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Excuses to Connect

Excuses to Connect

Richard Lee-Thai

1 Creator

1 Creator

Have you ever wanted to connect with someone, but you stopped yourself? Excuses to Connect is a podcast about actively creating the conditions that make meaningful connections easier. In other words, you can make excuses to connect. Join me, Richard Lee-Thai, as I have conversations with experts, friends, and strangers on their struggles and successes when it comes to human connections. As a listener, I hope that you can take these insights and find excuses to connect with people. You never know how any one connection can transform your life. https://excusestoconnect.com/
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Top 10 Excuses to Connect Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Excuses to Connect episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Excuses to Connect for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Excuses to Connect episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Brady Simpson is a Master’s Graduate from the University of Lethbridge and a Twitch streamer. Don’t know what Twitch is? It’s a livestreaming platform where people stream themselves playing video games, playing music, hosting talk shows, and much more. Brady specifically streams Guild Wars II, a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game). In this episode, we talk about the challenges he had to go through to complete his Master’s degree, as well as the amazing international connections that he’s built through streaming on Twitch, including a number of his viewers coming to watch his thesis defense!

Highlights & Takeaways
  • Brady being diagnosed with ADHD in the middle of his Master’s program and how his perception on ADHD shifted from it being some horrible thing to how it’s something extremely common and normal.
  • When Brady messaged his professor saying he was quitting, he received this message: “I support you either way, but I want you to know that I hope that someday you see in your yourself again, what I see in you.”
  • How he grew his Twitch livestreaming audience from 0 viewers to averaging over 75 viewers regularly
  • He ended up meeting some of his viewers in-person when he travelled, and how they became close friends that supported him during his challenges
  • “You'll find your people. You'll find your tribe. The number one thing is to not let that fear hold you back and understand that you're gonna get rejected sometimes. But every rejection is getting you one step closer to building that community and finding those connections and then ultimately stay consistent.”
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Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Watch my TEDx Talk: “How to Find Excuses to Connect

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnect

Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Isaac Mashman is a businessman, podcast host, and public speaker. Over the span of several years, and nearly a dozen various business ideas, it was in 2020 that Isaac launched his company Mashman Ventures, a public relations firm that specializes in working with people who want to be followed, in-demand, and respected to build their personal brands. In this episode, we hone in on what personal branding means and also how it relates to making meaningful connections with others.

Highlights & Takeaways
  • An elevator pitch is how you would sum up what you have going on in a short amount of time - Isaac approaches it by building rapport and focusing on the other person, rather than immediately trying to sell
  • Personal branding is something that you have already had since you were born - it’s who you are, your reputation, and your relationship with the general public
  • How Isaac was able to facilitate a connection between his musician friend and a famous local artist whom he respected, but never met. Now the artist has been managing Isaac’s friend for a year now
  • You don't have to grow every relationship, because you might be going in a different direction and have different values than each other
  • Aggressive patience is understanding that things take time, but also recognizing that if you have a vision of where you want to get to, why not get there sooner if you can?
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Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Emma Kobelsky works as a camp counsellor at Between Friends, which is an organization that provides social, recreational, and development opportunities for people with disabilities. We explore how this provides an important space for connections, and how summer camp has motivated her to pursue a career in Occupational Therapy. Emma and I also happen to share the same personality type, and we chat about how being introverted shapes the type of connections we seek out.

Highlights & Takeaways

  • How Between Friends offers a space where everyone feels like they belong and aren’t excluded because of their disability
  • The usage of person-first language (“a person with a disability” or “a person with autism”) contrasted with people who want to self-identify as a disabled creator or autistic person
  • What an Occupational Therapist does
  • The Myers-Briggs Personality Test and how we’re both INFPs
  • What a high-quality connection looks and feels like

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Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnectSupport Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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September Plumer is a Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) currently working towards her MBA. She is also currently the President of the Dinosaur Toastmaster club. She sees Toastmasters as a great middle ground of having activities for both task-oriented and relationship-oriented people. What does she mean by this? Well, a few years ago, she read about people either lean towards being task-oriented which means you’re great that you’re getting stuff done, but struggle in relationships. Or you’re relationship-oriented which means you’re great at connecting with people, but you don’t get as much done. In this episode, we explore this dynamic as well as her project to write down 4500 things she was grateful for.

Highlights & Takeaways
  • John Gottman’s concept of bids (any attempt to connect with someone) and the 3 ways it can be responded to. This is what separates long-term happy couples from those who are less happy
  • As an accountant, she can spend a lot of her career by herself, but how in her MBA right now, she’s been challenged to think more of how she can manage and motivate others effectively
  • Gratitude journaling helped her to be more relationship-oriented by writing down people she was grateful for and then texting them to let them know
  • When she hit 4,500 items of gratitude, she felt like she had strengthened that muscle to where it needed to be and that it had totally changed her life, even though her circumstances hadn’t changed
  • At one point in her life, her house was bursting with all the things she had bought thinking that it would make her feel like she was enough and was doing okay, but she now realizes that decluttering is one way she could take control of her life
  • If she could put any message on a billboard for the world to see, it would be: “Our lives affect and influence the people who are around us [...] So remember you make a difference, no matter how big or how small your circle is.”
Resources Mentioned

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Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Ron MacTavish is a Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) and the VP of Membership for Dynamically Speaking Toastmasters. With over 15,600 clubs in the world, Toastmasters is an international organization for people to develop their public speaking and leadership skills. In this episode, we talk about how he’s built connections around his interests of Toastmasters, travelling, and books. He says: Don't go through your life wishing “I wonder what would have happened if I had talked to her or talked to him? It's far better to step out and try and make that connection than to live in regret.”

Highlights & Takeaways
  • How Toastmasters helped him advance his career within sales and management, and why he returned back after a 16-year break from Toastmasters
  • How Dynamically Speaking Toastmasters has actually thrived during the pandemic by now having members from all across the globe
  • Ron’s “Lit Gang” and why he asks people about what they’re reading
  • Why his favourite books are “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and the works of Leo Tolstoy
  • Why he takes literary tours when he travels to a country
  • The story of how Ron connected with someone in Burma because he chose to wear a Saskatchewan Roughriders shirt
Resources Mentioned

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Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnect
Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Cherie Werner is the Co-Founder and Chief Kindness Officer at KOYA. KOYA is a social platform and app designed to create meaningful and intentional connections. You can send people a video or audio message along with an optional gift, like some money for coffee. You pick a location where the KOYA will activate, say your friend’s favourite coffee shop. The recipient receives a notification that they have a KOYA to discover, and you can provide them with hints to nudge them in the right direction. In this episode, we explore KOYA, as well as the F.I.E.S.T.A. Meetup group that she hosts in Austin, Texas, and much more on the topic of connections!
Highlights & Takeaways

  • How Cherie’s family would intentionally leave keepsakes to show that they were thinking of each other, like self-recorded audiobooks, objects hidden in their suitcase, or a 6-month journal that you can only read one day at a time
  • How Gen Z is the most overly connected generation, but also the loneliest
  • There is your biological family who brought you up, but also your chosen family that invest into you
  • Meeting an executive from Lunchclub on her 100th call, and then having their team over for a home cooked meal while they were visiting Austin
  • Why she started the F.I.E.S.T.A. (Founders, Investors, Entrepreneurs, Startups, Techies, and Austin Newcomers) Meetup group
  • You're never too old. It's never too late. Do your part in showing up and being intentional with the people in your life.

Resources Mentioned

______

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnectSupport Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Col Cseke is the Artistic & Executive Director at Inside Out Theatre, which is a Deaf and disability theatre company in Calgary invested in artistic excellence, community development, and deepening our cultures’ accessibility. He also runs a podcast called Mad Practice with his best buddy JD, where they talk about living with madness and generally just revel in their friendship. In this episode, we explore his journey with theatre and the connections he’s made within that industry, as well as the mental health effects of the pandemic and how it’s shifted our interactions with people. A candid and inspirational conversation, he shares a lesson he learned this past year: “Good people know good people.” In other words, connecting with one good person who is very involved in the community can lead to all these other relationships with awesome people.

Highlights & Takeaways
  • Col has always had an inclination towards storytelling and community building, and so a life in a theatre gave him a chance to do both of these things
  • Inside Out Theatre emphasizes that work created by and centered around artists with disabilities or deaf artists is a really vital part of us. It’s not a charitable or “nice thing to do”, but that in itself is a rich and thriving culture.
  • How during the pandemic he convinced himself that he was introvert and didn’t need to be around other people, which wasn’t true. But it was his coping mechanism as a way to not ask for help or be vulnerable with others.
  • Becoming comfortable with reaching out to friends just to talk and catch up, and not for any other particular reason or facade
  • How it’s difficult for a lot of people to make friends as an adult, but recognize that that’s okay too
Resources Mentioned

______

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Brianne Erichsen is a Registered Clinical Social Worker as well as my former therapist while I was at the University of Lethbridge. She shares her perspective as a mental health professional on topics such as making connections and social anxiety. She also shares her own experiences with connecting with people and how that has shaped her life.

Highlights & Takeaways

  • How seeing a counselor can be for everyone, not just people in a crisis or diagnosed with a mental illness
  • The analogy of mental health is like a house
  • How to better connect with yourself and others
  • The fear ladder approach to breaking down fears around connecting with people
  • Combating social anxiety through exposing yourself to more social situations

Resources Mentioned

______

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnect

Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Excuses to Connect - 34: Venn - The App to Make Friends with Jesper Algaard
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03/30/22 • 45 min

Jesper Algaard is the Founder and CEO of the Venn app. Venn is Norwegian for “friend” and it’s an app designed to help people make friends. This is done by matching people based on similar interests and personalities, as well creating activities to move the online conversations to in-person interactions. In this episode, Jesper shares his inspiration behind creating this app, curious facts about human connection, and stories about how connection comes about in different stages of our lives.

Highlights & Takeaways
  • When Jesper was in his 30s, he realized that his social life was changing quite a bit: friends who he used to regularly hang out with became less available because they got married. Venn came out of the idea of utilizing technology to help people be more social with the right people.
  • Norway is a “very non-flirty population” as compared to people in Spain and Italy. Norwegians won’t sit next to each other if they don’t have to, and people prefer being at a distance.
  • 50% of their users are people who are actually in a relationship - they may have a family, kids, and friends, but they still want more.
  • How he had a surprising friendship with an 80-year-old man by connecting over world politics and economics.
  • How he also had a several hour conversation with a Japanese TV celebrity without expecting it
  • “If you have a friend who you haven’t talked to in a long time, I would say pick up the phone and have a chat because good friends are probably one of the most things we can have. Friends rock!”
Resources Mentioned

______

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Watch my TEDx Talk: “How to Find Excuses to Connect

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnect

Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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Excuses to Connect - 29: Leading a Limitless Life with Lionel Migrino
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02/23/22 • 35 min

Lionel Migrino identifies himself as a Filipino-Canadian living with cerebral palsy. He is proud of his Filipino roots and to be a member of the disability community. In this episode, he emphasizes how he does not solely define himself as a person with a disability, because he lives his life without any limitations. His goal is to show people that your obstacles should not stop you from going on adventures and chasing your dreams. He is a photographer, anti-racism and disability advocate, and emphasizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Highlights & Takeaways
  • Cerebral palsy impacts one’s fine motor skills, but it is also different for everyone and there’s many layers to it. It might just affect a particular group of muscles, or someone might be non-verbal, and so on.
  • Lionel points out that society often puts the disability community in a box, and leaves their voice out of important decision-making and policies. He is passionate about promoting equity and ensuring there is a voice for the voiceless.
  • The first step of being an ally is recognizing your own privilege and also not being afraid of being uncomfortable. People with disabilities live in an ableist world that is not made for them. “So why can’t others be uncomfortable for a few minutes to learn about another person’s experiences?”
  • His “Kwento’t Litrato” project compares and contrasts the experience that white people and racialized people have when asked the question: “Where are you from?” For racialized people, they can be asked this all the time and it’s a microaggression
  • “I think it’s so important that the voiceless are heard so that change can happen without being dehumanized, or sacrificed, or without negative implications.”
  • “Your voice is as important as everyone else, and we should embrace our uniqueness and differences. Don’t be afraid to be who you are and don’t be afraid to own it.”
Resources Mentioned

______

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with a friend and make sure to follow Excuses to Connect on Facebook and Instagram.

Music by Meghan Rennie - Instagram / Soundcloud

Website: excusestoconnect.com

Email: [email protected]

Leave a Voice Message: https://www.speakpipe.com/excusestoconnect
Support Me: Buy Me A Coffee

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FAQ

How many episodes does Excuses to Connect have?

Excuses to Connect currently has 47 episodes available.

What topics does Excuses to Connect cover?

The podcast is about Podcasts, Self-Improvement and Education.

What is the most popular episode on Excuses to Connect?

The episode title '43: Livestreaming on Twitch to Create Community with Brady Simpson' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Excuses to Connect?

The average episode length on Excuses to Connect is 41 minutes.

How often are episodes of Excuses to Connect released?

Episodes of Excuses to Connect are typically released every 7 days, 1 hour.

When was the first episode of Excuses to Connect?

The first episode of Excuses to Connect was released on May 23, 2021.

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