George Raveling on Defying the Odds and Changing The Game of Basketball Forever (PT. 2)

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1:19Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down. Be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

2:10Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I've got some old friends. You know this, Judge Block, who I think was at the time my oldest friend. I was on the podcast not too long ago. I've talked about Richard Overton. We just did a little deep dive into him. But one of the greatest moments of my life came back in 2017 or 2000. Yeah, I think 2017, maybe early 2018. But I went to Richard Overton's house, who was at that time the oldest man in the world was another friend of mine, George Traveling. George was, I think, early 80s at the time. And it was just incredible to me to think of the span of history that the lives of these two men encompassed.

2:58When Richard was born in 1906, just a few miles down from where the bookstore is, Deidre Roosevelt was president. He remembered seeing Civil War veterans walking around. The oldest person alive then was born in like 1812, something like that. Just an incredible span of history. And then George, as George would later tell me, when he was born, not only was the life expectancy for a black man at that time, like in the high 30s, early 40s, but like the Golden Gate Bridge was being built. Picasso was painting Guernica. The Great Depression was obviously raging. And so it was just like an incredible human wormhole, as they're called.

3:47George would play basketball against Jerry West, who would become the NBA logo. But the game of basketball was at that time only a couple decades old. George was on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when Martin Luther King gave the I Have a Dream speech. And Martin Luther King handed him the speech. And then he took it home and put it in a signed copy of Truman's memoirs that Truman had given him after a basketball tournament. And then he would bring Jordan to Nike, turning him into a billionaire. I don't know. George is just one of my absolute favorite people. And so I took him to Richard. He brought Richard a box of cigars.

4:21And I just, I cherish that moment all the time. And I think I tell my son that he was there because I brought my kid and he sort of sat on their laps and said hello. And I was just like, you'll never experience anything weirder or more surreal or beautiful than this moment. And George and I have become good friends over the years. I flew out to LA and we sat down and had a long chat. I was really excited to do that. But it was sort of the culmination of a bunch of talks for us because I had been helping him on this book that he has coming out now. It's called What You're Made For. it's lessons from his incredible life, which I just gave you a brief snapshot that doesn't even get close to some of the things he experienced.

5:03And just that every week I get to spend an hour or two with George, ask him questions. It's just been massively enriching in my life. And I'm really excited to bring you that chat now. You can grab signed copies. George signed it. I signed it. We've got a small limited run of those. I'll link to that in today's show notes. You can follow George on social media. And then he has this great email that he does every day called The Daily Coach with my friend, Mike Lombardi, who was the one who introduced my books to professional sports. So George has just been an absolutely amazing person. I can't wait for you to listen to this.

5:45Do check out the book. He is a dear friend, a mentor, a hero of mine, and one of, I think, the treasures of the 20th century. And who knows how long we'll get him for. And I think you should avail yourself of him while you have time. Check out this book and check out this wonderful interview.

6:07That's what's fascinating about the career of George Ravelin, because look, you were the highest, most rebounds in the country. You coached at some really good schools. You won a lot of games. But primarily, I think when people think of your legacy, they don't think how many points you scored or how many, you know, what the standings of your teams were. Your legacy, to me at least, is primarily in other people or it's in something like the game of basketball being now a global international game. Your coaching tree and the ripples of your career are much bigger than anything you individually did, even though your accomplishments in that regard are pretty impressive too.

6:53But primarily, it's what you did for others or helped others do that I think is the most impressive part of the career of George Raveling. I never saw myself as a coach. I saw myself as a leader. And I can go back to when I was at the University of Iowa as a basketball coach. On the door, it had a George Raveling educator. I never positioned myself as a coach. I felt my job is to help people live a better life. How many young people did I have a positive effect on? How many people were I able to assist in realizing their dreams and aspirations in life? And to me, the wins I achieved off the court are far more important than the wins on the basketball court.

7:52And the players that I've had an opportunity to coach and the great people that I've had to tutor me over the years, Bob Knight, John Thompson, John Cheney, I had some of the best mentors in coaching. It really made me realize that I also had a responsibility to present myself as a role model for young black people in those days. When I was growing up, I never heard the connotation role model. But ultimately, it became an important ingredient in how I conducted myself in life. and so here I am at 87 years old and I don't chase money anymore. I chase learning, an opportunity to grow and be a better human being.

8:45Does it sometimes sting a little though? I think people go, yeah, I want to have an impact. I want to help others. But if I'm not like sort of actively fighting for myself, if I'm not making it all about me, I'll get pushed aside. Like, I mean, And you've done all this stuff. You've had this enormous impact of the game. I will say there was something for me watching that movie about Jordan going to Nike, which he insisted on you being in. That's incredible. But even there, like that movie, they made it about some other dude. Essentially underplaying your role in that story. Is there something about, like, if you're preparing someone for the trajectory we're talking about, do they have to cultivate a kind of a sense of self-worth as opposed to getting your worth from your achievements or your recognition?

9:37Because it's not always going to be there. You're not always going to get the credit you deserve. To me, I really never, I never was in it for the accolades. I was in it to try to be a positive difference maker in as many lives as I possibly could. And in some situations, I had better impact and others I had less impact. But I always try to say, what is it that I have that I can use to help this person become a better human being? And the more I gave, the easier it was to get and to try to be a positive difference maker in as many lives as possible. There's probably 50 players that I've coached between Washington State, Iowa, and USC to this day that we still text each other.

10:33We still talk to each other. We still share information together. And to me, I felt coaching is a great responsibility because here's a parent that takes their most prized possession and they put them in your hands. And so my responsibility is that at the end of the day, you want to be able to reward that trust that she had in you. Give them back better than you found them. Yes, yes. I was recruiting this young man from Georgia, and I remember when I got to the door, his mom said to me, Coach Ravling, and she looked me dead in the eye. She said, I want no foolishness out of you now. I'm sending you my most prized possession, and I want you to do the best you can to make him the person that he was.

11:28And so over the years, I really took greater pride in how many young people I helped live a better life or to understand life better. Yeah, it just strikes me as a representation of this beautiful idea the Stokes talk about, which is not asking for what they would call the third thing. So Mark Cirillo says, you know, you do something good and someone benefits from it. He says the third thing is asking for recognition, appreciation, or even, you know, the favor to be paid back in turn. And there's something about, I think, your life and the work that you've done that's largely unrecognized or largely a little bit under the radar.

12:10You're not one of those five coaches that everyone knows from that era. But I imagine you have ultimately the satisfaction of knowing, hey, I had an impact on these players' lives. We're still in touch. You're thinking about, hey, did I do what I was supposed to do? Did I do my job? That's enough. I don't need the extra stuff, the third thing. I take great pride in looking at the players when I recruited them and then ultimately what they became as adults. And not necessarily athletes, right? Right. And not necessarily athletes. Yeah. You helped them go on a journey. Your job was to take them from point A to point B or whatever.

12:50And in some ways, you're paying forward what Father Nadine did and Jack Ramsey and what these other coaches did for you as a young man trying to make your way in the world. There's something I think about being a mentor. You can't ever pay a mentor back, but you can pay what they gave you forward to someone else. Absolutely. And I look for those opportunities every single day. I think to myself, what can I do to help this person be a better human being? What can I do to help them live a better life? Most of the time when I meet with people for lunch or breakfast, I always bring a book with me and I give them a book to read.

13:31That's the wise, what do you call it? The rule of the wise men? Yeah, the three wise men always came bearing gifts. And so whenever I go meet somebody for breakfast or lunch, I'd say 95 % of the time I bring a book and I give it to them. I tell them, here's what I learned from this book. Here's what I think you can learn from the book. Yeah, I love that. You've given me many books over the years. Well, and some of my friends, they say, oh, I have the raveling section of books in my library at home. And talk about libraries. I have a library at home. I have over 250 books, 2 ,500, I'm sorry. I was going to say, that's how many books you probably read in the last six months.

14:17Yeah. And so I've collected books for ages and I run out of shelf space now. So I got them stacked up on the floor and the library in my house.

14:34Thanks to Toyota Trucks for sponsoring this episode. When I bought my ranch in 2015 out here in Basko County, I drove my car about halfway down the dirt road that we live on, thought this isn't going to work, stopped, parked it, walked the rest of the way home, borrowed my wife's car, drove into Austin and bought a truck. What I bought was a Toyota Tacoma. And this truck wasn't just transportation getting me to and from my house. It unlocked a whole different style of living for us, not just on the ranch, but in our little Texas towns. There were places I could go now that I couldn't go before, especially out here in the piney forests, through the fields, and on the unpaved roads like the one that I lived in.

15:19We got to go deep into the hill country's wild beauty. We've driven all the way out to East Texas. We've driven across the country. And by we, I mean not just my wife, but both my kids who I drove home from the hospital in that truck. Toyota trucks are built for those who understand that the best adventures happen when you're willing to veer off course, because you never know when you'll end up on a Toyota adventure detour. And of course, this is stoicism too, because every detour, every obstacle is an opportunity. But it's helpful if you can handle the difficulty inherent in that. If you've got the resilience and the right companion to make it wherever the road takes you, discover your uncharted territory.

16:00Learn more at toyota.com slash trucks slash adventure dash detours. We just took our kids to an outdoor performance at the Nutcracker. They had a snow cone and then they went insane in the car ride home. And one of the things I try to remind myself when that's happening is that I don't control my kids' behavior, especially when they're too far gone like that, but I do control how I respond, right? That's stoicism, but it's also what Dr. Becky talks about. Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and a best-selling author, and she founded Good Inside, which is there to give parents practical, actionable tools for handling those everyday challenges with confidence.

16:42My wife introduced me to Dr. Becky's books. I love them. I've recommended them a million times. I've had her on the podcast. And as it happens, Dr. Becky is hosting two live Q &A events for good inside members. I am one of them. She signed me up for it about a year and a half ago. I've loved it ever since. On December 1st, you can join Dr. Becky for her How Not to Raise Assholes event, which is about avoiding entitlement and raising kind, empathetic kids. And on December 15th, she's hosting her How Not to Lose It over the holidays event, which I'm sure we could all use. As I said, I'm a big fan of Dr.

17:19Becky. She's been a great influence for me as a parent and just as a human being. And Daily Stoic listeners can join for 15 % off with code STOIC15. You just got to head over to goodinside.com to catch the events.

17:39it's not easy being married to a person who's addicted to collecting books as as my wife can also yes my wife when she'd see me come in the house with a new book she says not another book you haven't read half the ones you have in there i said that's okay but i'm gonna still i'm still gonna purchase them and i don't really read the entire book anyway i go through i pick out the chapters that I think are interesting. Most of the books I've read, at least three of the chapters really had no real value to me. And so I'd go through and I start the book at what I think is the most intriguing chapter.

18:20And I start to read there. And like, here's a book that I read. Oh, I know, Chip. Yeah. But you can see - I've interviewed him before. Yeah, underlining. And I use, there's six blank pages in every book. And so I use those to take notes. Like there's a blank page at the back there. And so this is how I try to utilize a blank page there. And so I try to use those also as a notebook. It's nothing unique. I think most people who read would have their own reading style in that. Yeah, that's called marginalia. Yeah. And so what I try to do is not to read the book because to read it is entertainment.

19:06To study it is learning. And so today I have a different perspective. When I read a book, I'm reading the book to learn, not to be entertained. I heard a great reading rule that maybe would have some extra relevance to you at 87. So the rule, people go, you know, should you quit books you don't like? How much time should you give a book to see if you like it. The rule is you give every book you read 100 pages minus your age. So as you get older, you got to be more cutthroat. And I think that's actually kind of a superpower too. Life's too short to read bad books. If it sucks, quit. If it's not right for you at this moment, put it down, come back to it.

19:47But you got to learn to be a discerning reader because as an author, I know like my job is to write an entertaining book. It's to communicate the ideas effectively and compellingly. And if the author's not doing it, that's their fault, not my fault. There's a joke about one of the Stoics. He hears this student bragging about having read this big, thick, boring book. And he was talking about another Stoic named Chrysippus. And Epictetus, the Stoic, comes up and he goes, you know, if he had been a better writer, you'd have less to brag about. The books, as I buy them, I usually try to read four books at the same time.

20:23And so if I get bored with one, I just go to the other. I keep four books by my bed all the time. I keep four books in the family room. I have them strategically placed so I can just pick them up at any time and start to go through. And sometimes a particular book isn't really entertaining me enough intellectually, so I'll switch to another one. But I can easily go through six books a month. And then I just keep replenishing them with new titles or new authors. Yeah. Look, you multiply that by seven or eight decades, you get your way through quite a few books. Yeah. So coach, Seneca's line, this opens part one of your book.

21:07Often a very old man has no other proof of his long life than his age. What's that mean to you? What it means to me is what did I achieve during my lifetime that has unique value, not just for me, but for others. At the end of the day, I think if I have to go up and meet St. Peter at the gate, I think he'll say, you did a good job of serving the needs of others, and we have taken particular notice of that, and you're welcome to come and be amongst the heavenly angels. And that, to me, would be the ultimate reward of my life, is to look back and to realize that I live the reason I was put on earth, and that's, I believe, the reason I was put on earth is to serve the needs of others.

22:08And so I would like to be able to meet St. Peter at the gate. And he looks at my achievements and he says, well done, welcome. There's a story you tell at the end of the book about Phil Jackson when he was on the Knicks. He was engrossed in the game or he wasn't playing, so he wasn't paying attention. And the coach says, hey, how much time's left on the clock? And he says, I don't know, coach. And he says, you always got to know how much time is left on the clock. Is that a sensation you get or you can't lose in your 80s? Is there a sense that time is extra precious? Yes. I feel like I don't have a lot of time left on earth, but I want to make sure that I don't waste any of this time, that I make wise decisions every day as to how I'm going to live my life.

23:00Because to me, the way I look at it, it's the fourth quarter of the game and it's eight minutes left. What am I going to do to make sure that when the game ends, I'm on the winning team? Even though we all ultimately lose. Yes, yes. But to me, I try to focus every day on who today can I do something kind for? And sometimes I just send a person a text telling them, you know, what a wonderful human being they are. I try not to let a day go by that I don't tell one person the truth. And the truth is, I love you. And as part of that sort of understanding of the fragility and the shortness of life, I imagine that's not just because you're now in your 80s, but also in your 60s, right?

23:53or his 50s, you very nearly lost everything in a terrible car accident. Do you walk away from something like that with the sense that it's the fourth quarter and there's not much time left on the clock, no matter how old you are? Because you can go at any moment. Yes. When I had the car accident, it was probably the closest I've come to death. I remember when the police came, The car came to this intersection and the light changed. And so as I moved that into the intersection, a car on the left comes speeding by and knocks me up across the street into the person's front yard. And so when the police come and the ambulance and so forth, the policemen, when they're putting me in the ambulance, he says to me, he says, Coach, you don't know how lucky you are.

24:47He said, I've been on the force for 50 years. And most times when we get to this position, the person's dead. Yeah. And he said, based on this accident, you're a lucky guy that you're still alive. Yeah. But given what life expectancy was when you were born, you were already had like 20 years of bonus time that you'd been playing. It was already over time by the time you got in that accident. And then it's been decades since then. So you keep defying the odds over and over again. Well, I try to stay focused on what's really important. Like I decided, hey, I'm not chasing money. I'm not chasing fame.

25:24I'm not chasing anything. I'm going to spend the remainder of my life learning how to best serve the needs of others and to keep myself as well informed about our social issues. And sometimes I'll take those issues and figure out a way that I can help contribute to other people's lives in a positive way. I've been the luckiest guy in the world. I mean, there is nothing in my early years as a young person that would have ever led me to believe that I would end up living the life that I've had to live and to have an opportunity to work for one of the number one sports footwear and apparel company in the world, Nike.

26:15I learned so many lessons with the people I work with at Nike. I used to say that working for Nike is like going to Harvard Business School. Every day I'm learning something. Some of the most intelligent people I ever met in my life were people that I worked with at Nike and I learned from. And I'd be forever grateful for the opportunities that Phil Knight gave me over the years. I was one of the first college coaches that wore the Nike shoe. Mr. Knight gave me an opportunity to see the game from a global perspective. And also, we had the good fortune along the way to get Michael Jordan to come aboard with us.

27:01And so... That worked out for everyone. Yes. The 84 Olympic team was such a special unit. One, I'm working for someone who I deeply admired. I've known since he was an assistant coach at West Point. And also, I ended up spending that entire summer with Michael. We hung out, go to malls, restaurants, and so forth. And so I really got to know Michael more as a human being than I did as a basketball player. I mean, by the time we got to Los Angeles for the 84 Olympics, it was obvious that there There was nobody on the globe that could do what he does. And we spent a lot of time just talking about life.

27:49And I would share, you know, he'd ask me a lot of questions. And we really just had almost like a big brother, a little brother relationship. I'll say this about Michael. other than maybe my grandma and my mom, nobody in my life ever trusted me as much as Michael Jordan did. I mean, the opportunity to run this camp for 22 years, when my son and I, we ran the camp for 22 years, about 12 years on the fantasy camp. But along the way, it was the trust factor that He trusts me so much. I felt intimidated by it. I never wanted to ever disappoint him. I never wanted to put him in a position where it compromised who he really was.

28:41And I think I would be very comfortable in saying this, that as great a player as Michael Jordan was, he's a better human being. There's so many things that Michael has done for people throughout his lifetime that he took no credit for. But believe me, if Michael likes you, it's blind loyalty. He'll do anything in the world for you. But don't ever violate that trust. And I've tried to do that. I've never once asked him for any money or anything like that. I respected the opportunity that he gave myself and our family to prosper. Our family, we worked the camps. We made sure that the camp was run in a manner that magnified who he was as a person.

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30:15You want to know something funny? I was talking to one of Michael's sons one time. He'd read my books. And I told him that I was friends with you. And he says, you know, he's like, everyone sees George Raveling as the, as a nice old man. I've seen him have to yell at people. And it was funny because you didn't, you didn't get where you were by like, you had to be a tough son of a bitch sometimes I imagine, right? Especially in the early days of, of making it in a game and in a society that maybe wasn't always fair. Yeah, I mean, I knew when it was time, you know, to get the boxing gloves out and when it wasn't.

30:55But most of my life, I've had the good fortune to have people around me who were incredible role models, despite the fact that most of my life, I never knew what a role model was. It wasn't something that was ever important to me until I got into my latter. Well, you showed me an example of that one time just to pull back the curtain for some people. There was another project we were talking about working together on. And I remember the people sent you an offer. Yes. And you didn't like the offer. You thought it was, I don't want to say insulting, but you wasn't even in the ballpark of what you were interested in.

31:33And you were like, nope, I'm out. And then when they try to go, oh, no, no, no, that was just our first offer. You're like, you don't get a second chance with George Ravelin. And it was like, oh, OK, this is how this is how you got to be the first black coach at these different schools. This is how you must have negotiated your contracts. This is how you got in the door. And this is what you you I'm sure you were in some tough negotiations over there. You it was just it was, again, sort of that same insight of like, oh, OK, it's not all sunshine and kittens, but you got to be a good advocate for yourself.

32:07You got to know what you're worth and you got to stand up for yourself. Absolutely. And those were difficult lessons for me to learn because as I came along, I just kind of took life on a day-to-day basis. I didn't think about the future as much as I needed to. And even now, every day when I get up, I think this could be the last one. So you better make sure you're bringing your best game when you get out of bed and head out of the house. Yeah, I think sometimes it's like, I'm just happy to be here. I just want a chance. And that's good. But also, you're not helping anyone or anything by not getting paid what you're worth, by not getting the respect or the treatment that you're entitled to.

32:54And that kind of standing up for yourself is a part of making your way in a rough and tumble world, too. So you told me that you start every day with a choice. You say to yourself, these are your choices for the day. Walk me through that. Well, it's part of what I call a win the day strategy. So when I get up in the morning and when I put my feet on the floor beside me in the bed, I think to myself, okay, today you've got two choices and no other choice. You can either be happy or you can be very happy, but none of the other. And so I try to start my day out in a positive mental frame of mind.

33:39And then during the day, to win the day, I want to be able to be in control of my energy, my environment, my reading, my thinking. I try to go through. And the biggest thing is to control my energy each day. And so I will start off and now maybe have two things where I'll say, if I don't get anything else done today, this has got to be the one. I have a focus every day on what I want to achieve with that time that I have and how I spend that time. I call it control the spin, not just the spend of money, the spend of your time, the spend of your energy. And these are things that I have direct control over.

34:31Well, it's easy to decide between being happy and very happy when everything's going great, when you're feeling great, when you're doing fun stuff. But I know you've been dealing with some health stuff lately. And how do you think about that when it actually is a struggle? I imagine it's not always easy to be very happy. As I've grown older, especially once I've gotten into the 80s, I have health problems like everybody else does. And some of them are very critical. Some are not. But basically what I try to do is to put myself in a position where I'm not trying to do more than I'm capable of doing.

35:15And there have been some times in the last five or six years when I really had to grapple with the value of living as I continue along the journey. Is it going to be worthwhile? In my mind, I think I've done about all I can do in life to help other people in that. And so then you start to say, OK, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And so I feel today that I'm going to give everything I can to help other people to be better human beings, live a better life. When I die, I want to die on empty. I want to have spent every ounce of energy, material things I had. I want to make sure I utilize them as much as possible in helping other people.

36:10And when I die, I don't want to leave anything behind but memories of a life that I feel was well lived. Well, doing this project has been one of those things for me. It was just an incredible experience. I mean, I'm so glad I got to know you. And I would say my favorite part of the calls that we got to do was at the end, you always close with I love you. Yes. And I always say that back. And there's not a lot of people that I say that to on the phone these days. I know that's kind of part of your philosophy. When you love somebody, you tell them. Yes, that's one of the most important things to me in my life is to express appreciation.

36:54But also, when you tell someone you love them, it's got to be a reality. What do you mean? It's like you're dating this girl and you say, I love you, I love you, I love you. Not something you throw around. Yeah. And at some point she says, well, Georgia, if you love me, show me that you love me. Yeah. And so there comes a time when you have to, the words I love you have to take the next step. And the next step is an overexpression of love. Yeah. Someone once told me love is spelled T-I-M-E. You can say it, but what does your calendar show? And I only say it to people that I truly feel that way about is saying that I love.

37:35I think about this a lot in my adult life now is how many young people in America go to bed at night and not one time during the day that anybody say to them, I love you or I believe in you. You matter. Or you matter. And a lot of these young people today, if they need anything at all, it's love and recognition and encouragement. And so to me, I want to be able to say to a person that I love you and they know that I really mean it because I've shown them that I love them. Well, I love you, Coach, and I'm so glad we got to do this. You have been the best young mentor I could ever have. If it's 30 seconds of you, like when we were doing the book and we'd meet on the phone every Friday for one hour.

38:32And I knew that in this hour, I've got to be very respectful of Ryan's time and that. And so I would write notes out, things I want to talk about, things that I need to get you to give me your opinion on. But I never went into, as we were doing the book, and I felt, man, do you realize, George, this guy's giving you one hour of his time. How many people you think would love to get one hour of Ryan's time? Well, I thought the exact same thing. And so if I'm going to do it, I want to be well organized. I want you to realize that I put some time into it. I value your wisdom. I value our friendship in that.

39:18And when I look back on my life, I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was when Shaka Smart introduced me to you. Little did I know how rich my life was going to become as a result of you. For example, you were the one who said to me about starting the daily coach. You said you and Lombardi should start this column, the daily coach. I can't think of one thing that you've suggested to me over my lifetime that didn't make me a better person and made me see life in a broader perspective. And now you take the Daily Coach. We have close to 50 ,000 subscribers globally. And the essence of that started with you.

40:08You brought it up. You said, hey, you and Mike Lombardi should start this blog called The Daily Coach. You laid it out for me, and it's become one of the most valuable pieces of intellectual property that I've ever had a chance to do. But that's all most people don't realize, that you were the one who started me along that path to build The Daily Coach. Well, I'm just paying forward what I got out of you. I wanted more people to hear about it. And that's what this book's about, too. So, Coach, thanks. Thank you.

40:48Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. I'll see you next episode.

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