The Currency of Happiness

Have you ever worked as hard as you possibly could for an entire year and ended up exactly where you started?

I was staring at a spreadsheet at the end of the year, twelve months of work laid out in rows and columns, and the ranking hadn't moved an inch from where it sat twelve months earlier. My response was to work even harder. Not because I had a new strategy. Because I needed to prove something to the people around me, and to myself.

That decision cost me a year of joy before it taught me anything useful. It also forced me to name something I think most people confuse: ambition and ego are not the same drive, wearing different clothes.

In this episode, I break down the difference and why it matters more than almost anything else in how you build a life:

🔹 THE DIFFERENCE - Ambition is drive rooted in purpose. Ego is drive rooted in how you appear to others, and it gets louder, not quieter, when validation doesn't come
🔹 THE COST - How ego-driven ambition quietly burned through my joy until it turned into burnout that didn't look like a breakdown, just an empty tank
🔹 THE SHIFT - The one honest question I now ask before every decision, and why character, not confidence, is what actually holds up when results don't move

This isn't a story about fixing the problem once and being done with it. I still feel the pull of ego. The difference now is that I notice it, and noticing it is what gives me a choice.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - The spreadsheet that hadn't moved in a year
- Ambition vs. ego: what actually separates them
- Why ego-driven ambition always ends in burnout
- The question I ask before every decision now
- Competence, confidence, and why character is different
- This week's exercise: what would you stop chasing if no one was watching?

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com 

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness 

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness 

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

#Ambition #PersonalGrowth #Burnout #SelfImprovement #Leadership #Mindset #Purpose #Motivation #MentalHealth #Character #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #GoalSetting #Podcast

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What happens when you stop treating a food bank like a food bank and start running it like a business?

Mitch Thompson has spent five years turning the Red Deer Food Bank into something most people wouldn't recognize. What used to be a dusty stove and a handful of community barbecues is now a food distribution hub with three Red Seal chefs, a 40-foot hydroponic growing container, a mushroom farm, a culinary kitchen, and a fleet of food trucks that generate revenue to fund the mission itself. Today, the food bank serves over 30,000 people with emergency food each year, another 45,000 with supplemental goods, and supports 38 community agencies and 17 rural food banks across the region.

In this episode, Mitch walks through the full transformation: why he started with a food truck instead of asking for more donations, how a $185,000 grant turned into a 40-foot hydroponic seed can that grows the equivalent of three acres of land, and why 40 percent of the people walking through the door are children. We also get into the personal side, including the years he and his late wife spent fostering kids, the shame and fear people feel walking in for the first time, and why he believes a food bank can be an economic driver instead of just an organization with its hand out.

🔹 THE TRANSFORMATION — Why Mitch treats the food bank as a food distribution hub, not a handout
🔹 THE SOCIAL ENTERPRISE — How a food truck, a culinary kitchen, and a hydroponic farm turned into a self-funding model
🔹 THE NUMBERS — 30,000 people fed emergency food a year, 40 percent of them children
🔹 THE FUTURE — Why Mitch believes food banks can become economic drivers instead of relying on handouts

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 – Five years in, and just getting started
— Walking in the door in 2021 and what needed to change first
— Why they bought a food truck before anything else
— The $185,000 grant that became a 40-foot hydroponic farm
— What it means to shop with dignity instead of shame
— One in four Albertans are food insecure
— What the next five years could look like

Connect with the Red Deer Food Bank:
🌐 Website → reddeerfoodbank.com
📸 Instagram → instagram.com/reddeerfb
📘 Facebook → facebook.com/reddeer.foodbank
🐦 X (Twitter) → x.com/ReddeerFoodbank

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#FoodBank #FoodInsecurity #RedDeer #CentralAlberta #SocialEnterprise #CommunityImpact #Nonprofit #GivingBack #Hydroponics #TheCurrencyOfHappiness

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In 1943, a three-year-old girl asked her father why she couldn't see a photograph right away. He didn't have an answer. So he spent three years finding one.

Edwin Land grew up the son of a scrap metal dealer, dropped out of Harvard twice, and snuck into labs at Columbia at night to test his own theories because no one would fund them. He had no degree, no institution, and no financial backing. He also held 535 patents by the time he died, built the optics used in the U2 spy plane, and invented the instant camera after his daughter Jennifer asked why she had to wait to see her picture.

This episode uses Land's story to ask a bigger question: what happens to the problems you've stopped noticing because you've already accepted "that's just how it works" as the final answer?

🔹 THE QUESTION - Why a three-year-old's curiosity became a door that a billion photographs a year eventually walked through
🔹 THE STANDARD - Land's own bar for what was worth building: manifestly important and nearly impossible
🔹 THE FALL - Why being pushed out of the company he founded never stopped him from working
🔹 THE LESSON - The difference between people who ask complicated questions and people who take simple ones seriously enough to answer them

This isn't a story about genius. It's a story about what happens when someone refuses to let a simple question go unanswered.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - A father, a daughter, and a question with no easy answer
- Who Edwin Land was before Polaroid
- Why "that's just how it works" is the most expensive phrase in human history
- The standard he held every invention to
- Getting pushed out of his own company at 71
- What question have you stopped asking?

If this episode made you think, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#EdwinLand #Polaroid #InstantCamera #InnovationMindset #CuriosityMatters #EntrepreneurMindset #PersonalGrowth #PurposeDrivenLife #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #AskBetterQuestions

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What do you say to someone who just lost a brother, when you've buried one yourself?

Almost a year after losing his brother Simon, host Andrew sits down with his friend Stephen VanSanten, who lost his own older brother Phil to addiction in 2022. Instead of a typical interview, they flip the format and interview each other, asking the questions they wish someone had asked them.

Stephen shares what it was like watching Phil, once the captain of his high school basketball team, slowly lose himself to addiction, and the phone call that came while Stephen sat in a client's living room finishing an estate plan. Andrew shares what it meant to grow up alongside his older brother Simon, who lived with a severe disability from birth, and the guilt of moving provinces away from him as a teenager. Together they ask the harder question underneath both stories: is a person who struggles, whether with addiction or disability, a drain on the people around them, or does caring for them teach something society can't get any other way?

🔹 THE PHONE CALL — Stephen on finishing a client meeting the same day he learned his brother had died
🔹 THE ROLE REVERSAL — Why Andrew became the older brother to his own older brother
🔹 THE HARD QUESTION — What Phil's wife wrote a year after his death, and why Stephen carries it with him
🔹 THE ENCOURAGEMENT — What to actually say, and not say, to someone who is grieving

This isn't a conversation with easy answers. It's two friends being honest about loss, guilt, faith, and what it means to keep showing up for the people who can't always show up for you.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - Why this episode exists
- Losing Phil: the phone call and the years before it
- Growing up with Simon and the guilt of moving away
- Is someone who struggles a drain on society?
- What Phil's wife wrote a year after he passed
- How to actually support someone who is grieving
- What "happiness" means to two brothers who buried their own

If you've lost someone, or you know someone who has, share this with them.

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#Grief #Addiction #Recovery #Disability #FaithAndGrief #Siblings #MentalHealth #LossAndHealing #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #GriefSupport

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What would you find if you dug up a list of goals you wrote down ten years ago and forgot about?

I was cleaning out a closet and found a notebook from my early 20s. Inside was a list of things I wanted before turning 30. Some practical, like owning a home. Some specific, like a certain net worth. Some personal, like writing a book or owning a Jeep Wrangler. Every single item on that list had happened, including the real estate goal everyone told me was out of reach for someone my age.

What that notebook taught me isn't a story about how great things turned out. It's about something most people never get to see about themselves: you're more capable than you believe, and the goals that feel impossible when you write them down have a way of becoming normal by the time you get there.

In this episode, I walk through the exact framework my wife Emily and I use to set goals that actually move our life forward:

🔹 THE SIX F's — Finances, family, friends, faith, fitness, and freedom. Why setting goals in only one area while ignoring the rest quietly wrecks the others
🔹 SMARTER GOALS — Why the standard SMART framework is missing two letters, and why a goal that doesn't excite or scare you probably isn't worth setting
🔹 THE PROCESS — Three non-negotiables, process goals over outcome goals, and why writing it down turns a wish into a plan

This isn't theory. It's the actual system we use, including the messy and imperfect parts.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 – The notebook I found in the closet
— The six F's: finances, family, friends, faith, fitness, freedom
— Smarter goals: adding exciting and risky to the SMART framework
— Three non-negotiables and the difference between process and outcome goals
— Why writing goals down and sharing them changes everything
— This week's question: what would be on your notebook ten years from now?

If this episode gave you something to think about, subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

#GoalSetting #PersonalGrowth #SelfImprovement #Mindset #Purpose #Motivation #LifeGoals #Marriage #Productivity #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #Podcast

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What if the biggest gift you gave your kids this year wasn't a toy, but a letter telling them exactly who you see them becoming?

Pastor Jonathan Brozozog and his wife Joanne are raising eight children, ages 5 to 20, and have spent years teaching parents around the world how to lead a home without losing themselves in the process. His book Raising Parents flips the usual parenting question on its head: instead of asking how to raise good kids, he asks what kind of future parent you're actually raising. That question shapes everything from how he handles anger in the home to why he believes friendship, not money, is the real currency kids remember.

In this episode, Pastor Jonathan walks through the mistakes most parents make early on, why he believes "time doesn't heal, Jesus heals," and the practical, sometimes awkward habits his family practices on purpose, from a nightly no-phone hour to teaching young kids to salsa dance in the living room. We also get into the tradition that changed his family forever: a Father's Day letter of prophecy over each child that has become bigger in his home than Christmas.

🔹 THE OVERCORRECTION - Why so many parents swing from one extreme to the next, and how to stop the cycle before it reaches your grandkids
🔹 THE WORDS THAT WORK - What changes in a home when a parent's words carry weight instead of frustration
🔹 THE FATHER'S DAY TRADITION - The letter of prophecy that became his family's most anticipated day of the year
🔹 THE REAL WIN - Why he measures success by whether his kids love each other and Jesus when no one is making them

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - Meet a father of eight
- What most parents get wrong early on
- Raising Parents: why the title means more than it sounds
- Healing generational patterns instead of overcorrecting
- Why a parent's words have to be "anointed" to actually land
- Making prayer, confession, and worship normal at home
- The Father's Day tradition that beats Christmas
- Why friends aren't where kids get their identity
- What Pastor Jonathan wants his legacy to be

Connect with Pastor Jonathan Brozozog:
🌐 Website → jointheometeam.com
📸 Instagram → instagram.com/jonathanbrozozog
📚 Book → Raising Parents

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#ChristianParenting #FaithAndFamily #RaisingKids #FatherhoodMatters #ParentingTips #FamilyFirst #HomeschoolLife #FaithBasedParenting #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #RaisingParents

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What happens when a beautiful idea for your kids completely misses who your kids actually are?

A few years ago, Andrew heard a speaker describe a Father's Day tradition that stopped him cold: writing each of his kids a letter every year, reflecting on who they were becoming. Andrew decided to do the same. He wrote from the heart, got emotional as he put the words on paper, and gathered his family on Father's Day morning, ready to read them aloud.

His audience was a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a baby. The four-year-old lasted ninety seconds. The two-year-old was never in it at all. By the time Andrew looked up, nobody was left to listen.

In this episode, Andrew walks through what he learned from that failed moment, and the completely different tradition he built instead: a full Father's Day awards ceremony, complete with printed invitations, Oscar-style music, homemade certificates, and categories like Courageous, Compassionate, Caring, and Charismatic, with his kids' stuffed animals nominated right alongside them. He breaks down why the format that works for one family can fall flat in another, why Father's Day has quietly become a day about the dad instead of the kids, and the one question he thinks every father should sit with this year: not what do I want, but what does my kid need to hear from me?

🔹 THE LETTERS THAT DIDN'T LAND - What happened when Andrew's plan met a room full of toddlers
🔹 THE AWARDS CEREMONY - How he rebuilt the idea into something his kids actually received
🔹 THE REAL POINT OF FATHER'S DAY - Why the days kids remember are rarely the days their dad rested
🔹 THE ONE WORD EXERCISE - A simple practice to find what your kid needs to hear this year

This isn't about grand gestures. It's about whether your kids know you're paying attention.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - The letters that didn't go as planned
- Why one dad's idea doesn't fit every family
- Building the Father's Day awards ceremony
- The four categories and the surprise nominees
- Why Father's Day has become a day about the dad
- The one-word exercise for each of your kids
- What legacy is actually built from

If this episode meant something to you, subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

#FathersDay #Fatherhood #Parenting #IntentionalParenting #DadLife

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What does it take to run for the same job twice, lose the first time in front of your entire community, and come back twelve years later to win it?

Cindy Jefferies is the mayor of Red Deer, elected in October 2025 after nearly three decades of public service. She served nine years on the local school board, nine years on city council, and ran for mayor in 2013, a race she lost. In this conversation, she walks through what that loss actually felt like, the shame and grief she carried for almost two years afterward, and the question a friend asked her before she decided to run again that changed how she saw the whole thing.

Cindy also opens up about raising three sons while serving in elected office, caring for her husband Dan through two cancer diagnoses before he passed away in 2019, and the lesson he left her with that she still leans on today. Plus the story behind 100 Women Who Care Red Deer, the giving circle she co-founded in 2014 that has since raised well over $600,000 for local charities, one meeting at a time.

🔹 THE LOSS — What it actually felt like to lose the 2013 mayoral race, and the two years it took to name the shame and grief underneath it
🔹 THE QUESTION — What Ken Johnston asked her before she decided to run again in 2025
🔹 THE LEGACY — The lesson her late husband Dan taught her that she still returns to as mayor
🔹 THE MOVEMENT — How a radio interview turned into 100 Women Who Care Red Deer and over $600,000 raised for local charities

This is a conversation about leadership, loss, second chances, and what it means to keep showing up for a community even after it says no to you once.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 – Sitting beside her former opponents on election night
02:43 – What she looks for in a leader
03:34 – Giving Red Deer a seat at the economic table
05:20 – From a lost class president race to nine years on school board
10:37 – Balancing early motherhood with elected office
15:50 – Losing the 2013 mayoral race
18:17 – Naming the grief and shame that followed
21:12 – The question Ken Johnston asked before she ran again
22:27 – The lessons her late husband Dan left her with
25:58 – Starting 100 Women Who Care Red Deer
31:00 – Her leadership superpower
31:48 – Her vision for Red Deer's future
35:44 – Why municipal politics matters most
41:30 – What happiness means to Cindy
42:22 – Her closing advice on leadership

Connect with Mayor Cindy Jefferies:
City of Red Deer profile → reddeer.ca/city-government/mayor-and-city-councillors
X (Twitter) → x.com/CindyJefferies

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#CindyJefferies #RedDeer #MayorOfRedDeer #Leadership #MunicipalPolitics #WomenInLeadership #Grief #SecondChances #100WomenWhoCare #AlbertaPolitics #PublicService #TheCurrencyOfHappiness #Podcast #LifeOfMeaning #CivicLeadership

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What if the years that feel like nothing are actually the years doing the most work?

In 1948, David Ogilvy arrived in New York with $6,000, no clients, and no advertising experience. Before that, he had been expelled from Oxford, cooked meals for dogs at a Paris hotel, sold stoves door to door in Scotland, tried farming with the Amish, and failed at that, too. At 38, broke and uncertain, he opened an agency anyway. Eleven years later, he had signed every client on his wish list and became known as the father of advertising.

In this episode, Andrew walks through his own version of that story: a string of business attempts over the last decade that mostly didn't work. A merchant services company built on booklets that were unusable. A finance blog that stopped at five articles. A solar panel domain deal that earned one $100 deposit and a ghosting. A car wrap advertising business with a hundred people signed up and no businesses willing to trust their logo to a stranger's bumper. An email business that actually worked and still got shut down. Two Amazon bestselling books that felt significant for a moment and then faded.

Andrew breaks down what each failure actually taught him, why his wife Emily shutting down bad ideas early was a gift and not an obstacle, and why this podcast, the thing he's least attached to out of every business he's tried, is somehow the one most woven into who he is. The real question underneath it all: what season are you in right now that feels like a detour, and what if it isn't?

🔹 THE OGILVY STORY - Seventeen years that looked like failure and became the foundation for an empire
🔹 THE FAILED ATTEMPTS - Six businesses, six lessons, and why none of it was wasted
🔹 THE CORRECTIVE VOICE - Why Andrew is grateful his wife killed most of his ideas before they started
🔹 CHARACTER OVER OUTCOME - What it looks like to know who you are before the results arrive

This isn't a highlight reel. It's an honest look at what actually gets built during the seasons that don't look like progress.

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - David Ogilvy's seventeen lost years
- The merchant services booklets that didn't work
- The blog that stopped at five articles
- The solar domain deal and the hundred-dollar lesson
- The car wrap business nobody would trust
- The email business that worked and still wasn't right
- Two bestsellers that faded after the moment passed
- Why Emily shutting down ideas was the real gift
- What season are you in that feels like a detour?

If this episode meant something to you, subscribe so you don't miss what's next.

#Entrepreneurship #Failure #DavidOgilvy #Resilience #SmallBusiness #Mindset

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What do you do when a child discloses abuse, and the next step is making them repeat that story to four different people?

Mark Jones is CEO of the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre, now housed inside the Sheldon Kennedy Centre of Excellence in Red Deer. After the 2015 suicide of Lindsey Moore, a close friend of his daughter, and years of watching kids get passed between police, children's services, and the courts, Mark helped build something different: a single building where every partner, from RCMP to Alberta Health Services to the justice system, works under one roof so a child only has to tell their story once. What started as three staff in a 1,500 square foot office has grown into a 65,000 square foot facility handling five to ten cases a day, funded in a way that keeps the doors open without leaning on government forever.

In this episode, Mark walks through how the centre actually works: the forensic interview process, the quilt every child wraps around themselves on their way out, and the business model that turned government leases into funding for the centre's own operations. We also get into the harder parts, including the reality that 96 percent of victims know their abuser, the warning signs parents and teachers often miss, and how a school principal's decision to act after Lindsey's death became a $29 million building that other provinces are now asking him to help replicate.

🔹 THE ORIGIN — Losing Lindsey Moore and the disclosure that made Mark say "we have to do something"
🔹 THE SYSTEM — Why kids used to repeat their story four times, and how one building fixed it
🔹 THE WARNING SIGNS — What changes in a child's behavior parents and teachers often miss
🔹 THE MODEL — How government leases fund a self-sustaining building instead of endless fundraising

⏱️ What's Inside:
00:00 - What the Centre of Excellence actually is
- How Lindsey Moore's death started the movement
- Going from one shared office to a 65,000 sq ft building
- Why 96 percent of victims know their abuser
- The signs parents should watch for at home
- Sheldon Kennedy's role from day one
- The significance of the quilt every child takes home
- Building a self-funding model instead of relying on donations
- What restoration and healing actually look like
- What happiness means after years of this work

Connect with Mark Jones and the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre:
🌐 Website → centralalbertacac.ca
📸 Instagram → instagram.com/centralabcac
📘 Facebook → facebook.com/CentralABCAC

Money isn't the main currency of a good life. This podcast gives you the tools to build a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Free Ultimate Goal Setting Framework → thecurrencyofhappiness.com

Subscribe on YouTube → youtube.com/@thecurrencyofhappiness

Instagram → instagram.com/thecurrencyofhappiness

Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts → Search "The Currency of Happiness"

If this episode hit home, share it with one person. Every share helps build what comes next.

#ChildAdvocacy #ChildAbusePrevention #MentalHealthAwareness #SheldonKennedy #ProtectOurKids #TraumaInformedCare #RedDeerAlberta #NonprofitLeadership #ParentingTips #TheCurrencyOfHappiness

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