805conversations

One of the things I love about talking with Kevin Bourke is how I am guaranteed to learn something I can use immediately. Kevin has been on the show before (listen here) and is a great supporter of other efforts we undertake, such as sponsoring TEDxSantaBarbara for many years. In this conversation, Kevin talked about how he and the team at Bourke Wealth Management, look at finances from a big picture view, not just isolating their lens on stock portfolios. He calls it the Family Financial Ecosystem. He takes us on a deep dive of what this means, and once you hear it, you'll wonder why no one has explained this to you before. Kevin also introduced me to a new word right off the bat - you may need to look it up. It's Decumulation. It's how you thoughtfully and strategically use your savings to fund your retirement, though Kevin explains it much better. Kevin helped me to understand the differences in how you look at your family finances, especially as it relates to long term planning. He explains where Asset Management fits, how to think about Wealth Management, and how it's different than how someone like him sits as the family CFO and manages the relationships with attorneys, accountants, and anyone involved in your financial ecosystem. We love it when Kevin spends time explaining complicated topics to us and encourage you to get a copy of his book, Make Your Money Last a Lifetime. His site: http://bourkewealth.com His book: http://www.amazon.com/Make-Your-Money-Last-Lifetime/dp/0984789529

Dennis Baker is an accomplished marketer and entrepreneur. His latest venture is called POLIS Assist. For the last two years, he and his team have been locating every parking space in Los Angeles County and putting them into an app. Yes, it's true, need a space, use POLIS to find one. Dennis freely gives of his time and extensive expertise to the non-profit community in Santa Barbara to help them with messaging, strategic positioning, branding, and crisis communications. He has a deep background in marketing and has focused that energy into bringing the POLIS app to the millions of drivers in Los Angeles. While developing POLIS he and the team have collected parking information on over 500,000 blocks. Dennis talked about one day where he looked at the eight signs in front of a potential parking spot and was confused. Some of the signs said what day he could and could not park, what type of plate he had to have, and other regulations governing the single space. He was maddened by it and decided to fix the problem. The only obstacle was, there was no central database for street parking, which meant his team had to photograph every street sign on those 500,000 blocks. The volume of street information turned into a big data challenge and opportunity. Dennis says that POLIS is the Waze for Parking. We appreciate the mammoth effort that has gone into and will continue to go into POLIS. We also thank him for his support of the Santa Barbara Non-Profit Community and his frequent attendance at TEDxSantaBarbara events.

Claudia Weintraub is the Director of the River Oaks Academy, a Personalized Learning Public Charter School, based in Thousand Oaks, California. We sat down with her to understand changes that are occurring in various proposed laws that are going to affect students in Charter Schools throughout the State. Claudia spent some time updating us on Charter Schools since her first podcast with us in 2015. Lots has changed, specifically in the legislature and the current political climate. Claudia helps educate us, and parents and citizens about the challenges Charter Schools are facing during these challenging times. What was fascinating to learn was how Charter Schools are a perfect alternative for individual students. The concept of Personalized Learning is an answer for a lot of problems young people face when trying to navigate the structured public school system. Thankfully we have people like Claudia leading the charge and advocating for this innovative way to teach our children. More information about River Oaks is here: http://www.riveroakscharter.com/

Will Bellomy is himself quite a character, ironically he designs characters for his party game business, Murder Happens. Will joined us in the studio, with guest host, Kimberly Herriman. Kimberly is studying 'Play' as a part of her doctoral research at Antioch University. By day, Will works at Photothermal Spectroscopy in Santa Barbara, designing marketing materials to illustrate the incredibly complex process of their products. It's no wonder he's fascinated with creating complex narratives that anyone can play, with eight of their friends. This conversation was interesting on several levels. Many of us love solving puzzles, and interactive mysteries, like the ones Will designs are tremendously fun. Will says his stories come from everywhere and hints that an upcoming game stems from an idea he had while talking with an Uber driver. Kimberly added an interesting voice, as she's doing a lot of research into the psychology of play, and what motivates people to play. You'll learn a lot from listening to her questions. I'm looking forward to playing on of Will's games soon with her, and a bunch of our friends. Will says his business is just getting going and that he's encouraged that board games are really hot right now especially social games. I think that we're experiencing a backlash against screens.

Glen Derbyshire started taking photographs as a young boy growing up in a military family stationed in Asia. He fell in love with capturing images of events all around him and began his pursuit of lifelong learning, ending up at Brooks Institute here in Santa Barbara. He is the founder of Studio 2050, a full-service production facility located on the top of the San Marcos Pass in the old Cielo Store. Such a beautiful location has led to a creative vision that extends to a wide variety of production services. Glen and Mark talked at length about his experience with 3D animation. The Studio provides services that include photography, art direction, video production, print production and creative content needed to support his clients' marketing objectives. You may have seen him and his crew in downtown Santa Barbara in 2015 shooting scenes for the film Papa Hemingway in Cuba. Longtime Santa Barbara residents will remember the Cielo Store as a stop along the way to a camping trip in the Santa Ynez Mountains, to pick up last minute supplies. Here's an article in the LA Times from 1992 that speaks of the beauty of the region. We're jealous that Glen and his clients get to spend so much time in this stunning location.

We invited Tara Jones Haaf back to the show when we heard that her very successful company, Eat This, Shoot That, has expanded into Solvang. For those of you outside the 805, Solvang is a lovely recreation of a Danish town, nestled in the Santa Ynez Valley, just 45 minutes from downtown Santa Barbara. Tara tells Mark and Patrick all about the charming city and the hidden culinary treasures that abound on the tour. Tara says that her tours are an 8-course adventure. We can't wait to go up to Solvang and discover these hidden treats. Listen to our original episode with her from 2017 to get a full background on what Eat This, Shoot That is all about. We caught up on the business; she's now operating with seven tour guides. She is full of great quotes, including, "Take the picture that got you to go to the restaurant in the first place." Good idea. Tara gave us some pro tips for taking pictures of food - and they are simple and easy to remember. 1. Get in nice and tight. She suggests getting into the personal space of the dish. 2. Shoot at eye level. Forget perfectly framing those over the dish shots. 3. Front light the plate (have the sun at your back) unless you're taking pictures of glasses of wine, then have the light behind the glass. Tara also writes for Noozhawk and has an unfair competitive advantage in finding the best places to eat. You can see her many articles here. Her writing talents are also on display in her book that she spoke about in our first show: The 100 Things to do in Santa Barbara Before You Die.

We had a far-reaching conversation with Max Drucker, the CEO of {Carpe Data, a business located just upstairs from our studio here in downtown Santa Barbara. Max understands data, big data, and the future of how data impacts businesses like few we've had on the show. We learned about predictive analytics, his start at Apple working to bring Insurance Companies to the Internet, machine learning, and how to manage the data that impacts your business. Max is easy to listen to, especially if you are unsure about your relationship to big data and how it is used to calculate risks to businesses. He makes the discussion, which can frequently be nerdy and complicated, straightforward and easy to understand. Towards the end of the show, he takes us on a journey into the future, with a prediction about autonomous cars that you'll want to hear. As co-founder and CEO, Max leads Carpe Data in the development and execution of the business. Before Carpe Data, Max co-founded Social Intelligence, a social media background screening company. In November 2010, Insurance & Technology Magazine named Max as one of its Top 10 Innovators of the Decade, an award that recognizes accomplishments in the insurance technology industry over the past ten years.

We met with Gregg Hart, newly minted member of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors, for a delightful conversation about civic engagement. I've known Gregg for a long time, back from my days at Wavefront. Gregg has been involved in just about every significant activity here in Santa Barbara, as a member of multiple organizations over the years. One of the things that you'll remember if you ever meet with him is his persistent smile and pleasant attitude. He genuinely is committed to this community, and it's a joy to listen to him talk about public service. In this episode, you'll learn about his motivation to spend his life in community service. It started with him hanging out with his Dad, who was a librarian. For the past several years Gregg was the Executive Director of the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, a regional planning agency comprised of Santa Barbara County and all eight incorporated cities within the county. SBCAG distributes local, state, and federal transportation funds and acts as a forum for addressing regional and multi-jurisdictional issues. This episode may get you motivated to pay a bit more attention to the activities that go on in your community and possibly even move you to volunteer.

Mike Williams has one of the better jobs on the planet. He's the Getting Things Done Enterprise Architect for Zappos. What the heck kind of job title is that? In this episode, Mike tells about working with Tony Hsieh, the legendary founder of Zappos and being immersed in that fantastic culture. Mike is deeply involved by way of his background working for years with David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Together they recently co-authored a new book, Getting Things Done for Teens (Video below) and he's putting everything he's learned and taught around the world to good use at making Zappos one of the premier places to work in the US. Mike talks about the Airstreams and Tiny Homes and the Village which has been designed so you will 'collide' with those you work with regularly. He says Tony will talk about colliding many times during the day and believes it's a key to the organization's success. Mike calls it Holocracy. Holacracy is such a big idea you'll want to follow the link and dig in; it's a revolutionary way to think about organization. Which brings us back to Mike and the work he's on the planet to do - helping people get things done. He says figuring this out is the DNA of life, which he states so clearly as answering the simple question, "What's the Next Action?" One thing that amazed me about the conversation was learning Mike, who lives in Camarillo, commutes to Las Vegas every week. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, but he leaves out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County because he loves Jet Blue. What does that tell you about brand loyalty? We met Mike a few years back as a part of TEDxCamarillo and were able to help him along his road to the red circle. You can watch his talk here. Mike talks about the Airstreams and Tiny Homes and the Village which has been designed so you will 'collide' with those you work with regularly. He says Tony will talk about colliding many times during the day and believes it's a key to the organization's success. Mike calls it Holocracy. Holacracy is such a big idea you'll want to follow the link and dig in; it's a revolutionary way to think about organization. Which brings us back to Mike and the work he's on the planet to do - helping people get things done. He says figuring this out is the DNA of life, which he states so clearly as answering the simple question, "What's the Next Action?" One thing that amazed me about the conversation was learning Mike, who lives in Camarillo, commutes to Las Vegas every week. Ok, that doesn't sound so bad, but he leaves out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County because he loves Jet Blue. What does that tell you about brand loyalty? We met Mike a few years back as a part of TEDxCamarillo and were able to help him along his road to the red circle. You can watch his talk here.

Public Radio, There's nothing else like it - Mary Olsen General Manager, KCLU by 805connect

In this episode, we talk with Dan Hamilton, Associate Professor in the School of Management at California Lutheran University, where he is the Director of Economics for the CLU Center for Economic Research and Forecasting (CERF) and the Director of CLU's Master of Science in Quantitative Economics (MSQE). In partnership with CERF Director Matthew Fienup (previously on the podcast), he is a member of the Wall Street Journal's Economic Forecasting Survey and has more than 22 years of experience in economic forecasting. We had a lively conversation about forecasting, how you present data to decision makers and how 'data can be tricky.' Dan believes that we are in the Golden era of forecasting. Luckily for us, he has deep experience in the topic and was able to present Patrick and Mark with a Master's Class worth of information in under an hour. Dan joined CLU in 2009 and in three months, established CERF and MSQE. CERF has computed economic forecasts for the United States, California, Oregon, Los Angeles County, the San Fernando Valley, Ventura County, and for various other counties in California. The MSQE program focuses on teaching the application of quantitative methods in applied economic and financial analysis, including economic forecasting. Before CLU, Hamilton joined the UCSB Economic Forecast Project in 2000 where he worked with well-known regional organizations including Vandenberg Air Force Base, the County of Santa Barbara, the County of Ventura, The Towbes Group, the Sares-Regis Group, among many others. Before UCSB, Dan worked for three years for the Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates (WEFA Group) where he produced and interpreted forecasts for a wide variety of clients including Visa International, the Panama Canal Authority, and the United States government. He also conducted intensive forecast training programs for both internal and external clients at the WEFA Group.

This conversation with storyteller, award-winning journalist, author, and professor, Starshine Roshell takes us into the world of writing, storytelling and interviewing, and as Starshine is usually the one doing the interviewing, the show has a certain meta quality to it. Starshine has written several books, produces a regular column for the Santa Barbara Independent, is the Associate Director of Media and Communications at Fielding Graduate University, all while being a busy Mom. Clearly, she's got more than one superpower. She teaches people how to interview, so I was a bit on edge and made sure I brought my A-game to the table for this conversation. As you'll learn in the show, I didn't need to worry at all. We settled into a nice groove taking us from her coming from a family of storytellers, to being an instructor for Lynda.com (Now LinkedIn Learning). Along her long and winding road, she's discovered many tricks of writing she freely shared with us. As a student of interviewing and crafting the best questions to ask, I jumped on the chance to ask the expert about how she approaches interviews. Of course, she actually has a class in Interviewing. (Note to self: Must take this class.) I won't give away my favorite part, where she used an analogy to explain how music and messaging are more similar than you might think at first. We had a lot of laughs as will you when you listen. Please feel free to share this with someone who wants to be a better communicator. ps. The title of this episode, Talk more about that, is one of the tricks she explained that she uses to dig deeper into the answer she hears during an interview.

In this episode, we meet two amazing women, both winners in their respective categories of the 2018 Spirit of Entrepreneurship Awards. We've been partners with SOE for some time now, and love having these conversations. Both women are remarkably accomplished as you will learn in this spirited episode. Nirasha, the winner in the Hospitality and Tourism category, has built a thriving business based on her passion for food. She outlines how she went from attending Brooks Institute with a degree in photojournalism to starting The Food Liason with her husband and growing it to be able to feed 4,000 people a day. Zdena, the winner in the Retail category, has grown her passion for art glass that comes her home country in Eastern Europe, into a business based in Solvang, California. She and her husband have grown the business from art glass and jewelry to include a shop featuring olive oils and a new shop called Flavors, which is an artisanal cafe and gelateria. I loved the eclectic nature of our conversation, as will you. Next time you're in Carpinteria (during lunch) stop in at The Food Liason's counter for a treat, then when you're in Solvang, stop into Flavors, after visiting Zfolio's Gallery to see the art glass.

Jan Campbell is the Executive Director of Santa Barbara-based non-profit, Domestic Violence Solutions. Jan gave us a quick update on DVS's history, having been founded with their first shelter in 1977. She also introduced us to a new term: Intimate Partner Violence. She says that the #MeToo movement has raised awareness of this epidemic. Her statistics show that there are more than 6,000 calls a day nationally to organizations that provide support like DVS. DVS relies extensively on volunteers, with a 40-hour training for each of them, as there are more sensitive issues to consider than you'd first think. For instance, the actual location of the shelters is a secret known only to staff and law enforcement. Makes sense once you think about it. Another term she taught us was Intergenerational Violence, here's a link to a white paper on this topic for those of you that want to dive deeper after you listen to this episode. We talked at length about early warning signs, prevention and how to help. She said, "Be an upstander, not a bystander." Agreed. There are many challenges facing our community and this is one she rightfully called a Silent Epidemic. If you're interested in helping DVS be successful in their mission, check them out here. Listeners will remember Jan as the first guest on this podcast. Welcome back. (J.C. Corliss / Noozhawk photo)

I step in when you want to double and triple growth. Diana Pereira is committed to her clients in a way that's inspiring. She's one of the Founders of the Impact Hub in Santa Barbara, and the Founder of Balance Financial Management, located in the Funk Zone of Santa Barbara. We know her from the early days of the Impact Hub when it was still a dream, and she presented the vision at the Santa Barbara Library, several years ago. Since then, the Hub has grown into a center for entrepreneurship in Santa Barbara. Her work at the Impact Hub was recognized with a highly coveted Spirit of Entrepreneurship Award in 2018 in the Green and Entrepreneurship category. Note: We're going to interviewing the 2018 winners over a period of months, to help celebrate the work that the organization is doing. Diana sees her company's role at Balance as the backbone to startups and non-profits. She said she's been doing payroll and accounting since she was eleven years old and has been a CFO for over 15 years. She lights up when you ask her about success stories at the Impact Hub. Her current favorite is Cognixion, founded by Andreas Forsland. They're on the cutting edge of AI, creating products that accelerate and enrich human communication and connection. One of the things that I appreciate about Diana is that she sees herself as a part of the team. If you poke a view into her office in the Funk Zone, you'll see an excellent brick room, windows on two walls, and a shelf that wraps around the room that has computers, that everyone stands up to work on. It's cool, and if they need to sit or take a meeting, they're in the Impact Hub, with plenty of room to spread out when they need to. Congratulations to Diana, and the rest of the 2018 SOE Winners.

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Stephanie Caldwell, a seasoned Chamber of Commerce executive about Ventura and her vision for Main Street. Stephanie understands the small town nature of Ventura and the high percentage of mom and pop businesses. She's also got a lot to say about Growth vs. No Growth conversations and how they affect Ventura. Stephanie came to Ventura from The San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce three years ago, where she was the Chief Operating Officer. Stephanie says there are five main areas of focus: Economic Development, Networking and Visibility, Community Building (especially for non-profits), Advocacy and Political Action, especially as it relates to her board. We mention the board, as one of our sponsors, Greg Van Ness; also a guest on the podcast is Vice-Chair of Governmental Affairs at the Chamber. Ventura has a vibrant startup scene as well, and she quoted another 805conversations guest and Board Chair of the Chamber, John Silva, who said, "Joining the Chamber is one of the best ways to grow your business." Our conversation also touched on the Thomas Fire and the impact it had on an already tight housing marketing. With only 2% availability (much like most of the communities in the 805) it's a challenge when, as a business, you're trying to attract talent from outside the region. Her mantra is in three areas: attract, retain and grow. She's also not blind to the changing economy, and the impact technology has on brick and mortar businesses, especially the sharing economy. She's also recognized a generational shift in membership and is excited about the Young Professionals Group and their positive impact on the organization. Stephanie says the most significant ongoing challenge is communications and how to bridge the growth vs. no growth politics.

This conversation with Dr. Roger Dunham, who lives here in Santa Barbara, focused on a life well led. He's had three interesting careers; doctor, author, and crewmember aboard a Navy submarine. From medicine to underwater survival aboard a nuclear submarine, from the terrorism of piracy in the South China Sea to survival against the medical forces of nature, Roger Dunham. M.D. has crafted a series of intriguing books defining the ultimate in human challenge: Survival. His latest book, Rogue Captain, came out last month. The book blurb says the Navy tried to block publication, and his other submarine novel, Spy Sub, chronicled the search for a missing Russian sub at the bottom of the sea. Fascinating tale when you hear it from Roger in-person, there's a lot of controversy around both books. Roger was an Internal Medicine doctor here in Santa Barbara for 40 years until he retired. His ability to bring real-life experiences into his novels produced one medical thriller, Final Diagnosis, and after seeing so many patients facing end of life issues, he wrote Surviving Mortality.

Ashley is an avid sports enthusiast and is an athlete for life. It's no surprise she has remained in the sports industry for over 17 years. Her experience has ranged from Collegiate Volleyball Coach and Youth Development and Program Director to most recently General Manager and her current role as Director of Corporate Development at Sports Academy in Ventura County. We had a chance to catch up with her and talk about the wide-ranging offerings at Sports Academy and how they're impacting lives from small kids and families, local school sports teams all the way to professional athletes. Ashley explained how the founder of Sports Academy, Chad Faulkner, has an enlightened view of the definition of sports. It includes eSports - they have a cool room dedicated to it, a close-quarters defense course for first responders and even competitions for entrepreneurs. Ashley is an inspirational leader to be sure, and we're sure she and the team at Sports Academy make a difference in the lives of the athletes that train there. She explained their ALPHA motto - A = Athletes, L = Learning, P = Positive, H = healthy and A = Attitude. Love it. They recently hosted a Startup Weekend at their 96,000 square foot facility. Thanks to Mike Panesis, a friend of the pod, and past guest from California Lutheran University for the introduction.

In this candid interview with Dina Landi, the managing partner of Riskin Partners, we learn about the local real estate market and the attraction of people to the region. She explains how the market is complicated and how our coastal lifestyle is one of the main attractors to people in the area. You'll learn what's it's like to be a realtor who focuses on properties of distinction. She gives tips for meeting new people and how to get beyond just thinking about square footage when representing a home. My biggest surprise was when we talked about real estate technology and how realtors tend to be early adopters, and she said, "Yes, we have our own drone." Of course, she does. This conversation had a bit of sadness to it as well. Riskin Partners was founded by Rebecca Riskin, who perished in the Montecito Debris Flow in January 2019. Dina told us briefly about her story that day and wanted to dedicate this episode to her memory.

Miguel DeCoste, CPP, has worked in the field of security for over 25 years. He is the founder of Coast Executive Services. His background includes domestic and international Executive Protection, Security Consulting, and Event Security assignments in the private sector – including working in coordination with the USSS and State and Local law enforcement to provide client protection and site security during the 2012/2016 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. In addition to his 15 years of Public Events Management for the University of California, he is also the host of The Tao of the Velvet Rope, a podcast examining the myths, truths, and guiding principles of Nightclub Security. Our conversation covered a wide range of topics to get a civilian's view of the realm of security professionals. We talked about specific events in the news and his take on them, and how situational awareness is one of the most important skills you can have. I love his explanation of how he works a room when auditing the security at a nightclub, paying attention to things none of us ever consider. I'm glad that he has a podcast that other professionals can listen to and up their game, and keep us safe.

Dr. George Ayoub is an author, scientist, and educator, experienced in medical research and higher education. He has taught over 10,000 students at colleges and universities and is appreciated for his ability to make things clear for all audiences. He enjoys word plays, gardening, and teaching. His research has identified natural foods that protect our bodies from disease and improved the health of people. His most recent book, All the Worlds a Stage is a concise guide to the workings of your body, with clear explanations of how to improve your odds for a healthy and productive life. It includes an overview of human biology, including cell function, organ system physiology and development. The book explains common chronic diseases and how to adjust diet and exercise to improve your odds of a healthy life. Our conversation covered George's broad interests, from teaching, researching, and why he chose Physics as a major and in Grad School he majored in Neuroscience. He was drawn to these two subjects because they were core to his worldview that the two most core subjects were Physics and Philosophy. So he minored in Philosophy. These cover the bigger ideas of how things work (Physics) and who we are (Philosophy). This conversation is so packed, it's hard to isolate the best bits for the show notes. This show is best experienced by listening - keep a notepad around to take notes.

Alex Cicconi-Kasper, CEO of +Charge, is the winner of the recent Startup Weekend, held in February, at UCSB. He's a second-year College of Creative Studies student and Physicist. He and his team have developed a single-use cell phone charger. In this episode, Alex goes into detail about how they worked as a team over the 56 hours of the weekend to come up with a concept, test market the idea, get feedback and secure a team to mock up the idea, which led to them winning the weekend. 805Conversations is supportive of the efforts of the various Startup Weekends in the region and offers a podcast interview to help these young companies get some early publicity and gives the new leadership a chance to hone their presentation skills for the media. You can read more about the product in detail at the UCSB Center for Creative Studies website: https://ccs.ucsb.edu/news/2018/reliable-charge

Siobhan Holden is a student at Santa Barbara High School and brought cookies to her class one day, and everyone fell in love with them. Sometimes that's all it takes to get that entrepreneurial energy flowing. It turns out that high school kids don't have enough money to afford organic, handmade cookies, so she turned to a broader market and debuted at last year's Summer Solstice Festival. That was a great launchpad, and since then the cookies and the cookie business has grown exponentially. Along the journey to growing the business, she's learning about marketing, distribution, bulk baking, customer relations, and finding ways to build the business. She says that the reason they don't use preservatives in their cookies is that you wouldn't expect your mom or grandmother to use them in theirs. We agree.

Jennifer Berger is a native Southern Californian and a third generation Realtor. Following the footsteps of her Grandfather, and Mother, Jen began real estate in 1998 while attending UC Santa Barbara. She graduated in 2000 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish and soon after attained her Real Estate License. Jen began her career in a boutique real estate firm in Santa Barbara and after five years joined an established real estate firm to accommodate her expanding clientele and connect with clients on a local and international level. Jenn joined the prestigious and elite agents at Compass at the end of 2016. Our conversation took us into areas I'd never considered when thinking about real estate, like how to deal with death and divorce. She says that there are two reasons to be in the business, the money and the people. Knowing from working directly with her as a volunteer at TEDxSantaBarbara, for her, it's the people. She also busted some myths I had about weekend realtors that think it's easy to get a licesne and make a million dollars and only have to sell a couple of homes a year. Not true. If you want to be a realtor, she suggests: 1. Be ready to invest all of your time 2. Be a jack of all trades 3. You've got to have heart Coming from a 3rd generation realtor, that makes a lot of sense. We appreciate Jen's spirit and her sincere desire to build lifelong relationships with clients.

Edgar Terry, President, and CFO of Terry Berries comes from a long line of farmers. He has a lifelong interest in finance and teaching. In this episode, Edgar explains the Food System in a way that helps us understand the process of commercial farming in a way that helps us appreciate the complexities of the business. Terry Berries have been a fixture in Ventura County for the past 16 years. They are centrally located at 1701 Telephone Road. They've operated a fruit stand this entire time and don't wholesale the berries. If you want some of the best tasting, picked-fresh-daily strawberries, you'll need to go during the season (February through Mid-June). In addition to the berries, Edgar grows large crops under contract, peppers, celery and other vegetables for large food producers. As a chef, I was fascinated to learn how this all worked, and how he manages the entire process. Edgar explained that they operate on single-digit margins, meaning it only takes a minor mishap, maybe too much heat, to erase the profit. Luckily for the family, he has a love of numbers and suggests that there's no substitute for sound finance. He loves this aspect of the business so much; he's been teaching it for 32 years in California Lutheran University's Degree for Professionals Evening Program and the Master of Business Administration Program. He also somehow finds time to sit on eight boards of directors, including being the President and CFO of Terry Farms. He's a busy guy. We also talked about the challenges and surprises of commercial farming, and some of the innovative aspects that are being implemented to help him and other food producers meet the demands of an ever more discerning population.

Emily Barany has a great story to tell about how ThomasFireHelp.org started. It was the day after the Thomas Fire had burned through the night and was barreling towards downtown Ventura. She helped a friend evacuate and in the morning started looking for ways to help those affected by the raging fires. She contacted a friend Chris Collier, and together they came up with a plan to connect resources within a few days. Listen as she tells the story of rallying private pilots in the area to create an ad-hoc fleet of planes to transport key personnel and those in need of medical treatment during the worst days, primarily when the 101 freeway was closed. ThomasFireHelp was born out of the immediate and desperate needs of people in the Ventura and Santa Barbara communities facing disasters of unprecedented scale and destruction. No one knew where to go or what to do, and everyone wanted to help. That was their simple beginning - they became the 'Craigslist' of recovery, building a “scrappy” web-based platform connecting those in need with those who had resources to give. Emily has a background of helping local organizations. Her company, Visionality, works with non-profits to align their vision with their strategy and focus on the business side of the operation. This episode takes a deep dive into the motivation that has now resulted in the creation of a Disaster Resource and Recovery Platform. Emily admits that she knows nothing about software development, or disaster recovery, which leads to her quote above, "Everything starts with I don't know." She's been on a steep learning curve since early December 2017 when the Thomas Fire started. She continues to develop the platform, knowing that the recovery efforts may easily take ten years until we're back to a new normal. Emily is a graduate of California Lutheran University, one of the sponsors of our podcast and represents her alma mater very nicely.

Seth Streeter is a community organizer and CEO of Mission Wealth. Over the past two years, he has led the creation of a significant new effort in Santa Barbara called Sustainable Future. His Advisory Council of 24 civic leaders reads like a local Who's Who. Collaboratively they have found ways to amplify what's happening in the environmental movement in various silos and bring the efforts together under one umbrella. The site that they've created has an underlying strategy of employing game mechanics to make participation in various activities engaging and fun. At the recent Earth Day, they set up a Scavenger Hunt that took players in and out of over 200 organizations at Alameda Park. Part of the success of the project is how they are connecting non-profits to business to schools, the public and private sector and faith-based communities. It's a significant mandate. Seth's concerned about scope creep and has a clear focus on the challenges that such a sweeping initiative has. I enjoyed hearing Seth talk about Environmental Stewardship and feels that is an important message to communicate. We applaud everyone's commitment to this project and hope that it inspires you as well. Take a look a the site and sign up to discover new ways to be inspired.

Robin Elander is the Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Celebration. Recently she sat down with Mark and Patrick to talk about the upcoming 3-day festival and the workshop that runs for two months leading up to the big weekend. This year's celebration is June 22-24 in downtown Santa Barbara, ending up at Alameda Park for a well-attended parade after-party. We talked with Robin about the challenges of running such a creative endeavor and what it was like behind the scenes. Summer Solstice Parade began in 1974, as a birthday celebration for a popular artist and mime named Michael Gonzales. In subsequent years, their parade joined forces with a Summer Solstice Music Festival coordinated by Michael Felcher, sponsored by The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, staged at the Sunken Gardens to celebrate the longest day of the year. The Parade and Festival is the largest arts event in Santa Barbara County, drawing crowds of over 100,000 spectators from around the world. From these humble beginnings arose a celebration of life which, is like no other. This year's theme is Heroes and we're looking forward to seeing how the various floats and groups bring the theme to life. Robin says that Solstice has surprised her in how transitory the overall effort is and how people who've never thought of themselves as creative, come out of the workshops feeling a bigger, bolder version of themselves. Robin has been coordinating events since she was 16 in Jamestown, New York. She grew up in a beauty salon, much like the one we see in the movie Steel Magnolias. She says that the core of a community is their events, with the most visible of those being parades. Robin is involved in a lot of artistic ventures in Santa Barbara and works with the Office of Arts and Culture, the Community Arts Workshop and other organizations. She wears many hats as the founder of Global Good Impact and works tirelessly on behalf of many creative projects in Santa Barbara. She's currently working with a team to produce the Santa Barbara Timeline Mosaic. This project looks amazing.

Sabith Khan is an Assistant Professor at the School of Management at California Lutheran University. He's passionately interested in what drives us to give our hard-earned money to good causes and how this affects civil society, religion, and politics. Charity and philanthropy are becoming increasingly crucial as fields of study, given the growing importance of non-state actors such as civil society groups and nonprofit organizations in our society. The introduction of Automation, Artificial Intelligence and new forms of production are sure to upend the existing models of production, in what scholars and thinkers are calling the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ This is bound to have a profound impact on our societies, around the world. Sabith's research agenda is to examine these changes in the realm of nonprofit organizations, technologies, governance systems and help chart a path towards managing these rapid changes. He is particularly drawn towards examining the old as well as the new: religious, cultural and governmental systems as much as technological systems that seem to be emerging fast and dominating our consciousness. Our conversation covered; • His academic background, • What drew him into studying Public Policy and Administration, • Why he loves teaching, • Statistics about charitable giving that are eye-opening, • What about conflict countries? • What are remittances and why are they such a large part of the economy?

Narelle Wickham is a forensic mental health clinician, here visiting Santa Barbara for the summer from Canberra, Australia. This conversation opened up a window into why mental illness is such a driving factor in school violence and how educators can be taught to recognize early warning signs. Narelle became aware of the impact of mental illness and the judicial system while working in the court system in Australia and saw the challenges of mental health vs. criminal justice. She said that when you focus on solving the mental illness issue, there's an extremely high success rate. Narelle suggests that mental illness is primarily a young person disease, concentrated mainly on 12-25-year-olds. She has a method for training teachers called SOLD; S = Smile, O = Observe, L = Listen and D = Discuss. We talked about gun violence in Australia, where there's never been a school shooting, to here in the US, when there was a shooting while we were recording this episode. Another focus for her is Internet Addiction. We spoke at length about that issue. Narelle creates professional development workshops for teachers and school districts in Australia, and after having spent some time here, would love to start training here in the 805.

Professor Bruce Gillies, PsyD, teaches at the School of Management at California Lutheran University. He came back on the show to tell us about his new book, The 21st Century Career Search Program. He speaks about how the first 90 days on the job is crucial to make sure there's a cultural fit between the employee and the workplace. Bruce is passionate about this field and took us on a deep dive of how to get a great job, how to do a skills inventory, what to focus on in HR, including how to manage your self-confidence in the interview. Listeners to the show know that I love acronyms and Bruce has a great one as it relates to creating your inventory of skills. He calls it CAR - specifically, create an example of a problem you solved at a previous job, spell out the Challenge, talk about the Action you took and then highlight the Result. CAR. Note: It's been my experience that if you can insert stories into the interview, you'll perform at least 100% better than other candidates.

Laura Azzalina Rigali is a bundle of energy, and it must be fun to be one of her students. She is an adjunct professor at California Lutheran University, in the School of Management and in a professional capacity she runs a vibrant consultancy called Illuminate CFO, leading workshops and CEO Roundtables. During our conversation she let it slip that she loves going Case Studies - think of it as forensic accounting. Digging in and understanding what the numbers mean. She loves the stories that the numbers tell her. She's particularly interested in the financial empowerment of CEO's. She has a lot of experience working with millennials as well and says that what's unique about them is that they're very mission-oriented. She talked about the 'power of the purse - putting your money where it matters,' as something they care about. We asked about the three surprises she consistently sees when working with CEO's. She says they are: a lack of financial knowledge (or fear of numbers), a lack of confidence (afraid to grow) or a lack of self-awareness. Now we know why she's also a life coach as well as a CEO coach.

Aaron Pick, the Chief Operating Officer of award-winning Allen Construction, in Santa Barbara, had an engaging conversation with us, covering areas from LEED construction, the rebuilding of Montecito to his winding journey to Santa Barbara. Dennis Allen, the founder of the firm, is a pioneer in LEED methods of construction and is a thought-leader as it applies to sustainable building. Aaron focuses on growing the business and continuing to advocate for zero net energy projects. There were many exciting side-stories during this episode that will give you deep insight into what it's like running an independent operation here on the South Coast. Allen was honored with a California Small Business award in 2015. Note: It was at that ceremony in Sacramento that 805's host, Mark Sylvester, met Dennis, as introNetworks also was there to be recognized for the 805connect project (the organization that produces this show).

John Silva is the President and Senior Creative Director of DuPuis Group, based in Ventura, California. They work on branding, innovation and have created several ventures in conjunction with their clients' brands. John is a veteran with 25 years experience of creative problem-solving. The central theme of our conversation was around a shift in what branding is today and the brand-consumer relationship. We learned some key aspects of how he approaches problems. Specifically using brand values to connect trends and culture to business goals and strategy. A major takeaway from this conversation was that people buy values, not value (made us think about having a Values in addition to an About page on the website). John also suggests that the best brands are willing to polarize! There are plenty of pearls in this episode; you'll want to have a pen handy to take notes and feel free to share the show with a friend who's struggling with brand identity and purpose. We predict that this episode that will become required listening in marketing classes.

We had an excellent, wide-ranging conversation with Phillipa Bisou Della Vina, President of the Santa Barbara Transgender Advocacy Network (SBTAN). She's been deeply involved in this underserved community for the past several years and helped us better appreciate their challenges. There are a lot of new terms to consider during this episode, and we've provided a list of resources to help you better understand and find ways to be supportive. There is a tremendous transgender outreach and support network locally, and Bisou told us a poignant story of her meeting a young girl and her family at a Pacific Pride event three years ago. Bisou explained that there are several sub-communities underneath the trans-umbrella and that helping people understand this diversity is a large part of the organization's mission. She spoke of having recently produced a Cultural Competency Class for local educators to help them with transgender students in the classroom. We pushed this episode out quickly to support their upcoming event, Hearts on Fire on April 7th at the Lobero Theater in downtown Santa Barbara. Here's a list of organizations that are helping and providing resources: SBTAN and Trans youth Santa Barbara PFLAG - Center for the LGBTQ Community in Santa Barbara Hearts on Fire Event (April 7, 2018) Becoming a transgender affirming business Los Angeles economic empowerment for LGBTQ Tranz Central Coast (SLO) Diversity Collective, Ventura County Santa Maria House of Pride and Equality  Tips for Allies of Transgender People Understanding Gender Diversity and Sexual Orientation Among Students

Dane Howard is a designer, a dad and a friend of the show. We asked him back to continue our conversation about the importance of design in the workplace. Dane joined us in 2016 when we were first getting started, and we spoke about Design Thinking. You might want to listen to that show right after you've finished this one. I am fascinated with design, in all its incarnations. Dane and I talked at length about communication skills and how he pre-visualizes partnerships and how his ear for adaptive and tribal languages can influence conversations. He's keenly aware of how an organization feels, which is directly related to how people talk with one another. As usual, Dane had drawn up his ideas on his drive down to the studio and shared the intersections of his dreams with his skills and how course corrections and forks in the road changed everything. We also talked about Big Moments, his word, and how I refer to them as Taps (on the shoulder), with the takeaway being, you need to 'be available for the work.' Finally, we discussed the relationship he has with his daughter, Chloe, who was on the TEDxSantaBarbara red circle and has now launched her career at the old age of 17. I know that a lot of our listeners are parents and how they shape and guide their children blurs the line between work and family. How much guidance do you provide and how much do you let them go on their own path. The two of them have found an excellent way to work together. We may invite Dane back for a third talk at the table.

In this episode of 805conversations, we talk with Business Giving Roundtable members, Kirsten McLaughlin, Market Vice President, COX Communications and Van Haas, Founder, Accountix. The Business Giving Roundtable (BGR) is a growing forum where local business leaders share strategic approaches to corporate social responsibility and employee volunteerism. BGR promotes business giving and elevates the generous contributions of its members including local entrepreneurs, international corporations and local chambers of commerce. Kirsten and Van talk about how their organizations approach business giving and have embedded corporate social responsibility into the culture of their companies.

Karyl Lynn Burns and Jim O'Neil are the co-founders of the Rubicon Theater in downtown Ventura, California. They are celebrating their 20th Anniversary Season with six new shows. They call it "A Season of Enchantment." Jim has a long career in the theater; acting, directing, writing and producing. He's the Artistic Director Emeritus at Rubicon. Karyl Lynn has focused on her career as an actress and is the Producing Artistic Director. They don't run the theater by themselves, they've got a fantastic team and pull from a volunteer team of over 300 people. 20% of the volunteers have been with them since the beginning 20 years ago. Jim and Karyl Lynn are married and work closely together. In this episode, we explore what it's like to live as a creative couple. They have some ground rules: limit work-talk at home, remember that they're friends and co-workers and never forget their shared values. There were plenty of threads to travel down in this far-reaching interview including, How to read the audience? What does it mean to be a non-profit and how that affects operations? How running the theater is like sailing, you plot a course and then go with the winds. Over the years they have had 45,000 students go through their summer programs, and over 440,000 people have enjoyed their productions. With 20 years behind them, they are planning for ongoing sustainability, focusing on the people and the building the theater is housed in. They enjoy a tremendous amount of local financial support and know that great productions help pull in an even broader audience. We wish them the best for this Anniversary Season.

Sara and Garrett are the founders of the afterschool theater program based in Santa Barbara called Collabreations. They teach an ensemble-based creation method rooted in improv techniques. The focus on grades 1-6 and appreciate how much impact they're making in these young lives. Their business is teaching students skills that will serve them well in life, including collaboration, brainstorming, performing and developing self-confidence in front of an audience. The focus here is on how you launch a business like this in Santa Barbara, the market validation they did and how Sara is putting ideas she's learning in SBCC's Marketing class into practice. We are always interested in talking to couples who work together, the challenges they face and how they optimize their collective skills to serve a growing business. This is an excellent example of this collaboration can be done and how impactful arts-based education can be in our community.

Marsha Bailey, a resident of Santa Barbara since receiving her Masters in Communication from UCSB, leads an organization that's making a difference in the lives of hundreds of emerging entrepreneurs in the region. She's the founder of Women's Economic Ventures, which is the outgrowth of an early interest in the feminization of poverty, the suffragette movement and direct experience working in crisis intervention. She was surprised at her interest in entrepreneurialism and now finds working with women, and some men has been extremely rewarding. In talking about startups and empowering women through this type of education, she mentioned the startup rates are the lowest they've been in 35 years and that 60% of millennials want to be self-employed, but only 4% are. Her interest in empowerment led to a role for the past five years as a member of the National Women's Business Council in Washington. There, she's worked on policy, the SBA, with the White House and at the State level. Her members are in two camps. First, they hit a glass ceiling after acquiring 25 years of experience and want to venture out on their own. Second might be as the result of a significant life transition, divorce, or after an illness. She's also seeing more younger women now, with many in engineering. This is a great leading indicator of the local economic development challenge we have here. Something she loves teaching, "How to ask for the business." Yes, we could all stand some more training in that area.

Primo Custodio is the Executive in Residence at California Lutheran Univesity's School of Management. His career of 44 years working in human resources qualifies him to bring real-world experience into the classroom. Primo has seen it all as it relates to Talent Management, starting with his first job at Yosemite where he eventually became the head of personnel and unionized the bus drivers. That early exposure led to a career that included six mergers and acquisitions while at NBC Universal. He's seen every type of leadership style as it relates to managing personnel. He goes into an interesting dissection of the style of Human Resources over the past four decades: 80's - Lot's of M&A activity driven by Wall Street created massive culture clashes on the resultant pairings 90's - Re-engineering, including downsizing and consolidating 00's - The rise of HR related technologies 10's - A new term: Human Captial Management Current - Where Talent Management is aligned with Business Strategy We finished with a lengthy discussion about a new word (for us) called Encore Career. Listen and learn what this might mean for you.

Dan Weeks has precisely the type of personality you want in a mentor. Upbeat, optimistic, boundless business savvy and is a committed citizen. Dan spent most of his career at HP, which was famous for their corporate culture, The HP Way. Dan started off our interview by reciting their core idea: Catch people doing something right. He's a part of SLO Partners, who, in conjunction with the SLO County of Education, the Economic Vitality Corporation and the leadership of San Luis Obispo are working to solve an impending economic reality that is coming in seven years. The challenge is to solve the problem of the closing of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant which is estimated to have a $1B economic impact on the community and be closed by 2025. Communities all over the country have had to deal with the issue of industries leaving the area. Examples are numerous, steel plants closing, furniture manufacturing moving to China, endless businesses disrupted by technologies that make them obsolete. The SLO Partners builds on a combination of education and business, as exemplified at the SLO Hothouse, where Dan is an entrepreneur in residence. He and the other co-founder, Michael Specchierla of the County Office of Education, have implemented a program to train tech employees and build a new workforce. As the tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds in SLO, there's increasing demand for a trained workforce. Dan says after talking with business leaders and owners, they heard, "We want competent people everyone wants to work with." They were looking for people who'd make great team members, not just skilled workers. They've created a curriculum in conjunction with CompTIA's IT-Ready Career program, which assesses, trains, certifies and places unemployed and under-employed adults in their first jobs in the tech field, which has a shortage of qualified workers. The program has had two cohorts and promises to be a success. The program solves one piece of the puzzle if SLO is going to find a way to replace that $1B that will eventually go away. You get a sense of confidence and optimism in listening to Dan that they're going to be successful.

Joanne Kuchera-Morin is on the faculty at UCSB and is the Professor of Media Arts and Technology and the Director of the Allosphere. Her facility is in the same building as the California Nanosystems Institute. She's been on the cutting edge of digital media for many years. She gave a TED talk in Long Beach on the Allosphere in 2009. She started learning Music and Theory when she was 19 in Palm Beach, FL and since 1984 has been involved in media composition. Her dream, to create an interactive laboratory that can be used to travel through massive datasets has taken ten years to develop the software. JoAnn is a force of nature and has found a way, as a creative person, to work within the data-driven world of theoretical physics, nanosystems research and a myriad of interesting projects dreamed up by her colleagues at UCSB.

Sean Bhardwaj is the Founder and CEO of Aspire3, based at the Ventura Ventures Technology Center. He sat with Mark and Patrick to talk about his view of what entrepreneurs need to be successful and the program he's created to deliver the missing pieces. Sean looks at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship and how the missing piece in a lot of co-working spaces is mentorships. He also understands the importance of programmatic elements, such as marketing, sales, management and leadership training. He and his team have developed their curricula and have had students as young as ten go through the program. They have taught over 2,000 students and incubated 36 startups with over 50 entrepreneurs. He has a good model for how to prepare students how to understand a problem; it's solution and the market fit. They have a 16 weeks program with two classes a week, of 2 hours each. It's an accelerator program that only takes 30 people at term. They did the first of this new series in January and are currently in the second session of this year. When looking at potential members, they look at their passion, their desire to learn and their ability to take the initiative. He says that in the educational environment, there's no real-life business pressure, so he looks for self-starters with strong follow through. We know that Sean's working hard at making a difference in Ventura County and wish him and the program a lot of success.

Yelena Lipovetskaya wants to make an impact in the world. And her company Cospheric is doing just that, one microsphere at a time. Yelena is from Ukraine and works at the micro-level of manufacturing. We've had other companies that build things on the how, but not someone who makes a product that is 1/1000 of the width of a human hair. Not quite nano-small, but still very small. Her company makes these microspheres, essentially tiny balls, in all colors, materials, and properties. Sometimes one of her 6,000 clients will only need one. Yes. One small microsphere. She started work as a materials scientist at Xerox in the toner division. You know the black powder that spills out of the copier when you change the cartridge. Well, it turns out there's a lot of science involved in making that product, which she parlayed into an entire business. These microspheres, made of glass and other materials are enabling breakthroughs in a variety of sciences and medicine. The challenges researchers are trying to solve at the micro-level require high precision, microscopic spheres that can run through various mechanisms, including the human body, to trace any number of potential outcomes. She gives a few examples of what researchers are doing with the spheres that will amaze you when you hear them. It turns out there's a massive gap in the market Cospheric fills very nicely from their offices here in the 805. In over nine years of operations, they still don't have a direct competitor. I asked to get a tour of the facility, but it turns out the process is highly confidential, and they're very protective. We understand. We covered a lot of ground, as we have a natural curiosity about all things small, and with the California Nanosystems Institute here at UCSB, have a fascination with conversations related to this new world.

Dusty Stutsman is the co-founder of Nightout.com and SBMenus. One could say they backed into the business when they saw a gap in the market. He and partner Bryan Brand, noticed that one page on SBMenus.com was getting a lot of traction. People were spending more time on the Bar Specials and Entertainment page which got them to thinking, "What if we created an entire site for entertainment?". Nightout.com was born soon after and what a great URL that is too. Thinking bigger than just delivering information, or food, they approached the project as an opportunity to create a platform, not just a website. The resulting software project now is a complete ticketing and event site that producers can use to manage events. They're full service now, doing the marketing, selling, even scanning and validating tickets at the event. Dusty's parents are both entrepreneurs, so his exposure to thinking about ideas and turning them into businesses is a part of his DNA. He explained how he and Bryan developed a 3-sided marketplace for SBMenus that is composed of Consumers, Restaurants, and the Drivers. As a pure E-commerce play, they optimised each aspect of the business to be as efficient as possible. Dusty admits to being fixated on the Delivery Tracker, so he knows where all the drivers are - making sure clients get their meals hot and quick. Nightout.com sees 30,000 visitors a day, as people look for events nationwide. The platform's services are easily integrated into any website, and the entire ticketing experience can be added to an existing business. He sees a tremendous upside here, even in a crowded market.

Theo Stephan, the founder and life force behind Global Gardens tells us a great story of how she's brought her Greek culture and passion for food to Los Olivos. Theo is interested in permaculture, resilience, and food. She trained as a graphic designer and escaped LA a couple of decades ago. She's been an entrepreneur since she was eight (selling seeds she saw in an ad in the back of a comic book), then started a recycling business at twelve. When she moved to the Santa Ynez Valley, she imported 500 trees form Crete and started an Olive orchard. That grew to 2000 trees before she eventually sold that farm. She now maintains 60 trees that she uses to harvest table olives. Her main public presence now is a farm stand in Los Olivos where she sells amazing olive oils, olives, nuts and spectacularly tasty vinegar. We did a tasting on the air, hard to convey the deliciousness over a podcast, but we tried. Theo can talk all day about the deeper senses that food can touch, and you can tell in a minute how much she cares about the impact her foods can have. She also has a unique claim to fame; she was the first in the US to have a monthly subscription based Food Club. She's still running that club and curating selections for her members. Listeners know that I am a Chef and it was one of the rare interviews where I could go deep on food and entrepreneurs. You'll love the insight Theo offers on this episode.

Grandmaster Dave Wheaton, a past guest on the show, joined us to talk about aging and his hero Jack LaLanne. Dave is the founder of Hapkido International and is in the Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He sat down to talk with Mark and Patrick about his wellness regimen and a recent trip to Japan where he embarked on the Samurai Trail (Nakasendo Way). Dave was influenced early in life by Jack Lalanne who said, "Exercise is King, nutrition is queen." Dave embodies this philosophy in his martial arts teaching and through the KUT (Kickboxers Ultimate Training) program pioneered at his dojo, Martial Arts Family Fitness, based in Santa Barbara, California. Dave says that his Italian upbringing and a diet heavy in carbs lead to him being 'husky.' He now lives by the diet advocated by his wife and wellness expert, Melodee Meyer, author of the book: Clean Food Diet. Much of the conversation focused on the magic that Dave encountered on the Samurai Trail. We talked at length about Mushasi, author of the Book of Five Rings and the impact he had on martial arts. He was the most notorious samurai of his time and never lost a battle.

Doug Margerum was honored as the 2017 Vintner of the Year by the Arthritis Foundation and recently took time to chat with Mark and Patrick about Santa Barbara County winemaking. Doug's been involved in hospitality since his early days at UCSB, the Lobster House, in Santa Barbara and Borsodis (great coffee house in the 70's in Isla Vista). He's been an entrepreneur since his early teens, climbing up trees to harvest mistletoe during the holidays, and setting up a restaurant in the front yard of his home. Doug has always had a position of responsibility, from the early days with his mentor, a neighbor judge with homing pigeons, to now, as one of the most respected voices in the wine industry in Santa Ynez. Locals will know his Margerum Tasting Room in the El Paseo and remember his earlier venture as one of the founders of the Wine Cask. He made the transition from restaurateur to vintner after a trip to New Orleans where he met Emeril's sommelier and decided to make the leap. He started with 400 cases and this year, 2017, Margerum Wines will produce 16,000 cases from their home base in Santa Ynez. His story of the past decade takes him from renting space from friends and winemakers to getting his own place in Buellton on Industrial Way. We want to thank Doug for taking us to school on the geology of our region, the history of winemaking here in Santa Barbara County and a deep dive into why this region is responsible for some of the top wines in the world.

Kerri Murray, the President of ShelterBox USA, was late to our recording session because she was on the phone all morning with FEMA. Her organization was one of the many NGO's responding to Hurricane Harvey that was poised to hit the south Texas coast in hours. We gave her a pass and hope that people are as safe as they can be in this natural disaster. Kerry has been at the helm of ShelterBox for just a few short years. She came to Santa Barbara to work at Direct Relief as part of a six-month deployment with her employer, Glaxo SmithKline. Their Pulse program matches employee skills with non-profit needs. In this case, her background in Marketing and Communications proved to be extremely useful. She fell in love with Santa Barbara, and when the opportunity came up with ShelterBox, she took it. Kerri says that their relationship with the people they serve is typically on the worst day of their life when they've lost everything. Kerri explained that there are over 85 million displaced people in the world at any given moment and of those, 60 million is as a result of a conflict. She explained in harrowing detail the challenges they have of providing shelter in war-torn Aleppo in Syria. ShelterBox provided 1/3 of the housing during the 2010 Haitian earthquake and is directly involved with over 20 areas that need help around the world on any given day. Kerri explained how the network of volunteers, trained extensively, provide first responder services to provide shelter, to augment the food and water provided by other organizations. The tactical logistics of responding to natural disasters and conflicts are intense, and you can tell that they've amassed a tremendous amount of expertise so that they can be one of the first on site immediately after a disaster. That's what the FEMA call was about so that their pre positioned ShelterBoxes and other services could be deployed as soon as today (the day after Harvey touched the mainland.) Kerri said that a big part of the success of the organization is due to the relationship they have with Rotary International. The team works in close collaboration with hundreds of partners, such as Virgin Airlines to get products into place so that they're available at a moments notice. Kerri has a compelling personal story that started when she was 6, working at her father's fabric show in Connecticut. He worked seven days a week and would take her with him on Sunday mornings at 4 am to the Flea Market, where she learned how to talk with people and sell $1 toys. She saw first hand from her father how philanthropy was a very local-focused, community activity and has continued that throughout her life. She had advice for non-profits that are looking to improve their marketing: focus on what makes you unique, and use stories that illustrate the impact you're making in the community.

Tyler Lucas and Nathaniel Thompson are making a difference in the lives of 4th - 8th graders. They are helping run Start-Up Kids a project founded by Gerhard Apfelthaler of California Lutheran University's School of Management, Maria Ballesteros-Sola and Vlad Vaiman of CLU. Note: Gerhard and Vlad have been on the show before. This project, now in its second year, is expanding as they move to the third year. Over an eight week period, these two, and others on the team, spend 30 minutes a week helping students realize their entrepreneurial ambitions. This project is so successful, one of the teams was asked to present their project at the opening of the 2017 New Venture competition at HUB101. Who doesn't love hearing energetic, passionate young 12-14-year-olds who want to change the world? The students learn marketing, design, product development, costing and take the classes very seriously. You'll love hearing examples of how enthusiastic the students are in their desire to improve situations they think will make a huge difference in the world. Like making a kid-friendly version of Instagram, because their parents won't let them log in to it. This coming school year sees the program expand to 5 schools. Over the eight weeks they are taught three models; Explore, Create and Build. One of the tenets they teach is not everyone has to be an entrepreneur. They explain there's plenty of room on the teams for workers and individual contributors. The biggest surprise for the guys? It was how much the students retained over the period of eight weeks. If you have a 12-year-old in your life, you might consider moving to Ventura County, so they have a shot at getting into one of these classes. If you are interested in putting one of these programs together in your school district, drop the guys a note.