Unbreakable Spirit: Scott Martin on Overcoming Adversity and Embracing Life

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest is going to be talking about how you can redefine your life even after your life takes an unexpected turn. Nationally renowned soccer coach and author, Scott Martin, was, you know, coaching, going along with his everyday life until he got a rare illness that caused him to lose both of his hands and parts of his feet. This caused him to step away from coaching and go into a season of depression. Scott spent two decades rebuilding his life in ways he couldn't imagine as he adopted five children from Romania and Ethiopia. He also stepped back into coaching and he started coaching a group of 12-year-old underlooked players and he coached them to an undefeated state championship. Scott talks about his story and his memoir, Play From Your Heart. So we're going to be talking to Scott about his amazing life, rare illness, everything that he's up to and gonna be up to. So Scott, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:36

Thanks, Curtis. Hey, right from the start, not just soccer, I grew up with all the traditional American sports, and one of them, of course, was baseball. So therefore, when I came across you and living the dream with curveball, please, please explain to me what the nickname Curveball is from.

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Well, it's uh I'm a hip-hop artist, and my best friend Sean Davis in uh in uh junior high, the eighth grade, gave me the name Curveball because we were trying to figure out well, you think I'm gonna be a rapper. What should I call myself? And he came up with that and it stuck with me. And I tried to incorporate it into everything as I can because it's special.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

I think that's great. I think that's great. It's unique, and it made me think a little bit. And now what you mentioned uh rapping, I get it. It blends together. You've got to have something that you could hang your hat on and people can remember you by. So good one.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yeah, and I like baseball too.

SPEAKER_02 2:36

Cool, yeah, yeah. I was wondering if maybe you uh knew how to throw a really wicked curveball, or maybe if you knew how to throw a really wicked uh knuckle ball or a fastball or something. So now we know the story behind the phone. Don't throw to don't throw me, don't throw me too many curveballs, okay, Curtis. Now we're gonna be fine. This is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Yeah, why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Okay. Um, let's do some bullet points. I would describe myself as a husband, a father, an author, a teacher, a coach, and uh, oh yeah, I'm a quad amputee as well. So I think that pretty much covers it. I mean, that that's just more the specific, let alone not just uh uh I believe a good citizen of this earth and a good person and a believer in uh what humanity is supposed to be. Yeah, that pretty much finishes it, Curtis.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

Well, take us back to the moment uh when when you receive your rare illness or are you uh got diagnosed with it? Tell us what that rare illness is and what was going through your mind when you lost both your hands and part of your feet.

SPEAKER_02 3:45

Well, this is what I usually tell um my students when I the beginning of the year, uh, because I I substitute teach at a local high school. I used to teach social studies and history, but now I do everything along with coaching. But I used to say this back in 1993, I was the head women's soccer coach at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Um, we had just completed my first season. This was the summer after that, and we were nationally ranked. So everything was great trajectory. Uh, one of the things I like to do during the summers, I had the opportunities to go coach in Europe and we'd take uh players from across the United States and play in major tournaments, and that summer was no different. But this one was going to be some of the top college players from across the country. So everything was looking really good. And the final cherry on top of the cake was that Nike heard about me and asked me to come down to their Midwest regional camp outside of Chicago, where they're going to be 100 of the top high school players from the region. It's perfect for me, you know. NCAA rules wouldn't allow me to drop them all a business card and say call me or anything. Uh, but it did allow me to project who I was, you know. Also at the camp, there were national team players. Anyone knows a lot of the players that were under contract with Nike, of course, were there, and coaches from across the country. So this is just heaven for me, you know. You can imagine this happening to a guy after only one year coaching at the college ranks. This was going to help project me forward, hopefully, into winning a national championship and then division one. But one of the funny things with this curt is I showed up in Adidas because that's what our college wore. So I didn't have a look at Nike on me. That caused a little bit of uh, you know, some some chuckles. And I was told just go over the closet and you know, grab whatever whatever fits, and we go from there. So well, I got into doing things with the first day, and it was really great to be uh watching and working with national team players. And we had a uh coach's exhibition match uh one evening, and that's where I did something really strange, Curtis. I ended up having to take myself out because I was just feeling, shall we say, strange? I guess you could say fatigued, severely fatigued, which is really different for me because I was in top shape. I was still playing at the time, and um, so I I spent that night either throwing up profusely in the bathroom or sweating like crazy or or shivering like crazy in the in my dorm room. And I got up the next morning knowing I had to do something, but this is '93 and this is before cell phones, and I couldn't just ask my car to take me to the nearest hospital or whatever outside of Chicago. But as wise as women are, my mom was an hour and a half away in southern Wisconsin. So I just veered in that direction. And as soon as she saw me, she said, something's wrong with you. You get your butt over to the emergency room, presented myself, took a temperature 102.8, which should have triggered something. And this will come up later in the story. This is a big part of the middle of the book, I guess. Um, and told me, Hey, you're gonna be fine, just drink some Gatorade, you're gonna be okay. No, I wasn't. Next morning, I woke up even worse. I canceled a couple recruiting calls I had out of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and ended up going back to the hospital. Now, here's an interesting point, Curtis. The last thing I remember for a month, one month, was me being in a front passenger seat with my stepfather as we backed out of the driveway and my mom standing outside her kitchen door just looking freaked out. She knew something was really going on. Yes, and then we get into the awakening, so to speak, and um laying in a bed, basically solidified for one month, tends to do strange things to the muscles of the body. I lost 40 pounds of atrophy. So first thing, Curtis, when I woke up, I couldn't move. And I'm thinking that oh, what was I in a car accident or something? I don't know. You know, was I paralyzed? And the nurse saw me and went and got the doctor. And the doctor came in and uh I was intubated. I had so many machines in a room, it's been described that you could barely see me. So I couldn't speak, and uh he started going into spiel, said, Okay, you you've been out for a while. Uh, you contracted group A strep with necotizing fasciitis. People might remember Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets. He died from this in 1990, three so three years before I became sick. This this was an illness that was starting to go around the world, and I was a rare person that was that contracted it, but I was an athlete, so I was still alive. But then he said the word uh amputation, and that started playing with my brain, and I started shutting down. And I described this, I think, pretty well in the book. Uh, that I started playing mental games with myself. I I really started doing something stupid, Curtis. I don't know if it's just a male thing or what. I started deflecting, I didn't want to face it. I my attitude was okay, uh, I missed Europe. I could figure it out by what he said with the month, but my players are going to be arriving in a couple weeks for preseason training. So my mind, and again, I couldn't project this, was throw me in a wheelchair, let me get back. Well, that was ridiculous. Because I still had four months of rehab um to go through and gaining some of that weight back. So there's the the brunt of this. Um, I guess the simple way to term it is as a fork in the road. It's more like a rake to the face. Uh, when you step on a rake and whack you in the face. This is more like that, I guess. But you know, we could just go from there. That should give everybody the basis for what the story is going to be and what happens and how I get to where I am right now. That's what the entire book is is all about. How to get to go through all of this crap and come out good on the other end. There you go, Curtis. It's up to you now.

SPEAKER_01 10:09

Well, let's talk about how you were able to re redefine your identity when something you were known for was taken away from you.

SPEAKER_02 10:17

Mm-hmm. Um, yeah. So what I I was still playing indoor out of Minneapolis. We had actually won a championship that winter. And so yeah, that's that's what I was known for. I mean, it was soccer was my life. Uh, in a long-term relationship I had been in just out of college. I remember my girlfriend's mother saying that uh soccer was the girlfriend that might break us apart, and it wasn't that, but that had something to do with it. She actually started teaching in in Madison, Wisconsin, and I started teaching in West Bend, Wisconsin. So we were an hour and a half apart, and we both were had just been starting our careers in teaching that way. So things just naturally split. So I guess after our split and me focusing on college soccer, uh, that was my life, and still playing, that was my life. That was my art. I mean, I I looked at it as when I was told about the amputations, you know, losing both of my hands and parts of both of my feet, I knew my playing career was was done. And um, yeah, that's really what defined me. But more so than that, Curtis, I had a career that was based on well, put it this way. I was at the time I was sick, I was a white guy in athletics, and all you had really had to do to start moving forward was to win. I knew how to do that, I was successful. So all of a sudden, I became labeled, especially from outside people, especially males. Maybe we'll get into that. It's always males. I I started facing discrimination for the first time in my life, and uh I've I've had some things to say about that in the book, uh, on my viewpoint of that and how people mistreat others and how we should all just be in this world together and living through it. So I I guess it could be said something positive came of it because I saw a different side of things. You know, I was not at all. I had three kids from from Ethiopia, three black kids. So I had no issues with color, for example, or anything. But all of a sudden, I was now labeled as something different, and I started running into discrimination. So that was the first, and that's something that again I'm very cognizant of presenting that honestly and openly in the book. So present it from there.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Well, you also uh talk about how you went through a season of depression, talk about what was going on internally and how you were able to find your way back.

SPEAKER_02 13:03

Yeah, Curtis, I I think that it really started with waking up and not going at all. I I think I was stuck in denial. I was stuck in denial, I'll be honest, Curtis, for decades. You know, the five stages of the grief from uh Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I mean, obviously, I did run into that brick wall of depression. I returned to coaching with four more seasons nationally ranked, but I started to slide because I lost confidence. And therefore, I was uncomfortable approaching players, say, at a tournament, and just going up and giving my card or say, hey, like what I saw. Mind if we communicate, you know, where are you going to school or anything? So I lost that ability. And um something, you know, within within the uh frame of three months, Curtis, I resigned. I also I tried to find something else. I went out east where I really ran into discrimination. And I describe this also in the book of after being interviewed by an athletic director, I walked down the hall to get stop at a water fountain and get some water. I heard him yell across the hall to a secretary. Why did I just interview a guy with no hands for this position? Wow. Hey, how rude, but also that was an awakening of things that stirred inside of me. You know, I I grew up in the 60s and I experienced um the fight for rights, the the fight against the Vietnam War. I I went through the uh assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, you know, two people that were prominent in things that I believed in about trying to move this country forward. And here I was now in the position of what I was always fighting against, you know, even as a as a little kid. So next thing that happened with that was going back to that first presentation, a temperature of 102.8, was uh we had a medical malpractice trial. And uh two weeks, $10 million was sought. They had uh an expert that said that if they had taken my blood test on that first day presentation, it wouldn't have made a difference, and ours, of course, said it would. We lost, and uh here we get to a point where another major fork in the road. I don't know if I'd even describe it as that, Curtis. So that's where I would say I hit rock bottom. And where do you go after you hit rock bottom? And everyone has been there. We feel that we've hit rock bottom, and there's always a different rock bottom, I guess, in our lives. But I truly hit rock bottom. And what was I going to do? And um, so that was a that's probably right in the middle of the book because I think it shows that you know the story before and it's a pivot point towards the story of what happens after on how I dealt with hitting rock bottom.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Well, talk about uh adopting your five children from Ethiopia and Romania. Congratulations on that, and and talk about, you know, how big becoming a father uh changed your perspective.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Well, here's what happened after the trial. I got the call from my attorney that we had lost while I was at a friend's apartment. And I drove over to my apartment and I had three levels. The bottom was a garage, middle was a living room and kitchen, top level was a bedroom, and I another bedroom I made into my office. So I pulled into the garage and hit to close my garage door, and it dawned on me that there were probably a lot of people that wouldn't be surprised if I didn't turn my car off, or wouldn't be surprised if I went out and bought a pistol. I'm serious. I that during the trial, I was asked not to be in the courtroom when they brought in a psychiatrist. And we knew what that was all about. You know, was this guy prone to committing suicide? But here's what I did instead turn the car off, of course. Then went to the third level and uh pulled out a bunch of CDs and my cat Bogart hopped up on my shoulders, and that night was spent listening to music and carrying me, you know, the music carrying me forward and come up with ideas. Who can I go communicate to? How am I gonna get myself out of this? Because I had to do something about it, you know. The pendulum in my life had swung too far, and that was enough. See, that's how I handled it. You know, it wasn't suicide, obviously. I'm here. That was enough, man. It was uh-uh, I'm gonna go fix this. And what I came up with, Curtis, was I'm gonna break myself down in order to build myself back up. Every award or plaque or anything that I had earned from playing and coaching, I pitched it, sold everything that didn't fit into my little car. Bogart and I drove out to Washington State and took on a position working for free at a little college called Evergreen State. And a guy named John Wedge, who I had sent my coaching manual to, and he fell in love with it and said, I don't have any money, but man, I can help you out. So we came up with an agreement. And uh work for free and uh break myself down was, you know, you can imagine as just exposing myself as naked to the world. Um, I I could only afford a crappy apartment. I was on food stamps, I was working for nothing, but I was happy because I was now in charge of trying to dig myself back out of this. The agreement I had with John Wedge was that he would communicate with some of his uh coaching friends out west coast to help me get back, you know, under my legs. And he came up with a pretty good deal. Um, he knew the head coach at Gonzaga, and the Gonzaga coach was going to be leaving. So the deal was that I would be named as the assistant at Gonzaga, and he was going to exit, say, June or July, which would force them to bring me on as the interim. Give me a chance, really nice. But at the same time, uh Gonzaga also hired a new athletic director, and he was unaware of this handshake agreement we had, so it was nice enough. He did keep me on as an assistant to someone else that didn't have uh not even a tenth of the experience that I had. So it was it was a difficult season, and at the end of that season, uh the athletic director himself asked me to apply for the head coaching position that was opening up, of course. Except this is where one evening, uh watching a news story out of Seattle was a couple that had adopted two children from from uh Haiti. I guess there was a line um earthquake there. And these so these kids were without parents. And within 10 months, 10 minutes, Curtis, I was up studying adoption. And the next morning I called the athletic director, and luckily he didn't pick up because I don't know how to explain what I was doing. I just left a message, please remove my name from consideration for the head coaching position at Gonzaga University. Da-da-da. So I I guess I'll jump to the chase a little bit. A year and a half later, hmm, this took a long time, man. A year and a half later, after uh reaching out to Oprah, offering a bribe, uh uh contacting other people in the federal government, Senator Patty Murray from the state of Washington finally came to the rescue and helped uh two little kids, a boy and a girl from Romania, come home. A year later, a little boy from Ethiopia came home. Uh, two years after that, a little girl from Ethiopia, and two years after that, uh, another little girl from Ethiopia. So here was a soccer coach uh with a nice trajectory going on. All of a sudden, I guess you could say coaching a basketball team of five kids. I mean, that's what I was doing. I stopped coaching altogether. I I was raising my kids and I did that for 20 years, and it was wonderful. It was really wonderful. So I I I saw that. I guess you could look bad as look back at that as a pivot point. But that, Curtis, I guess could be more construed as if the question, and has been asked to me many times, why did you suddenly get into adopting kids? was I have no clue. This was something that just kind of grabbed me by the throat and said, You need to do this, or this is next on your agenda, or you You're needed or whatever. I have no no response other than I don't know. It just happened because it was supposed to happen. I don't know. Could get into that really deeply for this was a uh psychiatric show, I suppose. You could put me under and we could really get into it. But um yeah, that's how that story went. And um I became Tata, which is Romanian for father.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

All right. Well you uh you step back into coaching and you uh start coaching a group of uh 12 year old underlooked uh under uh looked uh students and you coach them to an undefeated in a state championship. So what what did that experience teach you about uh coaching and believing in people? You know, tell us about that.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

I like that, Chris. Believing in people because that's what it really comes down to. And I think that's what the uh underlying storyline in the book is believing in people and believing in ourselves. So thank you for bringing that up. Um so here's another point of facing discrimination. So I after 20 years, my youngest was well established in high school. Yeah, a couple in college, one in the military. And um uh we were in uh Bellevue, Bellingham, Washington, excuse me, Bellingham, Washington, and there was a large club there. And this is one of those clubs, Curtis, where parents pay thousands of dollars for their kids to go play with the expectation, not aspiration, but expectation of their kids ended up hey, national team play, regional play, uh, Olympic team, you know, uh college scholarship, whatever. I mean, high expectations. But here I was with my resume showing up uh to a director of coaching that first wouldn't shake my hand, never offered. And uh when I arrived for my assignment, I was told that I was coaching the C team. Like, okay, what's the C team mean? Well, it's not A, it's not B, it's the C team. Uh, what you need to be doing is with these kids is keeping the parents happy because we need the money to stay afloat. That's was honestly said to me, and that really reeked of discrimination. And actually, Curtis, it pissed me off to the point of all right, man, I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you, and these kids are gonna show you that you you can't be labeling people with something so negative as that. So those kids and myself all needed the same thing. We needed someone else to help propel us and move us forward and to overcome our lack of confidence, because that's what those kids lacked. They also lacked in size, they knew how to play the game, somewhat technically they did, but they didn't know how to play the game tactically and as a group. And that's what I brought to them. Those kids learned to play six different systems of play at 12 years old, which is I've been asked, do you coach youth differently than college? And I just say, no, I don't. There should be no difference. It's the game, that's how it should be played. And challenges, it's just more challenging when they're 12-year-olds and when they're in college. So, yeah, I mean, once that season was finished, I mean, these kids went through a summer of playing in five tournaments, of which uh they lost in the championship match three times. So they learned to overcome their lack of confidence because they were all mad about that. And they were looking forward to that 18-match state league season. And um, you know, at the in the end, didn't just win a state championship, they did it going undefeated. I mean, that I look back, Curtis, all honesty, was really rubbing the director of coaches and and all of those other people that had discriminated against me, and for discriminated, uh discriminated people and disabled people around the world. I I rubbed their nose in it, and uh, it felt good. And I I hope those kids felt good about it as well, because it, you know, it's just wrong what was done, and we proved something. I'm very proud about what we're able to to do. And it was that you know, as soon as we knew what was gonna happen with one, we won the state championship. It was oh boom, got a book here. There's a book here, so that's when I really started writing this in earnest.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

Well, congratulations. Uh tell us about your philosophy. Success is not about what you uh always about what you achieve, it's about uh helping others believe in themselves.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

I like what you're saying, Curtis. This is fantastic, man. I I've always followed a simple mantra, and it goes like this my mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to learn. Those two things are very different. I mean, traditional, but what we're all used to is let's go coach these kids, put discs down and have them run from A to B and do do boom boom boom, and we're gonna do all these drills, and all of a sudden you're gonna be a fantastic player. No, it doesn't work that way. I I I follow the same mantra again. It's it's um um my mission is not to teach you, but to put you in a position to learn. I did that as a teacher, I did that as a parent, and I've always done it in my coaching, and I think I've been successful all three. You know, it's it's it's trying to stay and figure out where the students are going, staying ahead of them, but directing them. I guess if you're herding cattle or sheep or something, you know, you have sheepdog. I guess you could say I was a sheepdog, I always have been, uh, trying to coax into them finding positive results on something. I also had a saying with with my players, um, be ready. I'm gonna ask you more questions and tell you what to do. Because if you can handle a question from me and get it wrong and still feel good about it, and me saying, I'm proud of you because you still you spoke what you believe in, that's the most important thing. You know, it's it's it's it's hard to do things that way to stay ahead and to lead, coax them into a in a position. But Curtis, once they learn something, it's rock solid because they came to the conclusion. It isn't just like in a history book where we you know read something on on the civil war, blah, blah, blah, this battle and that blah boo and this person and whatever, and this date and everything, and you spit that information out, and then you go take an English exam or write a paper or something. It's not like that, it's living something, experiencing. Well, it's it's it's experiential learning. That's what I present. Experiential learning. I guess it's a simple term on an educational basis. That's what I do. But I like I like herder. I'm a herd dog. That sounds better.

SPEAKER_01 30:44

Where your memoir is called play play from the heart. So talk about what playing from the heart means in everyday life beyond the soccer field.

SPEAKER_02 30:52

Well, it actually comes from a statement I use when I first started coaching as a college freshman. I would always tell the the players, um, turn off your brain and play from your heart. So that's too long. And by the way, you're you're not the only one that says play from the heart. That's a common term. It's play from your heart because it comes from turn off your brain and play from your heart, because it just it works better. I mean, that that title covers the entire book. Me, I had to remember to play from my heart, so to go from there. So it again, it it this game to me is art artistic. I uh I say that every soccer player has a dancer inside them. It could also be said that every soccer player has a pianist uh inside them, the one that can play the piano so well. Because I'll put it another way. If people can remember uh Jackson Pollock, Jackson Pollack was an artist in the 1940s and 50s, he did it, he came up with a drip technique. He would take different colors and they would just flow from his brush. He didn't touch the canvas very often, he would let the paint drip down. And my view of soccer is this that if the if you if the ball had a color for every player, that's both sides, both teams. If the call, if the ball had a color from every player in it, and every time that player touched the ball and then passed it or shot it, and then that color, their color would come from the ball and was left on the field. If you hovered over the field and looked down, you would actually see a Jackson Pollock painting. Because there's so much free flow and there's so much emotion that goes into the game that that's how I see it, and that's how I see that it comes out. I also look at things mathematically, and I don't think we'll get into this isn't a coaching show, so I won't get into that philosophy on things, but the artistic side, the feeling, the emotional side, that's how I view the game, and that's I how I I try to pull that from all of my players, pull their emotions. If I can't do it, then I usually find that they're not they're more of a soccer player, but not a part of a soccer championship team. Because that's what ends up building championship teams, and that's what all of my teams, my top teams, have always been more of those artists that gather and create something together. It's always it's different, it's fun, it's I think it's more interesting, and I think that's what the game calls for. You know, Pele called it the beautiful game, spot on, it's a perfect term.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 33:47

Hmm. First of all, they can buy uh play from heart wherever books are sold, even Walmart for crying all out on their website. Um, I finished the screenplay, and this afternoon actually I've started reaching out to I've already reached out to producers and pitched them, but now I'm looking for a manager. So I've got the screenplay done, pitch text done, a log line's done. I've been shopping that around a bit, and people that are experienced in movie and film have come back and said, you know, perfect, great log line. Um, your pitch deck is great. I've had a couple ask for the screenplay, you know, polish that up. We've gone from I think 274 pages down to down a magic number of 105 pages because uh uh in film, one page of a screenplay is one minute of film time. So 105 minutes is what uh an hour and 45 minutes. That's what producers and movie makers are looking for. So, you know, they can expand, they could shrink whatever they want to do with it. But that's what I'm doing next, Curtis. And um, actually I'm finding this screenwriting. Maybe it's because I've already written the book. I think it's easier than writing a book. Um, there's more mechanics to it, much more mechanics. And once you learn how the mechanics flow, then you can interject because the difference between writing a book is that you're telling about something and trying to get someone to imagine something. About when you write a screenplay for a movie, it's about action and portrayal, and you're presenting something that people hopefully will get pulled into. And a bad film doesn't pull anyone in, a good film, you leave emotional, and hopefully, you know, with mine, people could leave crying a little bit. That would be fine. So that's what I got going, but I mean it's it's a lot on my plate, and uh, you know, with the marketing for the book because we just dropped a few weeks ago trying to stay on top of things, but I am so we're going from there. Oh, yeah, I just finished coaching my under 19 team too. So uh I've got the rest of the summer free to be working on um on pitching the screenplay, so busy boy.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

So people can keep up with everything that you're up to, so add your contact info.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

I hope so. Yeah, hey, people can write to me. Uh, real simple, it's reader r-e-i-d-r reader dot playfromyourheart at gmail.com. So again, it's reader dot playfromyourheart at gmail.com. And the book is uh titled again uh play from your heart. Uh, and it can be found wherever people go to buy books online. So everything's everything's going in a very forward direction.

SPEAKER_01 36:36

We'll close this out with some final thoughts, maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on. Any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 36:44

Hey, one thing about the book is I stumbled on this, Curtis, because you know, you you write and you send it uh to the publisher who sends it to their editor and it you know bounces around between us. And the second time I got the book back from our editor, it dawned on me because I was reading it electronically. I opened up another tab and I went to Spotify because in the book, we mentioned 15, 16 songs. Because I I I play music at training and I use music in the book to help highlight different parts of the story. So I I what I did was uh right at the start. So when Love and Happiness by John Mellencamp is used in the book, that's what I was listening to on my drive to Chicago. When that's in there, I went to Spotify and I plugged in Love and Happiness, John Mellancamp. I listened to the song and then I came back, kept reading. Later on, we use uh uh Won't Back Down by Tom Petty Perfect. That's right after I lose the trial and I head out west. And then later on, I use um Night Train by Tab and Y. I like to use um uh funk, uh Rhythm of Blues, uh rock, of course, even disco in the book. So if people want to do that, it's it's become an interactive book, which is very rare. And people have been doing it, been getting back to me and say, This is fantastic because they can go listen to it and then come back, they feel more emotionally tied to the storyline. So go ahead. If you buy the book, you know, go to uh even if you're reading it on hardcover or paperback, you know, go open a tab on your computer or whatever and go listen to a song on Spotify that comes up in a book and then come back to reading. I I think people really like it.

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. Definitely, definitely pick out that book and check out uh Scott's amazing story and check out that screenplay when it comes out and follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. Also, if you haven't done so, please visit www.curveball337.com to keep up with all things living the dream and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Scott, thank you for all that you're doing, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

Thanks, Curtis. I think you're doing a great job too. Appreciate it. Keep it up.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com. Until next time, keep living the dream.