudson, ohio, hudson Community Television. We are grateful to have this opportunity and grateful to be able to bring this to you, not only through the TV station and that broadcast, but again everywhere YouTube, all audio platforms here in Northeast Ohio across the world and we're really just thrilled to be able to be in our third season. So we're going to be having our fourth anniversary gala coming up in October and we're in our third season for the TV show and podcast. So pretty awesome to think that that's where we're at.

Speaker 1: 6:52

Last year so 2023, we earned our first grant and so up until last year really in in 2023, our organization we really didn't know a whole lot about grants. We knew it was money, we knew you could earn it some of it for different reasons, whether it's for the arts or for mental health or whatever that may be. But we never looked into it First off, because having individuals and the time as a volunteer organization that was just very low on the priorities. We were trying to get the website up and running, trying to get the career website integrated with our VoicesForVoicesorg page. We were working on getting episodes filmed like this to bring to you. We were working on our gala who we were going to have as speakers, who was going to play and sing the music. We just had a lot of different variables, a lot of things that were going of different variables, a lot of things that were going.

Speaker 1: 8:32

So, as 2023 started to progress and having the ability to, I believe we did a five series uh at the five different episodes with this, the summit county public health department uh, which we're going to be doing some follow-up, some year-end review on future episodes. But through that relationship and by having that collaboration, I was made aware of a particular grant for organizations such as Voices for Voices, given the work and the advocacy that we do, and so we were made aware of it, took some time to research and then filled out the documentation that we needed to fill out, fill out. We had an interview to discuss our organization and what we, in specific and detail, we're going to use the dollars for, if we were to earn any bit of the actual grant. And so, after, through that whole process, we were notified that we did that. We earned a grant. So we earned our very first grant of any kind, and this is in the form of a check to be able to what we're calling Project Purple and that's bringing this content, to being able to get the guests to make sure that every episode is as premium as can be, to again have awareness of our organization in the community, again have awareness of our organization in the community and have it be around the. You know the mental health, opioid addiction epidemic that's still happening, and then the healing that is starting to also go on, and so having our organization be able to bring some of that content to the general public was deemed beneficial from the Akron Community Foundation, which is where the grant was funded from. So we're again very, very grateful to have had that opportunity. So we're having our eyes open, seeing here in 2024 what options seen here in 2024, what options, what we can focus some of our time and attention on.

Speaker 1: 11:30

And again, our organization. We run on donations, like many cars run on gas fuel, airplanes run on jet fuel. So if you're able to, every penny helps. The donation link is in the description. So if you can help out in any way, we appreciate it. If not, still please enjoy the content, the interviews that we're bringing to you, and at some point maybe that will change.

Speaker 1: 12:11

So our mission trip in 2023 was to keep Ukraine. So I was able to kind of covertly not share completely with my family exactly that I was going to Ukraine in the middle of the unprovoked Russian aggression, and so I was able to go there with a member of the Ukrainian parliament and really just be immersed in a community and a nation that is living life in a much different way. So, regardless of the political spectrum, should we fund Ukraine or shouldn't we? What I know and from what I saw in the mission trip is one of the reasons why I think it's important to do those from time to time is to be with the people and see and hear what's actually occurring on the ground, because sometimes different media, articles and different shows you know they put their spin on things the way they want to, and so I was able to see things, kind of, as I mentioned in the beginning, in the trenches. So we were in the trenches. That was our big mission trip for 2023. We have one planned for 2024. And more information you'll hear about that and see that through our typical channels, our typical social media channels, press releases, etc.

Speaker 1: 13:58

Not only were we able to go to Ukraine, but we were able to go to neighboring country, etc. Not only were we able to go to Ukraine, but we were able to go to a neighboring country in Romania, where we were able to purchase groceries for close to 100 Ukrainian refugees that had left the country due to their towns being in a war scenario that was occurring, and so we went to the grocery store, got the list and we got as many items as we could with the amount of money that we had as an organization. So that was again. That was the original main trip was to head to Romania, but tacked on Ukraine after speaking with one of our guests that we had on last year, of our our guests that we had on last year uh, dr roman shermita, who, uh, who's now the chairman of the board for ukraine american house and I was able to visit him and his brand new university titled american university keeve, and that was that was real, emotional and touching to have the opportunity to do that.

Speaker 1: 15:26

Every May 25th has been dubbed Voices for Voices Day, so May 25th was when we received our 501c3 status, and so we created last year in 2023, designated May 25th being Voices for Voices Day. We are planning a new event, a smaller event, for May 25th. I believe it runs on a Saturday here in 2024. So we're excited to be able to share some of that information as well. So you'll be seeing and hearing about all that coming. We kicked off our merchandise shop on our VoicesForVoicesorg site, our career center, our job board, resume building, all through the VoicesForVoicesorg Head, through the tabs of what we do, I believe, and then that takes you down and you can go section by section.

Speaker 1: 16:45

So the gala, so the gala we held last October was just awesome. Just the people involved involved. We had music from the goods band. We had a music therapist who actually was music therapist at Altman Hospital where my dad's receiving cancer treatment. She came in, hit his first chemotherapy treatment last year. She came in you know travels to the different rooms and asked if the patient would like her to play you know acoustic music and sing. And she came in and she played three songs and it was just amazing. I mean it was so emotional at that time. Obviously, you know we're all crying, we're all sobbing. We just got this diagnosis about my dad. He's getting his treatment, he's picking the song like, or the songs. I mean it was just so emotional and so I reached out to her and so she sang the national anthem, played some music too.

Speaker 1: 17:59

We had Dan Flowers, president and CEO of the Akron-Kent Regional Food Bank. That's our keynote speaker. He received an award. Judge Allison Brough received an award too. Her husband came and accepted on her behalf. She had a couple of competing events at that time wasn't able to make it in person.

Speaker 1: 18:29

And then we were able to just recently, in December, do a day trip to New York City and give an award to one of our previous guests that we've had. His name's Tyrus and he is a television personality on Fox News. He is a former NWA heavyweight champion in the world. He's New York Times best-selling author, sells out comedy shows, and so I was able to. We had him again. You can check out an earlier episode on our YouTube or on the audio version of our podcast. But I was able to go meet him in the green room, just have, have some conversation, just as like person the person. And then the most awesome thing happened afterwards, as I was able to present the award to him in front of the studio audience, which there's about 120, 125 there. I was able to get a couple pictures, but we don't have a photographer, so I would have loved to have had some of the photos of being able to present to him with the audience there. But nonetheless, it was so neat for somebody of his stature to take the time to be responsive and to make it happen. So it was really kind of a big thrill to be able to do that.

Speaker 1: 20:24

And then two last things here I want to cover here on this episode is last year, 2023 was big for art therapy and come out with a degree in art therapy and have that be a career that an organization can hire for specifically art therapy Previously, from my understanding, a therapist. So I have a therapist let's say the therapist I have now. She could give some of the treatment through music prior to 2023. She could give some of the treatment through music but the whole treatment couldn't be 100% music therapy or art therapy. And so 2023 in the state of Ohio that's now possible where individuals can do that. So that's big for our board member, heidi LaRue. We've had a couple episodes. She was on one of the episodes we had with Dr Temple Grandin that you can check out and so that all the more tied to having the music therapist from Altman Hospital that came to the cancer ward and was playing music for my dad and then who came and played at our gala. So that really tied together and she spoke so graciously about that at the event. So we're just ecstatic that more therapy methods are becoming known and able to make it a career out of. If somebody wants to do that, that, they can have that be their career. They don't have to dovetail that piece into you know, a treatment that's, you know, 75 percent. Another, you know, other you know and other treatment therapy.

Speaker 1: 22:41

And then, lastly, 3 billion people. I guess it was the end of 2022, I had this crazy idea that I wanted to voice it. One of the goals I wanted, or we wanted as an organization, was to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond, and so, as a population, the world population, we just had, I think, eight billion. I read the other day, and so I just, you know, throughout this goal. I'm a dreamer, so I'm going to throw out this big goal. And the craziest things happened there was.

Speaker 1: 23:21

You know, dr Ray Gurende has a show on the EWTN network. He just happened to be taping four episodes at Walsh University, where I teach, and I went to those tapings had the Voices for Voices shirt on and I was able to ask a question at three of the four while the show was running, while they were filming and they, being the EWTN, they didn't edit out my question, any of my questions, and you're able to see the Voices for Voices logo, as I was asking the question. And so the significance of that and the $3 billion is this show is available and viewable around. I believe it's three or four hundred, four or five hundred million households across the entire world have access to be able to watch it. So obviously not every single household is watching it.

Speaker 1: 24:35

But if you take that let's say say 400 million, and then the Nielsen rating system uses, I think, the household being like two people plus a percentage point or two, or yeah or not a full percentage point, but a part of a percentage, so if you take that and multiply that out, you kind of get somewhere in 800 million or so people that potentially could view that. And so the thought was okay, if I was on three different shows three different times, take the potential millions of people across the entire world, multiply that times three, you get not three billion, but you get pretty close. And so that's why I mean it's crazy, because when I made kind of proclamation and publicly brought out that goal, it's crazy because when I made kind of proclamation and and and publicly brought out that goal, I was even just a little unsure of it myself, like I was. I was still. I was thinking over the course of the rest of my life of having that opportunity and for that opportunity to happen at that time.

Speaker 1: 25:58

Did we reach the three billion? No, are we close to it? Maybe Did every single person in the household watch? No, but we're much closer to that three billion mark than when the year started in 2023. So we're just continuing to, to grow with, with awareness, uh, with the, the work we're doing, the episodes, the uh, the guests that we're we're bringing to you the uh, the, the new 2024 bi-weekly roundup where we're, you know, going to be having uh more conversations with you, uh, about more current events. Uh, given when we tape these specific episodes, we tape these in advance, um, so we're going to be able to uh, to, to, to do some more discussing about you know what, what's happening, what's going on, how I can really make the world a better place, and we're really looking forward to having you on that journey with us.

Speaker 1: 27:09

Continue on that journey and, again, be on the lookout for the fourth annual Brand New Day Gala date and time that will be coming forthright in the next couple months.

Speaker 1: 27:29

You don't want to miss it. We bring a lot of energy, the people to come have a good time, have good food, have good entertainment, excellent speakers, the awards. It just can't and I'm not just saying it because it's my organization, but if I look at other organizations who have been around a lot longer, we're doing a lot of great things and a lot of great people are getting word of Voices for Voices. So if you can help us out, if you can subscribe, if you can donate, if you check out our career website, again, voices for Voices is the organization we're grateful to be able to come in to your screen, whether it's a TV, ipad, computer, whether that's on the audio version, on all those platforms. So again, thank you for letting us be a part of your life and until next time. I'm Justin Allen Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices, and please be a voice for you or somebody in need.