Voices for Voices Episode 397 Left Us Speechless | Ep. 397

Voices for Voices Episode 397 Left Us Speechless | Ep. 397

The momentum feels different when gratitude sets the pace. We look back on 390+ episodes, a growing global community, and the small sparks—a listener’s golden beanie idea, an editor’s quiet excellence—that turned into bright, tangible wins. Our mission stays steady: serve people facing mental health challenges and trauma recovery with practical support, faith-filled encouragement, and content that helps every single day, whether or not a new show drops.

We open the door to everyone, believers and skeptics alike, and talk frankly about the culture we want to build: one that celebrates progress and doesn’t drown people in impossible goals. If you’ve wrestled with harsh performance reviews, restructurings, or the silent punch of a missed raise, you’ll hear real talk on resilience, humane leadership, and how to hold standards without breaking spirits. We also highlight the creators powering our publishing arm, from authors to editors to artists, and explain how merch and books fund a nonprofit model focused on service over hype.

Then we draw a firm boundary in defense of original work. Mythical Creatures Around the World now lives under the Voices for Voices umbrella, and the content is not open source. We outline why protecting stories, characters, and posts matters—for the integrity of the brand, for the trust of fans, and for the dignity of creators whose ideas fuel communities. If material was copied, we invite a public retraction and honest correction before a stated 2026 deadline. Clear lines create safer spaces for collaboration and ensure advocacy has a spine, not just a smile.

If this resonates, help us keep the work moving. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a quick review to tell us what lifted you up and what you want more of next. Your voice shapes where we go from here.

Chapter Markers

0:00 Welcome And Mission Of Service

1:12 Nonprofit Identity And Global Impact

3:26 Publishing, Merch, And The Beanie Story

8:36 Gratitude For Community And Donors

12:08 Hitting 390+ Episodes And Momentum

15:44 Rethinking Performance And Positivity At Work

22:15 Career Setbacks And Mental Health

27:20 Why We Protect Original Work

31:25 Mythical Creatures Brand And Ownership

36:25 Public Retractions And Legal Deadline

42:10 Closing Blessings And Share The Show

#VoicesForVoices #Episode397 #SpeechlessMoments #PodcastHighlights #EmotionalJourney #StorytellingMagic #InspiringVoices #LifeChangingStories #PowerfulNarratives #ThoughtProvokingContent #HeartfeltConversations #ImpactfulEpisodes #VFVCommunity #UniquePerspectives #MustListenPodcast #justiceforsurvivors #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion #TikTok #Instagram #truth #Jesusaire #VoiceForChange #HealingTogether #VoicesForVoices397

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission Of Service
• 1:12 Nonprofit Identity And Global Impact
• 3:26 Publishing, Merch, And The Beanie Story
• 8:36 Gratitude For Community And Donors
• 12:08 Hitting 390+ Episodes And Momentum
• 15:44 Rethinking Performance And Positivity At Work
• 22:15 Career Setbacks And Mental Health
• 27:20 Why We Protect Original Work
• 31:25 Mythical Creatures Brand And Ownership
• 36:25 Public Retractions And Legal Deadline
• 42:10 Closing Blessings And Share The Show

Transcript

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes: 0:02

Hey everyone, Justin here, Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode and all of the over 390 episodes we have in our Voices for Voices, TV show and podcast portfolio. Um, it's really a great time to uh reflect on all the all the blessings that we have uh received this year, all of our uh viewers or listeners, just like you and you, for uh being with us, being a part of the Voices for Voices ministry uh in movement, where we are helping people each and every day that uh not even just we have new shows or a TikTok live. Um we're helping people every day, even if we don't have a TikTok live, and even if we don't drop a new episode, because we have so many episodes and so much reach across the world that we know that we are touching people on a daily basis. Um on the on the heart, we are um not thinking like some individuals, um, say that phrase, uh some people's mind automatically goes to the gutter, and we are not those people, we are the clean version of uh Christian fantasy, of mental health recovery, and advocacy, the trauma recovery and advocacy. And at the end of the day, we just want to help, whatever that may be, and it may be this show, it may be a different show, it may be a TikTok live, maybe who knows? Uh only God knows the uh the trajectory and and how we were reaching people and and how we're helping people. Uh it's just so uh so validating, so reassuring that we are helping people. Because if you look at our vision and our mission, you look at voices for voices.org, I say or g instead of C O M because so many websites are.com and we're a 501c3 nonprofit charity, and so we are an org ORG, we're an organization. Um, if you're here in the United States, uh every every cent, every dollar that you either donate at lovevoices.org uh or by purchasing one of believe we have seven seven different books available. We have four in our TikTok shop, and we have seven in our publishing house. Uh so the voices for voices uh publishing arm of or leg of the the the uh the overall organization of voices for voices that you can see on my hat right here. Uh this beanie can be purchased if you head on over to voicelessforvoices.org, and then you're gonna look across the uh the top section, and you're you're gonna see what do we do. You're gonna click that, and then there's gonna be a drop-down, and one of the options it's gonna say shop S H O P. Click that, and on the first row on the right-hand side, you click there, and you can get your very own uh black beanie with the with the white lettering, and this is stitched, nothing but high quality for uh our donors, our viewers, our listeners, for anybody. And then if you want the golden voices for voices beanie, the golden beanie, uh we weren't able to get them in the same spot because uh the the one uh one factory doesn't produce golden beanies, and that's the that's the one that uh produces this this one. Same high quality product. Uh we we just had to uh we had to find another uh another vendor that we could get the the golden beanie. And so to do that, you're gonna scroll all the way down on that shop page, so all the way down, and then on the right-hand side, you're gonna see a picture of a beanie. Click there, and then there's gonna be a myriad, uh a multitude of options to uh select, and one of those is gonna be gold, golden. Click that, and that takes you to you know the the the purchase process. Uh those have been in high demand, they're actually recommended uh by one of our TikTok live uh viewers. Uh and here I am wearing this on a lot of our shows, and I I was so as sometimes we get so down in the weeds of what we're what we're working on project-wise, that I it took a TikTok live uh viewer or listener to bring that up. And I was like, oh yeah, we can definitely do that. So I think it was it was a couple days later, and we were able to do that, and then I was thinking, well, there's this really popular song called Golden out. And with the Olympics, uh the winter Olympics coming up, I was thinking, why don't we have a gold golden gold beanie? So we did that, so we saw a need, and we've been selling quite a lot quite a lot of these uh these these beanie. So thank you uh again to that TikTok live viewer, listener, who brought that up, and we're so grateful, and we hope you enjoy your beanie. And I I I hope that you you got two. I hope you got one of whichever color, because if that, you know, when you first get on that shop page and you scroll all the way over to the right, there's limited colors on that, uh, on the one where you can get it, you know, the black and white. I think you can get the black and white on the other one when you scroll all the way down where the golden one is, but we were wanted to make sure that at least one of the options had the gold version, and so that's what we did. Uh so we saw uh a problem, we saw a way we could get better, and and we did that, and so we're again we we have so much to be grateful for this holiday season. Whether you uh whether you're a believer or not, that's okay. You don't have to be one specific believer or not to uh be a part of the voices for voices, um ministry and movement. Uh we love everybody just the same, and we are so so grateful for all of our viewers, our listeners, our donors, our uh our customers that are purchasing the beanies and purchasing. We have so many different options of uh that you can choose from. And again, we are a nonprofit uh registered, and each dollar, each cent, whether by purchase or whether it's a straight uh cash, debit card, credit card donation, uh all that is 100% tax deductible if you live in the United States. Uh, I don't know all the rules and laws, and every country is different, and I know we're reaching over a hundred countries and territories and over a thousand cities across the world. Uh so before I would check into what the rules and regulations is for your country, uh we we have so many consumers and viewers and listeners from all across the world that we just want to thank thank you if you decide to jump in and and and donate uh what whatever that looks like. That's again that's straight, you know, uh monetary donation, the money, cash, US dollar, uh peso, you know, depending on where where where you live, uh or whether you make a purchase of any of our items from our shop. Or our books aren't always up to date in our on our website, so you you want to head over to Amazon.com and you want to type in voices for voices publishing or David Solomon author or Ryan Solomon, and Solomon is spelled S-O-L-O-M-O-N. Ryan is uh capital R Y A N. David is capital D A V I D, and his uh his wife and Ryan's mom and uh is Amanda A-M-A-N-D-A. Uh all of them are creators, they're just amazing, amazing people. And Amanda does so much of the editing, which is not always the most glamorous part of the creating process. Uh, so we want to give a big shout out to her, Amanda Solomon for everything that you do. Uh, we want to give a shout out to Cooper Saunders for the Adelaide comic book. Uh, he did all the artwork on the cover and inside the comic book. And the Adalan is spelled A-T-A-L-A-N. That's A-T-A-L-A-N. A-T-A-L-A-N, The Adalan. And that is the first comic that is written by the hottest author in the world, which is David Solomon in the artwork again. Uh, so David uh did the story part uh of the comic book, The Adalan, and Cooper Saunders did the artwork. Uh we just have so much to be thankful for uh trying to make sure I cover everybody, everybody, obviously, family, friends, everybody, everybody. It's been a part of the the uh the movement, the push this year. We are, as you may or may not know, this time last year, we were at maybe 155, 156 or so episodes total. And this year, we had a goal of reaching 300 episodes because we looked at the numbers and said, okay, you know, we we can probably double. Yeah, we can say 150. Yeah, we're on there. We could we could do that. So then that that grand total for seasons one, two, and three, and four, which is the season we're in now, you said, okay, well, the total of all four seasons through calendar year 2025, yeah, we can we should be able to hit 300. And then lo and behold, here we are. You see a 300 already, you see a 320, 330, 340, 350, 360, 370, 380, 390. And you're gonna see 400 at least a total of 400 episodes of our podcast and TV show. It's just so I I it's so hard to put into words because so much time with jobs, corporate America, corporate world, uh so much time is spent on the negative. Right? So you you and I would have you know a uh like a performance review. And so we would look at 2026 and we would meet with our whoever's our manager, director, whatever whatever the title is, we'd meet with a person and we'd say, okay, here's you know, list me out three or five goals that you want to reach next year. And they also have to tie into the mission vision of the organization. Well, so that's the part for next year. Well, at the end of this year would be the time, which where we're at right now, uh, but might happen in January or February or so. We'd look backwards at at calendar 2025, January through December, and we would sit down with our, you know, whoever our manager, director, whoever manages us. And we'd say, okay, did we reach these goals? Did we not? If we didn't, why didn't we? If we did, how'd we do it? And then our manager, you then they give their input, and and so we may think, oh yeah, we I reached that goal. And our manager might say, no, you didn't. Or they might say, yes, you did, or you said, yeah, I was satisfactory. I did okay this year on this particular goal. Anyway, so then the focus goes then not on what we're doing good, or well, it goes to what we didn't do, what we should have done better. If we're in a team of like five, then we get graded and rated against all five of those individuals. Or if there's five total, then there'd be four plus hypothetically me in this this example. So there's all this rating, and how do we do, and I feel that there's a lot of there's too much time and energy spent on what we didn't do, well do what we need to get better at, and there can be differing of opinions, and I get it, I get it to an extent. But I also don't get it, because we need to be empowering our people, our directory ports, or if we have our own organization and we're the only one running it, or if we are a CEO of an organization that has fifteen thousand employees. Whatever wherever you're at, we always can do better. It's easy to find flaws. You want to know why? Have you ever heard of gossip? The real housewives of wherever? Or sat in a mall or sat somewhere, and they're just kind of people watchers. And then there's conversation with others, like, oh, you'll never you'll never believe what I saw, or what this person was wearing, or this, or that. So that's how it starts. It starts as a like, oh it's not exactly mean. But it's like we gotta one up them. We gotta, you know, we're comparing, we're judging. And that's the part where we're trying not to do as much is the judging part. So way too much time, I believe, on negative and too little on the positive. So that's why I'm spending time on the positive for this show. Because number one, if we're alive, that is the biggest positive. There's a lot of people that aren't. Or in the month of December, or prior in other months, previous months and years. I'm not saying we need to have some humongous celebration for that, but I'd say that's a good thing, right? We're alive. Okay. We can agree. We're helping people. We can agree. It's a good thing. It's a really good thing. Whether you volunteer your time, whether you uh whether you donate some of your hard earned money you purchase from our shop. These are positive, these are positive things. And just you know, there's a song called, you know, it's a great day to be alive. That's one part of the song I I know I don't know, it's Kenny Chesney. Forget who sings it. But it is, and and so we gotta, we gotta start there. And then the helping people, however, that is helping is better than hurting, we believe, we believe that unity, unifying is better than dividing, and so anytime we can throw a positive or throw a win up on the scoreboard. Again, I'm not saying we have to have you know these huge celebrations for these wins, but can we at least just talk about them and let people know that they're appreciated every once in a while? Would it hurt? Would it hurt to do that? That's what I'm talking about because when everything's negative, negative, negative, negative, people are leaving, can't retain employees because everything's negative, and sometimes the goals are so far fetched, and some of the goals are so far fetched, in addition to just what you and I could do. So let's just say somebody is starting their career, first job, they get their performance review, they set their goals, and most of them, or some of them, might tie to how well the business does, or a somebody makes a business decision. So somebody starting their career is usually on like a one of the lower rungs of the ladder, and somebody who's making the decision on should we do this, shouldn't we do this, what are the options, is usually above, and and oftentimes multiple ladder rings uh above rungs, not rings. Um so here's a person just starting their career, and they're like, Man, I I hate I don't get to make the decision on this goal, this goal, or this goal, and yet our managers come back and say, Well, this is the way we have to do it. Sometimes there's some negotiating in that, and sometimes, but it all starts at the top, so if the top is getting some unachievable, only in a perfect world goals, then those all trickle down the organization. And so, no, that's that's absolutely unfair. And I've been at organizations where that has happened. I've been also organizations where I've hit all my goals and didn't didn't get a raise. And people around me were and we were told, well, there's just not money, you know, in our budget for that. So that's a def that feels defeating, that felt defeating, and then I ended up getting caught up in a restructuring and business restructured, and part of it was me not having a job. And so I gotta get I got that call at eight in the morning, went down to the conference room, was read uh legal jargon by the director and my team, which was a new director who didn't know who who took who had two teams, they got merged together. And so there was more knowledge about one side, one team than the other. Regardless, I go in there, lose my job, restructuring, so that stuff happens, and so that's why I wrote The House of You Five Workforce Preparation Tips for a Successful Career, written by Justin Allen Hayes, which is me. This was The House of You was what was before Voices for Voices. That's one of the reasons why I wrote that book because I am an expert in myself, and I've had ups and I've had downs. And I also teach collegiate classes, university level classes, undergraduate, graduate, in-person, remote, created classes. So that's why you see part of the organization and you see that book and go, wait, how does that really deal? How's that connect with voices for voices? So that's that's how it does. Because no matter how you a person loses their job, they still lose their job. That means it's gonna affect the mental side. It just is. We don't plagiarize. We have original content, we don't plagiarize. Mythical creatures around the world have been plagiarized so much, and it's such a shame, but we fixed that, and we are fixing that. The first thing we did, because you gotta do things in steps, you gotta do things you know one thing at a time. So first thing we did is we wholly W H O L L L L L Y, meaning the whole thing. We wholly acquired voices for voices, wholly acquired the mythical creatures around the world entity. So now mythical creatures around the world is covered by our R with the circle around it for voices for voices from the United States patent and trade office. So you heard no child is for sale and children trafficking. Well, I'm gonna do a little bit of parallel to that to that no child is for sale, no person is for sale, is to say no post, no content, past, present, future is open source on mythical creatures around the world. If you don't know what open source means, open source means anybody can use that information, anybody can use that story, anybody can use the characters uh it means so somebody I mean it's even it's open source, it's still kind of plagiarism. If somebody literally copies from a post or from somewhere, a blog, anywhere, copies and pastes that in into their own book, their own uh anything that is not mythical creatures around the world owned, then that's plagiarism. And so that was the first thing we did is we're letting everybody know that no child is for sale ever, ever, ever, ever, and no adults are for sale, ever, ever, ever. And mythical creatures around the world, everything associated with mythical creatures around the world, whether stated or implied, is now wholly owned and operated under the voices for voices, umbrella. So you have the umbrella, and then you have legs, arms, or when they call it. Uh so we have that's where the voices for voices publishing. Now we have mythical creatures around the world, and that all leads up to voices for voices, the umbrella organization. So that's the first thing we had to do. We had to stop whatever the notion was, whatever this open source information, whatever these thoughts were, we had to stop that first. So we had to make that action happen, and we did, and we did. So that's the first thing. The second thing is if anybody is found with plagiarized content of mythical creatures around the world and or voices for voices and all the all the uh all the areas then we we have to proceed legally because that's called copyright infringement. So it is our it's our request. See, we can do things a little easy, or we can do things a little bit tougher. If you have plagiarized mythical creatures around the world at any point, we are requesting again. We're requesting, we're not forcing, not that we're requesting. If you've ever lifted and taken content directly from mythical creatures around the world, and made that into your own and saying, oh, this is my this is my work, this is my work. We're requesting that you come out and you put a public statement out that says that you plagiarized mythical creatures around the world, who is a wholly owned subsidiary of Voices for Voices. Let your fans know. Let the world know. Because if that if that is the case, if that is the case, then you sold fans and consumers a fake bill of goods. And so that's called public relations. That's that's called okay, I screwed up, I messed up, I shouldn't have done it. I want to be the example of how to handle a crisis. Apologies, and you want to pretend like, oh, I'm I don't hear it, I don't hear it, I don't hear it, I don't hear it, I don't see it, I don't see it. I see nothing, I know nothing. When there is something to see in here You're probably not gonna want to be on the other other side of that. And I'm just being I'm just being honest. So we're given you an opportunity. We're given an opportunity through the end of March twenty twenty six. So I am going to just double check and make sure I have my okay. So at twelve oh one AM on April first of twenty twenty six, we're gonna put this in writing that if you have plagiarized for mythical creatures around the world at any point in time, and you haven't done a public retraction, you haven't given a public statement, you haven't acknowledged that you plagiarize for mythical creatures around the world by midnight. You're saying 1201 on April first of 2026. This is the warning. So you have three months, you have three full months to make this decision and to do it. If you don't, you're opening yourself up to potential legal action. Just to be clear, just to be clear. So thank you for joining us on this episode, the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. We love each every one of you. We pray for everybody, uh, not just myself, my family, but we pray for the whole world, even our enemies, even people that have done us wrong, whether we've whether they have or haven't. We pray for everybody. Even if you're not a believer, we we we pray. And we hope you have a happy holiday season. And we'll see you on our next show of the Voices for Voices podcast, a TV show. Please share, share, share, subscribe, subscribe, subscribe, like, like, like, follow, follow, follow. Let everybody know about the hottest podcast out there besides the Joe Rogan experience, and that is the Voices for Voices, TV show, and podcast. Have a great day, everybody.