Tactical Parenting for Dads: How Whole-Brain Discipline Builds Strong Kids

🎙️ Episode 25 – Tactical Parenting for Dads: How Whole-Brain Discipline Builds Strong Kids

Are you a dad trying to raise strong, resilient kids—but sometimes feel lost when it comes to handling your child’s emotions, meltdowns, or mood swings?

In this episode of The Lion Counseling Podcast, Mark Odland, Certified EMDR Therapist, and Zack Carter, Counselor & Coach, break down the practical, brain-based parenting tools that every dad needs to know.

Inspired by the work of Dr. Daniel Siegel, this conversation explores how to engage your child's full brain—left and right, upstairs and downstairs—to foster emotional regulation, resilience, and strong father-child connection. Whether you’re dealing with tantrums, sibling fights, or just want to be more intentional as a parent, this episode will equip you with a step-by-step framework to help your kids thrive.

👉 Want to take it further? SCHEDULE A FREE 30-MINUTE CONSULT with Mark or Zack at: https://escapethecagenow.com/call/
to explore counseling or coaching.

🔍 In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• The Whole-Brain Parenting model: left vs. right brain, upstairs vs. downstairs brain
• Why dads default to logic—and why that often backfires
• The simple phrase that changes everything: “Connect, then redirect”
• How to use storytelling to help kids process emotions and build resilience
• Why ignoring emotions can lead to addiction and trauma later in life
• Tools to raise kids who are emotionally strong, not emotionally shut down
• How YOU can model emotional intelligence and executive functioning as a father

Whether you're raising toddlers or teens, this episode will help you become the kind of dad your kids need: emotionally present, logically wise, and spiritually grounded.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.’

About the Show:
The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the lions they were created to be. Hosted by Mark Odland and Zack Carter, we tackle real issues—masculinity, trauma, faith, leadership, marriage, addiction, and parenting—with honesty, clarity, and courage.

👉 Learn more or get help: https://escapethecagenow.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Mark Odland

Founder of Lion Counseling, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified EMDR Therapist

Host

Zack Carter

Zack Carter is a Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling LLC.

What is Lion Counseling Podcast?

The Lion Counseling Podcast helps men escape the cages that hold them back and become the Lions they were created to be. It exists to help men obtain success, purpose, happiness, and peace in their career and personal lives. The podcast is hosted by the founder of Lion Counseling, Mark Odland (Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Certified EMDR Therapist), and Zack Carter (Counselor and Coach with Lion Counseling). In their podcasts, they address a variety of topics relevant to men, including: mental health, relationships, masculinity, faith, success, business, and self-improvement.

Mark Odland: 00:00

Welcome everyone to the Lion Counseling Podcast. I'm Mark Godland, founder of Lion Counseling and certified EMDR therapist.

Zack Carter: 00:06

And I'm Zach Carter, counselor and coach.

Mark Odland: 00:09

And our mission is to help men to break free, to heal deep, and to become the lions they were created to be. Today's podcast is for all you dads out there. And if you're like, me and Zach, you work hard for your family. You try to be a good provider. But deep down, you know that raising your kids isn't just about that paycheck because providing isn't just about their physical protection as important as that is.

Mark Odland: 00:36

It's about shaping our sons and daughters to live with purpose and integrity and emotional self control. And so in today's episode, we explore the possibility that the real key to raising emotionally healthy kids is to actually be strategic and to parent with our child's whole brain in mind. So hang on. We're gonna have a great conversation today about that. And feel free to throw in the comments if you agree, if you disagree, we'll be diving into some of the literature on the science of of what might work in this area.

Mark Odland: 01:11

And, of course, if, if you wanna reach out, check out escapethecagenow.com. Alright. Zach? Let's do it. Let's do it.

Mark Odland: 01:46

Why don't you kick us off here? Kick us off. Yeah. I know you've been diving in a little bit deeper. You're not only being a dad, but also looking at all this great material that's out there that's developing around parenting and and and in particular, the brain.

Mark Odland: 02:00

Like, how our our children's brains are impacted by the way we approach things, the way we parent them. I mean, it's it's a it's a fascinating subject.

Zack Carter: 02:08

Yeah. Definitely. And looking forward to talking about it today. You know, I've got a eight month old daughter and I was like, maybe it's time to start reading about this. Did I do it when my wife was pregnant?

Zack Carter: 02:18

No. Did I do it when my child was first born? No. So I was like, oh, she could like stand up on her feet now. Maybe I should like learn how to be a father.

Zack Carter: 02:28

That would be good. So, you know, we have meetings regularly with other counselors and I was asking everybody, I was like, hey, you know, is there any good stuff on family or raising kids?

Mark Odland: 02:39

Yeah. Yeah.

Zack Carter: 02:40

A guy named Doctor. Dance Eagle kept coming up. And so I was like, alright. I'll check out his books. And so yeah.

Zack Carter: 02:44

He's great. So he's a expert in the field of raising kids. And he wrote a book specifically on raising whole brain children. Right? Think about the whole brain.

Zack Carter: 02:54

And it's very, very helpful conceptualizations that he has. Thinking about we've got our left side of our brain, we've got our right side, we've got the upstairs, we've got the downstairs. Right? So left, right, And up and I think that's a really great way of thinking about how do we engage with our kids and how do we help them to develop their brains in Right? A healthy And it's so interesting as I read so many of these books, they kinda all say the same thing.

Zack Carter: 03:21

Yeah. And so like, you know, I feel like, man, we're gonna talk about emotions yet again. And so like, if people find like, oh, you you guys have talked about this when it comes to like, in your marriage, you need to like acknowledge your wife's feelings and like in the corporate environment or with your friends, you wanna acknowledge feelings, you wanna acknowledge their thoughts. It's like, yes. And yet again, we wanna do this with our kids as well.

Zack Carter: 03:46

And so Yeah. But Dan Siegel has it in he thinks about it in a really great way. So I'm gonna pull up this graph real quick. And so he thinks about it in terms of like left brain and right brain. So oftentimes our kids will come with a problem.

Zack Carter: 03:57

Hey. My, you know, brother hit me or hey, I fell down or hey, I got made fun of at school. And, you know, especially as men, I think we like being problem solvers. I think that's kind of our go to shtick is like that left brain, like, let's think logical, let's think analytical. Right?

Zack Carter: 04:15

Let's think factual. Okay. What are the facts of the case? How do we solve this problem? And what Dan Siegel says is you really wanna start with connection.

Zack Carter: 04:24

He says, first we connect, then we redirect. And so we connect right right brain to right brain. Right? So if your child is coming to you and they're emotional and they're starting with their right brain and you kick into that left brain thinking, right, it's not gonna go as well. What you wanna do is connect right brain to right brain.

Zack Carter: 04:43

So, oh, man, your brother hit you. Yeah. I'm sure that hurt. I'm sure that's, you know, very frustrating if someone hits you. And then go into logical.

Zack Carter: 04:55

Hey. Maybe we need to talk to him. Maybe we need to do this. Maybe we need to do that. If at school, you're being bullied, it's not just simply like, well, have you talked to the teacher?

Zack Carter: 05:03

It's like, oh, first off, that's really hard to get bullied. Like, it hurts your feelings. It's really stressful. I'm sure going to going to school is really stressful. You know?

Zack Carter: 05:14

And and so really starting with those emotions first, starting right brain to right brain first, and then, like, okay. Cool. Then you can go into your comfort zone of, like, going to that left brain logic after we're doing that right brain emotional. So any any thoughts on that, Mark?

Mark Odland: 05:30

Yeah. I think that I think that makes a lot of a lot of sense. You know, I think back to when one of my kids was you know, maybe they're, like, four years old. And I live in Minnesota. Right?

Mark Odland: 05:42

So we've got these brutal winters at times, and the way we survive is to bundle up like crazy. Right? We've got the snow pants on. We got the thick coat. And we were in the changing, you know, kind of in the mudroom getting our our kids' clothes on.

Mark Odland: 05:58

And it just became like this huge power struggle over to just get out the door. And it's seemingly my son is throwing this big fit for no reason. I felt my frustration level going up and up. I'm just like, just put on your boots. Let's just just get out the door.

Mark Odland: 06:15

Come on, buddy. It's okay. This is not a

Zack Carter: 06:16

big deal. Right? So what I'm doing is I'm using

Mark Odland: 06:19

logic. I am I am kind of trying to invalidate his feelings to just quick get over it. Yeah. And, you know, there there's a place. We're not gonna coddle our kids indefinitely.

Mark Odland: 06:28

That can go off the rails too. But Mhmm. What I found then I thought in my back of my mind I don't know. Maybe it was Siegel, but I I I thought I thought, okay. Alright, buddy.

Mark Odland: 06:37

I'm sorry your pant your snow pants feels so tight. What's happening here? Are you are you doing okay? Like and and then I found out it was, like, it was something crazy. Like, there's, like, some zipper, like, poking them in the side or something, And it was, like, really painful.

Mark Odland: 06:53

And it's like, oh, okay, bud. Well, I'm so sorry. Like, we let's let's let's turn that around and let's, like, rearrange that and and fix the zipper. Surprise. Surprise.

Mark Odland: 07:02

Now he's okay. And he just needed the space to not only feel his feelings, but to actually identify and correctly diagnose what the issue is. Because if you just if I was just gonna keep steamrolling through that situation, I never would have discovered that he's not just overreacting. He's actually in physical pain. And it would be totally unnecessary for me to blow through that.

Mark Odland: 07:25

I just had to kinda slow it down just enough. Yeah. I mean, if I sat with them on the floor for the next hour and then the whole family's afternoon is wrecked. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Odland: 07:33

That might not be the best,

Zack Carter: 07:34

but you're ignoring where I'm going. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. And and so there is nuance to it.

Zack Carter: 07:40

Right? Because Yeah. Sitting around in a circle for an hour is completely right brain. And that's that's not what you wanna do either. Like, it's not, hey, we just wanna hang out in feelings and emotions or we just wanna hang out in logic.

Zack Carter: 07:52

The idea is like we wanna be able to engage in both. And so, you know, guys listening, it's like, why? Why do we have to do that? Right. And so one of the problems with guys, so I'm know, maybe this is where my mind goes is because this is why, you know, I typically work with addictions.

Zack Carter: 08:08

Right? And so men typically use outside stimuli to numb out internal issues. Right? So we go to drugs, we go to alcohol, we go to porn, we go to TV, we go to food. We we we find these other things to kind of numb out internal problems.

Zack Carter: 08:24

And oftentimes, it's because we don't know how to deal with those internal problems. They come up, we're like, let's shove it down. Let's keep moving forward. Sometimes that's great. If you're in a wartime

Mark Odland: 08:35

Yeah.

Zack Carter: 08:35

Scenario, if you're a soldier, you need to shove that crap down and just move forward. Right? If you're a firefighter, if you're a policeman, yeah, initially, you need to shove that down and move forward. But it has to be dealt with at some point. Because that stuff doesn't just go away.

Zack Carter: 08:50

Right?

Mark Odland: 08:50

Yeah. Right. Mhmm.

Zack Carter: 08:51

And so like engaging in that right brain to right brain, you're dealing with it in the moment. Yeah. That it that those pants are frustrating, buddy. That, oh, wow. It does hurt when your your your zipper is poking you in the side.

Zack Carter: 09:04

And then logic. Okay. Let's figure out how to fix this problem so that it's no longer hurting. And then Right. Your child both feels heard begins to develop that EQ, emotional quotient.

Zack Carter: 09:17

Right? We don't wanna just have good high IQ, but also a high EQ, which in some studies show leads to better success. Right? We wanna be able to do both those things, that logic IQ and that on the left side and that right side emotional EQ. Right?

Mark Odland: 09:33

Yeah. I love that sense. Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah.

Mark Odland: 09:36

No. I just I just thought of another thing where there have been times this is a confession of a parent that I'm not not proud of, but, like, you know, it's still my guy brain. Right? There are times when, like, you know, my my kid skins his knee or something. And, you know, part of us part of being a dad is like, say, hey, buddy, you know, just oh, it's going be Okay.

Mark Odland: 09:53

Let's just just walk walk it off a little bit, kind of like the football coach. Right. Sometimes that actually works. It's not it's not bad. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Odland: 09:58

But there are times when my wife would come in or or, you know, I see another mom on the playground, and it's not even bleeding. I think, oh, do you need a Band Aid? I'm thinking, there's no blood? What is happening here? There's no blood?

Mark Odland: 10:13

And, yeah, I need a Band Aid. And then they put the Band Aid on and surprise, surprise. They're better. Yeah. Or kiss the boo boo.

Mark Odland: 10:22

Right?

Zack Carter: 10:22

The mom

Mark Odland: 10:23

just kisses the kisses the owie, and it feels better. And we're thinking like, this is this doesn't make sense. Yeah. But physiologically Mhmm. It does make sense because when you're receiving when you feel heard, when you feel understood, when you feel loved, when you feel cared about, combine throw in some placebo effect.

Mark Odland: 10:43

Yeah. And it's not just in their head. Their body is literally feeling better Mhmm. In that moment. Mhmm.

Mark Odland: 10:50

So yeah. So this is good for me. A good refresher for me, Zach, because my default still goes a little bit too much to just tough it out. And, again, there's a place and a time. But and and I guess the last thing I'd say is when you talked about other guys out there saying, well, why do I have to do it this way, or why why does it have to work that way?

Mark Odland: 11:14

Mhmm. Well, my thought is the brain is the brain. It's it's the way god designed it. It's the way he you know, apparently, he thought it was a good idea to design it that way. And so to act in accordance with the design of a thing, whether it be our brains or a nice nice car.

Mark Odland: 11:33

Right? When you bring it to the mechanic and and you say and he's like, yeah, we got to fix the transmission. You're like, well, why can't it be a Tesla? It's like because it's not a Tesla. Like, we have to work with what we got.

Mark Odland: 11:46

We got to. So I'll kick it back to you, Zach. But I appreciate you take priming the priming the pump for this conversation. It's fun.

Zack Carter: 11:53

Yeah. And it's it's so funny that what you're saying kinda leads us into talking about the upstairs versus downstairs brain. And so what is the upstairs brain? What is the downstairs brain? Well, the upstairs brain, as we're seeing on the graph right now, is our executive function, our thinking.

Zack Carter: 12:12

Right? It's that prefrontal cortex right here behind the forehead. So this is where we think through problems. This is where we plan for the future. Right?

Zack Carter: 12:22

Our downstairs brain, that's gonna be that amygdala. It's gonna be the part of the where the brain stem is, where it's connected Yep. With the spinal cord. Right? So all that stuff is designed for survival.

Zack Carter: 12:35

So when we've got small kiddos, that's the thing that's most fully developed. Right? Is that survival instinct and it's there for a reason. Right? So primary function of the brain don't die.

Zack Carter: 12:45

Right? And so the body makes it, hey, we're going to develop this first, right? We're going to develop the fear circuit first, we're going to develop the anger circuit, we're going to develop the survival circuit. That's going to be the first thing that develops and then that prefrontal cortex, that upstairs brain is not going to be fully developed until we're 25, right? That develops Oh, last, right?

Zack Carter: 13:07

And so what we want to do as parents is once again engage in those emotions, right, because they're there for a reason, we're gonna engage in those first to bring them down, but then we need to begin to engage in logic. Teaching our kids, okay, now now what do we do? You know, if you're they're out on the field, they skin their knee, you know, after playing football, they're like, oh, I wanna, you know, I want my mom, I want the Band Aid, I wanna kiss the boo boo. Okay. We we do all those things.

Zack Carter: 13:37

Right? We we physically connect. Right? We have that oxytocin. Right?

Zack Carter: 13:42

That that connection chemical starts to flow. Right? We can calm down. We know we're not in danger. Okay.

Zack Carter: 13:48

Then dad comes in with the executive function says, alright, dude. You just got hit by your brother. What do you think you did wrong in that play? Right? And then like, boom.

Zack Carter: 13:56

And so like you begin to engage that upstairs brain, that executive function, in addition to dealing with that downstairs brain, that survival brain. Right? And so we have to understand that when our kids are little, it's mainly survival brain. It is not as much of that executive functioning, and it's our job to kinda help it's gonna develop naturally, but it's our job to help them to use that use that component of the brain. Yeah.

Zack Carter: 14:23

What you think?

Mark Odland: 14:24

Yeah. I love it. I mean, I think I think that makes a lot of sense. Right? I mean, I had, you know, flashbacks to my old football coaches, like, when you bring that analogy of the field.

Mark Odland: 14:35

And they have a great coach logic that seems harsh at the time. But, yeah, you're walking off the sideline kinda limping a little bit, and then the coach will say, well, okay. Are you hurt, or are you injured? What's the difference? Injured means you can't play the rest of the game, and it's serious.

Mark Odland: 14:56

Mhmm. Hurt means it's just physical pain, but it's not doing any damage to the body. And you just have to kinda shake it off. Right?

Zack Carter: 15:03

But to be in the moment and have to

Mark Odland: 15:05

discern that, it actually does really up your logical brain because you're like, woah, what is the difference? Like, am I hurt? Am I injured? Okay. I guess this is just kind of sore, but I'll be okay in, five minutes.

Mark Odland: 15:16

Right?

Zack Carter: 15:17

And

Mark Odland: 15:20

and so we wanna develop kids who are resilient enough, right, to as they get older and as they're in different contexts Mhmm. To be able to regulate their emotions. Right? Because kids who can't regulate their emotions, they're more likely to get bullied. And I think that's a lot of fear that we have as dads is we want our kids to, you know, hold their values, but, essentially, we don't want them to be outcasts.

Mark Odland: 15:42

Right? Like, we we don't want them to be picked on. And the more confidence they have with their logic and their emotion Mhmm. It has to set them up well for life. And and the alternative is something I see every day doing EMDR therapy for trauma.

Mark Odland: 16:00

And it's not a coincidence. The more business leaders and executives and entrepreneurs that I work with, it's not kind of like if they have suppressed their emotions. It's almost always the case. It's almost like some of the most driven successful people have a wound back there where their feelings didn't matter, and they had to stuff it. And they're still using the same coping strategies today, and it's blowing up their marriage, and they're falling into all the addictions that you're talking about.

Mark Odland: 16:27

Mhmm. Right? So, again, I that's a I don't wanna overcoddle my kids. I'm aware of that, but it's kind of like when your default is tough it out, you probably have a lot more room to stretch the other direction than you think you do as far as tapping into the emotional side of things and Right. Setting their brains up to develop well.

Zack Carter: 16:47

Yeah. Right. That's that's perfect, man. And so if you're asking, okay, well then, like, how how what is the process? How do we go about it?

Zack Carter: 16:54

Well, if previously it's connect and redirect, we're gonna start with that right brain, connect with the emotion first, and then problem solve, cool, do the thing that is in our wheelhouse. Now we've got, you know, full left, right. What do we do as far as upstairs and downstairs?

Mark Odland: 17:08

Well Sure.

Zack Carter: 17:09

That primitive brain does need to get moving. Right? So sometimes, like you said, it's not about sitting and talking out. It's like, okay. Let's go back out on the field.

Zack Carter: 17:17

Let's go back to playing. Let's go back and getting physical again. Right? And a lot of that fear, a lot of that anger starts to work itself out. But in addition to that, telling the story, walking through the story of what happened.

Zack Carter: 17:30

Right? So as as little kids, you encourage them, hey, tell me the story. What's the thing that happened? Right? And you draw the story out of them.

Zack Carter: 17:39

When they're real little, you might have to fill in the details. Okay. So, you know, you're walking down the street and what happened? Oh, the kid came and pushed me. Yeah.

Zack Carter: 17:48

The kid did come and push you. And I know that that hurt, and I know that that scared you a little bit. You know, what did you do after? Oh, well, I got up and I, like, I went to my teacher. Okay.

Zack Carter: 17:59

Yeah. You went to the teacher and what did miss Smith say? Miss Smith said that I was gonna be okay and that I was safe. Okay. So you just walked through the story and it's helping to get out of that primitive brain into the executive functioning brain.

Zack Carter: 18:14

Right? This is exactly what we do in therapy. Right? So if kids aren't taught this stuff, they come and see guys like me and Mark, where we have to do the same process, which is Right. Tell me the story.

Zack Carter: 18:24

Let's walk through it. What did you feel? What did you think? What are you learning from it? How can you grow from this?

Zack Carter: 18:32

Right? And so you can start with your kids when they're little. Right? And so as they get older, you you let them tell more of the story, and when they're younger, maybe you help them along a little bit more.

Mark Odland: 18:42

Wow. Yeah. That that's powerful, Zach. There there's something so important about telling that story, and and what a powerful parallel you're making between the very things that we do as counselors and therapists. There's a mini version that we can do with our own kids as dads.

Mark Odland: 18:58

And, you know, as you know, Zach, I I had the privilege of interviewing Jonathan Pageau a while back for the podcast, and his symbolic world is all about story, all about metaphor, all about symbolism. And sometimes in this hard materialistic world that we live in, we tend to default to that being all reality, and we forget that there are things that are story based that in some ways are actually more true than the, quote, unquote, scientific facts. Right? And one could make a very persuasive case that language and thought itself does not work apart from story and symbol. Because if you if you ask a kid to describe something, eventually, you get to it's like this.

Mark Odland: 19:42

It's like that. It's it's only describing thing something in reference to what it's not or the symbol that it's not like or the other thing, the other symbol, the other story that it is like. And so it's it's just intimately tied into everything that we do, stories. So I think that's just amazing to even invite a a kid, even invite our kid. They're going through something.

Mark Odland: 20:02

You know, tell me the story, bud. Like, what what happened? And and guess what? Not only are they getting out of their limbic system, but they're also feeling understood, connected, cared about. Mhmm.

Mark Odland: 20:14

And then we can show the way to model them through the logic and through the problem solving to get to the next step.

Zack Carter: 20:20

Right. Right. And so in, you know, in regards to that, getting good at questions. Like, as dads, as men, we we tend to wanna go to statements. We'll just do this.

Zack Carter: 20:33

Just do that. Right? We'll just walk it off. It's like but actually starting with questions, actually starting with engaging in the emotion helps to draw them out, helps them to think more, right, to think for themself, to create that executive functioning, and allows them to tell the story, right? And so that's gonna help them to process, help them to learn, help them to grow better.

Zack Carter: 20:53

So Yeah. In summary, what we got? We've got left brain, that's that logic brain. We got right brain, that's that emotion. If you wanna help your kids, we start connect then redirect.

Zack Carter: 21:05

Right? Start with that right brain, lead into the left brain. We got the upstairs brain, we got the downstairs brain. That downstairs brain survival, that upstairs brain is lot is is executive function, is thinking, is planning, is storytelling. Okay.

Zack Carter: 21:18

Let's get them moving. Get them, you know, if that's what it needs if that's what they need in that moment to get your body moving cool. Then like once things are calmed down a little bit, okay, tell me the story. Let's like walk through that. Here are the details.

Zack Carter: 21:29

What were your thoughts? What were your feelings? What were your sensations? What are the images that are going through your head right now? And walking them through that process can help them to not just stuff things down that sticks with them the rest of their life, but actually helps them to process in the moment so they they don't have to hold on to all the stuff for so long and then go into stuff where they can bring it into their marriages or into their workplace or into addictive patterns.

Mark Odland: 21:52

Wow. Cool. Yeah. I mean, when you break it down like that, it seems like there's actually a fairly straightforward plan for how we could approach these things. Mhmm.

Mark Odland: 22:02

Right? And and tell me if I'm right about this, Zach. It sounds like we're connecting to the emotion first, meeting them meeting them where they're at. Mhmm. Then we're going to the logic.

Mark Odland: 22:11

Mhmm. Then we're moving, but essentially getting having them move their body kinda Mhmm. And and and then the story at the end to kind of, like, process it more fully and and and kind of put things in their place, and it helped the brain consolidate. That's actually from a trauma perspective. Story helps us consolidate memory.

Mark Odland: 22:30

Mhmm. And so it's not just fragments of painful things and painful images. The story helps us kinda pull it all together and, like, solidify the way our brain actually stores that memory. And if our brains are storing fragments, no wonder they if that they could mess us up down the road. Right?

Mark Odland: 22:46

And so what a gift as dads that we can help shape the way our kids hold memories, the way that they feel confident in their bodies, the way that they feel cared about, the way that they know if their story matters slash they matter, that they're loved. That's so cool, Zach. I I really appreciate you you sharing all that or any any closing thoughts for for our audience today?

Zack Carter: 23:08

It's all I got for the day, man.

Mark Odland: 23:10

No. This is this is really good stuff. Well, as always, if anyone wants free consult with me or Zach, we're happy to help. That's what we do. We're here to help you guys.

Mark Odland: 23:21

Escapethecagenow.com. Obviously, we're we're building momentum here, guys. This podcast is is is still somehow in the top one or 2% of new podcasts. We're we're coming up on 10,000 subscribers. Help us get over the edge.

Mark Odland: 23:33

You guys might not be aware of this, but, like, 90 something percent of people who listen to podcasts don't actually subscribe. And so it just makes it harder to be notified for future podcasts. So means a lot to us if you could support us with that, if you enjoy our content already. And join the conversation. If if you got places where you think me me and Zach, oh, that's cool.

Mark Odland: 23:54

Yeah. I I I think that makes sense. You're like, that seagull guy, I think he's ridiculous. So he he doesn't always talk. Well, hey.

Mark Odland: 24:01

Tell me why. Yeah. You know, we might just know. We we're up. We're learning, man.

Mark Odland: 24:05

We're we're learning with you. So, throw in the comments below, and we'll keep the conversation going. We we still have the the opportunity. We're we we're blowing up, but but we're still small enough where we can read every comment and and respond most of the time. So, thanks everyone as always and, we'll talk to you later.

Mark Odland: 24:20

Take care, everybody.