Feb. 11, 2025

Unlocking the Power of Communication with Mario Wissa

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In this episode, we explore the art of interpersonal communication with author and speaker Mario Wissa. Mario shares his journey from Egypt to the United States and how he discovered his passion for teaching communication skills. We delve into the importance of both interpersonal and intrapersonal communication, and how they affect our relationships. Mario also discusses the connection between communication and yoga, emphasizing the power of breath and mindfulness in enhancing our interactions. Don't miss this enlightening conversation about improving our communication skills to enrich our lives!
https://mariowissa.com/

Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

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00:00:00.560 --> 00:00:08.779
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Uh, if you believe you can achieve.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Today, we're going to be talking about interpersonal communication as I'm joined by author and speaker Mario Whistle. Mario has dedicated 17 years to teaching people and organizations how to improve their interpersonal skills. So we're going to be talking to him about everything that he's up to and what he does. Mario sounds like he's having fun. So, Mario, thank you for joining me today.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Thank, uh, you so much for the introduction. I really appreciate. You know, your introduction was really nice. It deserves that.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Amazing. I appreciate it.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Nice introduction. I'm very happy to be here. I'm excited to be doing this.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely. Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Uh, well, you did amazing, uh, introducing me. In the meantime, um, my, uh, name is Mario Halim Wisa, and I actually currently live in Seattle, Washington. Yet I do travel around, uh, like, upcoming April, I'll be traveling to North Africa to do some speaking.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Uh, I was born and raised in Egypt, and I moved to the US 25 years ago simply to learn to speak English. Um, a couple of decades forward, I have published three books. I'm working on my fourth one, and I'm traveling around the globe talking about the power of communication, how we use it for our advantage, consciously and intentionally.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, well, what made you get started into doing what you do?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Um, this is. This is my it. You know, we hear people talk a lot about, oh, you know, you need to pursue or find what your it is. Once you find your it, there's no turning back. And I heard this, like, over 20 years ago, and it seemed really intriguing to me because people who are talking about finding their it and, uh, applying it in their lives, they tend to be the most content, um, satisfied and happy about how they spend their time and their lives.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>And that was a really interesting thing for me, um, from the beginning, also from really young age, I realized that many conflicts that were happening around me, either between family or friends or coworkers.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>And I always felt that there was another way to handle these disagreements, conflict, misunderstanding. I knew there was a better way, but I don't know where or how. So went back to college, keep studying, and finally I came across communication. I'm, um, like, communication is a key to pretty much fix all issues that we have. We just need to know how to use it intentionally. So the world needs it and I'm here to offer it. And it's for me as well.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, in your mind, what is your definition of communication?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Yes, uh, that happens to be one of my favorite questions actually because uh, the wonderful thing about doing our own research, uh, in a topic that we truly enjoy, that fills our heart, that we get to the point where we start to coin our own definitions based on our understanding experiences.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>So the way I see communication is as the following. Communication is a non stop, voluntary and involuntary process of exchanging information, knowledge, data, vibration. It's a non stop process that's always happening whether we do consciously or unconsciously. Obviously we choose to do things consciously, but that takes effort. So it is a process that's happening all the time. Our existence is actually communication and some of us may not be aware of this. So it's a good time to be aware of that now.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So people understand how important communication is because we all talk about that, but we have to realize how important it is, you know, talk about how communication can impact our daily relationships.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Absolutely. Um, when, when you bring up this topic, many people think um, our relationship with other people and how communication could uh, impact that.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>There's an academic term, um, for this, it's called communication, uh, interpersonal communication. We all familiar with this 101. Like relationships with other people, relatives, co workers, intimate relationships.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>But there's also something called intra personal communication which is similar to Interpersonal Communication 101. The one I'm talking about. It's intra personal communication. And that's basically how we converse with ourself.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>We have a relationship with ourselves whether we are aware of it or not.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Actually some of us are not aware. Some are cultivating our own relationship with ourselves. And I am here to tell you the relationship that we have has a ripple.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Sorry, the relationship that we have with ourselves has a ripple effect in all the other relationships that we have in our lives. The closest person that the first person that we see when we wake up in the morning, all the way to like co workers or relatives that we see once a month or a couple times a year because we are in a relationship with ourselves 24 7. Making this relationship lovely, nice and kind.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>It spells everywhere else in our, in our lives. Simply put, I can tell by um, how someone's deal in their interpersonal relationships. It tells me somewhat about the relationship with themselves.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Most of us, when we are kind and understanding and patient and loving towards our own selves, that means we fill our own cup. And that way we will be able to Share that with other people.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Yet some people who tend to get frustrated easily or get upset or create conflicts with other people easily like that, that's sometimes indication of instability, um, inward and maybe not the healthiest relationship is being cultivated.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, well let's talk about the important relationship between communication and yoga.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Oh, oh my goodness. You're, you're really good with questions. This is great.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Um, these are actually two pillars that I am building my life on truly. Um, yoga one and communication. They're like you can imagine infinity sign going between these two, uh, these two topics. I started studying yoga.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Well I started practicing yoga 2012, so about 13 years uh, ago. And now I'm taking course to actually become a yoga instructor.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>And I find yoga and uh, yoga meditation and communication, they are the best medication for me.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>They go together hand in hand. So a minute ago when I was sharing about intra personal communication, how we communicate and connect with ourselves, the main goal of yoga is actually to do that and to have this connection grounded, solid and carry this connection with ourselves throughout the day, throughout our lives. So some of us might be familiar with the word yoga. Um, the word yoga, actually it's a Sanskrit word and Sanskrit language is about 8,000 years old.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Yoga comes from yoga and yog. It means bond or union between you, yourself and the universe.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>That's one of the ultimate goals of practicing yoga, where you feel like you're oneness with everything else.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>For me, that's really similar to communication and how it works when we are closer to ourselves and we have this healthy relationship and um, bond with self that helps us to do that with other people. In yoga, when we cultivate this oneness and centered feeling, centeredness, we are able to share that with other people as well. Not only that, we also have the capacity and the compassion to meet people where they at, even though they may not be in the same dimension that you're in from practicing yoga, Pranayama and meditation.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All uh, right, well, yoga and breathing, let's, let's talk about the, the methods that you use for yoga and breathing.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Yeah, absolutely. So, uh, breathing techniques in yoga it's called pranayama. Like two words, prana and yama is like the energy force and how we control it.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Imagine, um, um, some of us cannot go for 40 minutes without eating, but some of us actually the body can go 40 days with no food. Uh, when it comes to water. After one week, uh, of not drinking any water, actually the body dehydrates and is just gone. Um, after two, three days of no sleep, the Brain, the mind start to break down and feel confused and hallucinate.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>But when you think about air, try and hold your breath for as long as you can.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Some of us 30 seconds, some of us two minutes. Yet it shows you that after two or five minutes with no air, no oxygen, we are gone.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>How often do we really think about that?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>How often do we really consider that?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>How often do we breathe intentionally?

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> Mario Halim Wisa>So the interesting thing that I find, um, in terms of like breathing, pranayama and yoga, but also communication, that if you really think about it for a second as I'm speaking right now, and when you ask me a question, we only produce sounds when we exhale.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>If I was to try and speak and I'm inhaling, let me try and speak and inhale. The sound is not the same. I was trying to play that to see what it sounds like. So we need to be aware that exhaling is actually creating, uh, and when we create, we create words and that fills a, uh, space. So I'm going to take, for the sake of this podcast right now, I'm going to take 3 second of silence with us right now. Then I'm going to say something after that. I'm going to count backwards. Well, in my mind, not loud, three seconds. After three seconds, I'll make a sentence, I will speak a sentence.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>The last three seconds were completely silent until I made the following sentence, which I'm speaking right now.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Words by exhaling create in a vacuum and space. If you want to be particular about pranayama, breathing techniques that would help us to actually communicate better and calm our nervous system, to engage and activate our parasympathetic system, which helps us to calm down and not get engaged in fight or flight. There is one of the most popular breathing techniques, and I do pretty much on daily basis, something called box breathing.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Sounds familiar.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Absolutely sounds familiar.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Yeah, yeah, Box, uh, breathing.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Basically we look at breathing in four steps. Inhaling, holding, exhaling, holding, and for each step, hold breath. It's uh, up to you, up to four seconds, five seconds. So people like do 10 seconds, let's just say four seconds.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>We inhale, counting four. Hold, counting four. Exhale, counting four, hold, counting four. That's one round.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Doing this three to five times. It is guaranteed to calm the nervous system and bring down the emotional mind and body, which is just how it works. Just that's how the body works. So, um, that's how powerful breathing is. And it seeps in every aspect in our lives. Imagine if we practice pranayama for a few days, couple Weeks. And you become so good at it, and you handle conversations differently. And people see change in how you interact and respond and react to go like, hey, I like how you respond to this. What's your secret? And you can tell. I do box breathing once in the morning, once in the evening. And they'll be like, what is that? Teach me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, let's talk about best practice tips that you have about improving communication between groups and even on a personal level.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Oh, absolutely. Um, I guess I will share directly the things that I practice almost on daily basis. I'm human, I do my very best. And my best is, uh, different dimension every single day.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Uh, how we prime ourselves and how we prime our mind, by the way, in a way, self and mind somewhat close. Not exactly, but close. How we prime our mind early in the morning when we first wake up, the first 90 minutes before we do anything else, really impacts how we carry ourselves throughout the entire day. So one of the, um, important actions that I take in the morning, which is almost action of non action, where I make a cup of tea in the morning with some lemon and light a candle and incense, and I spend about 20 minutes to 30 minutes early in the morning with myself maybe playing some relaxing music in the background, um, cultivating this relationship early in the morning with ourselves. It really grounds us. Especially if someone has not done it before and they experienced it for the first time.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>It might be challenging for some people. At the beginning, it doesn't have to be 20 minutes, 30 minutes. It could be just three minutes to five minutes. Just to start the day by spending time with self, to honor self that it exists with us. Uh, so starting the day to actually spend time with self and be mindful of how we communicate out with ourselves, to prime our mind and also label events in a healthy way to empower us. When we spend time with ourselves and use language to empower ourselves, this actually radiates to everyone else around us. So starting early in the morning with some time, just sometime one on one on one, I guess, uh, with yourself and also middle of the day, taking a break for really pausing, uh, to center self is really, really important.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>I try to do this as often as I can. My friends remind me of it too. At least once a day. At least once a day, stop in the middle of the day and, um, find the mirror and you go tell yourself you are doing amazing. Wow. You remember how you felt yesterday or a week ago, or you thought you would not be able to do this. Motivate, inspire, empower yourself by looking in the mirror and actually do that to help you get through. Because life can be tough sometimes situations that happen, um, things that people do and say can really impact our inner world. So maintaining the inner world, inner self, how we feel about ourselves and relationship with ourselves. It is a non stop process because you center yourself one minute, 30 seconds later you get a phone call or a text or a meeting that does not go your way and boom, you're off centered. Then we have to center myself again. There's a danger of being off centered is when someone trying to interact with us. We may not respond in a logical way that we'd be happy later with how we responded.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>When we off centered. We seem to be saying things we do not mean. We think in a, um, mindless way or react instead of responding. Centering self like honestly, sometimes I tell myself, like I find myself walking around, uh, the day I'm like busy running from one place to another.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Then I catch that my heart rate is going up, I'm um, all over the place.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>I physically pause where I am and just like take a deep breath, inhale, exhale, and trying to center myself. I have to do this couple of times.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Then I tell myself, start small from where you are right now. And uh, once I start small, stay positive no matter what happens.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Label, frame, prime whatever is happening in a positive condition in a way that it empowers me.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>And final point for this is showing, uh up. This is probably uh, a topic for a podcast on its own. The power of being authentic and showing up. Where we go, wherever we go with our flaws, weaknesses, strength, just genuinely show up. Because when we show up in life, life also actually shows up. If we show up fake, well, the situation will be fake too.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Because a lot of things that happen in our life is a mirror for our inner world. Hence I say to cultivate this uh, centered inner world first thing early in the morning. Very powerful.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that people need to be aware of.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>I um, like that. What do people need to be aware of? Actually, I have a lot going on, uh, to be frank with you. So I'm actually working on my fourth book right now. A small, uh, pocket size, like 4 by 6 inches kind of book. Uh, the title is the Little Green Book. And um, just a quick preview, uh, this book has 104 seeds of wisdom and thoughts from east to the west. Something you can carry in your pocket, something that empowers you.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>You flip a random page and it will reach you where you at. I'VE been working on this for some time now. Also uh, in April this year, year 2025. As I'm saying that 2025 sounds like still in the future, but 2025 is actually here.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Um, April, May, June, I uh, will be traveling, uh, north, North Africa, Egypt and possibly couple of uh, places in Europe doing some book signing and uh, public speaking engagements. And I also hold workshops that I have started about six years ago now. It's called ice, uh, Interactive Communication Experience where people actually get to learn about themselves and find out what are the strength and how they can ground themselves regardless to what's happening around us. Also to understand that communication has invisible power and sometimes we misuse it due to our ignorance. So traveling around spreading the goodness of what communication is and how we use it to empower ourselves.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Throw out your contact info so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>Sure. So uh, my website, um, www.mariouisa.com that's my first name and last name. First name M M A R I O and last name W I s s a dot com. Also my email, uh, contact me@mario visa.com and I finally have a phone number you can actually call or text and it depends when you call I might be able to answer. The number is 360-821-5760.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>On my website and through my phone number you can actually um, book ah, uh, a 30 minute free session 101 to discover what we need to work on in terms live, uh, coaching session and all my services actually free. I'm um, doing this just to help people and uh, yeah, that's all Curtis.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, 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.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>I think that's one of the reasons why I do what I do because I don't think I have final thoughts. The leg running nonstop, um, but putting humor to the side, um, something I learned from my dad many years ago and I'll try to share this wherever I go. Being kind beyond necessary to self and others is a superpower.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, how about that superpower Mario weasel.com Absolutely.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>You guys be sure to check it out. Follow, rate, review, share to as many people as possible. Get on your favorite podcast app. Check us out man. You know, follow, share us any guests or suggestion topics.

00:24:00.407 --> 00:24:12.500
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Curtis Jackson1978t.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. Mario, thank you for mario.com and thank you for joining us.

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> Mario Halim Wisa>It's a privilege to be here. Thank you so much for making this happen. Truly nice work.

00:24:19.799 --> 00:24:27.791
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, stay focused on living the dream. Dream.