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Former LEO turned Martial Arts Expert, Matt Kelly Shares 7 Steps to Purposeful Living

Matt Patrick Kelly is a man of many talents. He is a published author, a poet, a former law enforcement officer, SWAT team member, Defensive Tactics, and Firearms Instructor with over 40 years of martial arts experience. Through his experiences, Kelly has gained insights and knowledge that he now shares with others through his speaking engagements and the Order of the Iron Rings, a community of like-minded individuals dedicated to living with purpose.

Kelly draws from his extensive experience in law enforcement and martial arts to help people achieve self-empowerment and live a more fulfilling life. He believes that everyone has the potential to live with purpose, but it takes dedication and effort to achieve that goal. In his speaking engagements, Kelly shares seven steps for a fulfilling life, which include finding a meaningful cause, seeking mastery in all pursuits, surrounding yourself with great people, being positive, getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, having gratitude, and believing in something greater than yourself.

Here are the steps towards finding a purposeful life

  • Find a meaningful cause. 

This could be creating one or joining one that is true and meaningful. Giving from the heart is important, and a true and just cause should also give you tenets by which to live and act. This step can be a challenging one, but it is essential for those who want to live with purpose.

  • Seek mastery in all worthy pursuits. 

Kelly believes that people should be the best they can be at what is important to them. This requires living in the present and building a future, not looking in the rear-view mirror, remembering past glory days. Kelly encourages people to look to true, inspiring, and driven real people that are better than them. These examples should not discourage but encourage.

  • Surround yourself with great people is the third step towards a purposeful life.

Kelly believes that iron sharpens iron, and people are the sum total of the people they hang out with. It is essential to surround oneself with people who challenge and inspire them to be better.

  • Be positive. 

Kelly believes that it is too easy to be negative about everything and see nothing but the bad. The media and government are experts at this, designed to kill one’s spirit, cause fear, and make people dependent on their solutions. It takes training and time to flip this habitual way of thinking for the positive, but it can be done. If steps one, two, and three are already in place, this step becomes easier.

  • Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Kelly believes that growth is not easy, or everyone would be the best version of themselves. It requires challenging oneself, waking up earlier, working out, having a daily routine, learning, reading, acting, and meditating.

  • Have gratitude. 

This means being grateful for what you have, where you are, and doing things as a role model to help others so that they can also experience gratitude.

  • Believe in something greater than yourself. 

Matt Patrick Kelly believes that this means believing in God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and Christian values. This step provides people with a sense of purpose that goes beyond themselves, connecting them with something greater and more significant.

Kelly’s seven steps are designed to help people live with purpose and meaning. They are based on his extensive experience in law enforcement and martial arts, which has taught him the importance of self-empowerment and capability. Through his work with the Order of the Iron Rings, Kelly helps people from all walks of life gain the skills and attributes they need to live in an unpredictable world more fearlessly.

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Dreamscape

Date Night Just Got an Upgrade at Melrose Alpine Club

Looking to impress your Valentine or plan a standout night out with friends? Melrose Alpine Club Presented by Hello Molly is turning up the romance in West Hollywood.

Located on the rooftop of EP and LP, this open air ice rink pairs skyline views with cozy winter charm. Skate under the stars, sip seasonal cocktails, and enjoy a sweet treat all included in your $22 ticket. Each session includes one hour of skating and skate rentals. The rink is open Fridays from 5 pm to 9 pm and Saturdays and Sundays from 12 pm to 9 pm at 603 N La Cienega Blvd.

Fashion lovers can lean into the moment with Hello Molly’s signature faux fur styles, perfect for a chic winter date night look. Guests can take 10 percent off rink tickets with code HELLOMOLLY10 and 10 percent off Hello Molly styles using code ALPINE10.

On February 11, the space transforms into a pink Valentine’s Day dreamscape with new photo ops and romantic activations that will remain through the end of the month.

Skate, sip, and celebrate love above the city. Book your tickets now and plan your perfect winter date night.

Written in partnership with Tom White

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Precision

The Quiet Power of Precision: Sound Editor Wooin Jeon’s Discipline in Narrative Design

Sound, often the least visible element of a film, carries undeniable weight in shaping a story’s impact. Los Angeles-based sound editor and designer Wooin Jeon is a professional whose work is defined by a meticulous, story-driven approach to the craft. Her contributions have been instrumental in preparing films for major festivals, with her sound work featured in 24 projects—16 of which have earned official selection at respected events, including the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival and Dances with Films New York.

Wooin’s reputation is built on her ability to deliver coherent, deeply engaging films across the diverse technical environments of the festival circuit. This consistent quality stems from her disciplined control over the sonic structure of each project.

A significant marker of her expertise is her work on the recent feature film By the Grape of God. For this project, Wooin single-handedly managed the entire post-production sound workflow: dialogue editing, sound design, effects, background ambience, music editing, and re-recording mixing, all while adapting to continuous picture updates. Successfully maintaining a unified and immersive sonic structure across an extended feature runtime—where even subtle inconsistencies can disrupt the audience experience—is a testament to her sustained focus and technical control.

For Wooin, sound’s primary function extends beyond simple support for the image; it is a critical force in guiding how a narrative is received and understood. Professional sound work ensures scenes connect smoothly and naturally, enveloping the viewer without drawing undue attention to the technical process itself.

“Have you ever turned on subtitles because the dialogue was hard to hear?” Wooin asks. “Or watched a film where the dialogue felt distant, but the action sound effects were uncomfortably loud? Those moments pull the audience out of the story.” She emphasizes that an unbalanced sound design is a distraction that compromises the narrative, regardless of the visual content’s strength.

Wooin approaches sound design as an exploration, likening it to the creative process of composing music, a skill rooted in her background as a musician. “I usually begin with a direction or a feeling I want to explore,” she notes, often finding that the outcome is an evolution of her initial concept. She views this creative journey as essential, allowing the soundscape to evolve organically with the story. While certain scenes demand adherence to established technical conventions, Wooin finds true creative fulfillment beyond those boundaries, believing that accidental moments of discovery push professional limits and define new creative spaces.

In post-production, Wooin treats dialogue, music, Foley, background ambience, and sound design as interconnected components of a single narrative system. Her work on films like the documentary Muljil and the short The Art of Pretending Everything Is Fine highlights this comprehensive approach. Clean dialogue is paramount for story clarity, while sound design provides the dynamic contrast necessary for tension and pacing shifts. Background ambience grounds the scene in its environment, and the final mix integrates these elements to ensure the story unfolds seamlessly.

Her professional philosophy is centered on restraint as much as on creation. “To create a sense of dynamic in a story, you can’t just keep adding sound endlessly,” she explains. “You need to subtract. Knowing what to leave out is what keeps a scene from feeling excessive.”

This philosophy also shapes her measure of success: “If sound doesn’t call attention to itself and instead blends seamlessly into the story, that’s when I consider it successful sound editing,” she concludes.

The value of Wooin’s detailed and precise technical work is perhaps best summarized by director Andrés Orellana, who described her contribution to the community-rooted project The Land as bringing “an extraordinary level of precision, creativity, and professionalism.” He credited her meticulous editing of dialogue, removal of problematic noise, and crafting of “nuanced soundscapes” with elevating the emotional tone of key scenes, which ultimately contributed to the film’s selection at major Latino film festivals.

For filmmakers navigating the demanding festival circuit, a collaborator with Wooin Jeon’s disciplined, story-driven understanding of sound is essential. Her professional focus ensures a film’s voice is not only heard but consistently strengthens its capacity to resonate with and compete before global audiences.

Written in partnership with Tom White

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Cannabis

CBD Discounter Bets on Scale and Control to Challenge Traditional CBD Pricing

In an industry long defined by boutique branding and premium price tags, CBD Discounter is taking a decidedly different route. Rather than competing on image or hype, the company is wagering that scale, operational control, and disciplined production can do what flashy marketing cannot: permanently lower the cost of high-quality CBD.

At the core of CBD Discounter’s strategy is an insistence on owning the process instead of renting it. While many CBD brands rely on layered supply chains—cultivators, wholesalers, processors, distributors—CBD Discounter commissions its own production directly from EU-certified industrial hemp farms in Austria. This approach allows the company to bypass traditional supply-and-demand bottlenecks that often inflate prices long before products reach consumers.

Control, however, is not only about cost. By working closely with cultivation partners and maintaining a multi-person specialist team on-site, CBD Discounter oversees every critical stage, from seed selection to harvest. All hemp is organically grown under strict EU and pharmaceutical standards, and no product is released without passing extensive internal and independent laboratory testing. The result is a portfolio that meets premium benchmarks without carrying a premium price.

Scale plays an equally decisive role. By purchasing large quantities and planning production well in advance, CBD Discounter leverages economies of scale that smaller competitors simply cannot access. Bulk commissioning stabilizes pricing, shields customers from market volatility, and allows the company to offer consistent value to both casual buyers and high-volume customers. In a sector where price fluctuations are common, this predictability has become a key differentiator.

Freshness is another area where the company challenges convention. Instead of pre-packaging and warehousing large inventories, CBD Discounter packages CBD flowers only after an order is placed. This just-in-time model reduces storage costs while ensuring that customers receive products at peak potency and aroma—an advantage that typically costs more, not less.

The company’s product range reflects the same philosophy. CBD flowers remain the flagship, offered in multiple strains with distinct terpene profiles, such as fruity and citrus-forward varieties. Complementing these are CBD oils in full-spectrum and broad-spectrum formats, CBG flowers, and high-concentration extracts like hash and Moon & ICE Rocks. All products comply with EU regulations and contain less than 0.2% THC, reinforcing both legality and consumer trust.

Founded in 2019, CBD Discounter’s ambitions extend beyond pricing disruption. A portion of profits is allocated to charitable initiatives supporting animals and children in need, signaling a broader vision of accessibility—not only to CBD, but to social responsibility.

By betting on scale and control rather than exclusivity, CBD Discounter is quietly redefining what “affordable” can mean in the CBD market—and challenging competitors to rethink how much of their pricing is truly unavoidable.

Written in partnership with Tom White

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