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We’re Brad & Monnica Manuel - we've been married for 28 years and business partners a little longer than that.
Every Sunday morning, we press record on a conversation rooted in reflection. Over coffee and a vinyl record, we talk through the week we just lived: what challenged us, what taught us, and what tuned us along the way.
From marriage and mindset to leadership, resilience, and personal growth, these are honest conversations about being human through the lens of Gen X, family, work, and life in transition - one record, one reflection, one transmission at a time.
🎧 New Transmissions every Sunday morning
☕ Stories • Soundtracks • Marriage • Leadership • Self-Discovery • Coaching • Generation X
Alright, Bradley.
Brad:Final night.
Monnica:Look at that water. Alright. So welcome back to the manual transmission.
Brad:Live from
Monnica:Hawaii. Ko'olina, Hawaii. This podcast is a little different because we are on vacation in Ko'olina on Oahu.
Brad:We are in Lagoon is this one or four?
Monnica:I don't know which way it goes.
Brad:I don't either. Anyway, we're in the furthest furthest West Lagoon, which is El Lani and the 4 Seasons. And we are headed towards the marina in which we'll pass three more lagoons out to the point and circle back around, which is right about two, two and a half miles. Yeah. Somewhere in there?
Monnica:Depending on where you start, but yeah.
Brad:And we've done this little circuit
Monnica:Every day.
Brad:Every day.
Monnica:At least once.
Brad:At least once.
Monnica:We had all the intentions of having a prerecorded podcast all edited and ready to just set up to be dropped before we left, but we ran out of time. So instead
Brad:Instead.
Monnica:We're just talking to you from our walk along the cove here in Hawaii.
Brad:Yeah. So it's the last night of our vacation, we just saw Isabella and Ryker off Yeah. Down at the front in
Monnica:their the one thing, though. If we're gonna do the walk and talk, you can't speed walk like you usually do. Oh, sorry. Got walk so fast.
Brad:Well, and I if I'm focused on something else, I'm just naturally gonna speed up.
Monnica:But, yes, we just saw Riker and Isabella off at the lobby.
Brad:We know how that is. I remember the first time we came to Hawaii and all the sad faces on the elevator on the day that they had to leave. But, it was a great trip.
Monnica:So much fun. We saw sea turtles and whales and dolphins and fish.
Brad:We met Jason Momoa's dad.
Monnica:Uncle Joe. He's pretty cool. He's playing the or blowing the conch shell, and he was
Brad:Yeah. He was guiding us on a
Monnica:We went out on
Brad:little catamaran?
Monnica:It's like
Brad:What was that
Monnica:thing? Don't think it's a small I should know what it's called, but it's a small boat. There was about there were nine of us total. Three the captain, two crew, and our six.
Brad:That was fun. And it was beautiful. Oh, I need to slow down again.
Monnica:You walked so fast.
Brad:Sorry. I'm sorry. Hello. Okay.
Monnica:So this trip was pretty intentional in multifaceted ways. It's a time we set aside to rest and recover after what was a very busy season, busier than we had intended.
Brad:It was a busy season. End of year, wrapping everything up. And I think if there was one thing, if there was nothing else that we came out of this trip with, was that your stress levels are actually lower when you are engaged with work.
Monnica:It's counterintuitive, I suppose. But, I mean, coming into this nine days of downtime, yeah, I was pretty intentional. I had, for those of you who have an Oura Ring, you know it tracks your sleep quality day to day and there's one of the metrics is your sleep deficit. So coming into this week, I had a sleep deficit of ten hours, which isn't good, and my goal was to be at zero by the end of the trip, and I hit that yesterday, so that was
Brad:Congratulations. Happy New Year.
Monnica:Accomplished my goal. I got lots of good sleep. I'm I'm reset. Yeah. Was my intention coming into this.
Monnica:I knew I knew that there was gonna be a big push toward the end of the year. I was traveling a lot, I was working long hours, and then it was even more than anticipated because of all of the emotional and logistical work around the diagnosis that Carl had. Anyway, a bunch of stuff with family and lots of stuff with work and life. We knew it was gonna be a hard push, but we knew we had this reset coming, we kinda came in a little banged up, but had the intention of resetting. And then also got some really good quality time with the family, so that was great.
Monnica:And it was interesting to see my stress data is actually lower when I'm engaged with work than when I'm trying to relax on a beach, which is probably something I should evaluate. But right now in this season, I'm really passionate about what I'm working on professionally, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Brad:Nothing wrong with that.
Monnica:I geared down over these last several days and accomplished what I wanted to physically and mentally, and I'm ready to go really run hard for the next ten weeks before we have another little break.
Brad:Yeah. Another short burst, but then also already planning the next aid station.
Monnica:Right. You know, we've talked so many times about using the analogy of aid stations, like in an endurance run when you know you're going to be doing an an ultramarathon. How you plan your aid stations is really important. It's an important part. It's a critical part of the strategy for completing a race, being staying healthy enough to complete a race like that.
Monnica:And we've really taken that approach to how we plan our our years. Right now, I'd say I'm I've shortened up the planning window just because there's a lot of moving parts, and I'm waiting on inputs to tell me what I can do. And so usually I'm planning twelve, eighteen months in advance, but right now I've kind of tightened that up a little bit to more like four to six months because of the variables. Broad strokes, longer period of time, but logistical details keeping it more like on the four month horizon so we have time to gather data and know what we're doing because there's a lot moving right now. But but anyway, so sorry.
Monnica:I had to slow Brad down again. You walk so fast, which normally is just fine, but right now,
Brad:You are you can't, crawling right
Monnica:Well, just relax.
Brad:Oh, I'm trying.
Monnica:There, little kids are ready to like take us out. Okay. Anyway, so this was a really strategic aid station for us.
Brad:Yes. Obviously, it didn't work enough.
Monnica:Because you're power walking.
Brad:I was just enjoying
Monnica:Calm down, dude. Having
Brad:some energy right now,
Monnica:by I can tell.
Brad:Anyway, you are absolutely right. In fact, I think we alluded to aid stations in the last transmission. They have become very important, critical in fact, to the way that we live.
Monnica:Right.
Brad:They're great to have out there in the future, to dream about, to look forward to, to plan for, to anticipate and get excited for, but then it's, you you have the experience, you take advantage of it like we did this week, and we were able to slow down and decompress a bit and get ready for the new year. But like I mentioned, we have our next one already scheduled. 90% of it is booked and that's inside of this first quarter even.
Monnica:Yeah.
Brad:We've tried to do, and what we're gonna continue to try to do is to build in some type of aid station once a quarter.
Monnica:Yeah, yeah. And I mean, everybody's a little different. Personality types are different. Work types are different. Seasons of life, like earlier on when we had little kids or when we didn't have any money or whatever, we took breaks differently.
Monnica:Now So
Brad:many that's chasing the kids everywhere, their sports
Monnica:and
Brad:our vacations were travel. Baseball. Tournament. Tournament.
Monnica:Those weren't much much of a vacation, but it did break But things now it's like a different season of life and our breaks look more like going to Europe or going to Hawaii or
Brad:I will say that we, I mean, I think many parents do this, but you get creative when you're in that mode. Sure. I start thinking about like the trip that we took Isabella to for the Oregon softball camp.
Monnica:That was great. That was fun.
Brad:It was in conjunction with us going up and running a Ragnar.
Monnica:Oh, I forgot about With
Brad:the kids.
Monnica:That's right. Pro tip, if you want a way to help teenagers process motions, get them into running.
Brad:Right.
Monnica:I think our kids ran seven or eight Ragnars.
Brad:Ran a feat.
Monnica:Six or seven Ragnars.
Brad:Something say like six, seven. Oh. Don't do that. Riker caught us all week.
Monnica:Oh, you said
Brad:six time. Like, the kid's seven, and he is loving six seven.
Monnica:He just loves to catch it, and he's so quick. He wants to be a marine biologist, and boy, was this the trip for him. He was out there snorkeling today, and a sea turtle swam up to him. He saw an eel. He went and snorkeled with the fish in the they have, like, a closed off snorkel area in Aloni.
Monnica:He was all about it. And he's decided that he's a vegetarian because he refuses to eat animals. So that's been an adjustment.
Brad:I love it. I love it.
Monnica:We're all being supportive. Auntie Sid is a vegetarian, so she's coaching him on how to get his protein. That
Brad:kid's a crack up.
Monnica:He's funny. Anyway, I think that for me anyway, I get not everybody's like this, but my personality type, I like to really run at something and so I think 10 x is easier than two x. Conceptually, it's easier to really throw yourself at something than to just to drone on. I'd rather just, go at it hot but have a break planned. And so I know that I have a big a really big, really intense, massive projects ten, twelve weeks in front of me, and then I'm gonna go to Italy.
Monnica:I like to work it out like that, so
Brad:I do too.
Monnica:To each their own.
Brad:I get it. I get it, and I'm excited for it. So the aid station here served multiple purposes. Do you, and I know the answer, but you feel you accomplished everything that you needed to accomplish with this aid station. You're ready.
Brad:You've got everything. You're equipped to go out there and go at it again.
Monnica:I think I did. There's one data point I will know when I get home, but not I don't have a scale here. I wanna make sure I didn't gain any weight on this trip because I have goals, but but yeah. And I I think it was really good. I I ate really healthy food all week.
Monnica:I worked out every day. I slept a lot. I sat in the hot tub a lot. Hung out with the kids a lot. We had good family time.
Monnica:It was great. It was a great trip. I think I got everything I wanted out of it. How about you?
Brad:Yes. I, as you were, was looking forward to decompression, to slow down. I think I told you, but I felt like the last time we were here, the kids got cheated.
Monnica:Oh, the weather. Out of the
Brad:magic of Hawaii. The weather the entire week was cloudy. So I was really hoping that this was gonna make up for it. And the first three days we were here, it was like rainy and I'm like, oh my gosh.
Monnica:Here we go again.
Brad:This is not cool. And obviously, you're signing up for the time of year, but real quick. What?
Monnica:Oh my god.
Brad:What was that? It was coming after you.
Monnica:It was
Brad:a bunch of them.
Monnica:That's gross. I think those are cockroaches.
Brad:Oh. It's
Monnica:the beach. What can you say? Wow. I got chills. That thing came right at me.
Brad:He was gonna crawl up your leg.
Monnica:Yeah. Anyway, the sun came out. It was a great week. Was Oh, gosh. It was perfect.
Monnica:Because that storm came through, they said then it was like the perfect Hawaii weather.
Brad:It was amazing. And then we got to get off resort.
Monnica:The North Shore, a pipeline had perfect waves. Lots of surfers up there.
Brad:Got to see some real surfing. Got to eat some really good garlic shrimp and some really bad
Monnica:garlic shrimp. Should've taken note. One of the of the trucks do not go there, and I can't remember what the name was, but the the one that is called Da Bald Guy?
Brad:Da Bald Guy.
Monnica:That garlic shrimp was awesome. Go there, not the other one.
Brad:So wherever Da Bald Guy is over on the Windward Side, just around, the corner from, Turtle Bay, there is a bunch of food trucks in a small town, and I can't quite remember the name, but whatever the name of the town is, there is a red and white food truck there with its namesake on it. And it's, I think the only one that says garlic shrimp. It was not good.
Monnica:Not good at all.
Brad:It was bad.
Monnica:So gross.
Brad:It was bad.
Monnica:If you like your garlic shrimp cooked with the whole shell on and not properly deveined then go for it, but I don't like that. And when I went up to the window to get a napkin, I looked in, and there was just slabs of meat just sitting on this dirty counter. Was so grossed out. So it's probably better that I don't remember the name.
Brad:Yeah. So you came walking back to the table with this disgusted look on your face as I was shoveling in, like, just oodles of rice that's dipped in this butter that they had been cooking this
Monnica:Gross.
Brad:Gross shrimp in, and I was just hungry.
Monnica:Yeah. We we threw that away, and we went and we got
Brad:We did.
Monnica:A different plate. A very, very good garlic
Brad:shrimp. Very different.
Monnica:Also, right there, what's the name of that little bar? They had Guinness on drafts. Yeah. Right there. It was such a nice treat.
Monnica:Anything else before we drone on anymore and bore people out of their minds?
Brad:Well, I think that it's probably important for us to do a high low from
Monnica:Oh. Alright. What was your high part of this week? You're walking really fast again. You just can't help it.
Brad:I am not walking fast right now, but faster than you'd like I as you're
Monnica:would like to. I'm actually a pretty decisive quick walker, but you are just way faster than me. Okay. What was your high part of the vacation?
Brad:Probably the day that we spent driving around the island together.
Monnica:That was fun.
Brad:We were all shoved in a van and we forced everyone to be together for
Monnica:used the word shoved and forced for a day. It was really fun and everyone enjoyed it. Don't understand.
Brad:I I agree. But but it was, you know, it was calculated.
Monnica:There's plenty of room in a van. We're driving a minivan, which typically I refuse to do, but you drove.
Brad:Yep.
Monnica:And everyone
Brad:was complained the whole way.
Monnica:Hopefully. About
Brad:my driving.
Monnica:Oh, well, that's because your driving is objectively terrible. And I I didn't say it. The kids
Brad:said it. You just did.
Monnica:Well, I just did. Yeah. You're right. You were just, like, taking it all in and seeing the sights and occasionally looking at the road.
Brad:I think I was driving like a local.
Monnica:Oh, okay. I don't know how the locals drive, so I can't really say. Anyway, we got home safely. Everybody had a great time. I agree.
Monnica:That was a good day. What did you like about it in particular? You haven't really sold it here.
Brad:You're right.
Monnica:I thought the Waimea Valley was incredible.
Brad:The whole day was really cool and it was really flexible having all that planned out and then still being able to flex like we did with going to Waimea Valley and seeing the falls and walking through the botanical garden. All that happened before noon that day. And it was just really cool to have all of us together. The kids have been to Hawaii before, but they never got off resort and they didn't see the sun. This time they saw the sun.
Monnica:Maybe they saw the sun, but not a whole lot.
Brad:And then and then, but this time, the day that we were off resort and drove around the island, the sun was out and it was like, they got to see the entire island.
Monnica:Yeah, that was neat. And the mountains.
Brad:Yeah, so that's what I was really excited about doing and I got to do it. I got to share that perspective with them.
Monnica:Cool. That was a fun day. Thank you for planning it.
Brad:You're welcome.
Monnica:What was your low part?
Brad:There was still, like, this cloud over the trip because Angelica, Audrey, and Zach aren't here to enjoy this.
Monnica:Yeah. I just wanna travel like, I was. I'd say that's probably a good candidate for Milo as well. Let's see. My high of the week oh my goodness.
Monnica:That spa day today. Oh, We waited till the end of the trip. We went to the spa and got an eighty minute deep tissue massage. Oh my goodness. It was so good.
Monnica:I that was one of the best massages I have ever had. So, yeah.
Brad:I wish I had that experience.
Monnica:Didn't have a very good massage?
Brad:I had a got a good massage.
Monnica:It just wasn't like the best ever. No. I'm sorry.
Brad:Partly is my fault. I'm still like figuring out like how comfortable I am communicating.
Monnica:Oh, like not enough pressure too much pressure.
Brad:Exactly. And even when she asked how's the pressure, I'm like, it's great.
Monnica:Why don't you say what you need?
Brad:It was it was like super light. It wasn't it's like she was coming at me.
Monnica:You can say, hey. I I prefer more.
Brad:I know, but then I'm afraid, like, what she's gonna do because I've been there before.
Monnica:Or they give you too much.
Brad:Yes.
Monnica:You know, I'm telling you, that's why I don't sorry. There are exceptions to this, but generally speaking, I prefer a male because they aren't trying to prove their strengths and they just are stronger, typically. I'm probably gonna get criticized for saying that, but generally true, not always true. I have had really great massages from females before, but typically they're better, in my opinion, when it's from a male.
Brad:Okay. So what was your low?
Monnica:My low was probably sending the kids off. Caleb and Sid left yesterday, and they're headed to New York, and I won't see them for a while. And so that was
Brad:They're already back in New York.
Monnica:They are back now, but I saying goodbye to them was a little bit more difficult just because I won't see them for a few months.
Brad:I'm sorry. Me
Monnica:too. It's part of it. I'm really proud of them. They're doing a great job. Syd got a four point o three three in her first semester doing her master's degree at Columbia.
Monnica:So proud of that kid. And Caleb's doing a great job working in finance in Manhattan. I mean, there's not a more aggressive environment that I know of to work in in finance, and he's doing a great job. So proud of those guys.
Brad:It's cool.
Monnica:Anyway, back to
Brad:it tomorrow. Anyway
Monnica:home, ready to go.
Brad:It is 2026. We just had a phenomenal aid station, and we're we're getting back to it.
Monnica:It's gonna be great. I'm really looking forward to it.
Brad:When when we don't have a vinyl
Monnica:Not this time because we're on the road. Those are hard to travel with. So we'll skip it this week.
Brad:We'll skip it.
Monnica:Hey. So if you're still listening all the way to this point in the end, that's amazing.
Brad:Thanks.
Monnica:Thanks for hanging out with us. Have a great week.
Brad:May your Mai Tais be strong.
Monnica:And your aloha stronger.
Brad:There it is.
Monnica:Mahalo.
Brad:See you next week.
Monnica:See you next week.